NFC Sensors Based on Energy Harvesting for IoT Applications

The availability of low-cost near-field communication (NFC) devices, the incorporation of NFC readers into most current mobile phones, and the inclusion of energy-harvesting (EH) capabilities in NFC chips make NFC a key technology for the development of green Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In this chapter, an overview of recent advances in the field of battery-less NFC sensors at 13.56 MHz is provided, and a comparison to other short-range RFID technologies is given. After reviewing power transfer in NFC, recommendations for the practical design of NFC-based sensor tags and NFC readers are made. A list of commercial NFC integrated circuits with energy-harvesting capabilities is also provided. A survey of recent battery-less NFC sensors developed by the group including soil moisture, water content, pH, color, and implanted NFC sensors is done

A Passive Harmonic Tag for Humidity Sensing

This paper describes a passive harmonic tag for radio frequency identification (RFID) and wireless sensor applications. The tag uses a dual polarized UHF patch antenna as an input antenna. One of the outputs is connected to a frequency doubler, which consists of a Schottky diode with its output connected to a patch tuned at twice the input frequency. The other output of the input antenna feeds a DC power harvested converter that drives an oscillator which modulates its output signal by controlling the bias point of the Schottky diode. The antenna’s output is also used as a humidity sensor. To achieve this, the antenna is loaded with an interdigital capacitor with humidity-dependent capacitance. The antenna is consequently detuned when humidity varies, and therefore the second harmonic power is received. The tag is manufactured using standard fiberglass substrate. The basic theory of harmonic tag operation is described and compared with the standard backscattering approach. Experimental results with a proof of concept using commercial components are presented

Dones, trajectòries de vida i noves ruralitats

En el marc d'un cert retorn al camp per part d'alguns col·lectius i en determinats territoris, dones formades s'instal·len en aquests entorns rurals i des de la seva posició contribueixen a construir la ruralitat actual. Aquest és un fenomen nou a diverses àrees rurals d'Espanya i d'Europa i frena la tendència d'un procés sostingut de despoblament rural selectiu quant a edat i gènere que ha afectat negativament les dones joves. Aquest article pretén donar a conèixer la trajectòria de vida d'algunes dones de Catalunya i Galícia que han decidit viure en entorns rurals i que resideixen al mateix municipi, comarca o província on van néixer. Ens interessa saber què els ha portat a viure al món rural i si aquesta permanència o tornada al lloc d'origen té a veure amb motius familiars, laborals o socioambientals que puguin il·lustrar la tendència d'aquestes noves ruralitats. De forma expressa, relacionem la seva trajectòria de mobilitat residencial amb el nivell d'estudis i l'ocupació laboral. L'estudi constata que els aspectes socioambientals i emocionals són importants en el retorn i corrobora que, amb igualtat de formació acadèmica, hi ha diferències d'oportunitats segons el grau de ruralitat.En el marco de un cierto retorno al campo por parte de algunos colectivos y en determinados territorios, mujeres formadas se instalan en el medio rural y desde su posición contribuyen a construir la ruralidad actual. Este es un fenómeno nuevo en diversas áreas rurales de España y Europa que frena la tendencia de un proceso sostenido de despoblamiento rural selectivo en cuanto a la edad y al género que ha afectado negativamente a las mujeres jóvenes. Este artículo pretende dar a conocer la trayectoria de vida de algunas mujeres de Cataluña y Galicia que han decidido vivir en entornos rurales y que residen en el mismo municipio, comarca o provincia donde nacieron. Nos interesa saber qué las ha llevado a vivir en el medio rural y si esta permanencia o vuelta al lugar de origen se relaciona con motivos familiares, laborales o socioambientales que puedan ilustrar la tendencia de las nuevas ruralidades. De forma expresa, relacionamos la trayectoria de movilidad residencial de las mujeres con su nivel de estudios y la ocupación laboral. El estudio constata que los aspectos socioambientales y emocionales son importantes en el retorno y corrobora que, con igualdad de formación académica, hay diferencias de oportunidades según el grado de ruralidad.Dans le cadre d'un certain retour au champ de la part de certains groupes et sur des territoires déterminés, des femmes formées s'installent en milieu rural et contribuent depuis leur position à bâtir la ruralité actuelle. Il s'agit d'un phénomène nouveau dans plusieurs zones rurales de l'Espagne et de l'Europe qui freine la tendance d'un processus soutenu de dépeuplement rural sélectif en ce qui concerne l'âge et le genre et qui a négativement affecté les femmes jeunes. Cet article souhaite faire connaître la trajectoire de vie de quelques femmes de la Catalogne et de la Galice qui ont décidé d'habiter dans des environnements ruraux et qui résident dans la même commune, région ou province où elles sont nées. Nous cherchons à savoir ce qui les a amenées à vivre dans un milieu rural et si cette permanence ou retour au lieu d'origine est liée à des motifs familiaux, professionnels ou socio-environnementaux qui puissent illustrer la tendance des nouvelles ruralités. Nous associons expressément la trajectoire de mobilité résidentielle des femmes avec leur niveau d'études et leur profession. L'étude constate que les aspects socio-environnementaux et émotionnels sont importants dans ce retour et ce qui confirme que, à avec une formation académique similaire, il existe des différences d'opportunités selon le degré de ruralité.In the context of a certain 'back to the countryside' move on the part of certain groups and in specific geographic areas, educated women are settling in the rural environment and from this position are helping to build the new rurality. This is a new phenomenon, seen in several rural areas of Spain and other countries in Europe, which is slowing down a sustained process of rural depopulation, selective in terms of age and gender, that has negatively affected young women. This article aims to illustrate the life journeys of some women from Catalonia and Galicia who have made the choice to live in rural areas, in the same municipality, county or province where they were born. Our aim is to ascertain, first, what factors have led them to live in the rural environment and, second, whether their return to their place of origin is related to family, work or social and environmental reasons, which could give us an insight into the way in which the new ruralities are being shaped. We explicitly relate women's paths of residential mobility to their level of education and their occupation. The study reveals that socio-environmental and emotional factors are important in the desire to return and it indicates that, given equal educational backgrounds, there are differences in opportunities depending on the degree of rurality of the different areas

Development of a physiomimetic model of acute respiratory distress syndrome by using ECM hydrogels and organ-on-a-chip devices

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome is one of the more common fatal complications in COVID-19, characterized by a highly aberrant inflammatory response. Pre-clinical models to study the effect of cell therapy and anti-inflammatory treatments have not comprehensively reproduced the disease due to its high complexity. This work presents a novel physiomimetic in vitro model for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome using lung extracellular matrix-derived hydrogels and organ-on-a-chip devices. Monolayres of primary alveolar epithelial cells were cultured on top of decellullarized lung hydrogels containing primary lung mesenchymal stromal cells. Then, cyclic stretch was applied to mimic breathing, and an inflammatory response was induced by using a bacteriotoxin hit. Having simulated the inflamed breathing lung environment, we assessed the effect of an anti-inflammatory drug (i.e., dexamethasone) by studying the secretion of the most relevant inflammatory cytokines. To better identify key players in our model, the impact of the individual factors (cyclic stretch, decellularized lung hydrogel scaffold, and the presence of mesenchymal stromal cells) was studied separately. Results showed that developed model presented a more reduced inflammatory response than traditional models, which is in line with what is expected from the response commonly observed in patients. Further, from the individual analysis of the different stimuli, it was observed that the use of extracellular matrix hydrogels obtained from decellularized lungs had the most significant impact on the change of the inflammatory response. The developed model then opens the door for further in vitro studies with a better-adjusted response to the inflammatory hit and more robust results in the test of different drugs or cell therapy

Lung Extracellular Matrix Hydrogels Enhance Preservation of Type II Phenotype in Primary Alveolar Epithelial Cells

One of the main limitations of in vitro studies on lung diseases is the difficulty of maintaining the type II phenotype of alveolar epithelial cells in culture. This fact has previously been related to the translocation of the mechanosensing Yes-associated protein (YAP) to the nuclei and Rho signaling pathway. In this work, we aimed to culture and subculture primary alveolar type II cells on extracellular matrix lung-derived hydrogels to assess their suitability for phenotype maintenance. Cells cultured on lung hydrogels formed monolayers and maintained type II phenotype for a longer time as compared with those conventionally cultured. Interestingly, cells successfully grew when they were subsequently cultured on a dish. Moreover, cells cultured on a plate showed the active form of the YAP protein and the formation of stress fibers and focal adhesions. The results of chemically inhibiting the Rho pathway strongly suggest that this is one of the mechanisms by which the hydrogel promotes type II phenotype maintenance. These results regarding protein expression strongly suggest that the chemical and biophysical properties of the hydrogel have a considerable impact on the transition from ATII to ATI phenotypes. In conclusion, culturing primary alveolar epithelial cells on lung ECM-derived hydrogels may facilitate the prolonged culturing of these cells, and thus help in the research on lung diseases

Large-scale ocean connectivity and planktonic body size

Villarino, Ernesto ... et al.-- 13 pages, 5 figures, 5 tables, supplementary material https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02535-8Global patterns of planktonic diversity are mainly determined by the dispersal of propagules with ocean currents. However, the role that abundance and body size play in determining spatial patterns of diversity remains unclear. Here we analyse spatial community structure - β-diversity - for several planktonic and nektonic organisms from prokaryotes to small mesopelagic fishes collected during the Malaspina 2010 Expedition. β-diversity was compared to surface ocean transit times derived from a global circulation model, revealing a significant negative relationship that is stronger than environmental differences. Estimated dispersal scales for different groups show a negative correlation with body size, where less abundant large-bodied communities have significantly shorter dispersal scales and larger species spatial turnover rates than more abundant small-bodied plankton. Our results confirm that the dispersal scale of planktonic and micro-nektonic organisms is determined by local abundance, which scales with body size, ultimately setting global spatial patterns of diversityThis research was funded by the project Malaspina 2010 Circumnavigation Expedition (Consolider-Ingenio 2010, CSD2008-00077) and cofounded by the Basque Government (Department Deputy of Agriculture, Fishing and Food Policy). [...] E.V. was supported by a PhD Scholarship granted by the Iñaki Goenaga−Technology Centres FoundationPeer Reviewe

Global beta diversity patterns of microbial communities in the surface and deep ocean

This is contribution 1112 from AZTI Marine Research Division.-- 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, supporting information https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13572.-- Data Availability Statement: DNA sequences for surface prokaryotes are publicly available at the European Nucleotide Archive [http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena; accession number PRJEB25224 (16S rRNA genes)], for deep prokaryotes at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Sequence Read Archive (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/sra) under accession ID SRP031469, and for surface and deep picoeukaryotes at the European Nucleotide Archive with accession number PRJEB23771 (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena). Environmental data used in this study are available from https://github.com/ramalok/malaspina.surface.metabacoding, Giner et al. (2020) and Salazar et al. (2015). The code to analyze the data and produce the figures of this research is available from the corresponding author upon request.-- This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Ernesto Villarino, James R. Watson, Guillem Chust ,A. John Woodill, Benjamin Klempay, Bror Jonsson, Josep M. Gasol, Ramiro Logares, Ramon Massana, Caterina R. Giner, Guillem Salazar, X. Anton Alvarez-Salgado, Teresa S. Catala, Carlos M. Duarte, Susana Agusti, Francisco Mauro, Xabier Irigoien, Andrew D. Barton; Global beta diversity patterns of microbial communities in the surface and deep ocean; Global Ecology and Biogeography 31(11): 2323-2336 (2022), which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13572. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived VersionsAim: Dispersal and environmental gradients shape marine microbial communities, yet the relative importance of these factors across taxa with distinct sizes and dispersal capacity in different ocean layers is unknown. Here, we report a comparative analysis of surface and deep ocean microbial beta diversity and examine how these patterns are tied to oceanic distance and environmental gradients. Location: Tropical and subtropical oceans (30°N–40°S). Time period: 2010-2011. Major taxa studied: Prokaryotes and picoeukaryotes (eukaryotes between 0.2 and 3 μm). Methods: Beta diversity was calculated from metabarcoding data on prokaryotic and picoeukaryotic microbes collected during the Malaspina expedition across the tropical and subtropical oceans. Mantel correlations were used to determine the relative contribution of environment and oceanic distance driving community beta diversity. Results: Mean community similarity across all sites for prokaryotes was 38.9% in the surface and 51.4% in the deep ocean, compared to mean similarity of 25.8 and 12.1% in the surface and deep ocean, respectively, for picoeukaryotes. Higher dispersal rates and smaller body sizes of prokaryotes relative to picoeukaryotes likely contributed to the significantly higher community similarity for prokaryotes compared with picoeukaryotes. The ecological mechanisms determining the biogeography of microbes varied across depth. In the surface ocean, the environmental differences in space were a more important factor driving microbial distribution compared with the oceanic distance, defined as the shortest path between two sites avoiding land. In the deep ocean, picoeukaryote communities were slightly more structured by the oceanic distance, while prokaryotes were shaped by the combined action of oceanic distance and environmental filtering. Main conclusions: Horizontal gradients in microbial community assembly differed across ocean depths, as did mechanisms shaping them. In the deep ocean, the oceanic distance and environment played significant roles driving microbial spatial distribution, while in the surface the influence of the environment was stronger than oceanic distanceData collection was funded by the Malaspina 2010 Circumnavigation Expedition project (Consolider-Ingenio 2010, CSD2008-00077) and cofunded by the Basque Government (Department Deputy of Agriculture, Fishing and Food Policy). We acknowledge funding from the Spanish Government through the “Severo Ochoa Center of Excelence” accreditation CEX2019-000928-S. [...] We also acknowledge H2020 Mission Atlantic project (Ref. Grant Agreement Number 862428). EV was supported by an international exchange post-doc scholarship to Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Oregon State University granted by the Education Department of the Basque GovernmentPeer reviewe

Canagliflozin and renal outcomes in type 2 diabetes and nephropathy

BACKGROUND Type 2 diabetes mellitus is the leading cause of kidney failure worldwide, but few effective long-term treatments are available. In cardiovascular trials of inhibitors of sodium–glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2), exploratory results have suggested that such drugs may improve renal outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes. METHODS In this double-blind, randomized trial, we assigned patients with type 2 diabetes and albuminuric chronic kidney disease to receive canagliflozin, an oral SGLT2 inhibitor, at a dose of 100 mg daily or placebo. All the patients had an estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) of 30 to <90 ml per minute per 1.73 m2 of body-surface area and albuminuria (ratio of albumin [mg] to creatinine [g], >300 to 5000) and were treated with renin–angiotensin system blockade. The primary outcome was a composite of end-stage kidney disease (dialysis, transplantation, or a sustained estimated GFR of <15 ml per minute per 1.73 m2), a doubling of the serum creatinine level, or death from renal or cardiovascular causes. Prespecified secondary outcomes were tested hierarchically. RESULTS The trial was stopped early after a planned interim analysis on the recommendation of the data and safety monitoring committee. At that time, 4401 patients had undergone randomization, with a median follow-up of 2.62 years. The relative risk of the primary outcome was 30% lower in the canagliflozin group than in the placebo group, with event rates of 43.2 and 61.2 per 1000 patient-years, respectively (hazard ratio, 0.70; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.59 to 0.82; P=0.00001). The relative risk of the renal-specific composite of end-stage kidney disease, a doubling of the creatinine level, or death from renal causes was lower by 34% (hazard ratio, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.53 to 0.81; P<0.001), and the relative risk of end-stage kidney disease was lower by 32% (hazard ratio, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.54 to 0.86; P=0.002). The canagliflozin group also had a lower risk of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or stroke (hazard ratio, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.67 to 0.95; P=0.01) and hospitalization for heart failure (hazard ratio, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.47 to 0.80; P<0.001). There were no significant differences in rates of amputation or fracture. CONCLUSIONS In patients with type 2 diabetes and kidney disease, the risk of kidney failure and cardiovascular events was lower in the canagliflozin group than in the placebo group at a median follow-up of 2.62 years

A Survey of NFC Sensors Based on Energy Harvesting for IoT Applications

In this article, an overview of recent advances in the field of battery-less near-field communication (NFC) sensors is provided, along with a brief comparison of other short-range radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies. After reviewing power transfer using NFC, recommendations are made for the practical design of NFC-based tags and NFC readers. A list of commercial NFC integrated circuits with energy-harvesting capabilities is also provided. Finally, a survey of the state of the art in NFC-based sensors is presented, which demonstrates that a wide range of sensors (both chemical and physical) can be used with this technology. Particular interest arose in wearable sensors and cold-chain traceability applications. The availability of low-cost devices and the incorporation of NFC readers into most current mobile phones make NFC technology key to the development of green Internet of Things (IoT) applications

Feasibility of Backscatter Communication Using LoRAWAN Signals for Deep Implanted Devices and Wearable Applications

This paper presents a method for low data rate transmission for devices implanted in the body using backscattered Long Range (LoRa) signals. The method uses an antenna loaded with a switch that changes between two load impedances at the rate of a modulating oscillator. Consequently, the LoRa signal transmitted by a LoRa node is reflected in the adjacent channels and can be detected with a LoRa gateway tuned to the shifted channels. A prototype developed to operate at Medical Implant Communication Service (MICS) and the Industrial Scientific and Medical (ISM) 433 MHz band is presented. The prototype uses a commercial ceramic antenna with a matched network tuned to the frequency band with high radiation efficiency. The effect of the coating material covering the antenna was studied. Simulated and experimental results using a phantom show that it is feasible to read data from deep implanted devices placed a few meters from the body because of the high sensitivity of commercial LoRa receivers