Gianluca Gariani

Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A. · Imaging, Diffraction, Emission, Absorption and Scattering

This paper presents new developments on the provenance study of lapis lazuli started by our group in 2008: during the years a multi-technique approach has been exploited to obtain minero-petrographic characterization and creation of a database considering only rock samples of known provenance. Since the final aim of the study is to develop a method...

The production of devotional reliefs particularly flourished in 15th century Florence, where models from Renaissance Masters actually became the object of a serial-production. One of the materials mostly used to this purpose was the so-called "stucco". This preliminary work focuses on the multiscale structural and compositional analysis of micro sa...

Male infertility is a worldwide clinical issue that increments the number of couples submitted to assisted reproductive technologies (ART) to achieve pregnancy. Photobiomodulation Therapy (PBMT) is a promising technique able to biostimulate cells and tissues and it is currently successfully employed to enhance the sperm motility in vitro. Neverthel...

A thorough understanding of the implications of chronic low-dose exposure to engineered nanomaterials through the food chain is lacking. The present study aimed to characterize such a response in Cucurbita pepo L. (zucchini) upon exposure to a potential nanoscale fertilizer: copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles. Zucchini was grown in soil amended with...

Progress in nanotechnology calls for material probing techniques of high sensitivity and resolution. Such techniques are also used for high-impact studies of nanoscale materials in medicine and biology. Soft X-ray microscopy has been successfully used for investigating complex biological processes occurring at micrometric and sub-micrometric length...

Coccolithophores, marine calcifying phytoplankton, are important primary producers impacting the global carbon cycle at different timescales. Their biomineral structures, the calcite containing coccoliths, are among the most elaborate hard parts of any organism. Understanding the morphogenesis of coccoliths is not only relevant in the context of co...

Background: Although X-ray fluorescence microscopy is becoming a widely used technique for single-cell analysis, sample preparation for this microscopy remains one of the main challenges in obtaining optimal conditions for the measurements in the X-ray regime. The information available to researchers on sample treatment is inadequate and unclear,...

III-V-compound semiconductors offer many advantages over silicon-based technologies traditionally used in solid-state photodetectors, especially in hard X-ray applications that require high detection efficiency and short response times. Amongst them, gallium arsenide (GaAs) has very promising characteristics in terms of X-ray absorption and high ca...

The physiology and proliferation of coccolithophores, one of the main marine calcifiers, are still poorly known even though pivotal to deepen on their role within the global carbon cycle. Recent studies on DNA sequences proved that some living species need silica-like transporters (SILTs) to build their mineralized shell-i.e. the coccoliths (Durak...

Coccolithophores, one of the main marine calcifiers, significantly impact the atmosphere-ocean CO 2 exchanges and the global carbon cycle since geological time by capturing CO 2 through photosynthesis and permanently fixing carbon in their coccospheres composed of micrometrical carbonate plates, i.e. coccoliths. However, the physiology and prolifer...

Background X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) microscopy has become a widespread method to observe the location of elemental components within cell. Although it is becoming a widely used technique in many laboratories and synchrotron facilities, sample preparation for this microscopy remains one of the main concerns. Indeed, the information available to rese...

In hard X-ray applications that require high detection efficiency and short response times, such as synchrotron radiation-based Mössbauer absorption spectroscopy and time-resolved fluorescence or photon beam position monitoring, III–V-compound semiconductors, and dedicated alloys offer some advantages over the Si-based technologies traditionally us...

The production of devotional reliefs, flourished in 15th century in Florence, where models from Renaissance Masters were reproduced in series by using a large variety of materials. One of the most frequently used is gypsum plaster, often referred to as “stucco” or “gesso”. Despite devotional reliefs wide diffusion, details concerning their constitu...

Gypsiferous rocks of Tuscany and derived materials (i.e. alabaster, stucco and gesso) have been frequently used as sculptural materials. Remarkable examples are attested from the Renaissance Florence. At the junction of two ongoing programs, dealing respectively with the study of 15th century stucco reliefs (called Madonne di gesso) and the provena...

As part of an ongoing project dealing with the technical study of 15th century Florentine devotional reliefs, a focus was made to investigate their production by serial casting. Manufacturing techniques of the so-called Madonne di gesso were investigated on 12 artworks chosen after three different models of Donatello and B. Bellano, Desiderio da Se...

Gypsum-based plasters or stuccoes, in spite of their importance and diffusion, received little attention in cultural heritage materials studies. This work introduces a new, non-destructive methodology, using micro-tomography to measure the water/plaster ratio and the morphology of the hemihydrate powder used to make plasters on < 1 mm³ samples. Thi...

p class="Abstract">Ion Beam Analyses (IBA) techniques, for example PIXE (Particle Induced X-ray Emission) and IL (IonoLuminescence), are a powerful analytical tool used to investigate the composition and structure of materials in cultural heritage. These techniques could be applied both in vacuum preparing the sample as in electron microscopy and i...

Despite that the Badakhshan Province (Afghanistan) remains the most plausible hypothesis for the lapis lazuli used in antiquity, alternatives proposed in literature are worth to study to confirm or disprove their historical reliability. In this work, a protocol for determining the provenance of lapis lazuli rocks used for carved artefacts is descri...

A geologic and petrographic study was performed on a rich collection of statues made of stone exposed at the statuary of the Egyptian Museum of Turin (NW Italy) to enhance the value of this artistic heritage and set the basis for its best conservation. Magmatic and sedimentary rocks were recognized. Magmatic rocks with an intrusive origin are the m...

The first part of this study reports on the wide campaign for the extension of the database of both trace and minor elements concentration in diopside by means of l-PIXE measurements and of luminescence spectra in diopside and wollastonite by means of l-IL measurements. Diopside and wollastonite are actually two of the most common lapis lazuli-formi...