Search results for " ingegneria"
showing 10 items of 796 documents
Physical features of Health Care Waste
2008
A monitoring work was recently carried out in two major Health Care Facilities (HCFs) in Italy, both located in Palermo, to obtain information on waste generation rates. Monitoring consisted in weighing infectious waste containers for 15 days in 4 Departments for each health care facility. From values obtained monthly production, specific weights and Production Indexes were calculated. The main producers of waste appeared Oncological DH and Resuscitation for both HCFs, with more than 4 and 3 kg measured per occupied place and day, respectively. About specific weight, apparent bulk values always below 200 kg/m3 were calculated. From the short observation performed it seems that notable impro…
Health Care Waste production: measures and estimates in “V. Cervello” Hospital, Palermo, Italy.
2009
A monitoring work was carried out in May/June 2007 in one large hospital located in Palermo. The monitoring consisted in weighing the infectious waste containers filled in some Departments purposely chosen. As a second stage of the work a comparison was attempted between the results obtained from the waste production monitoring and the Hospital’s purchases recorded in the same time. A restricted list of purchased products out of the general one was extracted. Such list allows one to calculate approximately the mass of medical devices purchased and their composition. To these materials a reasonable change in humidity after use was attributed. It was possible in this deductive way to draw a p…
Solution-Based Processing for Scaffold Fabrication in Tissue Engineering Applications: A Brief Review
2021
The fabrication of 3D scaffolds is under wide investigation in tissue engineering (TE) because of its incessant development of new advanced technologies and the improvement of traditional processes. Currently, scientific and clinical research focuses on scaffold characterization to restore the function of missing or damaged tissues. A key for suitable scaffold production is the guarantee of an interconnected porous structure that allows the cells to grow as in native tissue. The fabrication techniques should meet the appropriate requirements, including feasible reproducibility and time- and cost-effective assets. This is necessary for easy processability, which is associated with the large …
Novel dual-flow perfusion bioreactor for in vitro pre-screening of nanoparticles delivery: design, characterization and testing
2021
An advanced dual-flow perfusion bioreactor with a simple and compact design was developed and evaluated as a potential apparatus to reduce the gap between animal testing and drug administration to human subjects in clinical trials. All the experimental tests were carried out using an ad hoc Poly Lactic Acid (PLLA) scaffold synthesized via Thermally Induced Phase Separation (TIPS). The bioreactor shows a tunable radial flow throughout the microporous matrix of the scaffold. The radial perfusion was quantified both with permeability tests and with a mathematical model, applying a combination of Darcy's Theory, Bernoulli's Equation, and Poiseuille's Law. Finally, a diffusion test allowed to in…
Preparation and characterization of PLLA-HA scaffolds for bone tissue engineering
2013
In this work, the possibility to produce composite - Poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) and Hydroxyapatite (HA) - porous scaffolds via Thermally Induced Phase Separation for bone tissue engineering applications was investigated. Several PLLA/HA ratios were tested (70/30, 50/50, 30/70 and 20/80 wt/wt) and the as-obtained scaffolds were characterized via Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Wide Angle X-Ray Diffraction (WAXD) and compression test. The results showed that the presence of HA does not influence the phase separation process. Morphological analysis revealed an open structure with interconnected pores and HA embedded in the polymer matrix. This evidence was confirmed by WAXD analysis; where …
A COMPOSITE PLLA SCAFFOLD FOR REGENERATION OF COMPLEX TISSUES
2010
A composite biodegradable scaffold incorporating an integrated network of synthetic blood vessels was designed and prepared, in line with the requirements of a scaffold effectively supporting the regeneration of highly vascularized tissues. In other words, this composite scaffold should allow the regeneration of complex injured tissue (e.g. dermis) and, at the same time, favour the development of a vascular network on its inner, i.e. a 3D polymeric scaffolds embedding synthetic blood vessel-like structures for nutrient supply and metabolite removal. PLLA assures a high degree of biocompatibility and a low level of inflammation response upon implantation, while the embedded tubular vessel-li…
Should conference pricing mechanisms incorporate options?
2016
The provision of many services is often characterized by demand uncertainty, as, at the time of purchase, consumers may not be completely informed about their valuation for the service or the possibility to utilize the service when it will actually be provided. For such reason, service providers implement several pricing mechanisms to maximize their profits in presence of consumer uncertainty and heterogeneity. A commonly adopted mechanism is intertemporal price discrimination, under which service providers charge different prices to consumers buying at different times. For instance, a lower price is usually offered to consumer buying early in advance, whereas higher price is practiced to l…
Ecological risk assessment of agricultural soils for the definition of soil screening values: A comparison between substance-based and matrix-based a…
2017
The Italian legislation on contaminated soils does not include the Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA) and this deficiency has important consequences for the sustainable management of agricultural soils. The present research compares the results of two ERA procedures applied to agriculture (i) one based on the “substance-based” approach and (ii) a second based on the “matrix-based” approach. In the former the soil screening values (SVs) for individual substances were derived according to institutional foreign guidelines. In the latter, the SVs characterizing the whole-matrix were derived originally by the authors by means of experimental activity.\ud \ud \ud The results indicate that the “matr…
Modelling strategies for the reduction of fat dormice in northern Italian hazel groves
2018
The production of hazelnuts represents an important resource for several Italian rural areas. Sicily and Piedmont, two of the most important producers of hazelnuts, are affected by the presence of the dormouse (Glis glis), that has considerably severely harmed the production of hazelnuts. This study aims to analyse the issue in the Province of Cuneo in Piedmont and to evaluate the sustainability of the policies implemented by using the system dynamics (SD) methodology. An SD predator-prey microworld was built to reproduce the main relevant cause and effect relationships between the development of the dormouse population and local hazelnut production. The results of the SD microworld simulat…