Bologna al bivio: una città come le altre?

Bologna è una città in crisi. Una crisi istituzionale, ma sopratutto una crisi politica le cui origini vanno rintracciate indietro nel tempo. Come affrontarla evitando la lamentazione fine a se stessa, la mitizzazione del passato, la protesta di stampo demagogico e populista, la rassegnazione a un degrado culturale che sembra inarrestabile? Abbiamo riunito in questo volume voci che appartengono a culture, generazioni e professioni diverse, accomunate dalla volontà di non rimanere alla superficie dei problemi affrontati, di evitare luoghi comuni, di porre domande scomode e cercare risposte accomodanti. L'obiettivo è quello di stimolare un dibattito vero in una città smarrita, ma che non vuole rinunciare alla propria cultura civile. Una città che non trova luoghi e occasioni per interrogare se stessa ed elaborare progetti per il futuro, e rimanere inascoltata da un ceto politico prigioniero della propria autoreferenzialità

Development and application of a solid-phase microextraction gas cromatography mass spectrometry method for analysing volatile organic compounds produced during cooking

In the last decades, there is more awareness on the impact on human health of pollutants emitted during cooking processes, both from commercial and from domestic activities. In this study, a new method exploiting solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (SPME-GC-MS) was developed to analyse the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted during cooking. The air above the cooking plate was sampled using a polyethylene terephthalate olfactometric bag that allows to transport the sample to the instrument location and to perform the SPME extraction of the sampled air. The efficiency of different extraction systems and different extraction times (1, 8, 16, and 24 h) was evaluated in order to obtain sufficient sensitivity. Thus, the proposed system, combining the use of olfactometric bags and SPME-GC-MS, was applied for the first time to study VOCs emitted during cooking allowing to perform the analysis, even on samples produced in sites far from the instrument location, in an easy way and with instrumentations available in most of laboratories. Then, the method was applied to assess the efficiency of odour filters used in common kitchen hoods, using deep frying of potatoes in sunflower oil as cooking model system. VOCs were analysed in the air before and after passage through the filter, calculating then percentages of dejection for the different classes of VOCs that resulted to be in the range 31-77%