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The Lab4treat experience has been developed to demonstrate the use of magnetic materials in environmental applications. It was projected in the frame of the European project Mat4Treat, and it was tested several times in front of different audiences ranging from school students to the general public in training and/or divulgation events. The experience lends itself to discuss several aspects of actuality, physics and chemistry, which can be explained by modulating the discussion depth level, in order to meet the interests of younger or more experienced people and expand their knowledge. The topic is relevant, dealing with the recycling of urban waste and water depollution. The paper is placed within the field of water treatment for contaminant removal; therefore, a rich collection of recent (and less recent) papers dealing with magnetic materials and environmental issues is described in the Introduction section. In addition, the paper contains a detailed description of the experiment and a list of the possible topics which can be developed during the activity. The experimental approach makes the comprehension of scientific phenomena effective, and, from this perspective, the paper can be considered to be an example of interactive teaching.

Biowaste-derived substances isolated from green compost (BBS-GC) are environmentally friendly reactants similar to humic substances, which contain multiple functionalities, that are suitable for adsorbing different kinds of pollutants in wastewater. Herein, sodium alginate (derived from brown algae) cross-linked with both Ca2+ ions and BBS-GC in the form of hydrogels and dried films are proposed as green, easy-to-form, and handleable materials for tertiary water treatments. The results show that both hydrogels and films are mechanically stable and can effectively remove differently charged dyes through an adsorption mechanism that can be described by the Freundlich model. BBS-GC-containing gels always performed better than samples prepared without BBS-GC, revealing that such unconventional materials can integrate waste valorization and water decontamination, potentially providing social and environmental benefits.

The microbial community of a plastic-polluted landfill soil was described. Among the isolated fungi, some of them showed important degradation skills against polyethylene.

The growing utilization of renewable and residual biomasses for environmental preservation and remediation are important goals to be pursued to minimize the environmental impact of human activities. In this paper, sodium alginate (derived from brown algae) was crosslinked using chitosan (mainly derived from the exoskeleton of crustaceans) in the presence of biowaste-derived substances isolated from green compost (BBS-GC), to produce hydrogels and dried films. The obtained materials were tested as adsorbents for wastewater remediation. To this purpose, gels were characterized using a multi-analytical approach and used as active substrates for the removal of three differently-charged molecules, chosen as model pollutants: crystal violet, rhodamine B, and orange II. The effectiveness of the gel formulations was demonstrated and attributed to the variety of active functionalities introduced by the different precursors, the structural factors and the peculiar physicochemical properties of the resulting materials.

Optimism can be seen as an enduring strength in marriage. It provides spouses with a broader and more flexible range of behavioral options and helps them to successfully navigate stressful situations. Optimism is characterized by a positive attitude toward the future and by positive expectations. While a positive attitude toward the future may benefit adaptation, merely holding positive expectations may lead to disappointment and inflexible responding to daily challenges. Using questionnaires and diaries from 103 couples, this study examines how spouses respond to situations where the partner prefers being alone at the end of a workday. We investigated whether and how optimism, and two components of positive expectations, the overall level of and the flexibility, shape these responses. Findings showed that perceived partner withdrawal was associated with less positive and more negative reported behaviors. Optimism buffered this effect above and beyond the effect of positive expectations. Expectation levels indicated no buffering and even a tendency to more negative and less positive reactions. Finally, and unexpectedly, expectation flexibility had no effect on partners’ reported negative behaviors, and was even associated with less positive reported responses to the partner’s withdrawal. Implications for the theoretical understanding of optimism and expectations, as well as for intervention, will be discussed.

The traditional objective of parental enrichment programs is to train parents’ abilities and specific competences, but these interventions pay less attention to the key aspect of parental identity. Parenting programs, moreover, are generally delivered to groups of parents, but scarce attention has been devoted to the use of the group as a specific tool of the intervention and as a factor promoting changes in participants’ relational functioning. The Groups for Family Enrichment (GFE; Iafrate & Rosnati, 2007, Iafrate, Donato & Bertoni, 2010), focus on parental identity in addition to parental skills and adopt a semistructured format to take advantage of the group setting. We will first introduce the characteristics of GFE, then we will describe an application of this intervention to a group of Italian parents, and finally we will present the results of a qualitative evaluation of such an intervention. Findings from process evaluation showed that participants actively contributed to the development of themes during the intervention. Result evaluation showed that recognition of key aspects of parental identity can be an important prerequisite to the acquisition of better parenting skills. Implications for parenting programs design are discussed.