Profiling of high molecular weight esters by flow injection analysis-high resolution mass spectrometry for the characterization of raw and archaeological beeswax and resinous substances

EASY-FIA: A Readably Usable Standalone Tool for High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry Metabolomics Data Pre-Processing

Flow injection analysis coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry (FIA-HRMS) is a fair trade-off between resolution and speed. However, free software available for data pre-processing is few, web-based, and often requires advanced user specialization. These tools rarely embedded blank and noise evaluation strategies, and direct feature annotation. We developed EASY-FIA, a free standalone application that can be employed for FIA-HRMS metabolomic data pre-processing by users with no bioinformatics/programming skills. We validated the tool's performance and applicability in two clinical metabolomics case studies. The main functions of our application are blank subtraction, alignment of the metabolites, and direct feature annotation by means of the Human Metabolome Database (HMDB) using a minimum number of mass spectrometry parameters. In a scenario where FIA-HRMS is increasingly recognized as a reliable strategy for fast metabolomics analysis, EASY-FIA could become a standardized and feasible tool easily usable by all scientists dealing with MS-based metabolomics. EASY-FIA was implemented in MATLAB with the App Designer tool and it is freely available for download.

The Honey Bee Apis mellifera: An Insect at the Interface between Human and Ecosystem Health

Simple Summary

Apis mellifera Linnaeus (1758), a honey bee, is a eusocial insect widely known for its role in pollination, an essential ecosystem service for plant biodiversity, and quality of vegetables and fruit products. In addition, honey bees and bee products are valuable bioindicators of pollutants, such as airborne particulate matter, heavy metals, and pesticides. In this review, we explore the provisioning, regulating, and cultural services provided by the honey bee, an insect at the interface between human and ecosystem health.

Abstract

The concept of ecosystem services is widely understood as the services and benefits thatecosystems provide to humans, and they have been categorised into provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services. This article aims to provide an updated overview of the benefits that the honey bee Apis mellifera provides to humans as well as ecosystems. We revised the role of honey bees as pollinators in natural ecosystems to preserve and restore the local biodiversity of wild plants; in agro-ecosystems, this species is widely used to enhance crop yield and quality, meeting the increasing food demand. Beekeeping activity provides humans not only with high-quality food but also with substances used as raw materials and in pharmaceuticals, and in polluted areas, bees convey valuable information on the environmental presence of pollutants and their impact on human and ecosystem health. Finally, the role of the honey bee in symbolic tradition, mysticism, and the cultural values of the bee habitats are also presented. Overall, we suggest that the symbolic value of the honey bee is the most important role played by this insect species, as it may help revitalise and strengthen the intimate and reciprocal relationship between humans and the natural world, avoiding the inaccuracy of considering the ecosystems as mere providers of services to humans.

An integrated analytical study of crayons from the original art materials collection of the MUNCH museum in Oslo

Among the artists' materials of the nineteenth century, pastel crayons merit scientific interest since their early commercial formulations are mostly unknown and, until now, have been considerably less studied with respect to other contemporary painting materials. In this framework, research herein reports the results of a comprehensive multi-analytical study of 44 pastel crayons of two recognized brands (LeFranc and Dr. F. Schoenfeld) from the Munch museum collection of original materials belonging to Edvard Munch. The integrated use of complementary spectroscopic and hyphenated mass-spectrometry techniques allowed the compositional profiles of the crayons to be traced providing the identification of the inorganic and organic pigments, the fillers/extenders and the binders. All crayons resulted to be oil- based and the binder was identified to be a mixture of a drying oil (safflower or linseed oil), palm oil or Japan wax and beeswax. Among others, pigments such as ultramarine, chrome yellows, Prussian blue, manganese violet, viridian and madder lake have been identified. A significant alignment in formulations of the brands was observed with the only exception of the greens which showed distinctive pigment and filler compositions. The analytical information provided for these commercial artists' materials will be of great interest for academia, museum and other institutions hosting art collections dating from the same period and it will be used by the Munch museum to draw proper conservation strategies of its own artwork collections.