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The design and the characterization of a non-linear target to test an intermodulation radar was performed using the AWR design environment Version 22 by Cadence software. Two experimental setups for intermodulation measurements were realized in order to characterize connectorized or antenna-equipped devices. Both setups were modeled using the VSS software available inside AWR Version 22. The comparison between measurements and simulations on the designed target showed a very good agreement. Intermodulation measurements were performed on connectorized devices present inside electronic systems and on various transceiver available on the market. This experimental study evidenced that the non-linearities of devices such as amplifiers and mixers are visible at their access ports even when the device is switched off. Moreover, this study highlights the ability of an intermodulation radar to remotely detect the presence of a particular transceiver, even when the latter is switched off, thanks to the specific frequency response of its intermodulation products.

In this paper we prove the following weighted Sobolev inequality in a bounded domain $\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n$, $ n\geq 1$, of a homogeneous space $(\mathbb{R}^n, \rho, wdx)$, under suitable compatibility conditions on the positive weight functions $( v, w, \omega_1, \omega_2, \dots, \omega_n )$ and on the quasi-metric $\rho$, \begin{equation*} %\label {PS} \Big ( \int_\Omega \vert f \vert ^q v \, wdz \Big)^{\frac{1}{q}}\leq {C} \, \sum \limits_{i=1}^N \Big ( \int_\Omega \vert f_{z_i} \vert ^p \omega_i M_S w\, dz \Big)^{\frac{1}{p}}, \quad f\in \mathrm{Lip}_0(\overline \Omega), \end{equation*} where $q\geq p>1$ and $M_S$ denotes the strong maximal operator. Some corollaries on non-uniformly degenerating gradient inequalities are derived.

The nuclear factor NF-kB is the master transcription factor in the inflammatory process by modulating the expression of pro-inflammatory genes. However, an additional level of complexity is the ability to promote the transcriptional activation of post-transcriptional modulators of gene expression as non-coding RNA (i.e., miRNAs). While NF-kB’s role in inflammation-associated gene expression has been extensively investigated, the interplay between NF-kB and genes coding for miRNAs still deserves investigation. To identify miRNAs with potential NF-kB binding sites in their transcription start site, we predicted miRNA promoters by an in silico analysis using the PROmiRNA software, which allowed us to score the genomic region’s propensity to be miRNA cis-regulatory elements. A list of 722 human miRNAs was generated, of which 399 were expressed in at least one tissue involved in the inflammatory processes. The selection of “high-confidence” hairpins in miRbase identified 68 mature miRNAs, most of them previously identified as inflammamiRs. The identification of targeted pathways/diseases highlighted their involvement in the most common age-related diseases. Overall, our results reinforce the hypothesis that persistent activation of NF-kB could unbalance the transcription of specific inflammamiRNAs. The identification of such miRNAs could be of diagnostic/prognostic/therapeutic relevance for the most common inflammatory-related and age-related diseases.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is among the best examples for depicting the relationship between inflammation and cancer. The introduction of new therapeutics targeting inflammatory mediators showed a marked decrease in the overall risk of CRC, although their chemopreventive potential is still debated. Specifically, a monoclonal antibody that blocks tumor necrosis factor (TNF), infliximab, increases CRC risk in inflammatory bowel disease patients. To address the axis between TNF and CRC development and progression, we depleted the Tnf from our previously established murine model of colitis-associated cancer (CAC), the Winnie-ApcMin/+ line. We characterized the new Winnie-APCMin/+-TNF-KO line through macroscopical and microscopical analyses. Surprisingly, the latter demonstrated that the deletion of Tnf in Winnie-ApcMin/+ mice resulted in an initial reduction in dysplastic lesion incidence in 5-week-old mice followed by a faster disease progression at 8 weeks. Histological data were confirmed by the molecular profiling obtained from both the real-time PCR analysis of the whole tissue and the RNA sequencing of the macrodissected tumoral lesions from Winnie-APCMin/+-TNF-KO distal colon at 8 weeks. Our results highlight that TNF could exert a dual role in CAC, supporting the promotion of neoplastic lesions onset in the early stage of the disease while inducing their reduction during disease progression.

In this paper, we introduce a novel tree-based architecture which allows the implementation of Ultra-Low-Voltage (ULV) amplifiers. The architecture exploits a body-driven input stage to guarantee a rail-to-rail input common mode range and body-diode loading to avoid Miller compensation, thanks to the absence of high-impedance internal nodes. The tree-based structure improves the CMRR of the proposed amplifier with respect to the conventional OTA architectures and allows achievement of a reasonable CMRR even at supply voltages as low as 0.3 V and without tail current generators which cannot be used in ULV circuits. The bias currents and the static output voltages of all the stages implementing the architecture are accurately set through the gate terminals of biasing transistors in order to guarantee good robustness against PVT variations. The proposed architecture and the implementing stages are investigated from an analytical point of view and design equations for the main performance metrics are presented to provide insight into circuit behavior. A 0.3 V supply voltage, subthreshold, ultra-low-power (ULP) OTA, based on the proposed tree-based architecture, was designed in a commercial 130 nm CMOS process. Simulation results show a dc gain higher than 52 dB with a gain-bandwidth product of about 35 kHz and reasonable values of CMRR and PSRR, even at such low supply voltages and considering mismatches. The power consumption is as low as 21.89 nW and state-of-the-art small-signal and large-signal FoMs are achieved. Extensive parametric and Monte Carlo simulations show the robustness of the proposed circuit to PVT variations and mismatch. These results confirm that the proposed OTA is a good candidate to implement ULV, ULP, high performance analog building blocks for directly harvested IoT nodes.

The design and the characterization of a non-linear target to test an intermodulation radar was performed using the AWR design environment Version 22 by Cadence software. Two experimental setups for intermodulation measurements were realized in order to characterize connectorized or antenna-equipped devices. Both setups were modeled using the VSS software available inside AWR Version 22. The comparison between measurements and simulations on the designed target showed a very good agreement. Intermodulation measurements were performed on connectorized devices present inside electronic systems and on various transceiver available on the market. This experimental study evidenced that the non-linearities of devices such as amplifiers and mixers are visible at their access ports even when the device is switched off. Moreover, this study highlights the ability of an intermodulation radar to remotely detect the presence of a particular transceiver, even when the latter is switched off, thanks to the specific frequency response of its intermodulation products.