Once printed, books are always accompanied by the smells of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which are continuously emitted not only by inks but also by papers themselves throughout their lives. Although the VOCs from papers may bring mild discomfort to readers, they are considered as very important factors that feature the degradation of papers and show potential applications in cultural relic appraisal. In this study, an analytical approach based on solid phase microextraction combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (SPME-GC/MS) was proposed for the evaluation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by Chinese traditional handmade papers. The VOCs evaluations and artificial aging processes were both applied to recent-made papers and naturally aged papers from a traditional Chinese calligraphy and painting scroll (collected by the National Museum of China). To be noticed, a large number of aliphatic acids, aldehydes, ketones, furan derivatives, benzene series and terpenoid substances indicated that the VOCs signals not only reveal the degradation of paper but also tentatively reflect the storage environment along hundreds of years ago. The semi-quantitative evaluation of markers indicated that the historical paper is under a serious degradation due to the high capacity it releases. Our results provided a path way to get the degradation information of ancient paintings as well as potential realistic applications such as the conservation of paper-based relics and the environmental protection in libraries and museums.

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Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are accumulated frequently in the mitochondrial displacement loop (D-loop) in various types of cancer, and their association with cancer risk and disease outcome has been extensively identified. We have identified specific risk-associated SNP for familial breast cancer patients previously. In this study, we investigated the association between age-at-onset and the SNPs in familial breast cancer patients. The SNP sites of nucleotides 16 311 T/C were identified for their association with age-at-onset using the log-rank test. The age-at-onset of the patients with the minor allele C genotype was significantly earlier than that of patients carrying the T genotype at the site 16 311 (p = 0.032). Accordingly, the genetic polymorphisms in the mitochondrial D-loop are predictive markers for age-at-onset in familial breast cancer patients, which may help to identify familial breast cancer patient subgroups at high risk of early onset.

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