Innovative Diagnostic Methods for Early Prostate Cancer Detection through Urine Analysis: A Review.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death among men. It is an asymptomatic and slow growing tumour, which starts occurring in young men, but can be detected only around the age of 40–50. Although its long latency period and potential curability make prostate cancer a perfect candidate for screening programs, the current procedure lacks in specificity.

HS Loss through Nalophan™ Bags: Contributions of Adsorption and Diffusion.

Hydrogen-sulfide (HS) is a molecule of small dimensions typically present in the odor emissions from different plants. The European Standard EN 13725:2003 set a maximum storage time allowed of 30 hours, during which the sampling bag has to maintain the mixture of odorants with minimal changes. This study investigates the HS losses through Nalophan bags and it shows that nonnegligible losses of HS can be observed.

Assessment of the Indoor Odour Impact in a Naturally Ventilated Room.

Indoor air quality influences people's lives, potentially affecting their health and comfort. Nowadays, ventilation is the only technique commonly used for regulating indoor air quality. CO₂ is the reference species considered in order to calculate the air exchange rates of indoor environments.

Application and Uses of Electronic Noses for Clinical Diagnosis on Urine Samples: A Review.

The electronic nose is able to provide useful information through the analysis of the volatile organic compounds in body fluids, such as exhaled breath, urine and blood. This paper focuses on the review of electronic nose studies and applications in the specific field of medical diagnostics based on the analysis of the gaseous headspace of human urine, in order to provide a broad overview of the state of the art and thus enhance future developments in this field. The research in this field is rather recent and still in progress, and there are several aspects that need to be investigated more into depth, not only to develop and improve specific electronic noses for different diseases, but also with the aim to discover and analyse the connections between specific diseases and the body fluids odour.

Electronic Nose Testing Procedure for the Definition of Minimum Performance Requirements for Environmental Odor Monitoring.

Despite initial enthusiasm towards electronic noses and their possible application in different fields, and quite a lot of promising results, several criticalities emerge from most published research studies, and, as a matter of fact, the diffusion of electronic noses in real-life applications is still very limited. In general, a first step towards large-scale-diffusion of an analysis method, is standardization. The aim of this paper is describing the experimental procedure adopted in order to evaluate electronic nose performances, with the final purpose of establishing minimum performance requirements, which is considered to be a first crucial step towards standardization of the specific case of electronic nose application for environmental odor monitoring at receptors.

Ammonia diffusion through Nalophan double bags: effect of concentration gradient reduction.

The ammonia loss through Nalophan bags has been studied. The losses observed for storage conditions and times as allowed by the reference standard for dynamic olfactometry (EN 13725:2003) indicate that odour concentration values due to the presence of small molecules may be significantly underestimated if samples are not analysed immediately after sampling. A diffusion model was used in order to study diffusion through the bag.

Ammonia diffusion through Nalophan™ bags.

The aim of the work is to verify the diffusion rate of ammonia through the Nalophan™ film that constitutes the sampling bag, considering storage times ranging from 1 to 26 h. The ammonia decay over time was evaluated using gas-chromatography for the quantification of ammonia concentration inside the bag. The research assesses the roles of both of ammonia and water concentration gradients at the polymeric film interface on the diffusion process.

Modeling the adsorption behavior of linear end-functionalized poly(ethylene glycol) on an ionic substrate by a coarse-grained Monte Carlo approach.

The rheology of cement pastes can be controlled by polymeric dispersants such as branched polyelectrolytes that adsorb on the surfaces of silicate particles. In the present work, we analyze the adsorption behavior of ad hoc-prepared end-carboxylated poly(ethylene glycol), or PEG, on CaCO(3) particles as a model of cement in an early hydration stage. The experimental adsorption isotherms form the base of a theoretical study aimed at unraveling polymer conformational aspects of adsorption.