1,472 research outputs found
George Smith e la tavoletta del Diluvio / George Smith and the Flood Tablet
On December 2, 1872, an extraordinary discovery was presented at the Society for Biblical Archeology in London: a Chaldean account of the Flood, discovered in the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh and strikingly similar to the biblical one. The text, written in Akkadian, was part of a series of cuneiform tablets on the deeds of Gilgamesh, the hero, the builder of Uruk, the king who sought a solution to death, and who, not finding it, obtained wisdom. The author of the discovery was George Smith, a former banknote engraver and brilliant self-taught Assyriologist. The great interest shown by the newspapers for the discovery is visible in the many articles written on the subject and in the fact that it was one of them, the Daily Telegraph, to finance a new mission in northern Mesopotamia, to find the missing parts of the tablet. Two successive expeditions were funded by the British Museum, but during the latter one George Smith fell ill and died in Aleppo, unaware of the extent of his discoveries. The discussion on the relationship between Mesopotamia and the Bible continued for decades until it broke out in the controversy known as Babel-Bibel Streit in the early 20th century
Response to Nagai et al.
Refers to: Nagai M, Dote K, Kato M, Sasaki S, Oda N. The insular cortex and QTc interval: Was there the effect of hemispheric lateralization? Eur J Neurol 2017; 24: e45. - Referred to: Turri G, Calabrese M, Pancheri E, Monaco S, Gajofatto A, Marafioti V. QTc interval in patients with multiple sclerosis: an infer- ence from the insula of Reil? Eur J Neurol 2017; 24: 491 – 496
Multi-step fractionation as a tool for enhanced valorization of technical lignins: a model study
The valorisation of lignin obtained as a by-product of the pulping and biofuel industries is one of the most promising topics in the bioresource field. Despite its potential value as the only massively available aromatic biopolymer feedstock, technical lignin is nowadays mostly burnt as low cost energy source because of its chemical recalcitrance. The high heterogeneity of this material, largely dependent on the different vegetal sources and the specific biomass recovery methods, restricts its direct use and hinders also the optimization of depolymerisation approaches. The development of effective technical lignin fractionation strategies is therefore today one of the most challenging topic in the green chemistry field.
In this study, the fractionation of an industrial commercial lignin was developed by a three step procedure set-up either in aqueous or in an environmentally friendly organic solvent in order to obtain sustainable and scalable processes.1,2 The first step consisted in a microfiltration or a Soxhlet extraction, depending on the type of solvent used. Then a cascade membrane-mediated ultrafiltration allowed to obtain at the end three refined lignin fractions. The parent lignin and the different lignin fractions were fully characterized.
The two-step process reported here allows accessing lignin fractions with well-defined physico-chemical properties (including mass distribution, glass transition temperature, aliphatic and phenolic hydroxyl groups concentration, syringyl/guaiacyl unit ratio) and represents a valuable approach towards the development of bio-based polymers and the preparation of key platform chemicals, thereby paving the way for an effective exploitation and valorization of this remarkable resource.
[1] Allegretti, C.; Fontanay, S.; Krauke, Y.; Luebbert, M.; Strini, A.; Troquet, J.; Turri, S.; Griffini, G.; D’Arrigo, P. ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2018, 6, 9056-9064; DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.8b01410.
[2] Allegretti, C.; Fontanay, S.; Rischka, K.; Strini, A.; Troquet, J.; Turri, S.; Griffini, G.; D’Arrigo P. ACS Omega 2019, in press; DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.8b02851
The frameworks : effects and significance of research assessment in the Italian university system
Lo sviluppo dei sistemi di valutazione della ricerca : un’analisi critica dell’esperienza italiana
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