Float-Ram: A Sustainable Machine for Buildings Made by Compressed Earth Blocks

This article describes a sequence of research, design, prototyping and utilization of a new manually operated press, which has the purpose of facilitating a construction technology that uses compressed earth blocks, CEB. Buildings and houses made of CEB have better quality than traditional in poor region. They are also economical, robust, aesthetically pleasing, and sustainable from an environmental point of view. The research is addressed to some targets of the SDG 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities: (i) “ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums”; (ii) “support least developed countries, including through financial and technical assistance, in building sustainable and resilient buildings utilizing local materials”. The paper presents the project path, the results and finally the impact in a specific context, the rural areas in Tanzania

The political economy of Brexit and the future of British capitalism first symposium

The political economy of Brexit generates new challenges for the UK’s national business model and for European capitalism more broadly. Two symposia examine the implications of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in key economic policy areas. These symposia contribute to two main bodies of academic literature: the political economy literature on varieties of capitalism, with a specific focus on the UK, and the political economy literature on key economic policy areas of the EU. This short introduction to the first symposium first outlines the key features of the British variety of capitalism and highlight the main questions raised by Brexit in that respect. It then summarises the main findings of the papers of the first symposium and tease out some common themes

Interdisciplinary Writing Center Collaborations

This article discusses approaches and attitudes toward writing center outreach amid misconceptions surrounding writing centers across many college campuses. Through the experiences of one land grant institution, the authors advocate interdisciplinary cooperation across campus to combat faulty perceptions of writing centers’ offerings. Students and faculty alike benefit from a new understanding of the writing center’s mission to strengthen students’ writing and processes

Delayed priming promotes CNS regeneration post-rhizotomy in Neurocan and Brevican-deficient mice

A wealth of literature has provided evidence that reactive tissue at the site of CNS injury is rich in chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans which may contribute to the non-permissive nature of the CNS. We have recently demonstrated using a murine model of human brachial plexus injury that the chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans Neurocan and Brevican are differentially expressed by two subsets of astrocytes in the spinal cord dorsal root entry zone (DREZ) following dorsal root lesion (Beggah et al., Neuroscience 133: 749-762, 2005). However, direct evidence for a growth-inhibitory role of these proteoglycans in vivo is still lacking. We therefore performed dorsal root lesion (rhizotomy) in mice deficient in both Neurocan and Brevican. Rhizotomy in these animals resulted in no significant increase in the number of sensory fibres regenerating through the DREZ compared to genetically matched controls. Likewise, a conditioning peripheral nerve lesion prior to rhizotomy, which increases the intrinsic growth capacity of sensory neurons, enhanced growth to the same extent in transgenic and control mice, indicating that absence of these proteoglycans alone is not sufficient to further promote entry into the spinal cord. In contrast, when priming of the median nerve was performed at a clinically relevant time, i.e. 7 weeks post-rhizotomy, the growth of a subpopulation of sensory axons across the DREZ was facilitated in Neurocan/Brevican-deficient, but not in control animals. This demonstrates for the first time that (i) Neurocan and/or Brevican contribute to the non-permissive environment of the DREZ several weeks after lesion and that (ii) delayed stimulation of the growth program of sensory neurons can facilitate regeneration across the DREZ provided its growth-inhibitory properties are attenuated. Post-injury enhancement of the intrinsic growth capacity of sensory neurons combined with removal of inhibitory chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans may therefore help to restore sensory function and thus attenuate the chronic pain resulting from human brachial plexus injur

Design, Fabrication, and Testing of a Capsule With Hybrid Locomotion for Gastrointestinal Tract Exploration

Abstract—This paper describes a novel solution for the active lo-comotion of a miniaturized endoscopic capsule in the gastrointesti-nal (GI) tract. The authors present the design, development, and testing of a wireless endocapsule with hybrid locomotion, where hybrid locomotion is defined as the combination between internal actuation mechanisms and external magnetic dragging. The cap-sule incorporates an internal actuating legged mechanism, which modifies the capsule profile, and small permanent magnets, which interact with an external magnetic field, thus imparting a dragging motion to the device. The legged mechanism is actuated whenever the capsule gets lodged in collapsed areas of the GI tract. This allows modification of the capsule profile and enables magnetic dragging to become feasible and effective once again. A key com-ponent of the endoscopic pill is the internal mechanism, endowed with a miniaturized brushless motor and featuring compact design, and adequate mechanical performance. The internal mechanism is able to generate a substantial force, which allows the legs to open against the intestinal tissue that has collapsed around the capsule body. An accurate simulation of the performance of the minia-turized motor under magnetic fields was carried out in order to define the best configuration of the internal permanent magnets (which are located very close to the motor) and the best tradeoff operating distance for the external magnet, which is responsible for magnetically dragging the capsule. Finally, a hybrid capsule was developed generating 3.8 N at the tip of the legged mechanism and a magnetic link force up to 135 mN. The hybrid capsule and its wireless control were extensively tested in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo, thus confirming fulfilment of the design specifications and demon-strating a good ability to manage collapsed areas of the intestinal tract. Index Terms—Capsule endoscopy, endoscopic capsule, magnetic locomotion, robotic surgery. I

A Simple Method to Identify Parametric Oscillations in Power Amplifiers Using Harmonic Balance Solvers

A qualitative method to verify the presence of parametric oscillations at f_0/2 in power amplifiers (PAs) is presented and validated. It relies on the simultaneous application of fundamental and subharmonic tones to trigger possible parametric oscillations and can be implemented in any commercial harmonic balance solver without requiring any external software that may be expensive or however not available to the designer. Wide applicability is guaranteed by the fact that this method does not require access to any internal node of the circuit. In fact, the amplifier is handled as a black-box where only the input and output ports are accessible. The stability check is first demonstrated on a simplified case study and then validated on a real K-band integrated PA, where it correctly reproduces with simulations the parametric oscillations observed by measurements. On the redesigned amplifier, the proposed test predicted the absence of oscillations, which has been confirmed by the experimental characterization

Genotype-phenotype relations of the von Hippel-Lindau tumor suppressor inferred from a large-scale analysis of disease mutations and interactors

Familiar cancers represent a privileged point of view for studying the complex cellular events inducing tumor transformation. Von Hippel-Lindau syndrome, a familiar predisposition to develop cancer is a clear example. Here, we present our efforts to decipher the role of von Hippel-Lindau tumor suppressor protein (pVHL) in cancer insurgence. We collected high quality information about both pVHL mutations and interactors to investigate the association between patient phenotypes, mutated protein surface and impaired interactions. Our data suggest that different phenotypes correlate with localized perturbations of the pVHL structure, with specific cell functions associated to different protein surfaces. We propose five different pVHL interfaces to be selectively involved in modulating proteins regulating gene expression, protein homeostasis as well as to address extracellular matrix (ECM) and ciliogenesis associated functions. These data were used to drive molecular docking of pVHL with its interactors and guide Petri net simulations of the most promising alterations. We predict that disruption of pVHL association with certain interactors can trigger tumor transformation, inducing metabolism imbalance and ECM remodeling. Collectively taken, our findings provide novel insights into VHL-associated tumorigenesis. This highly integrated in silico approach may help elucidate novel treatment paradigms for VHL disease

Optimisation of a Doherty power amplifier based on dual-input characterisation

The success of the Doherty architecture compared to other efficiency enhancement techniques derives mainly from its simple design and full-RF nature, not requiring complex digital signal processing to achieve high back-off efficiency. In this work we propose a design strategy for the optimisation of a Doherty power amplifier to mitigate the typical practical issues of this architecture related to inaccuracy of the non-linear model and of the manufacturing. The approach is based on the experimental characterisation of a dual-input Doherty prototype without input section. This test structure is obtained from a single-input Doherty amplifier, designed only through non-linear simulations, by removing the input section and allowing for separate control of the two RF inputs. From the collected data, approximated functions for the phase shift and power splitting versus frequency are identified to be realizable in hardware with RF networks. Compared to the reference single-input Doherty stage, a significantly improved behavior is registered in terms of output power (up to 2.7 dB), efficiency at saturation and back-off (30 % and 15 % respectively) and power gain (2 dB)