Two new books on Fascism. A review,the authors’ responses and the reviewer's comments

This section contains a review by the Italian historian Emilio Gentile of Paul Corner's new book on the Fascist Party and public opinion, and of Christopher Duggan's intimate history of Mussolini's Italy. The review is followed by responses from Corner and Duggan, and the section concludes with comments by Gentile.     

Confidence Factor?

Eurocode 8 Part 3 (EC8-3) is devoted to assessment and retrofitting of existing buildings. In order to take into account the uncertainty in the knowledge of structural properties, EC8-3 defines, analogously to the ordinary material partial factors, an adjustment factor, called “confidence factor (CF),” whose value depends on the level of knowledge (KL) of properties such as geometry, reinforcement layout and detailing, and materials. This solution is plausible from a logical point of view but it cannot yet profit from the experience of its use in practice, hence it needs to be substantiated by a higher level probabilistic analysis accounting for and propagating epistemic uncertainty (i.e., incomplete knowledge of a structure) throughout the seismic assessment procedure. This article investigates the soundness of the format proposed in EC8-3. The approach taken rests on the simulation of the entire assessment procedure and the evaluation of the distribution of the assessment results (distance from the limit state of interest) conditional on the acquired knowledge. Based on this distribution, a criterion is employed to calibrate the CF values. The obtained values are then critically examined and compared with code-specified ones. The results pinpoint a number of deficiencies that appear to somewhat invalidate the approach. The methodological significance of the work extends beyond the assessment procedure in EC8-3, since similar factors appear in other international guidelines (e.g., the knowledge factor of FEMA356).     

Analysis of polychrome Iron Age glass vessels from Mediterranean I,II and III groups by LA-ICP-MS

In this work the analytical results obtained by ICP-MS with laser ablation solid sampling and SEM-EDS for some polychrome glass vessels from the Iron Age are presented and discussed. The samples, coming from Etruscan sites near Adria (Northern Italy), belong to the so-called Mediterranean Groups I, II and III and are dated from the 5th, 3rd and 2nd century B.C., respectively. To date, analytical data for only two sets of vessels of the Iron Age have been discussed in the literature. In spite of the low number of available samples, this is the first time that vessels of all three periods are analytically compared. Elemental concentration data show that the samples can be classified as low-magnesia-low potash (LMLK) soda-lime-silica glasses, with low phosphorus and titanium contents, in agreement with data for similar samples of the same age. Bivariate and multivariate analyses of the contents of many elements characterizing the siliceous sands showed three distinct sets corresponding to the three periods. Since the sets indicate different provenances of the sands it seems rational to assume that different glassmaking locations were involved. Chromophores and opacifiers of the blue bodies and the yellow, white and turquoise decorations of the vessels were analytically identified, while the nature of the corresponding ores was hypothesized.