Blood is a fluid connective tissue of human body, where it plays vital functions for the nutrition, defense and well-being of the organism. When circulating in peripheral districts, it is exposed to ...some physical stresses coming from outside the human body, as electromagnetic fields (EMFs) which can cross the skin. Such fields may interact with biomolecules possibly inducing non thermal-mediated biological effects at the cellular level. In this study, the occurrence of biochemical/biological modifications in human peripheral blood lympho-monocytes exposed in a reverberation chamber for times ranging from 1 to 20 h to EMFs at 1.8 GHz frequency and 200 V/m electric field strength was investigated. Morphological analysis of adherent cells unveiled, in some of these, appearance of an enlarged and deformed shape after EMFs exposure. Raman spectra of the nuclear compartment of cells exposed to EMFs revealed the onset of biochemical modifications, mainly consisting in the reduction of the DNA backbone-linked vibrational modes. Respirometric measurements of mitochondrial activity in intact lympho-monocytes resulted in increase of the resting oxygen consumption rate after 20 h of exposure, which was coupled to a significant increase of the FoF1-ATP synthase-related oxygen consumption. Notably, at lower time-intervals of EMFs exposure (i.e. 5 and 12 h) a large increase of the proton leak-related respiration was observed which, however, recovered at control levels after 20 h exposure. Confocal microscopy analysis of the mitochondrial membrane potential supported the respiratory activities whereas no significant variations in the mitochondrial mass/morphology was observed in EMFs-exposed lympho-monocytes. Finally, altered redox homeostasis was shown in EMFs-exposed lympho-monocytes, which progressed differently in nucleated cellular subsets. This results suggest the occurrence of adaptive mechanisms put in action, likely via redox signaling, to compensate for early impairments of the oxidative phosphorylation system caused by exposure to EMFs. Overall the data presented warn for health safety of people involved in long-term exposure to electromagnetic fields, although further studies are required to pinpoint the leukocyte cellular subset(s) selectively targeted by the EMFs action and the mechanisms by which it is achieved.
Purpose
The response of human cells to applied electrical signals depends on the cellular health status, because it is influenced by the composition and structure of the main cellular components. ...Therefore, electrical impedance‐based techniques can be considered as sensitive tools to investigate healthy or disease state at cellular level. The goal of this study is to show that different types of in vitro cellular lines, related to different health status, can be differentiated using impedance spectra analysis.
Methods
Three different types of human breast cell line, corresponding to healthy, cancerous, and metastatic adenocarcinoma cells, were measured by means of electrical impedance spectroscopy. By modeling the investigated cells with proper resistive and capacitive circuital elements, the magnitude of the cell electrical components and spectra of real and imaginary part of dielectric permittivity were obtained. The latter were subsequently examined with a commonly adopted mathematical model, in order to estimate the values of specific dielectric parameters for the three different cellular lines.
Results
The relative variation of cellular capacitance with respect to that of the culture medium, estimated at 100 Hz, has a larger value for the two types of cancerous cells with respect to the noncancerous type. Furthermore, the ratio between the real and imaginary part of the dielectric permittivity function has larger values for metastatic cells with respect to the normal and nonmetastatic ones. Therefore, the mentioned relative capacitance allows to discriminate between normal and cancerous cells, whereas the results obtained for the dielectric function can discriminate between metastatic and nonmetastatic cells.
Conclusions
This study can be considered as an exploratory investigation of evaluating in vitro the health status of humans cells using selected electrical impedance parameters as potential markers. The obtained results highlight that a standard cultureware system, provided with interdigitated electrodes and appropriate impedance parameters, that is, cellular capacitance and the ratio between the imaginary and real part of cellular dielectric function, can be used to discriminate between healthy and cancerous breast cell lines, as well as different malignancy degrees.
The next generation of gaseous photon detectors is requested to overcome the limitations of the available technology, in terms of resolution and robustness. The quest for a novel photocathode, ...sensitive in the far vacuum ultra violet wavelength range and more robust than present ones, motivated an R&D programme to explore nanodiamond based photoconverters, which represent the most promising alternative to cesium iodine. A procedure for producing the novel photocathodes has been defined and applied on THGEMs samples. Systematic measurements of the photo emission in different Ar/CH4 and Ar/CO2 gas mixtures with various types of nanodiamond powders have been performed. A comparative study of the response of THGEMs before and after coating demonstrated their full compatibility with the novel photocathodes.
The proposed new Electron–Ion Collider poses a technical and intellectual challenge for the detector design to accommodate the long-term diverse physics goals envisaged by the program. This requires ...a 4π detector system capable of reconstructing the energy and momentum of final state particles with high precision. The Electron-Ion Collider also requires identification of particles of different masses over a wide momentum range.
A diverse spectrum of Particle IDentification detectors has been proposed. Of the four types of detectors for hadron identification, three are based on Ring Imaging Cherenkov Counter technologies, and one is realized by the Time of Flight method. The quest for a novel photocathode, sensitive in the far vacuum ultraviolet wavelength range and more robust than cesium iodide, motivated an R&D programme to explore nano-diamond (ND) based photocathodes, started by a collaboration between INFN and CNR Bari and INFN Trieste. Systematic measurements of the photoemission in different Ar:CH4 and Ar:CO2 gas mixtures with various types of ND powders and Hydrogenated ND (H-ND) powders are reported. A first study of the response of THGEMs coated with different photocathode materials is presented.
The progress of this R&D programme and the results obtained so far by these exploratory studies are described.
In high momenta range, the construction of a Ring Imaging CHerenkov (RICH) detector for the particle identification at the future Electron Ion Collider (EIC) is a complicated task. A compact collider ...setup imposes to construct a RICH with a short radiator length, hence limiting the number of photons. The number of photons can be increase by choosing to work in far UV region. However, as standard fused-silica windows are opaque below 165 nm, therefore, a windowless RICH approach could be a possible choice. In the far UV range, CsI is a widely used photo-cathode (PC) to detect photons, but because of its hygroscopic nature, it is very delicate to handle. Its Quantum Efficiency (QE) degrades in high intensity ion fluxes. These are the key reasons to search a novel, less delicate PC with sensitivity in the far UV region. Hydrogenated nanodiamond films are proposed as an alternative PC material and shown to have promising characteristics. The performance of nanodiamond PC coupled to THGEM-based detectors is the objects of our ongoing R & D.
The first phase of these studies includes the characterization of THGEMs coated with nanodiamont PC, the comparison of the effective QE in vacuum and in gaseous atmospheres, the hardness respect to the PC bombardment by ions from the multiplication process. The approach is described in detail as well as all the results obtained so far with these exploratory studies.
In the last years disturbances in VLF/LF radio signals related to seismic activity have been presented. The radio data were collected by receivers located on the ground or on satellites. The ...ground-based research implies systematic data collection by a network of receivers. Since 2000 the "Pacific VLF network", conducted by Japanese researchers, has been in operation. During 2008 a radio receiver was developed by the Italian factory Elettronika (Palo del Colle, Bari). The receiver is equipment working in VLF and LF bands. It can monitor 10 frequencies distributed in these bands and, for each of them, it saves the power level. At the beginning of 2009, five receivers were made for the realization of the "European VLF/LF Network"; two were planned for Italy and one for Greece, Turkey and Romania, respectively. In 2010 the network was enlarged to include a new receiver installed in Portugal. In this work, first the receiver and its setting up in the different places are described. Then, several disturbances in the radio signals related to the transmitters, receivers, meteorological/geomagnetic conditions are presented and described.
A study of the structural, optical and electrical properties of synthetic and natural melanin by means of X-ray diffraction, absorption and photocurrent techniques is reported. The model of the ...natural melanin film as a network of nano-aggregates of polymeric units based on the indolic structure is proposed to explain the X-ray diffraction results. The shape of the absorption spectra is similar to that of amorphous and disordered semiconductors, with a very strong, broad band UV and visible absorption and an optical gap value of about 0.5 eV. Photosensitivity to sun spectra has been demonstrated by photoconductivity measurements of synthetic melanin pellets under AM1 light source illumination.
A jellified alginate based capsule serves as biocompatible and biodegradable electrolyte system to gate an organic field-effect transistor fabricated on a flexible substrate. Such a system allows ...operating thiophene based polymer transistors below 0.5 V through an electrical double layer formed across an ion-permeable polymeric electrolyte. Moreover, biological macro-molecules such as glucose-oxidase and streptavidin can enter into the gating capsules that serve also as delivery system. An enzymatic bio-reaction is shown to take place in the capsule and preliminary results on the measurement of the electronic responses promise for low-cost, low-power, flexible electronic bio-sensing applications using capsule-gated organic field-effect transistors.
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