Scientific investigation of the Imperial Gates belonging to the wooden church from Sacel, Turda County, Romania.

Cultural heritage objects have a major contribution to the historical patrimony of every country. In Romania, wooden churches are famous, they are mostly dated in between the XVth and XXth century, but unfortunately many of them have been destroyed, by natural or anthropic means. Therefore, the necessity of conservation and restoration has appeared, to the ones that still exist, as legacy for the future generations. In the present article, an Imperial Gate from a wooden church in Cluj County, Romania, has been investigated, using scientific techniques (FTIR and XRF). A 3D reconstruction has been performed, using similar colors with the original artwork, as resulted from the scientific investigation of the painting materials. A limited number of constituent materials have been used for this artwork, and the wood species used was lime, due to the ease of carving.

Micro-Raman spectroscopic investigation of external wall paintings from St. Dumitru's Church, Suceava, Romania.

The external sixteenth century wall paintings of St. Dumitru's Church in Suceava (Romania) are suffering visually from deterioration. Fragments of these paintings spallated from the external wall have been studied by micro-Raman microscopy in order to elucidate possible causes of this process. Calcite and alpha-quartz are the components of the substratum indicating that the artists used the Roman fresco technique comprising a limewash putty. No organic binders have been detected in the substrate or pigment application. Amorphous carbon and goethite, alpha-FeOOH, have been identified in areas containing residues of grey and yellow pigments, respectively. Small amounts of gypsum have been detected in the grey areas which we attribute to special attention being given to surface preparation and pigment application in these areas. An abundance of sodium nitrate, nitratine, microcrystals have been observed on the surfaces of many fragments which suggests that a biodeterioration process originating from guano deposits could have been operating in these frescoes.

Direct fluorescent detection of chromatographically separated amino-acids by means of 9-isothiocyanatoacridines.

A new method is presented for fluorescent detection of amino-acids separated on silica gel R plates, by spraying with a 0.1% solution of 9-isothiocyanatoacridine derivatives in dichloromethane or benzene, heating and examining in ultraviolet light at 254 and 336 nm. This method is useful for routine analysis owing to its selectivity and sensitivity.