Abstract
The development of smart orthopaedic implants is being considered as an effective solution to ensure their everlasting life span. The availability of electric power to supply active mechanisms of smart prostheses has remained a critical problem. This paper reports the first implementation of a new concept of energy harvesting systems applied to hip prostheses: the multi-source generation of electric energy. The reliability of the power supply mechanisms is strongly increased with the application of this new concept. Three vibration-based harvesters, operating in true parallel to harvest energy during human gait, were implemented on a Metabloc TM hip prosthesis to validate the concept. They were designed to use the angular movements on the flexion-extension, abduction-adduction and inward-outward rotation axes, over the femoral component, to generate electric power. The performance of each generator was tested for different amplitudes and frequencies of operation. Electric power up to 55 µJ/s was harvested. The overall function of smart hip prostheses can remain performing even if two of the generators get damaged. Furthermore, they are safe and autonomous throughout the life span of the implant. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.

Abstract
Instrumented hip implants were proposed as a method to monitor and predict the biomechanical and thermal environment surrounding such implants. Nowadays, they are being developed as active implants with the ability to prevent failures by loosening. The generation of electric energy to power active mechanisms of instrumented hip implants remains a question. Instrumented implants cannot be implemented without effective electric power systems. This paper surveys the power supply systems of seventeen implant architectures already implanted in-vivo, namely from instrumented hip joint replacements and instrumented fracture stabilizers. Only inductive power links and batteries were used in-vivo to power the implants. The energy harvesting systems, which were already designed to power instrumented hip implants, were also analyzed focusing their potential to overcome the disadvantages of both inductive-based and battery-based power supply systems. From comparative and critical analyses of the methods to power instrumented implants, one can conclude that: inductive powering and batteries constrain the full operation of instrumented implants; motion-driven electromagnetic energy harvesting is a promising method to power instrumented passive and active hip implants.

Abstract
Energy harvesting solutions such as instrumented orthopaedic implants are under development to power a wide variety of electronic systems including biomedical implants. Three micro-power generators have already been developed as part of a smart hip prosthesis structure. This paper outlines a power management architecture for efficient harvesting of energy to supply power to modules other than those powered by current instrumented implants. Considering that it is impossible to predict the amount of energy harvested by each particular person, the proposed system also comprises an activation circuit and its ultracapacitor energy reservoir as a fourth type of energy to be used when a continuous energy source is needed. The hip prosthesis prototype has now the capability to energize more power demanding loads, intermittently or continuously, such as radio-frequency modules. The proposed architecture enables operation of a Bluetooth low energy (V4.0) embedded device (BLE112 from Bluegiga), part of a wireless body sensor network, up to 50 s, and a MSP430/eZ430-RF2500 (Texas Instruments), which uses the SimpliciTl communication protocol, up to 110 s, solely using the energy produced by one of the generators.

Abstract
In the last decade, Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR) has become operational as a technique that allows remote detection of deformation at the Earth's surface. Analysis of time series of SAR images extends the area where InSAR can be successfully applied and also permits detection of smaller displacements through the reduction of error sources. Stanford Method for Persistent Scatterers (StaMPS) InSAR implementation, which is based on the processing of multi-temporal SAR data, is widely used for ground deformation monitoring. This is due mainly to its proven reliability and freeware distribution among the scientific community. However, some issues can make the interpretation of the results a difficult task: StaMPS supports data processing based on command prompt, which increases the difficulty of usage by users not familiar with the specific programming language that supports StaMPS. Moreover, several visualization tasks are not implemented in the standard approach requiring that each user develop its own code for visualization and interpretation purposes. In this paper, we present viStaMPS, a new visual application developed to enhance the visualization, manipulation and exportation of StaMPS results. The programmed application is developed in Matlab through the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and no coding is required for running it, which avoids any programming language knowledge for standard uses. The included graphical interface is very versatile allowing the user to choose among several features: visualization, manipulation and exportation of data which are not available in the original StaMPS.

Abstract
The IEC 61508 standard recognizes the programming languages defined in IEC 61131-3 as being appropriate for safety-related applications, and suggests the use of static analysis techniques to find errors in the source code. In this context, we have added a semantic verification stage to the MatIEC compiler—an open source ST, IL, and SFC code translator to ANSI C. In so doing, we have identified several issues related to the definition of the semantics of the IL and ST programming languages, as well as with the data type model defined in IEC 61131-3. Most of the issues are related to undefined semantics, which may result in applications generating distinct results, depending on the platform on which they are executed. In this paper we describe some of the issues we uncovered, explain the options we took, and suggest how the IEC 61131-3 standard could be made more explicit. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.

Abstract
The capacity of important hydroxytyrosol metabolites (homovanillyl alcohol, hydroxytyrosol acetate, homovanillyl alcohol acetate, hydroxytyrosol 3' and 4'-O-glucuronides, and homovanillyl alcohol 4'-O-glucuronide) to protect red blood cells (RBCs) from oxidative injury induced by the radical initiator 2,2'-azo-bis(2-amidinopropane) dihydrochloride (AAPH) or by the natural radical initiator H2O2 was evaluated. In the presence of AAPH, all compounds showed to protect RBCs from hemolysis in a dose-dependent manner, exccept for the homovanillyl alcohol glucuronide, with the order of activity being at 20 mu M hydroxytyrosol > hydroxytyrosol glucuronides = hydroxytyrosol acetate = homovanillyl alcohol = homovanillyl acetate > homovanillyl alcohol glucuronide. At 10 mu M, hydroxytyrosol, hydroxytyrosol acetate, and hydroxytyrosol glucuronides still protected hemoglobine from oxidation and from morphological RBC changes. In the presence of H2O2, hydroxytyrosol showed to significantly protect RBCs from oxidative hemolysis in a dose-dependent manner, but the hydroxytyrosol glucuronides showed only a limited protection that was independent of the concentration used.