Technologies

Lifeshell is an anti-seismic furniture construction concept, which can be used for making wardrobes, tables, desktops, beds. It’s made by timber based panels: highly resistant and flexible, relatively lightweight and inexpensive. Lifeshell benefits from the natural wood elasticity and from smart connections for dissipating the great impact energies occurring during an earthquake. Lifeshell has been designed for resisting partial building collapses, and to provide a safe shell where inhabitants can find refuge.

Mirrors for space applications, besides featuring suitable optical properties, should be light, resistant to mechanical stresses, and unsensitive to light-shadow thermal cycling. The standard optical materials easily fulfill optical and thermal requirements, but are fragile, and the mirrors must be thick (typically 1/6 of the diameter). For this reason they are heavy, and the only available solution is to lighten them, by removing material from the back side, still preserving the necessary mechanical robustness and optical quality.

Extracellular vesicles produced by teratocarcinoma cells were isolated and characterized. Functional assays on glioblastoma (GBM) cell cultures showed the inhibitory effect of these vesicles on tumor cell migration, without inducing undesirable effects such as increased cell proliferation or chemotherapy resistance.

Integrative omics has posed new challenges in modern precision medicine, particularly in oncology, including i) the identification of new tumor markers for early, precise, and non-invasive diagnostics, and ii) the discovery of innovative molecular targets for therapeutic applications. Our studies on medulloblastoma, a highly malignant childhood tumor, have contributed to identifying RNA molecules that meet these criteria.

In our recent publication we identified a group of  bladder cancer-specific ncRNA, called T-UCRs that are the most up-regulated in bladder cancer patient samples compared with normal bladder urothelium.

Data loggers for environmental data recording  have been commercially available for several years, but their cost often limits their use. The development of low-cost data loggers, with adequate features for the acquisition of environmental and physiological data, to understand the relationships between organisms and the environment, and capable of recording and storing data for long periods of time is essential for their diffusion in the naturalistic field.

We propose a compact innovative spectroscopy system operating in the UV range. In the actual version, designed for gas, it exhibits: an aluminium tubular optical chamber (length can be adjusted; currently is 20 cm); a cheap commercial UV LED; a SiC visible blind UV detector designed and manufactured at the CNR-IMM facilities. The team developed also the electronic chain for wireless remote real time read out; while able to deal with pA current levels, it uses very cheap components and construction technology.

The invention consists of a method and apparatus for the delivery at low pressure (equal to or less than 10^-7 Torr) of monoatomic fluorine for reaction with surfaces in an ultra-clean environment. Thanks to the low pressure values involved in the proposed method, the risks associated with the use of fluorine are reduced to a minimum.

The aim of the research group is the creation of 3D models (microorgan/ organoids) constructed using samples obtained from patients, both biopsy samples and samples collected with non-invasive techniques (exhaled breath condensate, induced sputum, blood samples).

Mergers e Acquisitions represent important forms of business deals because of the volumes involved in the transactions and the role of the innovation activity of companies. By considering the patent activity of about one thousand companies, we develop a method to predict future acquisitions by assuming that companies deal more frequently with technologically related ones.

The procedure enables the fabrication of nanocomposite membranes filled with suitable amounts of exfoliated bidimensional crystals. These are obtained with an advanced wet-jet milling technique, which provides desired thickness and lateral size of nanofillers through the pulverization and colloidal homogenization of bulk nanomaterials. The bidimensional crystals are dispersed in fluids and suitably delivered inside polymeric matrixes exhibiting a singular morphology.

WembraneX is an Italian start-up born with the ambition to make a significant contribution to UN Sustainable Goal 6 - Ensure Access to Clean Water and Sanitation for all by 2030.

The proposal concerns the development of the G.A.T.CD4 (Gliadin-activated CD4+ T cells) method which allows, in peripheral blood, the identification of CD4+ T lymphocytes reactive to toxic peptides of gliadin, the main gluten protein of cereals.

An innovative approach for the treatment of diabetic and venous ulcers, characterized by a difficult healing process and therefore at potential risk of infection and therefore of hospitalization and amputation of the limb, is represented by the local administration of "bioactive" factors through the use of synthetic and/or biological matrices that allow a gradual and controlled release in order to obtain a better and faster healing.

This invention comprises an interrogation and readout differential method for chemical sensors based on Surface Plasmon Resonances (SPR). The integration of the SPR sensing unit (chip or other), as intermediate reflecting element of a Fabry-Perot (FP) optical resonator, is the starting point for the application of this method.