On the piezoelectricity of anionic collagen films

In this paper, we report results of a study of the physicochemical, dielectric and piezoelectric properties of anionic and native collagen films, considering the development of new biomaterials which have potential applications in coating of cardiovascular prostheses, support for cellular growth and in systems for controlled drug delivery. The piezoelectric strain tensor element d₁₄, the elastic constant s₅₅, and the dielectric permittivity ?₁₁ were measured for the anionic and native collagen films. It was observed that the collagen samples submitted to the alkaline treatment present lower thermal stability than those made from native collagen. However, the treated samples present a higher piezoelectricity compared with the native collagen. The frequency constant fL and the piezoelectric strain element d₁₄, obtained for the alkaline-treated sample (72 h), present the highest values for the samples under study (444.1 kHz m and 0.079 pC/N, respectively). We believe that the alkaline treatment led to an increase of the organization of the microscopic fiber structure of the sample, which could result in an increase of the piezoelectricity.     

Trace pollutants analysis in soil by a time-resolved laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy technique

The results of a joint experiment of IFAM-Pisa and ENEA-Frascati for the detection of traces of pollutants in soil by a time-resolved laser-induced spectroscopy technique are reported. Using samples of soil with known pollutants' concentration [Geochemical Exploration Reference (GXR) silicate from US Geological Survey], we were able to estimate the sensitivity of this Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) technique to be of the order of some parts per million for a vast class of metallic pollutants, including extremely dangerous soil pollutants such as copper, lead and chromium.ENEA guest with HC&M fellowship     

Special geometry,cubic polynomials and homogeneous quaternionic spaces

The existing classification of homogeneous quaternionic spaces is not complete. We study these spaces in the context of certainN=2 supergravity theories, where dimensional reduction induces a mapping betweenspecial real, Kähler and quaternionic spaces. The geometry of the real spaces is encoded in cubic polynomials, those of the Kähler and quaternionic manifolds in homogeneous holomorphic functions of second degree. We classify all cubic polynomials that have an invariance group that acts transitively on the real manifold. The corresponding Kähler and quaternionic manifolds are then homogeneous. We find that they lead to a well-defined subset of the normal quaternionic spaces classified by Alekseevskiî (and the corresponding special Kähler spaces given by Cecotti), but there is a new class of rank-3 spaces of quaternionic dimension larger than 3. We also point out that some of the rank-4 Alekseevskiî spaces were not fully specified and correspond to a finite variety of inequivalent spaces. A simpler version of the equation that underlies the classification of this paper also emerges in the context ofW ₃ algebras.Communicated by K. Gawedzki     

Principles and recent developments in ultrasound contrast agents

The behaviour of gas bubbles and gas encapsulated spheres as echographic contrast agents is reviewed. Compared with rigid spheres, gas bubbles are superior scattering agents and they offer a number of useful properties which can be exploited in a variety of ways. The analysis of their velocity of sound, back-scatter intensity, second harmonic emission and resonant frequency opens up new perspectives in the development of contrast agents for echocardiographic research with potential clinical applications.     

Allocation rules for hypergraph communication situations

This paper considers hypergraph communication situations, where for a group of agents the economic possibilities are described by a coalitional game and the communication possibilities are described by a hypergraph in which the nodes are the agents and the edges are the subgroups of agents who can effect communication. Axiomatic characterizations are provided for two allocation rules, the Myerson value and the position value.