La villa Montalto et l'idéal rustique de Sixte Quint

Constructed, beginning in 1576 by the architect Domenico Fontana, the Villa Montalto, named after the Cardinal Felice Peretti Montalto, was for a long rime described as having surpassed the splendor of all the villas in Rome. Located to the north of the city in an arid and practically deserted zone, between vineyards, Antique ruins and early Christian churches, the villa occupies a privileged place within the history of urban landscape. Elected pope in 1585, under the name of Sixtus V, Felice made his villa the largest that had ever existed inside of the walls, establishing the upper city of the Monti, the Città Felice, as a new economic and religious center, crystallizing his ambitions for a major territorial reform. By simultaneously focusing on the gardens, the painted decorations, the literature, and the architecture of the villa, but also on its economic and social role, this article proposes an original interpretation of the Villa Montalto, demonstrating the fundamental importance of the imagined landscape in the Rome of Sixtus V. Through the ideal space of his villa, the Pope sought to propose a new model of economic and social development necessary to the reform of the then poor and insalubrious Rome. The ultimate goal was none other than the reestablishment of a Christian Eden on Earth. Sixtus V thus placed himself within the lineage which, since Adam, had attempted through the virtue of agricultural labor, to atone for the original sin.

Assessment of Tandem Mass Spectrometry and High Resolution Mass Spectrometry for the Analysis of Bupivacaine in Plasma

Triple quadrupole mass spectrometers coupled with high performance liquid chromatography are workhorses in quantitative bioanalyses. It provides substantial benefits including reproducibility, sensitivity and selectivity for trace analysis. Selected Reaction Monitoring allows targeted assay development but data sets generated contain very limited information. Data mining and analysis of non-targeted high-resolution mass spectrometry profiles of biological samples offer the opportunity to perform more exhaustive assessments, including quantitative and qualitative analysis. The objectives of this study was to test method precision and accuracy, statistically compare bupivacaine drug concentration in real study samples and verify if high resolution and accurate mass data collected in scan mode can actually permit retrospective data analysis, more specifically, extract metabolite related information. The precision and accuracy data presented using both instruments provided equivalent results. Overall, the accuracy was ranging from 106.2 to 113.2% and the precision observed was from 1.0 to 3.7%. Statistical comparisons using a linear regression between both methods reveal a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.9996 and a slope of 1.02 demonstrating a very strong correlation between both methods. Individual sample comparison showed differences from -4.5% to 1.6% well within the accepted analytical error. Moreover, post acquisition extracted ion chromatograms at m/z 233.1648 ± 5 ppm (M-56) and m/z 305.2224 ± 5 ppm (M+16) revealed the presence of desbutyl-bupivacaine and three distinct hydroxylated bupivacaine metabolites. Post acquisition analysis allowed us to produce semiquantitative evaluations of the concentration-time profiles for bupicavaine metabolites.