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The consolidation treatment of porous materials is performed by in situ and frontal polymerization of acrylic monomers inside a porous stone and its penetration is detected by using unilateral NMR and magnetic resonance imaging. The results have indicated that unilateral NMR represents an inexpensive and simple technique for the non-invasive observation of the water uptake and of the effect of consolidation procedures in porous materials.

Abstract: Paper and papyrus endurance depends on their intrinsic properties that are related to the manufacture processes and to the environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, presence of micro-organisms, etc.). During the time, paper and papyrus undergo unavoidable ageing processes causing mainly the degradation of the cellulose. In the framework of the European Project “PAPERTECH” a multi-analytical approach was selected to carefully study the behaviour, properties, and the quality of different samples of paper with different provenience, before and after artificial ageing. This work was focused to understand and explain the degradation processes occurring in paper during the time. Portable EDXRF, NMR, Raman, FTIR, ATR, mechanical properties, colour measurement and XRD analyses were performed before and after the accelerated weathering. The light and the chemical oxidation were found to cause the most aggressive ageing processes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The morphology of polyester-based polyurethanes was observed by transmission electron microscopy, which highlighted a nanostructured system made by a continuous distribution of hard domains with size equal to few nanometres in the soft matrix. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article presents research which examined the efficacy of waterborne polyurethane in preventing the occurrence of enzymatic attack on paper-based materials. The researchers investigated the influence of inorganic and organic additives on the biodegradability of the polyurethane. They found that some waterborne polyurethanes exhibited a high effectiveness in the protein of paper-based materials.

The article presents a study which investigates the behavior of polymers and the harmlessness and effectiveness of grafting polymerization on paper-based materials that were consolidated with polymeric materials. The study conducts various laboratory simulations through accelerated aging and characterization tests by physical and chemical measurement. Results indicate the consolidation methods used were not suitable to be utilized in paper restoration.

The article discusses the morphological analysis of paper images through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS). The materials are segmented into individual fibers to determine their digital measurements using secondary electron detector. Calcium carbonate particles resulted to the formation of fillers characterized by large amounts of coarse edge fibers and irregular granules. Furthermore, fiber borders with small size width are accidentally identified, however, they represent flat and peak directions.

Abstract: Grafting of methyl methacrylate and ethyl acrylate onto cellulose chains of textiles with oxidized sites has been carried out. To this aim, carboxyl and carbonyl groups have been introduced by oxidation of the cellulose and used as photosensitive agents, allowing the formation of radical sites. The copolymerization has been started irradiating the substrate with ultraviolet light for a short time. With the grafting of acrylic monomers the mechanical strength and the thermal stability of cellulose based textiles may be improved, as well as the resistance to chemical and biological agents. The method has been successfully tested performing the grafting on a naturally aged cotton sample. It is worth to note that the grafting does not affect the aspect of the material. All samples have been characterized with 13C solid state NMR spectroscopy. A semi-quantitative evaluation of the grafting has been performed either studying the cross-polarization dynamic process, or by direct integration of resonances in 13C single pulse excitation spectra. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this work, a study concerning the composition of Italian papers from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries was carried out using energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDXRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy coupled to energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS). The analyzed samples consisted of papers employed for drawing, writing, printing, and absorbance. Observations carried out by SEM magnified the typical paper morphology. EDXRF in combination with XRD and SEM-EDS allowed the determination of calcite, gypsum, kaolin, talc, magnesite, and dolomite, used as fillers in the production of the papers studied herein. The inks present in the handwritten and printed papers, investigated by SEM-EDS and μ-EDXRF, were synthetic, Fe based, and iron gall inks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Nemo's Garden® underwater biospheres are a green, alternative agriculture system. • Underwater basil did not show micromorphological changes of the leaf indumentum. • Relevant differences were detected in the essential oil and head space compositions. • More photosynthetic pigments and polyphenols were produced in the underwater plants. • Basil seems well adapted: studies on other species are needed to evaluate a scale-up. The need for alternative cultivation methods is urgent for regions of the world where cultivable land is scarce: underwater areas are unexploited and vast. Nemo's Garden® Project aims at creating a green and alternative agriculture system: its biospheres are underwater greenhouses, developed for areas where plants growth is difficult in terrestrial conditions, due to climate change. Basil was chosen as model plant to study its phytochemical, physiological, and micromorphological parameters, in comparison with the same plants grown in terrestrial conditions in the Sanremo Research Centre for Vegetable and Ornamental Crops (CREA-Centro di Ricerca Orticoltura e Florovivaismo) greenhouse. While the micromorphological analyses showed no detectable differences between control and biospheres samples, the phytochemical investigations evidenced a switch of the essential oil chemotype from methyl eugenol/linalool to methyl eugenol, respectively. The headspaces were also different: sesquiterpenes dominated the biospheres samples, whereas oxygenated monoterpenes accounted for half the control sample emission. Differences also emerged in the physiological investigation: total chlorophyll, total carotenoids and total polyphenols were present in higher amounts in the biospheres samples, with a 31.52% and 13.3% increase in the antioxidant activity and polyphenols content, respectively. Basil was well adapted in the biosphere environment, whose influence should be studied in different species to assess the viability of an industrial scale-up of the Nemo's Garden®. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the development of image processing and analysis routines for acquiring information about the paper structure from images obtained by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is described. A new method to measure the fibre width based on the processing of superficial SEM observation is herein proposed and successfully applied to some commercial paper-based materials. The quantification of fillers in the Z-direction of paper was based on paper cross-sectional SEM images. The results obtained by image processing demonstrated the excellent performance and suitability of the proposed method to quantify exactly information concerning fraction and size distribution of digital fillers. The fraction of digital fillers was correlated with the surface roughness of a given paper grade.

Recent developments in microscopy and image processing have made digital measurements on high-resolution images of fibrous materials possible. This helps to gain a better understanding of the structure and other properties of the material at micro level. In this paper SEM image segmentation based on mathematical morphology is proposed. In fact, paper models images (Whatman, Murillo, Watercolor, Newsprint paper) selected in the context of the Euro Mediterranean PaperTech Project have different distributions of fibers and fillers, caused by the presence of SiAl and CaCO3 particles. It is a microscopy challenge to make filler particles in the sheet distinguishable from the other components of the paper surface. This objectif is reached here by using switable strutural elements and mathematical morphology operators.