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The Exudative maculopathy is a very common eye desease and represents the first cause of loss of sight for people over 50To treat it, until today, it is necessary to have a frequent cycle of injection, an invasive procedure with a high impact on the life of patients, that often abandon their therapy.

To avoid the premature abandonment of the treatment, a group of researchers of the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering "Giulio Natta" of Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with the Deparment of clinical and biomedical sciences "Luigi Sacco, ASST Fatebenefratelli-Sacco, Università degli Studi di Milano, it has developed Mag Shella device that with a singular injection is able to release precise doses of medicine in defined intervals.

The device was first created in 2015 from the Phd thesis of Marco Ferronibiomedical engineer of Politenico di Milano. In six years, thanks to the support of Polihub that has incubated MgShellthe spin off which has gained a lot of prizes and investments the technology and the business model were developed.

MAG SHELL: A NEW THERAPEUTIC FRONTIER FOR EXUDATIVE MACULOPATHY

The Mag Shell ocular device is a drug "container" that is inserted, with a single injection, into the eye and releases the active ingredient gradually, thus ensuring greater patient adherence to the therapeutic protocol.

This operation is possible thanks to the conformation of the device itself, which alternates layers of biodegradable materials, consisting of magnesium or its alloys, with drug doses.

materiali biodegradabili, costituiti da magnesio o da sue leghe, a dosi di farmaco.

"Today this means avoiding that 40% of patients who drop out of therapy go blind, it means drastically reducing the social impact that chronic diseases have" explains Ferroni in an interview.

The advantages of this procedure are many: in addition to the reduction of costs and the impact of current drug treatment on maculopathic patients, hospital staff and on healthcare costs, there are promising possibilities for using MagShell in other areas of pharmaceutical application as well.

The device is currently in a preclinical in vitro trial phase and the first animal pilot study will begin soon.

primo studio pilota su animale.

Cover Photo: Polihub

A research by Politecnico di Milano, published in the journal Aerosol Science and Technology, tries to answer this question by analyzing a series of scenarios characterized by different weather conditions: a city in summer and autumn; a seaside town in summer; a mountain village in summer and winter

Ettore Maggiore, Matteo Tommasini and Paolo M. Ossi published on the magazine Aerosol Science and Technology the article "Propagation in outdoor environments of aerosol droplets produced by breath and light cough.
The research group studied the propagation of the aerosol that we emit from the mouth and nose by breathing, coughing or sneezing in various kinds of open environments.

Virus trasmitted via air such as the flu, the cold, SARS and obviously, Coronavirusdiffuse through areosolwhich is air saturated by water vapor and droplets.
Viruses "ride" the droplets. These evaporate during flight or fall to the ground, depending on their initial size. The evaporation rate depends on the temperature and humidity of the ambient air.
As the drop evaporates and contracts, its speed and flight time in the air flow associated with respiratory activity change.

Up to now, the propagation of aerosol from respiratory activities has been studied experimentally and modeling by considering closed environments and, more recently, environments with complete air conditioning.

In the paper researchers focused on the propagation in open spacesanalyzing breathing and light cough (the one for clearing the throat), normal respiratory activities in healthy or non-symptomatic people, and considering propagation in stagnant air, even if the effect of wind has been discussed.

The propagation distance of droplets have been calculated five environments characterized by different pressure, temperature, relative humidity: a city in summer and autumn; a seaside town in summer; a mountain village in summer and winter.
In every enviromental condition, among the droplets travelling for a longer distance, those emitted by coughing are bigger than the ones emitted breathing.
In the city in summer (high temperature, very high humidity) and in winter in the mountains (low temperature, medium-high humidity) the greatest propagation distances are observed: about 2 m from the mouth. The minimum distances are recorded in summer both in the mountains (high temperature, low humidity) and at the sea (high temperature, medium-high humidity): about 1.5 m from the mouth.

Cover Photo: Matteo Jorjoson on Unsplash

Prof. Mauro Nisoli (Department of Physics, Head of the Attosecond Research Center at Politecnico di Milano), along with Fernando Martín (IMDEA and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) and Nazario Martín (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), have been awarded an ERC Synergy Grant for the TOMATTO project (the ultimate time scale in organic molecular opto-electronics, the attosecond).

Researchers will explore what happens within individual molecules immediately after interaction with light. This is uncharted territory, since light triggers events that are not easily accessible, happening as they do in extremely short time scales, in the order of attoseconds. The goal here is to study and – possibly – control the light-induced motion of electrons in molecules with an unprecedented temporal resolution; researchers also aim to understand how the interaction with light is influenced by the molecular structure, in order to alter this structure according to a specific design.

Credits header: Photo by Sandip Kalal on Unsplash

With the ERC PoC INSTANT project, prof. Tronconi of the Department of Energy obtains new funding to explore the potential of a compact reactor, more efficient and less invasive from the point of view of environmental impact

European project INSTANT (effIcieNt Small-scale uniT for distributed heAt and hydrogeN generaTion), led by Prof. Enrico Tronconi of the Energy Department aims to develop an efficient catalytic fuel processor as the key component of a compact unit to produce hydrogen. Based on hydrogen-fuel cells and fed by natural gas, air and water, researchers will develop units for combined heat and power (CHP) generation that may be used in small-scale applications, such as the cogeneration of heat and electricity for domestic residential use or refueling hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles. Sustainable on-site and on-demand hydrogen generation will reduce or eliminate the transport and storage costs associated with traditional production technologies, improving their energy efficiency and carbon footprint.

INSTANT, funded with 150,000 € under the Horizon2020 program, is a Proof of Concept ERC project that stems from the AdG ERC INTENT project. INTENT developed and validated the concept for a new generation of catalytic reactors to produce energy carriers, with a revised design based on thermally conductive cellular structures packed with catalyst microparticles. With INSTANT, researchers aim to test this novel configuration of the fuel processor on a semi-industrial scale (TRL5). Indicators which will be evaluated during the test sessions include:

1. H2 productivity for a given catalyst load (target = +30%);
2. start-up time to full load (target = -30%);
3. response time to a load change (target = -30%).

Based on the experimental outcomes, INSTANT will also assess the potential for reducing the footprint of the CHP unit, the system volume being currently one of the main constraints for domestic CHP applications, as well as the overall production cost, including life-cycle costs.

If successful, INSTANT will pave the way to a new generation of CHP systems based on hydrogen fuel cells and explore the commercial and social potential of their research work.

Cover photo by Mihály Köles on Unsplash

Yes, it is also good against Coronavirus: Narvalo Urban Mask is a certified PPE according to the law, an FFP3 mask equipped with the best filtration standards and an Active Shield (patent pending) that constantly optimizes the internal air flow for maximum comfort and to facilitate respiratory performance

Narvalo's storyread more here on MAP 8) inizia sui banchi della Scuola del Design del Politecnico di Milano dalla tesi di Ewoud Westerduin, con il contributo di Venanzio Arquilla (rivedi il Digital Talks in cui è stata raccontata anche la storia di Narvalo), Professore del Dipartimento di Design e suo relatore di tesi, passa per l’incubatore PoliHub e una serie di test e sperimentazioni all’interno di Polifactory. (Find out more about the research-territory-incubation system of the Politecnico di Milano in the Digital Talk of the Alumni: "Startup, engine for restarting")

Today the spin-off of Politecnico di Milano, Narvalo, launches the campaign on Kickstarter for the industrialization of the second version of its mask: "Active", which contains some important smart electronic components. In the device there is a sensor capable of reading three parameters: pressure, temperature and humidity, which provide a precise and direct reading of the user's respiratory rate and regulate the speed of a fan. This fan extracts the heat and humidity that usually accumulate inside, making breathing more comfortable. The valve can be blocked by inserting the special COVID-19 “plug”. The Narwhal App interacts with the sensors of the mask to report the respiratory rate and monitor the quality of the air along the user's movements. Urban Active filters have a 99% guaranteed filtration level and protect against fine dust, smog, pollen, viruses and bacteria and, thanks to the activated carbon layer, are able to filter odors.

Credits images: Narvalo Design