Laboratory Testing of FBGs for Pipeline Monitoring.

The monitoring of the effects of geohazards on pipelines can be addressed by optical fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). They are sensitive to strain and bending, and are installed on the external surface of pipelines at discrete locations. A joint approach of theoretical analysis and laboratory experiments is useful to check the reliability of the performance of this technology. We focus on the theoretical analysis of pipeline buckling and investigate the reliability of FBG monitoring both by examining the analytical model available and by performing a laboratory-scale experiment. The novelty lies in the analysis of models and methods originally developed for the detection of pipeline upheaval buckling caused by externally imposed forces in the context of service loads (temperature). Although thermal strain is very relevant in view of its potentially disruptive effects on both pipelines and the FBG response, it has not been yet fully investigated. We point out the merits of the approach, such as the functionality and simplicity of design, the accessibility and inexpensiveness of materials, the controllability and repeatability of processes, the drawbacks are also described, such as temperature effects, the problem of slipping of gages and the challenge of performing quasi-distributed strain measurements.

[Affliction and skepticism: Montaigne and anti-medical literature]. / Afflizione e scetticismo: Montaigne e la letterature contra medicos.

The essay II, 37 De la ressemblance des enfants aux pères, written by Montaigne between 1579 and the first months of 1580, is a merciless critique of doctors, doctoring and medicine in general. This Essay, as much as a large number of other texts, of archival records, of iconographic materials produced during the Early Modern period, testifies a wide spread skeptical attitude toward medicine across Europe. This is an important aspect of Early Modern culture. Despite its relevance it has been often neglected by medical historians. This paper aims to show how a literary text can contribute to the understanding of the rise of some aspects of these critical attitudes towards medicine and medics. In Montaigne's text, these attitudes appear to be generated by his personal experiences of suffering and disillusion deeply entangled with a long tradition of philosophical skepticism to which some of his favorite readings belong. Both these elements seem to have also contributed to bring Montaigne in 1580 to the definition of the poetic project of the Essays as a self-portrait: a project in which the bodily presence of the author, with his humors, passions and sufferings, is self-consciously part of the writing process and of the intellectual enterprise.