Dal progetto al restauro di un manoscritto polimaterico

Casapini’s Herbarium is an 18th century manuscript, belonging to the Palatina Library in Parma and currently stored at the Botanical Garden of Parma University. The Herbarium collects nearly 200 samples of dried plant specimens that have been severely affected by physical, biological and chemical degradation. In 2016 the Inner Wheel Club Italia-Parma Est, an international female association, decided to fund the conservation of this Herbarium in order to preserve it and allow its study. A large team of professionals, including conservators, chemists, physicists and a botanist, has been working on the project to secure this unique but very fragile object. This paper discusses the condition assessment, the identification of degradation processes and the first conservation approach to the Casapini Herbarium. Issues related to the treatment of heavily corroded areas, the resewing of the sections and the future storage of the manuscript are also identified and highlighted for further research.

Development of Medical Care Assist Bed using Pneumatic Planar Soft Actuator

Bedridden persons often have a bedsore, which causes pain to the patient. Then, it is important to prevent from a bedsore. In this study, for prevention from a bedsore, a medical care assist bed using a pneumatic planar soft actuator constructed with rubber balls has been developed. This actuator can carry an object by generating a traveling wave by controlling the inner pressure of balls. In addition, owing to the flexibility of the mechanism, this actuator can carry a fragile object without a complicated control method. In this paper, the structure and operational principle of the actuator is described, and then the principle of both the change of bedridden human body position and the adjustment of pressure distribution between the body and the bed is described. Finally, their effects are experimentally investigated. The experimental results show that this bed can adjust the contact pressure with the human body. Therefore, the effective of this bed to prevent from a bedsore is confirmed.