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Cultural heritage metallic artifacts are often subjected to environmental factors that promote degradation through corrosion processes. Anticorrosion protection is needed both for the long-term preservation of outdoor monuments and the short-term conservation of archaeological artifacts. In this work, functional nanocoatings based on ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) in a silica matrix are prepared as a replacement for a commercial Incralac lacquer. Facile sol–gel synthesis is employed for obtaining silica filmogenic materials, using tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) and 3-glycidyloxypropyl trimethoxysilane (GPTMS). Silica-based nanocomposite coatings, with and without ZnO NPs and benzotriazole (BTA) as anticorrosion agents, applied on copper coupons by brushing are characterized by using VIS and FTIR spectroscopy, SEM and AFM and compared to Incralac lacquer as reference materials. The optical and morphological properties of the proposed silica coatings are similar to the Incralac specimens. The protective effect against corrosion is investigated on the copper coupons as model metallic objects subjected to a corrosion test by using potentiodynamic polarization in a 3.5% NaCl solution at ambient temperature. The influence of the presence of BTA and ZnO NPs in both silica and Incralac coatings is studied, and the variations in the anticorrosive, morphological and optical properties with the concentration of ZnO NPs are evidenced. The presence of moderate concentrations of ZnO in both nanomaterials leads to changes in the color parameters slightly above the limit accepted in the field of cultural heritage (ΔE* 5.09 and 6.13), while a high ZnO concentration of 3% leads to higher values (ΔE* > 10). Regarding the anticorrosive effect, the silica-based coatings with ZnO and BTA present similar efficiencies to that of the Incralac reference material (corrosion rates in the range of 0.044–0.067 mm/year for silica coatings compared to 0.055 mm/year for Incralac).

Dental decay is the most prevalent oral disease worldwide since more than 2.4 billion people suffer from caries of permanent teeth. Therefore, any details about its progression into the hard-dental tissues could contribute to unravelling the mechanisms underlying this process. We have analyzed dental tissue sections with and without caries in order to detect structure differences corelating them with clinical aspects observable from the tooth surface. Our working hypothesis was based on finding a link between the process of tertiary dentin laying (as a response to coronal caries) and the subsequent obliteration of dentin tubules. We have selected N=10 extracted teeth with/without coronal caries, resin-embedded and sectioned them. A specific software was used to digitally quantify the density of unobliterated dentin tubules reaching the dentin-enamel junction (DEJ), considering as positive threshold criteria the presence of the odontoblast process inside the analyzed tubule. This study showed the differences between the healthy and carious-affected hard-dental coronal tissues. More odontoblast processes reached the DEJ in unaffected teeth. Using specific software, we have quantified their density decrease near a lesion. We have studied the dynamics of the carious study and measured the consequent structural modifications of the dentin. In conclusion, there is a significant difference between the number of dentin tubules containing odontoblast processes that reach the DEJ in healthy∕altered tissues. The tooth reacts not only by production of tertiary dentin to protect the pulp chamber, but also by obliteration of dentin tubules, thus reducing the number of odontoblast processes reaching the DEJ. This pilot study could serve as the starting point in developing a dedicated software that could deliver a personalized pattern for decay progression by analyzing one single tooth and extrapolate the result to all the patient's remaining ones.

The first step in combating speech and language disorders, is checking if specific language development steps from infancy and toddlerhood have been done. Students from families with financial difficulties, that lack early childhood cognitive development, tend to be less skilled in reading or writing. To avoid school dropout, we focused on identifying these issues when a child starts school and apply a ten week program. This program has two components, one for teachers and the other for students. The main goal is to identify if certain early development milestones have been met, memory and atention development and phonology conscience. The program has proved it’s eficacity even during the corona virus pandemic

Anthropogenic activities lead to the issue of new classes of pollutants in the environment that are not currently monitored in environmental studies. This category of pollutants (known as emerging contaminants) includes a very wide range of target substances, such as pharmaceuticals, plant protection products, personal care products, dyes, toxins, microplastics and many other industrially important intermediaries. Together with an increasing demand for clean water (both for agricultural necessities and for the increasing population consumption), the need for the removal of emerging pollutants, simultaneously with the current “green chemistry” approach, opens the door for the industrial application of natural polymers in the area of environmental protection. Recent developments in this area are presented in this paper, as well as the application of these particular natural materials for the removal of other contaminants of interest (such as radioisotopes and nanoparticles). The current knowledge regarding the processes’ kinetics is briefly presented, as well as the future development perspectives in this area.

Charcot foot or Charcot neuropathy is a rare disease found in patients with diabetes mellitus and is characterized by bone damage to the foot leading to deformities, instability, functional impotence and even amputation. The mechanism is still under discussion, without a consensus regarding the pathophysiology of this condition. The treatment is a complex one, non-surgical and surgical, the non-surgical one addressing especially the acute phase of the disease, the surgical one being complex and ranging from osteotomy, debridement, arthrodesis, internal or external fixation or even amputation. A good management of diabetes, of its peripheral complications, an early recognition of the Charcot type foot, prevents the evolution towards this serious condition.

The fast-paced adoption of smart devices has changed the Internet of Things (IoT) landscape, leading to the growth of smart environments and inclusion in many aspects of our society. In IoT applications, data collected from sensors and mobile devices are aggregated, processed, and analyzed to extract useful information and develop intelligent services. If the collected data is not trustworthy due to the damage or malicious input of some sensors, the quality of the service will be impacted. For reliable data collection and mining, it is mandatory to define robust security and trust models, suitable for the IoT application context. In this paper, we propose RESFIT, a platform that implements a reputation-based trust mechanism and an advanced application level firewall to cope with the above mentioned issues. Having a gateway-centric architecture, the proposed platform ensures minimal resource consumption at the node layer, and an integrated overview and control of the system state, through the cloud component and smartphone management application.

Mobile crowdsensing has emerged as a new paradigm in the IoT world, exploiting users’ mobility in conjunction with advanced capabilities and proliferation of mobile devices. Smartphones, tablets and smartwatches are now typically equipped with sensing and wireless capabilities, enabling them to produce and upload data for different IoT applications. The mobile crowdsensing approach has the advantage of being cost-effective, while also providing real-time data. However, a number of challenges should be addressed in order for mobile crowdsensing to reach its full potential. Security, privacy and reliability of the data provided by mobile devices are the most important ones. In this paper, we propose a security framework with a multi-layer architecture that addresses the trust evaluation of sensing devices based on reputation scores calculated using a naive Bayes algorithm.

Data gathering from wireless sensors using unmanned aerial vehicles has been a subject of interest in the recent years. Scientific literature shows that this method has not reached its peak and results are promising, as can be seen from Section 2. Sensors were included in different areas with the sole purpose of optimizing results (traffic management, crop field surveillance and many more). Beside obvious advantages that they bring, they offer also limitations in terms of hardware/software capabilities. For this reason, this paper addresses the need of reducing the transmission time and energy consumption due to the limited capacities of wireless sensors. The most important part of the proposed optimization relies in the dynamic construction of the trajectory that an unmanned aerial vehicle uses for gathering data from wireless sensors. The trajectory will be built based on a file that contains the positions of all sensors in the field. The file would be created in a previous step, when the unmanned aerial vehicle would fly on a predefined pattern and discover sensors on the ground. Based on the locations of the sensors, grouping and optimizations are done to obtain the best trajectory for the given location of sensors. Simulations were made with Network Simulator 2 and results show that the proposed objectives have been reached.

The rapid growth of Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices will have a great impact on people's personal lives. Even if, at the beginning of the technological advance, IoT was used only in the industrial applications, now it has reached regular consumers, enabling Smart-Home applications. In the IoT landscape, Smart-Home applications need to meet certain requirements, such as enriching the user experience or allowing the integration with an IoT Cloud platform and a smartphone management solution. In a Smart-Home architecture, remote access, whether or not using a trusted Cloud, requires secure authentication and authorization mechanisms in order to protect against unauthorized actions. This paper proposes a Smart-Home security framework which consists in a Secure Cloud platform and a smartphone based command authorization solution. The Secure Cloud acts as proxy between the IoT devices and a third-party Cloud vendor and the smartphone authorization mechanism allows the user to control the commands received by the IoT device.

Ambient intelligence is a new paradigm in the Internet of Things (IoT) world that brings smartness to living environments to make them more sensitive, adaptive, and personalized to human needs. A critical area where ambient intelligence can be used is health and social care, where it can improve and sustain the quality of life without increasing financial costs. The adoption of this new paradigm for health and social care largely depends on the technology deployed (sensors and wireless networks), the software used for decision-making and the security, privacy and reliability of the information. IoT sensors and wearables collect sensitive data and must respond in a near real-time manner to input changes. An IoT security framework is meant to offer the versatility and modularization needed to sustain such applications. Our framework was designed to easily integrate with different health and social care applications, separating security tasks from functional ones and being designed with independent modules for each layer (Cloud, gateway and IoT device), that offer functionalities relative to that layer.

With Romania’s integration in the European Union, the media content related to the member states has acquired growing importance. The themes of journalism were enriched with new approaches towards national image in the European context and vice versa. At a first level, the study aims to conduct a quantitative analysis on the news topics broadcasted by Radio Romania Actualitati and Europa FM, for the duration of 32 days. The qualitative component focuses on the topics addressed in radio news in order to see what is the media content which reflects the image of the European Union. The findings show, beyond the numbers, that the editorial policy of the Romanian media is not concerned with the interests of the citizens - from the perspective of common themes - but rather with how can the EU, as a unified body, help member countries solve their problems.

Solar urticaria (SU) is a rare type of physical urticaria triggered by sun exposure with pathognomonic wheal and flare seen within five to ten minutes of sun exposure. The mechanism of action is a type 1 hypersensibility, Immunoglobulin E mediated, triggered by an unknown photoallergen. Phototesting determines the eliciting action spectrum and the minimal urticaria dose. The first line treatment relay on antihistamines and sun protectors. Other treatment options are phototherapy, plasmapheresis, cyclosporin A, and intravenous immunoglobulin (1). Therefore some SU are resistant to these treatments. The objective of this study was to investigate the variation in phototest results in patients with solar urticaria, triggered mainly by visible light, resistant to antihistamines treatment, receiving two injections of omalizumab, a monoclonal antibody, 150 mg per month for three months. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.