An indoor air quality study at the Ambrosiana Art Gallery (Milan)

Indoor air quality in historical buildings and museums is receiving increasing concern nowadays among the scientific community. Many sources of pollutants, both gases and particles, are responsible for the accelerated decay of the works of art. Knowing the levels of indoor pollutants is of critical importance to apply conservation and preservation strategies of cultural heritage [1, 2]. Air quality at the Ambrosiana Art Gallery in Milan has been monitored (in the two periods October-November 2017 and March 2018) inside the room where the preparatory cardboard of the School of Athens (1509-1511), one of most important masterpieces by Raffaello Sanzio, is stored. The cardboard is currently undergoing restoration and will be exposed in a new showcase that will be realized according to the specific environmental and microclimatic conditions of the room. The objective of this study was to monitor the concentration and chemical composition of the aerosol particulate matter (PM) up to the nano fraction, which represents the most dangerous fraction for the works of art surfaces. The monitoring campaigns have been carried out in parallel in the Raffaello room (at present not accessible to visitors) and in a nearby room open to visitors. The set of instuments employed included: a TSP sampler (total suspended particles) (Tecora, Pollution Check, Bravo M2); a DustMonit (Contec) analyzer that measures the concentration of dust up to PM1 and provides 13 granulometric classes (up to 300 nm); a NanoScan Nanoparticle sizer 3910 (TSI) instrument that measures particles concentration up to 10 nm; two instruments for the determination of black carbon (BC) in continuous and in particular a SILIIS instrument (Sphere-Integrated Laser Induced Incandescence Spectroscopy) and a micro aethalometer (AE51 Magee Scientific). Quartz fiber filters have been employed to collect TSP samples to be submitted to chemical analysis. The filters have been fully chemically characterized: main ionic constituents and the carbonaceous fraction (i.e organic carbon, OC and elemental carbon, EC) have been analyzed by IC (ion chromatography) and TOT (thermal optical transmittance) respectively. A particles morphological characterization has been carried out on PM collected on polycarbonate filters by means of SEM-EDX (scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy). Outdoor PM concentrations, obtained for the two seasons (autumn 2017 and spring 2018) from ARPA monitoring stations placed in the city center, have been correlated with indoor data

Investigating trophic ecology and dietary niche overlap among morphs of Lake Trout in Lake Superior

Four morphs of Lake Trout (Salvelinus namaycush, Walbaum 1792) have been identified in Lake Superior: leans, siscowets, humpers, and redfins. In this comprehensive study, the trophic ecology of Lake Trout morphs were characterized using stomach content, fatty acid, and stable isotope data. Stomach content results indicated a predominately piscivorous diet for leans, siscowets, and redfins, whereas humper diets were comprised of 50% fish and 50% Mysis by mass. Humper and siscowets were most similar in their dietary fatty acid profiles, whereas redfins had the most distinct dietary fatty acid profile. Results from stable isotope analysis revealed some among-morph differences along a pelagic-profundal consumption gradient (34S), but there were no significant differences in trophic position (15N) or basal carbon sources among morphs (13C). Using the recently developed nicheROVER software package, 4-dimensional trophic niches for each morph were quantified using stable isotope ratios (δ13C, δ15N, and δ34S) and fatty acid profiles (30 dietary fatty acids, condensed to one axis). Humpers had the largest 4-dimensional niche regions of all four morphs, and redfins had the smallest. Pairwise probability of overlap among morphs in these four-dimensional niche regions was determined to be < 50% in most cases. Overall, stomach content results indicate that humpers diets were more planktivorous than the other morphs, consistent with previous research. Results of the niche overlap analysis suggests some degree of generalist feeding for all morphs. Better characterization of seasonal variation in diet using tracers that reflect more recent feeding (e.g., fatty acids, stomach contents, and/or stable isotope analyses performed on tissues that turnover more quickly than muscle) are needed to further elucidate among-morph differences and similarities in diet and trophic ecology

The material soul: Strategies for naturalising the soul in an early modern epicurean context

We usually portray the early modern period as one characterised by the ‘birth of subjectivity’ with Luther and Descartes as two alternate representatives of this radical break with the past, each ushering in the new era in which ‘I’ am the locus of judgements about the world. A sub-narrative called ‘the mind-body problem’ recounts how Cartesian dualism, responding to the new promise of a mechanistic science of nature, “split off” the world of the soul/mind/self from the world of extended, physical substance—a split which has preoccupied the philosophy of mind up until the present day. We would like to call attention to a different constellation of texts—neither a robust ‘tradition’ nor an isolated ‘episode’, somewhere in between—which have in common their indebtedness to, and promotion of an embodied, Epicurean approach to the soul. These texts follow the evocative hint given in Lucretius’ De rerum natura that ‘the soul is to the body as scent is to incense’ (in an anonymous early modern French version). They neither assert the autonomy of the soul, nor the dualism of body and soul, nor again a sheer physicalism in which ‘intentional’ properties are reduced to the basic properties of matter. Rather, to borrow the title of one of these treatises (L’Âme Matérielle), they seek to articulate the concept of a material soul. We reconstruct the intellectual development of a corporeal, mortal and ultimately material soul, in between medicine, natural philosophy and metaphysics, including discussions of Malebranche and Willis, but focusing primarily on texts including the 1675 Discours anatomiques by the Epicurean physician Guillaume Lamy; the anonymous manuscript from circa 1725 entitled L’Âme Matérielle, which is essentially a compendium of texts from the later seventeenth century (Malebranche, Bayle) along with excerpts from Lucretius; and materialist writings such Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s L’Homme-Machine (1748), in order to articulate this concept of a ‘material soul’ with its implications for notions of embodiment, materialism and selfhood

ATEROSCLEROSI

We describe a harmonic and normotonic newborn, with peculiar facies characterized by broad nasal rooth, hypoplastic nasal alae and dystopia canthorum (increased distance between the inner canthi: cm 3, 97° percentile), associated with white medio-frontal forelock with methopic hypochromia. The shape of the mother's eyes, similar to her son's, associated with bilateral hearing loss, premature greying of the hair (at 20 years of age) and vitiligo, induced us to evaluate the child's otoacoustic emissions, which resulted in severe bilateral hearing loss. The physical examination was otherwise normal. Given the presence of the characteristic facial phenotype, associated with deafness and pigmentary anomalies in mother and son, a diagnosis of Waardenburg Syndrome was made. This condition is autosomic dominant. Audiologic follow-up is suggested

A kinetic study of the rat liver Adenosine Kinase reverse reaction

Adenosine kinase is an enzyme catalyzing the reaction: adenosine + ATP --> AMP + ADP. We studied some biochemical properties not hitherto investigated and demonstrated that the reaction can be easily reversed when coupled with adenosine deaminase, which transforms adenosine into inosine and ammonia. The overall reaction is: AMP + ADP --> ATP + inosine + NH(3). The exoergonic ADA reaction shifts the equilibrium and fills the energy gap necessary for synthesis of ATP. This reaction could be used by cells under particular conditions of energy deficiency and, together with myokinase activity, may help to restore physiological ATP levels