0000000000146231

AUTHOR

S. Saladino

Formulation of Different Chitosan Hydrogels for Cartilage Tissue Repair

Different formulations of Chitosan/sulphate and Chitosan/PEGDE were produced by physical and chemical reticulation to obtain hydrogels with better physiochemical properties. The hydrogels were analyzed – in terms of their non-toxicity, proliferative, differentiative, inflammatory and immunology responses. Commercial grade Chitosan (Sigma) was solubilized and purified by progressive filtrations. Then, the polymer was freeze-dried in a water soluble cationic form. A physical hydrogel was prepared by mixing a 3 % w/w water solution of the a.m. polymer with different stoichiometric ratios of (SO4=) 1/0.5;1/0.75;1/1 respectively. The hydrogels were cross-linked in multiwells. The chemical hydrog…

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Green manuring as sustainable management for southern Italy extensive cultivated areas

In the extensively-managed agricultural areas of Sicily, rainfall is often so limited that economically effective annual productions are not feasible. Bare fallow, the most extreme dry-farming technique, seems to be, under such conditions, the only suitable strategy. The introduction in these cropping systems of an annual legume to put early into the soil, as an alternative to bare fallow, may represent a technique able not only to prevent soil erosion, but also to improve the low soil organic matter reserves, with a direct benefit on the following yields and on the whole environment. The trial was aimed to verify the bioagronomical and qualitative behaviour of durum wheat managed under dif…

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Tracking with heavily irradiated silicon detectors operated at cryogenic temperatures

In this work we show that a heavily irradiated double-sided silicon microstrip detector recovers its performance when operated at cryogenic temperatures. A DELPHI microstrip detector, irradiated to a fluence of /spl sim/4/spl times/10/sup 14/ p/cm/sup 2/, no longer operational at room temperature, cannot be distinguished from a non-irradiated one when operated at T<120 K. Besides confirming the previously observed 'Lazarus effect' in single diodes, these results establish, for the first time, the possibility of using standard silicon detectors for tracking applications in extremely demanding radiation environments.

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Cryogenic operation of silicon detectors

This paper reports on measurements at cryogenic temperatures of a silicon microstrip detector irradiated with 24 GeV protons to a #uence of 3.5]1014 p/cm2 and of a p}n junction diode detector irradiated to a similar #uence. At temperatures below 130 K a recovery of charge collection e$ciency and resolution is observed. Under reverse bias conditions this recovery degrades in time towards some saturated value. The recovery is interpreted qualitatively as

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Soil erosion assessment on tillage and alternative soil managements in a Sicilian vineyard

Mediterranean crops favour high erosion rates. Vineyards use to reach the highest soil and water losses due to the lack of vegetation cover. A topographical approach by means of the use of vineyards poles as fixed reference point as erosion markers allowed to quantify high and non-sustainable soil erosion rates on the Sicilian vineyards during 9 years. In order to develop strategies to control the soil losses, seven land management were selected and applied in a typical blanc wine grape vineyard located in southwestern Sicily. Comparable plots were managed traditionally using conventional tillage and alternatively using various cover crops: 1) Vicia faba; 2) Vicia faba and Vicia sativa; 3) …

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Charge collection efficiency and resolution of an irradiated double-sided silicon microstrip detector operated at cryogenic temperatures

Abstract This paper presents results on the measurement of the cluster shapes, resolution and charge collection efficiency of a double-sided silicon microstrip detector after irradiation with 24 GeV protons to a fluence of 3.5×10 14  p/cm 2 and operated at cryogenic temperatures. An empirical model is presented which describes the expected cluster shapes as a function of depletion depth, and is shown to agree with the data. It is observed that the clusters on the p-side broaden if the detector is under-depleted, leading to a degradation of resolution and efficiency. The model is used to make predictions for detector types envisaged for the LHC experiments. The results also show that at cryo…

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