Maria Consiglia Rasulo

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Projects

Progetto di ricerca IREA participates in numerous national and international research projects as evidenced, among other things, by the relevance of external fundings. Currently, IREA is present, even with co-ordinating role, in 17 international projects, 14 of which are funded by the European Union under the Seventh Framework Programme.

At a national level IREA coordinates research activities of 4 projects and participates in several projects funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR), by the Ministry of Economic Development (MISE), by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), by the Region of Campania and the Region of Lombardy. It should be remembered, also, the provision of highly qualified institutional services as that carried out for the Italian Department of Civil Protection Department of which IREA is Centre of Competence for the satellite monitoring of ground deformation.

IREA is also involved in industrial research projects funded or carried out in collaboration with companies of national relevance. It coordinates a project funded by ENI, with West Systems Srl it is developing a project funded by MISE, with Vitrociset SPA participates in a project funded by MIUR, with the South SPA Equipment Industry (INARME) is in progress a project funded by the Region of Campania. Finally, it has just started a project with the CGS SpA General Company for Space and one with the Company Pierreci Codess.

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Project 'Nanodem' to reduce the rejection in transplantation has kicked off

One of the greatest risks in operations involving an organ transplant is rejection. To ensure that the immune system accept the new organ, immunosuppressive drugs must be administered in order to avoid crises of graft rejection through inhibition of the immune system's response. However, these drugs lower the whole organism immune system and their excessive administering can have serious side effects. For this reason it is essential to determine the correct dosage of immunosuppressants for each transplant patient.

The project 'Nanodem', which involves numerous foreign institutions, high-tech industries and two CNR structures, IFAC (Institute of Applied Physics) and IREA, aims to create a device that can measure the concentration of immunosuppressive drugs in transplanted patient blood automatically and with high frequency. The protocol in use today is based on drawing blood in defined time intervals, usually every hour, and sending the sample to central laboratories. The possibility to perform a more frequent detection, without drawing blood and using an instrumentation next to the bed of the patient, can provide an important aid to identification of the correct therapy.

The apparatus involves the use of an intravascular catheter for microdialysis able to extract continuously from the blood of the transplanted a sample on which the immunosuppressants of interest are measured on-line. Heart of the device is an advanced miniaturized biochip that, using the latest developments in the field of nanotechnology, will convert the change in the concentration of the substances to be analyzed in precise detectable optical signals that will allow to make a multiple determination of the different immunosuppressants.

nanodembig

IREA personnel involved

Romeo Bernini

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International School of Bioelectromagnetics Alessandro Chiabrera VI course: "Static and Low Frequency Magnetic Fields: Physical Concepts, Biological Effects, Mechanisms and Limit Setting"

In the framework of the International School of Bioelectromagnetics "Alexander Chiabrera" the VI course dedicated to static magnetic fields and low frequency will be held this year from the 25th November to the 1st December.

Each year 100 million patients are exposed to strong static and low frequency magnetic fields while having a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) procedure. Each year most of humanity it exposed to weak extremely low frequency (ELF) magnetic fields from electric power generation, distribution and use. Given this enormous exposure burden to humans and other biological organisms it is surprising that we still know so little about biological effects and, if there are effects, if they are detrimental. The school will cover fundamental physics, including dosimetry, and relevant data from biological systems from cell free systems to humans. These topics will be structured with respect to candidate biophysical and biochemical mechanisms including consideration of the target of the initial transduction mechanism and the importance of the choice of the experimental observable. Moreover, what future experiments and scientific endeavors are needed to allow informed decision making with respect to exposure guidelines and further development of medical and non-medical applications will be also discussed.

The course will be held in Erice (Sicily, Italy) at the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture (President: prof. Antonio Zichichi). Here a Permanent School of Bioelectromagnetics was set up in 2003 (Director: prof. Ferdinando Bersani) with the aim of dealing with the various aspects of interaction between electromagnetic fields and biological systems.

The course directors are Frank S Prato (Lawson Health Research Inst., London, Ont., Canada) and Jukka Juutilainen (Department of Environmental Science, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio).

As part of the VI course Maria Rosaria Scarfì, researcher at IREA, will give a lecture entitled "In vitro studies on static magnetic fields".

Interested candidates can consult the course program containing registration procedures..

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An international prize for the satellite monitoring techniques developed at IREA

In the framework of the royal palace in Munich and of the international conference IGARSS 2012, the most important in the field of remote sensing which includes over two thousand scientists from all over the world, the Italian techniques of image processing for satellite monitoring developed at IREA was rewarded by the IEEE Society. The work "Tomographic Imaging and Monitoring of Buildings with Very High Resolution Data", developed by an Italian-German team composed by Diego Reale, Gianfranco Fornaro and Antonio Pauciullo of IREA-CNR and by Xiaoxiang Zhu and Richard Bamler of the German Space Agency and published in the international journal Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, received the award for the best article of 2011. This work represents a significant advancement in the development of the satellite technology for monitoring the Earth by satellite, by opening an application scenario to the reconstruction and monitoring of single buildings and structures. The application sectors involves the control of deformations of buildings and infrastructure associated with structural defects and exposed to natural and anthropogenic stresses, such as excavation and extraction in subsoil, or extreme events such as earthquakes.

3D reconstruction of the Hotel Mirage in Las Vegas obtained by the technique of multi-dimensional SAR imaging (also known as tomographic SAR) using the very high resolution data of the German satellite TerraSAR-X

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Organization

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Ground deformation caused by the earthquake in Turkey October 23, 2011

Researchers at the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment, following the powerful earthquake that struck the eastern province of Turkey on 23 October 2011, processed SAR data acquired by ENVISAT satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), generating the deformation map caused by the earthquake. In the image each color cycle represents a displacement of about 2.8 cm.

ENVISAT differential interferogram relevant to the area of Van (eastern Turkey) derived from the scenes acquired on 05/10/2010 and 31/10/2011, along descending orbits (Swath: IS6, Track: 121); one color cycle corresponds to about 2.8 cm displacement in the radar line of site. The interferogram has been produced at IREA-CNR (Napoli, Italy) by using the satellite predicted orbits. ENVISAT raw data have been provided by the European Space Agency.

See the image at full resolution

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COSMO-SkyMed supervises the awakening of NaBr

nabro_1

The renewal of intense volcanic activity of the African volcano monitored by IREA-CNR researchers

The largest explosive eruption of the volcano NaBr, which began on June 12 last year after a series of earthquakes up to magnitude of high Magnitude 5.7, was constantly monitored through the use of satellite data system.

All information have been processed by a team of researchers from the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment (IREA) of the National Research Council (CNR) under the research project, funded by ASI, dedicated to the use of SAR data for the study of volcanoes.

News ASI - Italian Space agency

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Workshop "Remote Sensing of Cyanobacteria"

On July 19, 2011, the workshop "Remote Sensing of Cyanobacteria", organized by CNR-IREA Milnao, was held at the lakes of Mantova and Garda. The workshop was organized within the bilateral Italy-Sweden project actvities of cyan-IS-was (CYanobacteria AssessmeNt in Italian and Swedish WAters from Space), where the optical remote sensing techniques are used to monitor the quality of waters with focus on cyanobacterial blooms.

The workshop was divided into two parts: in the morning, n the lakes of Mantua, there was a measuring session by using different spectroradiometers (two ASD, Ramses, SpectraScan), optical sensors (H6) and fluorimetric probes that, together with the sampling samples of water, allow to build the database for bio-optical modeling of the lake. In the afternoon, at the Experimental Station of Sirmione del Garda Eugene Zilioli, an oral session was held.

See the event poster (locandina)
See the video of the afternoon session

The workshop was attended by CNR colleagues from IREA Milan, ISMAR Venezia and IDPA Bergamo, by persons from the Universities of Univerità di Parma, Milano Bicocca, Stockholm and Zurich and by people from the Community of Lake Garda.