Circular Futures: How can design nurture more sustainable production and delivery systems for social micro enterprises?

In the face of environmental degradation, increasing economic volatility, and societal inequalities, transitioning to a more sustainable future—environmentally and socially—is a pressing demand. European Union policy aims to be at the forefront of this transition, placing the circular economy and social innovation at the center of policymaking. While the need for social micro-SMEs to uptake environmental measures arises, institutions still struggle in providing direction and tools for a systemic transition that considers both environmental and social innovation. This paper presents an ongoing framework to investigate how designers can inspire product, process, and business model changes in micro-enterprises to sensitively intervene in local urban production and consumption systems. The framework emphasizes the use of designerly thinking and crafting to promote practices that create social and environmental value alongside the economic one. Specifically, the paper reflects on the framework's first application in a studio course of the Master in Product-Service System Design at the Politecnico di Milano. The studio partnered with La Scuola dei Quartieri (SdQ), a social innovation program from Milan’s Municipality, prompting students to twin the challenges of some of its projects in a parallel innovation journey. The in-progress framework is a starting point for understanding how design for social innovation can help social micro-SMEs consider their environmental impact and create environmental value alongside the social one. Here, designers become activists, sharing and cultivating visions while strategizing how to weave initiatives together to favor the consideration and possible introduction of these new business practices

Biosensors for Biomolecular Computing: a Review and Future Perspectives

Biomolecular computing is the field of engineering where computation, storage, communication, and coding are obtained by exploiting interactions between biomolecules, especially DNA, RNA, and enzymes. They are a promising solution in a long-term vision, bringing huge parallelism and negligible power consumption. Despite significant efforts in taking advantage of the massive computational power of biomolecules, many issues are still open along the way for considering biomolecular circuits as an alternative or a complement to competing with complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) architectures. According to the Von Neumann architecture, computing systems are composed of a central processing unit, a storage unit, and input and output (I/O). I/O operations are crucial to drive and read the computing core and to interface it to other devices. In emerging technologies, the complexity overhead and the bottleneck of I/O systems are usually limiting factors. While computing units and memories based on biomolecular systems have been successfully presented in literature, the published I/O operations are still based on laboratory equipment without a real development of integrated I/O. Biosensors are suitable devices for transducing biomolecular interactions by converting them into electrical signals. In this work, we explore the latest advancements in biomolecular computing, as well as in biosensors, with focus on technology suitable to provide the required and still missing I/O devices. Therefore, our goal is to picture out the present and future perspectives about DNA, RNA, and enzymatic-based computing according to the progression in its I/O technologies, and to understand how the field of biosensors contributes to the research beyond CMOS

Efeitos de doses de resíduos orgânicos e tipos de adubação na biomassa microbiana do solo cultivado com milho.

O trabalho foi conduzido na fazenda escola da UEL com o objetivo de avaliar os efeitos de doses de resíduos orgânicos e de tipos de adubação na biomassa microbiana do solo cultivado com milho. O carbono da biomassa microbiana do solo foi avaliado em cada época de floração e colheita do milho em duas safras, considerando-se o delineamento experimental de blocos casualizados em esquema fatorial 4 x 2, com três repetições, em que os fatores foram quatro doses de resíduos (O, 15, 30 e 45 Mg ha-1), e dois tipos de adubação (AO: adubação orgânica e OM: adubação organomineral). A adubação mineral empregada na semeadura do milho nas duas safras correspondeu à aplicação de 40, 60 e 40 kg ha-1 de N, P2O5 e K2O, respectivamente. O conteúdo de carbono da biomassa microbiana do solo aumentou com as doses de resíduo na primeira safra de milho. O ponto de máximo (777 mg Kg-1 de solo) foi observado na floração do milho da segunda safra e para a dose de 23 Mg ha-1 de resíduo. Na colheita da segunda safra reduziu linearmente com as doses de resíduos nas parcelas que receberam adubação organomineral

Miniaturised Wireless Power Transfer Systems for Neurostimulation: A Review

In neurostimulation, wireless power transfer is an efficient technology to overcome several limitations affecting medical devices currently used in clinical practice. Several methods were developed over the years for wireless power transfer. In this review article, we report and discuss the three most relevant methodologies for extremely miniaturised implantable neurostimulator: ultrasound coupling, inductive coupling and capacitive coupling. For each powering method, the discussion starts describing the physical working principle. In particular, we focus on the challenges given by the miniaturisation of the implanted integrated circuits and the related ad-hoc solutions for wireless power transfer. Then, we present recent developments and progresses in wireless power transfer for biomedical applications. Last, we compare each technique based on key performance indicators to highlight the most relevant and innovative solutions suitable for neurostimulation, with the gaze turned towards miniaturisation

Simulation of a molecular QCA wire

Molecular Quantum Dot Cellular Automata (MQCA) are among the most promising emerging technologies for the expected theoretical operating frequencies (THz), the high device densities and the non-cryogenic working temperature. In this work we simulated a molecular QCA wire, based on a molecule synthesized ad-hoc for this technology. The results discussed are obtained by means of iterative steps of ab-initio calculations

On the impact of the stem electrical impedance in neural network algorithms for plant monitoring applications

Smart agriculture offers an environmental-friendly path with respect to unsustainable farming that depletes the nutrients in the soil leading to a persistent degradation of ecosystems caused by population growth. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help mitigate this issue by predicting plant health status to reduce the use of chemicals and optimize water usage. This paper proposes a custom framework to train neural networks and a comparison among different models to point out the impact and the importance of the stem electrical impedance in addition to environmental parameters for plant monitoring applications. In particular, the paper demonstrates how stem electrical impedance improves the accuracy of the proposed neural network application for plant status classification. The data set is composed of electrical impedance spectra and environmental data acquired on four tobacco plants for a two-month-long experiment. In this paper, we describe the acquisition system architecture, the feature composition of the data set, a general overview of the developed framework, and the training of the neural networks showing the different results considering both the stem impedance and the environmental parameters

Long-Range Low-Power Soil Water Content Monitoring System for Precision Agriculture

World population growth and desertification are increasing the food demand. Food production must increase to ensure food security in the following years. Smart agriculture tries to improve food production thanks to the adoption of electronic sensors to monitor and control fruit and vegetable crops. Another critical point in agriculture is the use of potable water. Precision irrigation strategies can be implemented to reduce water waste and increase crop production. This paper proposes a long-range, low-power sensor node to monitor soil water content. It is possible to place multiple sensor nodes in the field and use the gathered data to determine the most suitable irrigation strategy. The node communicates thanks to the LoRa protocol and it can also be used in remote areas where it is impossible to have an internet connection

Live Demonstration: Wireless Device for Clinical Pulse Wave Velocity Evaluations

This Live Demonstration presents a low-cost wireless integrated device for clinically evaluating Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV). The system comprises two pen-shaped probes with a high-precision MEMS force sensor on their tips and a base/charging station. The two probes are placed on the femoral and carotid arterial sites and send the pulse wave signals to the base/charging station via Bluetooth. A PC GUI displays the signals and calculates in real-time the PVW value. The visitors can see a real PWV measurement on a dedicated test subject or experience, in the first person, the arterial pulse assessment on their carotid after proper probe sterilization

Does the thermal mismatch hypothesis predict disease outcomes in different morphs of a terrestrial salamander?

Many aspects of ectotherm physiology are temperature‐dependent. The immune system of temperate‐dwelling ectothermic host species is no exception and their immune function is often downregulated in cold temperatures. Likewise, species of ectothermic pathogens experience temperature‐mediated effects on rates of transmission and/or virulence. Although seemingly straightforward, predicting the outcomes of ectothermic host−pathogen interactions is quite challenging. A recent hypothesis termed the thermal mismatch hypothesis posits that cool‐adapted host species should be most susceptible to pathogen infection during warm temperature periods whereas warm‐adapted host species should be most susceptible to pathogens during periods of cool temperatures. We explore this hypothesis using two ecologically and physiologically differentiated color morphs of the Eastern Red‐backed Salamander (Plethodon cinereus) and a pathogenic chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis; hereafter Bd ) using a fully factorial laboratory experiment. At cool temperatures, unstriped salamanders (i.e., those that are tolerant of warm temperatures) had a significantly higher probability of Bd infection compared with cool‐tolerant striped salamanders, consistent with the thermal mismatch hypothesis. However, we found no support for this hypothesis when salamanders were exposed to Bd at warm temperatures: the probability of Bd infection in the cool‐tolerant striped salamanders was nearly identical in both cool and warm temperatures, opposite the predictions of the thermal mismatch hypothesis. Our results are most consistent with the fact that Bd grows poorly at warm temperatures. Alternatively, our data could indicate that the two color morphs do not differ in their tolerance to warm temperatures but that striped salamanders are more tolerant to cool temperatures than unstriped salamanders. Research Highlights: In a test of the thermal mismatch hypothesis, we found that in cool temperatures, warm‐tolerant salamanders had higher parasitism compared with cool‐tolerant salamanders. There was no difference in parasitism for salamanders in warm temperatures