Abstract

Abstract
The emergence of optical fiber tapers allowed for the development of new sensing heads to measure physical and external parameters. In the last five years, investigation became more intense with the rapid development of new types of fiber such as microstructured fiber. This chapter aims to present the latest work based on tapers: single tapers, interferometers based on tapers, tapers combined with other structures such as Bragg gratings or surface plasmon resonance. Finally, it also describes new taper geometries and tapers in microstructured fiber. © 2013 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Abstract
This paper refers to the new direction for enhancement in traditional remote controlling functionality in manufacturing systems. Employing a diversity of tools such as videoconferencing, computer supported cooperative work tools, immersive virtual reality, virtual environment tools, such as "Metaverse" tools, and Internet through Pragmatic Web, is necessary for overcoming the "space barrier". Therefore, further analysis of human-machine user interface is crucial for user interaction with manufacturing systems through remote control. That is the motivation for investigation on evaluation of the user interfaces for remote control of manufacturing systems within the above-mentioned framework. Preliminary results of the evaluation of two types of interfaces are presented in this paper. These two interfaces are distinctive in one particular presentational aspect, while all the remote controlling functionalities are equal for both. The results show that one user interface type clearly fares better than the other over a number of factors as graded by users. © Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Belgrade.

Abstract
This paper studies inefficiencies arising in oligopolies subject to environmental regulation based on tradable emission permits. We propose a duopoly model of upstream-downstream strategic competition: in the permits market a leader sets the price, whereas in the output market Cournot competition occurs. We find that strategic interaction in the output market gives rise to an additional distortion in the permits market where both firms adopt rival's cost-rising' strategies to gain a competitive advantage in the output market. As a result, the price of permits is always higher than firms' marginal abatement costs.

Abstract
All companies developing their business on the Web, not only giants like Google or Facebook but also small companies focused on niche markets, face scalability issues in data management. The case study of this paper is the content management systems for classified or commercial advertisements on the Web. The data involved has a very significant growth rate and a read-intensive access pattern with a reduced update rate. Typically, data is stored in traditional file systems hosted on dedicated servers or Storage Area Network devices due to the generalization and ease of use of file systems. However, this ease in implementation and usage has a disadvantage: the centralized nature of these systems leads to availability, elasticity and scalability problems. The scenario under study, undemanding in terms of the system's consistency and with a simple interaction model, is suitable to a distributed database, such as Cassandra, conceived precisely to dynamically handle large volumes of data. In this paper, we analyze the suitability of Cassandra as a substitute for file systems in content management systems. The evaluation, conducted using real data from a production system, shows that when using Cassandra, one can easily get horizontal scalability of storage, redundancy across multiple independent nodes and load distribution imposed by the periodic activities of safeguarding data, while ensuring a comparable performance to that of a file system. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Abstract
Performance measurement determines, based on data, if the process, business unit or organization is progressing toward the goals as planned. This chapter describes the approach proposed for performance measurement, that is part of the Net-Challenge framework for the performance management in collaborative networks (CNs). The chapter first presents an overview of performance measurement in the framework and introduces the concept of the performance factor. Some typical performance factors and some known approaches are elaborated. Collaboration is addressed in particular. Next, the chapter discusses factorization and disaggregation as the development of the performance factors in two dimensions. Then, the chapter explains the three main activities of performance measurement, including definition of what to measure and targets setting, setup of a measurement system, and measurement and analysis of performance. Finally, the chapter briefly provides information and communication technology (ICT) platform to support performance management. ©2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.