Posts by Michele Covolan

Within a couple of weeks the Polytechnic of Turin will place an order for its four new prefabricated lecture rooms that will have 220 seats each and will be put in the current car park that divides the campus from the new university residence “Carlo Mollino”, on the corner of Corso Castelfidardo and Corso Peschiera. These new lecture rooms will be very important because they will contribute to solving the overcrowding problems of the Polytechnic. In addition, Romano Borchiellini, the deputy director of the construction industry of the Polytechnic, says that the lecture rooms will also “Comply with all the standards of the existing lecture rooms, in terms of safety, acoustics and comfort”.

The Polytechnic of Turin has designed the new lecture rooms by itself, in order to speed up the process. As we can see from the first renderings that have been made, the four new lecture rooms will form a dark parallelepiped, whose top will be made of a metal twine that will give more movement to the building. In addition, since it will be a prefabricated structure, it won’t have the foundations but it will lay on a big slab. The internal areas will be on an even plane, with a shoulder part at the end, and they will have everything they need for teaching.

Borchiellini explains that: “We call them temporary lecture rooms, but they actually have to meet restrictions that are similar to the ones of the other areas of our university”. The aim is to build a good-quality building, able to last for a long time. The deputy director adds that: “On the basis of the masterplan that we are preparing, within 5-6 years these lecture rooms will be probably “obsolete”. However, on the basis of the way they have been designed, they could be used for ten years”.

The budget approved by the board of directors of the Polytechnic is four million euros. The tendering process will start by mid-July and the four new lecture rooms should be completed before March 2018 (provided that there aren’t administrative reviews).

In the meanwhile, there’s a plan for the beginning of other two building sites inside the Polytechnic Citadel: one of them is related to the improvement of the General Motors headquarters, that was announced a year ago. In March, General Motors sold Opel to the French of Psa and the sale kept the Turinese workers with bated breath for some days. In the end, the building in Corso Castelfidardo remained to the Americans and so the improvement can continue. In this case, the tendering process should start in Autumn. The other construction improvement is related to the so-called “R Lecture Rooms”, which are the ones that will be built in Via Carlo Boggio and Via Borsellino. The original plan had been stopped by the government department responsible for the environment and architectural buildings because it planned to knock down a part of a wall of the former OGR (Officine Grandi Riparazioni) which is considered “of monumental interest”. As a consequence, the improvement has been re-planned and re-approved, so over the next few months also this part of the Polytechnic will start its own transformation.

New materials and biotechnologies, architecture, design, redesign and urban development: these are the issues on which the partnership between the Polytechnic of Turin and the Kyoto Institute of Technology – KIT (Kyoto, Japan) will focus on, thanks to a memorandum of understanding that has been signed today in Turin by the Dean Marco Gilli and the President of the MIT Masao Furuyama.

As a consequence, Turin and Kyoto will be closer, thanks to the exchange of students of the five-year degree courses and of the doctorate, and also thanks to joint training initiatives such as the summer schools dedicated to very topical issues. The students will also have the chance to do an apprenticeship in the two Countries.

From a research point of view, the agreement offers the joint participation to public announcements and the implementation of joint border projects related to the issues that are at the basis of the agreement. In addition, the partnership includes the creation of a Joint Research and Training Centre, that will become a real platform where research, training and technology transfer will meet, with two headquarters: one in Kyoto and the other in the Polytechnic.

The five-year agreement also includes the sharing of the results obtained from research thanks to seminars, meetings and workshops, in order to offer socio-economic benefits both in Italy and in Japan.

Laura Montanaro (Department of Applied Sciences and Technology), the responsible for the initiative for the Polytechnic, says that: “This agreement offers very interesting partnership perspectives with Japan thanks to one of its illustrious technical universities. The sectors that have been identified for joint activities own important complementarities between the two Institutions and are highly qualifying, both as regards research perspectives and teaching factors. The interest of the Kyoto Institute of Technology in collaborating with us on these issues confirms that these are worldwide acknowledged areas of excellence of our University, and I want to thank Professor Giuseppe Pezzotti, the Vice-Regent of the KIT, for creating this opportunity that will bring our two universities closer”.

Also the Vice-Regent of the Kyoto Institute of Technology Giuseppe Pezzotti confirms his interest in the partnership, in fact he says that: “For the Kyoto Institute of Technology, the creation of a partnership project with such a long experience University like the Polytechnic of Turin is a reason of prestige and it represents the strong desire of internationalisation of Japanese Universities towards European Universities”.

artribune.com – The GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea of Turin and the Castello di Rivoli holds an extraordinary exhibition, that highlights the potential of colour through works and artists of different periods in history, among emotions, spirituality and contemporary dynamics.

L’emozione dei COLORI nell’arte is an exhibition that is as successful as a biennial festival, whose main aim is to explain the painting of the last 150 years through the use of colour. This is a historic and geographic itinerary that shows the studies carried out by 150 artists from different places and periods in history through 400 works of art: from the great masters of the late 17^th century to the iconic works of conceptual artists. There are many Italian artists, works of art coming from important international institutions and masterpieces coming from the GAM and the Castello di Rivoli collections.

A WORLD IN BLACK AND WHITE

How would human life be if, instead of the cones, the retina of our eyes could only rely on the retinal rods to see the world around us? An invisible geometric difference could have changed everything because, in that case, we would always see the world in black and white. Like in a book by Saramago, we would all be affected by achromatopsia, the most serious form of congenital colour-blindness for which affected people see the world on greyscale levels that people who see colours can’t imagine. it’s not hard to understand how it would be if we look at the story of photography: at first it was in black and white and later, infected by colour, it made a grand entrance in the world of art. At the beginning it is called “photography by a famous artist”, but the fact of being colourless, pale, monochrome, detaches it from the world and wanes it to such an extent that it can’t be defined as a work of art. Living in black and white (just think about movies and TV programmes before colour televisions) would be like living in Cartier-Bresson’s universe, in a world where every single thing, however extraordinary and plastic, is deprived of its vital aspect.

THE LANGUAGE OF COLOURS

Would a perception that excludes colours be able to avoid emotions too? If we observe this exhibition, designed by Carolyn Christov Bakargiev, Artistic Director of Documenta 13 and of the Biennale of Sydney, it would seem that through colours not only do we have access to painting in its entirety, but we also feel an endless number of emotions that can justify, in whole or in part, the existence of painting as the music of colours.

The exhibition is a gallery of melodies and harmonies from which we can infer the different ways of understanding (the) colour and managing its emotional abundance. Not only does colour open us up a world, the real world in its complexity and abundance, but thanks to the painting it allows us to go beyond the real and concrete world to have immediately access to emotions, just like it happens with music. Before being something else, eyesight is a form of touch. The eye touches and distances anything, but in painting it is touched and always excited. There is a wide palette of emotions at the exhibition: from the tragic ones, felt and expressed by Mark Rothko or by Nicolas De Staël (without forgetting Car Crash by Andy Warhol which is orange as only tragic death can be), to the most imperceptible ones expressed by James Turrell who displays a lively and pulsating environment with shimmering light that is able to get to the essence of colour.

KANDINSKY AND THE SPIRITUAL COLOUR

There are many other fundamental works of art at the GAM. In some of the paintings by Vassily Kandinsky you can feel a beginning and an ending: the end of an analytical and mathematical behaviour towards colour, that comes from the positivist culture of the first half of the 19^th century and the studies of colour by Isaac Newton, who divided light in colours. Goethe, in his book Theory of Colours, written in 1810, already tried to give a perceptual, psychological and emotional dignity to colours. In 1799, together with Friedrich Schiller, he wrote Temperamental Roses, where colours were combined with four personalities of people (quick-tempered, even-tempered, hot tempered and melancholy), from which psychological models derive (tyrants, heroes, adventurers; hedonists, lovers, poets; speakers, historians, teachers; philosophers, pedants, rulers). However, if Goethe likes being considered a scientist first of all, Kandinsky feels he is more like a musician and says that in panting he wants to do what Arnold Schoenberg did in music: the friendship between the two men will be a remarkable one, and will have an influence on a whole century. Besides inventing abstraction, and maybe exactly because of this, Kandinsky can maintain a theory of colour focused on the spiritual effect. Every colour has and emits an “interior sound” and has a direction and a movement that puts it, in just one stroke, both on the painting and in our soul.

With Kandinsky, a new colour era starts, with a pure and more aware use of colour that includes William Turner, an abstract artist who was ahead of his time and had been influenced by Goethe, and arrives up to the squares of Josef Albers and to monochrome painting that, as the exhibition’s curators say, takes care of “the pure breath of colour”.

If during the first years of the 20^th century the Fauves used colour as an outstanding instrument of their rebellion against art schools, Kandinsky leads the spiritual way which is maybe the most undefined, but for the same reason it is the most prolific as regards splendour. There are many researches carried out by other artists that can be placed on this way, such as the ones by Paul Klee, who taught painting and theory of colour for a decade at the Bauhaus and of whom the exhibition displays the notebooks coming from the Paul Klee Zentrum of Bern. In addition, there are the theosophic researches on colour carried out by Annie Besant, who was forced to paint the lights of other worlds using the “earth’s dull colours”; the esoteric symbolism of M.K. Čiurlionis, a paradigmatic person since he was a sublime composer but he was a deserter of painting in which he finds the concepts to tell that imaginary world evoked in music; last but not least, the works by the followers of Hindu Tantric art, dating back to the 17^th century and suggestively in harmony with the fundamental insights of Kandinsky.

NOT ONLY EMOTIONS

The world in which we live is faster and faster and increasingly emotional and superficial. And colourful. The colour is used as an instrument of seduction and wonder: it fosters the purchase. In the packaging, as well as in the new technological products with more and more amazing resolutions, the colour plays a key role in seduction. Maybe also for this imposing and gradual “emotionalization” of the world, the second half of the 20^th century and the current artistic experiences seem to abandon the colour as emotional instrument to focus on other kinds of approach. The conceptualism of Laurence Wiener and Robert Barry, author of the majestic work of art One Billion Colored Dots, provides good examples, while the pantone canvas by Damien Hirst reflects on the powerful analytic and synthetic effort of our culture, focused on decoding that eternal continuum offered by reality, that magma where our brain has learnt to sail dividing everything into micro-perceptions able to give us the meaning of things. The interruption of the flow is based on the control we have on it and on the possibility of a common language that we can build, since the pantone canvas is the numbered decoding of the different possible colours, and each of them is fractionated into its building blocks and in this way it is able to be repeated anywhere in the world. However, this only applies to artificial colours while art history is based on colours derived from insects, flowers, plants and any kind of minerals.

Also the psychedelic culture of colour, mentioned in the exhibition through the work of Jim Lambie and some movies and photographs (that are a small part in relation to painting), seems to declare the end of an era and the possibility of giving colour new roles. For example the political role, highlighted by the works of David Hammons, a flag that represents the colours of Africa, or the ones of Asli Cavusoglu who, in her works, uses the “Red Ottoman” which is obtained from an Armenian recipe that replaces the red of the Turkish flag. In the art of the second half of the 20^th century, also the exclusiveness of painting decreases and the colour appears on clothes (like the ones worn by Franz E. Walther, who received a Golden Lion at the Venice Arts Festival), on plastics (like the overflowing ones of Tony Cragg and the ironic ones of Pino Pascali) or on lights (Olafur Eliasson).

We can say that art history is a story of palettes, every artist has had their own and with it they opened us up a world, their world, that could only have those colours. Whether it is the pale body of Jesus in the Lamentation of Christ by Mantegna or the dawn’s light of The Immaculate Conception by Tiepolo, each artist’s brush stroke has always been and will always be a choice of colour and therefore a declaration of intent as regards every aspect of reality: emotions included.

Repubblica.it – One thousand representatives coming from many universities of the world will meet to talk to the farmers of Terra Madre. Carlo Petrini sets the goal for the 2018 Salone del Gusto that will take place in Turin again: “Breeders and farmers have to be acknowledged as teachers and knowledge bearers. We want to open up a dialogue on an equal footing with our 7 thousand representatives and with the professors of one thousand universities from all over the world and we will do it in Terra Madre”, says the founder of Slow Food, who was invited in Chieri to receive the honorary citizenship and to celebrate the one hundred Piedmontese cities that in Autumn 2016 opened their doors to the Slow Food representatives for the first open-air Salone del Gusto.

Claudio Martano, the Mayor of Chieri, has invited Carlo Petrini and his colleagues who have committed themselves to creating the reception network that made the record breaking event possible last September. “We have decided to give you the honorary citizenship for your social and cultural commitment in the area of food and defence of the territory”, explains Martano. There were almost forty local administrators, among mayors and council members, who celebrated Petrini on that special day. The council member for Trade of the City of Turin, Alberto Scacco, who has believed a lot in Salone del Gusto, says that: “If we arranged meetings according to politics, we would never find a day that is right for everyone”. “Some mayors and council members aren’t here today because they are on the ballot, others because they haven’t been re-elected or they have just been elected”, jokes Petrini to explain why there are so many absents.

 However, the theorist of “good, clean and right food” raises the bar, as always. “For the next Salone del Gusto, there must be at least 110 cities in Piedmont that will host the representatives. The hospitality you gave is very important, especially for those who organized the event, but this is an important life experience for the Piedmontese as well. This is why I tell you that we must claim Piedmont’s hospitality ability which is bigger than what we are told”.

 In fact, not only local administrators (of Bra, Cavallermaggiore, Capriglio, Pecetto, Villanova d’Asti) will take part in the event, but also a large group of representatives of those hundreds of families that in September opened up the doors of their houses to accommodate representatives coming from all over the world. “We found out that there was this opportunity on the website of the town hall. We have for children and, in agreement with them, we decided to try this experience”, says Maura Tosco from Chieri. “We accommodated five representatives of the Brazilian group of representatives, who came from different areas of the country. For example, there was a girl who protects the biodiversity of the Amazon Rainforest, a representative of Slow Food and a farmer. And thanks to them I learned that I should have a different relation with time and not to depend so much on it”.

Mr and Mrs Bovero, from Pecetto, accommodated a Brazilian boy who has always kept in contact with them since September. They say that: “His name is Remy and at least once a month we send emails. In the next few months he will be in Germany with his girlfriend and he told us that he will come and see us again with her”. However, the exchange of skills and experiences, between those who accommodate people and the visitors, will be institutionalised from the next Terra Madre Salone del Gusto event. Petrini says that: “Every host city will be the location of the widespread teaching of this big University of Earth. Only in this way we can value food and farmers”. Roberto Burdese, the man who makes Petrini’s dreams come true and who is already working on the next Salone del Gusto, says: “During the first months of 2018 we will meet all of you in order to make the creation of the next Salone del Gusto start and to begin to organize this new project”.

During the meeting that will take place in Ivrea on 16^th June at 10 a.m., there will be the presentation of new project proposals for the Core Zone of the candidacy for UNESCO “Ivrea, industrial city of the 20^th century”, that refer both to the identity aspect of the products and to their past and future functional vocation. The students of the Restoration and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage Atelier/Workshop of the Master’s Degree Course in Architecture for Restoration and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage of the Polytechnic of Turin (Department of Architecture and Design) will present their projects of reuse and enhancement developed during the Academic Year 2016/2017, with the guidance of Professor Rocco Curto and the Architecture Lisa Accurti, for the restoration to a useable condition of the cultural heritage of the Core Zone.

The event has been promoted by the City of Ivrea and the Polytechnic of Turin, in collaboration with Confindustria Canavese and IdeaFimit Sgr, as part of the European project Erasmus + “Citylabs: Engaging Students with Sustainable Cities in Latin America” and as part of the activities carried out for the Candidacy of “Ivrea, industrial city of the 20^th century” in the List of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

On 16^th June, during the meeting, there will also be the presentation of the Local Information System “Ivrea, industrial city of the 20^th century”, developed by the Polytechnic of Turin with an innovative and experimental concept which aims to supporting the teaching experience carried out with the students of the Restoration and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage Atelier/Workshop. The LIS has been conceived as a dynamic and interoperable model able to connect more than 100 buildings (houses, businesses, offices, buildings used to offer services) to their local surroundings, and its aim is to support the administration policies and the UNESCO candidacy in the process of enhancement, including economic enhancement, of the Core Zone.

The presentations in the morning and the final round table discussion will be an opportunity to think about how Olivetti’s heritage of the Core Zone of “Ivrea, industrial city of the 20^th century” represents a symbolic heritage that has to be enhanced, whose “private dimension” has to integrate with the public one and create a single architecture system able to give birth to enhancement processes of the whole urban area and to innovative ways for the use of services both for Ivrea citizens and for the people who come from other places.

At the end of the meeting, an examining board made up of important experts in the field and stakeholders who work as part of the Core Zone of Ivrea, will judge the best projects, that will later be awarded by the City of Ivrea.

You have until 30^th May 2017 at 12 a.m. to take part in the announcement of selection by which the University of Turin allocates and gives 150,000€ to be used for tutoring activities for the future freshmen who will enrol in the academic year 2017/2018.

All the students who are enrolled full-time in one of the three-year degree courses (students enrolled in the second year) or in one of the five-year degree courses specified in the announcement of selection can take part in it. They have to submit their application online on www.unito.it, log in with their username and password and access the “Collaborazioni 200 h” menu. Every student can only apply for the tutoring activity concerning the degree course he/she is enrolled in.

The scholarships offered will be 105, and they include 200, 100 or 50 hours of tutoring activities that will have to be carried out over 8-12 months, starting from the first week of September, 2017.

The selections, that are going to take place between the end of June and mid-July, will be carried out by specific Commissions, that will assess the candidates according to criteria based on the weighted average, on the number of the credits achieved and on the outcome of the interview.

The selected students will attend a training course and will receive 9€ per hour for the tutoring activity: if it is a 200-hour tutoring activity they will receive about 1,800€, if it is a 100-hour tutoring activity they will receive about 900€, and if it is a 50-hour tutoring activity they will receive 450€.

After the first announcement of selection in the academic year 2015/2016, for the students of the Departments of Historical Studies, Humanistic Studies, Philosophy, Education Sciences, Psychology, Foreign Languages and Literatures and Modern Cultures, the second and the third announcements of selection have been extended to the students of almost all the courses of the University of Turin, in order to emphasize the attention given to the future freshmen and with the aim of preventing, from the first moments in the university world, the dispersal and the delay of the students in the studies, and to promote a more fruitful active participation of the freshmen in the university life in all its forms, according to the purposes of the tutoring activity.

For further information:

Bando per collaborazioni a tempo parziale per attività di tutorato – Anno 2017

https://www.unito.it/universita-e-lavoro/opportunita-ed-esperienze-di-lavoro/chi-studia/collaborazioni-tempo-parziale

Quotidiano Piemontese – Yesterday, Monday 29^th May, at 11 a.m., in the Aula Magna della Cavallerizza Reale (Via Verdi 8, Turin), the Atlante del Cibo di Torino Metropolitana (Atlas of Food of Turin) was presented. This is a project promoted by the University of Turin, the Polytechnic and the University of Gastronomic Sciences in cooperation with the Chamber of Commerce of Turin, and it is a one-of-a-kind cross-disciplinary research because it collects a catalogue of representations, graphic pieces of information, videos, texts, researches and articles which are available to the public and useful for an analysis and a representation of the “food system” of Turin and of the Province of Turin.

The aim of this project is to give people information about the food system of Turin, collecting and arranging the existing pieces of information and to offer a vision of growth that confirms the potential of the area.

To this purpose, it is necessary to identify and to define the players, the resources, the flows of matter, energy and knowledge, the areas and the relationships that make up this system we know little about. As the coordinator of the project, Professor Egidio Dansero of the University of Turin, highlights quoting the renowned Italian economist Luigi Einaudi, “we must know in order to decide”. We can therefore start from food to reinterpret a series of big or small, institutional or not policies, actions and projects in the area of Turin that can contribute to defining the future of local policies.

Therefore, the five-year research that aspires to become a replicate in other contexts, aims to give a response to the need of knowing more (that not only is in the local areas, but also in the international areas) and of having players, subtended by the will of supporting the planning of food policies of Turin and of improving the day-to-day management of the production and distribution system.

The Atlas is an instrument of narration, analysis and monitoring, through mapping processes and functions that enable the connection of existing pieces of information with the possibility of carrying out thematic, geographical and cultural detailed studies, in order to reflect on the food regional system. The Atlas also aims to increasing the awareness among citizens and decision-makers, creating new opportunities for dialogue, discussions and for the sharing of the objectives for a widespread well-being.

In the morning the First Report on the situation of the food system of Turin was presented. This is a document that will become a real observatory for the regional dynamics related to the food in Turin, with periodic reports and thematic detailed studies.

The first issue of the Report contains reflections on different topics that are in 37 specific sheets (accompanied by maps and graphic pieces of information), from agricultural products to breeding, from school canteens to the typical products and the food and wine top quality products, whose aim is to describe and explain the most significant elements of the current situation of the food system of Turin on variable scale, from district level to regional level.

Professor Franco Fassio of the University of Gastronomic Sciences and National Councillor for Slow Food Italia says that: “The database of knowledge that makes up the Atlas presents us a situation full of pieces of information about the flows and the dynamics of the local food system, a vision of the whole system instead of the analysis of the single components that can lead us to the planning of valuable relationships that are an example of the quality of the system”.

In addition, a website section gives the opportunity to have access to a shared mapping process that uses the civic social network called “First Life”, that has been developed by the Department of Computer Science of the University of Turin.

The Atlas of Food can therefore be useful to the people who regulate and promote the regional food system, to those who investigate its sustainability, to those who work in the different stages that range from production to the management of waste and to the people who are simply curious to know the food system of Turin better.

The Atlas provides a first series of pieces of information that are verified, transparent and updated, that can be useful to the design of new products and services and, more generally, to the activation of a cultural innovation project in the region: an area where new ideas and business models oriented to a sustainability of the system can develop, highlights Professor Paolo Tamborrini of the Department of Design of the Polytechnic of Turin.

In the metropolitan area of Turin (with about 1.5 million people living in the restricted metropolitan area), about 1,600 tons of food are consumed every year, of which 600 tons of fruit and vegetables, 400 tons of cereals and cereal-based products, 300 tons of dairy products, 200 tons of meat and 65 tons of fish. Despite a growing demand for organic products, in particular in reference to the demand from school canteens with 8 million meals every year, the percentage of agricultural surface devoted to organic food currently stands at 1,839.31 ha, that account for 0.88% of the total utilised agricultural area (UAA). The distribution of organic food is heterogeneous: in rice production, the organic food production model accounts for 23.6% of the UAA, while in other productions, for example the cereal production, it is limited to 0.5%. However, it is interesting to notice that the current area under conversion, 1,591 ha, is almost the same as the total of the area under cultivation of existing organic methods.

Another particularly significant piece of information is the role of the peri-urban agriculture and of the surrounding zones of the metropolitan area in the alternative sales channels to the large-scale organised distribution which are based on direct sale (farmers’ markets, ethical purchasing groups market, etc.).

In fact, the companies of the metropolitan area that sell directly their products are 36% of the total. This percentage is definitely higher that the regional figure (12%), which reaches 58% if we only consider the companies situated in the Municipality of Turin (figures from the 2010 Agricultural Census).

As regards distribution, the food system of Turin is characterised by the presence of both the traditional channels of the industrialised conventional system (GDA-Grande Distribuzione Organizzata – Large-scale organised distribution, and wholesale markets) and by a number of food markets (about 42 every day), which are also characterised by the direct sell by producers, which is unparalleled in Italy, in relation to the population.

Every day there are more than 40 municipal markets in Turin, where in most of them there are farmers’ stands (more than 300 every day), largely from areas within 50-70 km of the city, who directly sell their products.

In addition, in the Municipality of Turin alone, there are about 70 GAS (Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale – Ethical Purchasing Groups) and 15 farmers’ markets, as well as a dozen of small shops specialized in the sale of the products of the short distribution chain.

On the other side of the food system of Turin there is waste: it is estimated that every Turinese produces 110 kilos of organic waste every year (of which 50% enters the system of separate collection) that come from food consumption, to which we must add packaging waste (figures from the Province of Turin, 2012).

In Turin and in Piedmont food plays a very important and historical role: in fact, the food and wine sector, together with the top quality restaurant industry are a thriving factor of the city, especially in terms of promotion of the territory and tourist development. Just think about the top quality products such as wine, chocolate and baked goods, the big markets such as the Porta Palazzo Market, and the respective responsibilities and knowledge that make up a significant tangible and intangible capital.

The self-recognition process of these instruments can contribute to the definition of the characteristics of the food system of Turin, to the development of its urban and rural components, to the identification of promoting ad hoc routes, to the activation of processes of international visibility if we think about food and, at the same time, cultural events such as Terra Madre Salone del Gusto.

In fact, food is one of the strategic resources on which the role of the post-industrial Turin is redefining, both towards the inside of the city and in the international urban networks, both from a tangible point of view (economic activities, urban transformations, flows, etc.) and in terms of a symbolic and building aspect of a new image of the city.

As reported by lastampa.it website, the University of Turin has a new high-performance instrument that will be used by the researchers of the Department of Biotechnology in Via Nizza: mass spectrometry. This instrument has been bought thanks to the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation in the context of the Open Access Lab.

The researchers of the University of Turin explain that: “Mass spectrometry is a powerful analytical technique used for the quantitative measurement of known chemical compounds and for the detection of unknown compounds. In fact, it tells you how much molecules “weigh” and it has high diagnostic properties which are useful to make the chemical and structural properties of the molecules clear. One of the strong points of mass spectrometry is high sensitivity, thanks to which we can carry out analysis of very small quantities of the substances (we arrive up to the femtogram, which corresponds to a fraction trillion times smaller than a gram). Spectrometers allow the analysis of infinitesimally small concentrations, billionths of grams per solution, also with complex mixtures such as blood”.

The use of spectrometers in the pharmaceutical field is also very important: in fact, mass spectrometry is used to study the effects of drugs in the body. The total amount of the investment has been 750,000 euros.