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In this study, hydrogels were produced using a Schiff base reaction between two hyaluronic acid derivatives: one containing aldehyde groups (HA-Ald) and the other holding a diethylenetriamine with terminal amino groups (HA-DETA). The DETA portion promotes the in situ growth, complexation, and stabilization of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), eliminating the need for external reducing agents. The reaction between HA-DETA and HA-Ald leads to the formation of imine bonds, which results in dynamically pH-responsive cross-linking. While the DETA capping ability helped in embedding the AgNPs, the on/off pH environmental responsivity of the hydrogel allows for a controlled and on-demand release of the drug, mainly when bacterial infections cause pH variation of the wound bed. The injectable hydrogels resulted in being highly compatible in contact with blood red cells, fibroblasts, and keratinocytes and capable of having a proliferative effect on an in vitro wound scratch model. The pH-responsive hydrogels showed proper antibacterial activity againstPseudomonas aeruginosaandStaphylococcus aureus, common bacterial strains presented in wound infections. Finally, in vivo wound model studies demonstrated an overall speeding up in the wound healing rate and advanced wound conditions in the experimental group treated with the hydrogels compared to control samples.

Objective: The finding of a fetal intra-abdominal cyst is relatively common and it can be due to a wide variety of clinical conditions. The aims of this study were to determine the accuracy of the prenatal ultrasound (US) in identifying the etiology of fetal intra-abdominal cysts and to describe the neonatal outcomes.Methods: All cases of fetal intra-abdominal cystic lesion referred to our center between 2004 and 2012 were reviewed. Cysts of urinary system origin were excluded. Prenatal and postnatal data were collected. Our cohort was divided into subgroups according to the prenatal suspected origin of the lesion (ovarian, mesenteric, gastro-intestinal and other locations). For each subgroup, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, false-positive rate and accuracy of fetal US were calculated.Results: In total 47 fetuses (10/37 M/F) were identified. The mean gestational age at the time of diagnosis was 33 ± 4.9 weeks. Our cohort comprised of 25 ovarian cysts (10 simplex and 15 complex), 3 GI duplication, 6 mesenteric lesions, 4 meconium pseudocyst and 9 lesions of other origin. Surgery was performed in 38 cases (81%) at birth. The prenatally established diagnosis was exactly concordant with post-natal findings in 34 cases (72.3%). Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and false-positive rate of US were 88.1%, 95.5%, 71% and 5.4%, respectively. Long-term outcome was good in almost 90% of the cases.Conclusions: The etiology of fetal intra-abdominal cysts can be prenatally diagnosed in about 70% cases. Despite the high risk of surgery at birth, the long-term outcome was good in most of the cases.

Although adaptive routing algorithms promise higher communication performance, as compared to deterministic routing algorithms, they suffer from the out-of-order packet delivery problem. In the context of Network on Chip, the area and computational overhead of ordering packets at the destination is high and may reverse any gain achieved through the use of adaptivity of the routing algorithm. In this paper, we describe a novel scheme for ensuring in-order packet delivery while retaining the performance advantages of adaptive routing. The hardware architecture of a router that supports the proposed scheme is described. Although the basic idea in our proposal is topology independent we evaluate and compare the performance of our scheme with both deterministic as well as adaptive routing algorithms for 2D mesh NoC. As compared to the XY routing algorithm, our technique significantly reduces the packet delay and improves the saturation point. The impact on router area and power dissipation is also discussed. Although the power consumption of routers increase, the energy consumption per flit increases less than 2% on average, since the higher performance allows for draining more traffic during a certain time window.

The communication infrastructure of a complex multicore system-on-a-chip is getting an increasing fraction of the overall chip area. According to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, killer defect density does not decrease over successive technology generations. For this reason, the probability that a manufacturing defect affects the communication system is predicted to increase. In this paper, we deal with manufacturing defects which affect the links in a network on-chip-based interconnection system. The goal of this paper is to show that by using effective routing functions, supported by appropriate selection policies and with a limited amount of extra logic in the router, it is easy to exploit partially faulty links to improve the performance of the system. We show that, instead of discarding partially faulty links, they can be used at reduced capacity to improve the distribution of the traffic over the network, yielding performance and power improvements. We couple an application-specific routing function with a set of selection policies which are aware of link fault distribution and evaluate them on both synthetic traffic and a real complex multimedia application. We also present an implementation of the router, augmented with the extra logic, to support both the proposed selection functions and the transmission of messages over partially faulty links. We analyze the router in terms of silicon area, timing, and power dissipation.

General purpose routing algorithms for a network-on-chip (NoC) platform may not be able to provide sufficient performance for some communication intensive applications. This may be because of low adaptivity offered by a general purpose routing algorithm resulting in some links getting highly congested. In this study the authors demonstrate that it is possible to design highly efficient application-specific routing algorithms which distribute traffic more uniformly by using information regarding applications communication behaviour (communication topology and communication bandwidth). The authors use off-line analysis to estimate expected load on various links in the network. The result of this analysis is used along with the available routing adaptivity in each router to distribute less traffic to links and paths which are expected to be congested. The methodology for application-specific routing algorithms is extended to incorporate these features to design highly adaptive deadlock-free routing algorithms which also distribute traffic more uniformly and reduce network congestion. The authors discuss architectural implications and analyse area and power overheads of the proposed approach on the design of a table-based NoC router.

Bimetallic Ru-Cu samples supported on SiO 2, Al 2 O 3 and MgO were studied by the temperature-programmed reduction (TPR) technique. Experiments were carried out both on unreduced impregnated salts and after oxidation of already reduced samples. The TPR profiles reveal a simultaneous reduction of ruthenium and copper precursors, even though the Ru and Cu in the monometallic catalysts exhibit reduction peaks which differ by up to 150??C. It is suggested that the two metal salts interact during the stages of preparation and drying, and after reduction form bimetallic aggregates which are not stable and tend to separate. The stability of the bimetallic particles was found to be strongly dependent on the support used, being higher on SiO 2 than on Al 2 O 3 and MgO. It is suggested that the chemical nature of the support determines the different degree of interaction and/or agglomeration of the bimetallic particles. Auf SiO 2, Al 2 O 3 und MgO aufgebrachte bimetallische Ru-Cu-Proben wurden mittels temperaturprogrammierter Reduktion (TPR) untersucht. Experimente wurden sowohl mit unreduzierten, durch Impregnation aufgebrachten Salzen als auch mit nach vorangegangener Reduktion reoxydierten Proben ausgef??hrt. Die TPR-Profile lassen eine gleichzeitige Reduktion der Ruthenium- und Kupfervorstufen erkennen, obwohl Ru und Cu in monometallischen Katalysatoren Reduktionspeaks zeigen, die um bis zu 150??C voneinander entfernt liegen. Es wird angenommen, da?? die zwei Metallsalze w??hrend des Darstellungs- und Trocknungsstadiums miteinander in Wechselwirkung treten und nach der Reduktion nicht stabile, zum Zerfall tendierende bimetallische Aggregate bilden. Die Stabilit??t der bimetallischen Partikel ist stark vom Tr??ger abh??ngig, sie ist an SiO 2 h??her als an Al 2 O 3 und MgO. Es wird angenommen, da?? die chemische Natur des Tr??gers den Grad der Wechselwirkung und/oder Agglomeration der bimetallischen Partikel bestimmt.??????????????????????????????????????-???????????