An Inkjet Printed Chipless RFID Sensor for Wireless Humidity Monitoring

A novel chipless RFID humidity sensor based on a finite Artificial Impedance Surface (AIS) is presented. The unit cell of the AIS is composed of three concentric loops thus obtaining three deep and high Q nulls in the electromagnetic response of the tag. The wireless sensor is fabricated using low-cost inkjet printing technology on a thin sheet of commercial coated paper. The patterned surface is placed on a metal backed cardboard layer. The relative humidity information is encoded in the frequency shift of the resonance peaks. Varying the relative humidity level from 50% to 90%, the frequency shift has proven to be up to 270MHz. The position of the resonance peaks has been correlated to the relative humidity level of the environment on the basis of a high number of measurements performed in a climatic chamber, specifically designed for RF measurements of the sensor. A very low error probability of the proposed sensor is demonstrated when the device is used with a 10% RH humidity level discrimination

Multi-frequency polarizarition converter with enhanced angular robustness

This paper presents a multi-frequency polarization converter for linear polarized waves. The reflection-based polarization converter is realized with a periodic surface. The unit cell comprises loaded dipoles printed on a metallic backed Teflon substrate 1.52mm thick. The unit cell topology results to be robust to the variation of the azimuthal incident angle. For this reason, the proposed device is particularly suitable for applications in which the direction of arrival of electromagnetic w ave is unknown

Element-independent design technique for wide angle impedance matching material

This paper presents a design technique for a wide angle impedance matching network material which does not require the knowledge of the analytical form of the scan impedance of the radiating element. The design procedure is therefore applicable for any type of array element and it is based on a Floquet-mode expansion. The presented approach is applied to the design of a multilayer Wide Angle Impedance Matching (WAIM) material for a phased array of patch elements

Theatre is a valid add-on therapeutic intervention for emotional rehabilitation of parkinson's disease patients

Conventional medical treatments of Parkinson's disease (PD) are effective on motor disturbances but may have little impact on nonmotor symptoms, especially psychiatric ones. Thus, even when motor symptomatology improves, patients might experience deterioration in their quality of life. We have shown that 3 years of active theatre is a valid complementary intervention for PD as it significantly improves the well-being of patients in comparison to patients undergoing conventional physiotherapy. Our aim was to replicate these findings while improving the efficacy of the treatment. We ran a single-blinded pilot study lasting 15 months on 24 subjects with moderate idiopathic PD. 12 were assigned to a theatre program in which patients underwent "emotional" training. The other 12 underwent group physiotherapy. Patients were evaluated at the beginning and at the end of their treatments, using a battery of eight clinical and five neuropsychological scales. We found that the emotional theatre training improved the emotional well-being of patients, whereas physiotherapy did not. Interestingly, neither of the groups showed improvements in either motor symptoms or cognitive abilities tested by the neuropsychological battery. We confirmed that theatre therapy might be helpful in improving emotional well-being in PD

A Complete Design Flow of a General Purpose Wireless GPS/Inertial Platform for Motion Data Monitoring

This work illustrates a complete design flow of an electronic system developed to support applications in which there are the need to measure motion parameters and transmit them to a remote unit for real-time teleprocessing. In order to be useful in many operative contexts, the system is flexible, compact, and lightweight. It integrates a tri-axial inertial sensor, a GPS module, a wireless transceiver and can drive a pocket camera. Data acquisition and packetization are handled in order to increase data throughput on Radio Bridge and to minimize power consumption. A trajectory reconstruction algorithm, implementing the Kalman-filter technique, allows obtaining real-time body tracking using only inertial sensors. Thanks to a graphical user interface it is possible to remotely control the system operations and to display the motion data

Enhanced Electrocatalytic Oxygen Evolution in Au–Fe Nanoalloys

Oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is the most critical step in water splitting, still limiting the development of efficient alkaline water electrolyzers. Here we investigate the OER activity of Au–Fe nanoalloys obtained by laser-ablation synthesis in solution. This method allows a high amount of iron (up to 11 at %) to be incorporated into the gold lattice, which is not possible in Au–Fe alloys synthesized by other routes, due to thermodynamic constraints. The Au0.89Fe0.11 nanoalloys exhibit strongly enhanced OER in comparison to the individual pure metal nanoparticles, lowering the onset of OER and increasing up to 20 times the current density in alkaline aqueous solutions. Such a remarkable electrocatalytic activity is associated to nanoalloying, as demonstrated by comparative examples with physical mixtures of gold and iron nanoparticles. These results open attractive scenarios to the use of kinetically stable nanoalloys for catalysis and energy conversion