A small rodent research facility for flight with Columbus laboratory.

During 2001 ESA has finalised the definition of an animal holding facility able to support experimentation with small rodent for the ISS International Space Station. The name of this facility is MISS or Mice on ISS. A facility Science Team is consolidating with ESA the MISS Requirement specification that is driving the Phase A/B Study, where Laben is acting as Prime contractor. In the frame of this Phase A/B that will last until the end 2003, Laben is working in co-operation with qualified European companies with recognised specific area of excellence and heritage. This article presents the Study heritage, the different scenarios under assessment, the critical areas to be explored and then preliminary candidates for bread boarding that is the final task of the Study to consolidate the final Facility Specification.

Electrocardiomultigraphimeter using a home computer.

The drop in hardware costs has fostered the widespread use of home-computer systems. Because of this situation, the home computer can be profitably employed in some highly specialized fields. We believe electrocardiographic instrumentation to be one such field. We have built an electrocardiomultigraphimeter (ECXGM), which can be considered as a development of the traditional electrocardiograph that performs some additional functions. Our prototype features vectorcardiography, polar coordinate tracing, automatic measurements between fiducial points selected by the user with a joystick and screen cursor and trace filing by patient on labelled floppy disks. The standard hardware consists of a Commodore 64 console, a monitor, two floppy disk drives and an Epson HI-80 plotter, all of which are readily available. The special hardware consists of an A/D converter, which receives the electrocardiographic signal downstream of the amplifying stage, which is a standard feature of any electrocardiograph. Prototype development mostly involved the software. Difficulties were posed by the limited resources available on home computers, an important point in view of the problem to be tackled. The solutions adopted are based on the use of assembler language and overloading techniques and minimizing the interconnections among the software modules defined in a compactly built program. The result is an instrument with significantly advanced clinico-scientific capabilities as compared to current electrocardiographic instruments. This fact, and the class of the hardware used and special software built, confer originality to this work. The new instrument ought to be especially suitable for the offices of cardiologists who have an interest in such capabilities, and for schools of electrocardiography.

[The electrocardiomultigraphimeter and the Commodore-64. How to use the home computer with great skill]. / Elettrocardiomultigrafimetro in ambiente Commodore-64. Come usare con alta professionalità il calcolatore di casa.

The drop in hardware costs has fostered the widespread use of home-computing systems. Because of this situation, the home-computer can be profitably employed in some highly specialized fields. We believe electrocardiographic instrumentation to be one of such fields. We have built an electrocardiomultigraphimeter (ECXGM), which can be considered as a development of the traditional electrocardiograph that fulfills some additional functions. Our prototype features vectorcardiography, polar coordinate tracing, automatic measurements between fiducial points selected by the user with a joystick and cursor on the screen and trace filing by patient, on labelled floppy disks. The conventional hardware consists of a Commodore 64 console, a monitor, two floppy disk drives and an Epson HI-80 plotter, all of them readily available. The special hardware consists of an A/D converter, which receives the electrocardiographic signal downstream of the amplifying stage which is a standard feature of any electrocardiograph. Prototype development mostly involved the software. Difficulties were posed by the limited resources available on home-computers, an important point in view of the problem to be tackled. The solutions adopted are based on the use of the ASSEMBLER language, overloading techniques and on minimizing the interconnections among the software modules defined in a compactly built program. The result is an instrument having significantly advanced clinico-scientific capabilities as compared to current electrocardiographic instruments. This factor, and the class of the hardware used and special software built confer originality to this work.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)