26.04.2010 -
AREA Science Park will be showcasing three technological
developments at the 2010 International Trade Fair, devised and
developed by companies operating in the Science Park of Trieste:
active roofing, robot-pharmacist and near field optical microscope.
The three projects will be presented as part of the "Italy of
Innovators" initiative (24th July to 7th August 2010), a temporary
showcase organized by the Ministry of Public Administration and
Innovation, for the purpose of promoting technological excellence,
the fruit of Italian engineering and inventive flair.
The technologies presented in Shanghai were selected from 454
proposals by a technical committee of members of the world of
business and communications, fulfilling two requirements: they had
to originate from companies/consortiums, universities, research
centres, science and/or technology parks, and they had to be
technological innovations for the local community, people and
quality of life. The technology developed at AREA Science Park
covers both requirements, having to do with energy saving and
biomedical industry.
The "active roofing" project was developed by the company STP
and will soon be "worn" by one of the buildings in the park. It is
an external coating with a gap in which natural or forced air
circulates, made " active" by heat pumps. The system is coupled
with a conventional system of geothermal probes and heat pump to
guarantee economic, management and energy advantages, for example
for blocks of flats or public buildings.
The biomedical field, on the other hand, is represented by the
robot pharmacist, CytoCare, and the near field optical microscope
TriA-SNOM. CytoCare, devised and made by Health Robotics, is the
first robotic system in the world designed to handle and
automatically prepare cancer drugs for use in hospitals. It can
automatically prepare cancer drug treatments in a sterile
environment. It uses innovative technology, both in hardware and
software. Currently, the robot is being used in forty hospitals
around the globe.
TriA-SNOM (Scanning Near Field Optical Microscope) is a
microscope designed and optimised by A.P.E. Research S.r. for
nanobiomedical applications. It is an integrated optical system
that permits up to three types of optical signals to be acquired
with the simultaneous topographical image of the sample. It belongs
to the family of probe scanning microscopes, a category that can
reach very high resolution, enabling 3D topographical
reconstruction of the sample surface (up to the resolution of the
individual atoms it is made of). Thanks to their innovative
technology, these microscopes can open new frontiers of
nanomedicine.