Abstract
The TIMEMESH game, developed in the scope of the European Project SELEAG, is an educational game for learning history, culture and social relations. It is supported by an extensible, online, multi-language, multi-player, collaborative and social platform for sharing and acquiring knowledge of the history of European regions. The game has been already used, with remarkable success, in different European countries like Portugal, Spain, England, Slovenia, Estonia and Belgium. © 2012 IEEE.

Abstract
Spreadsheets are increasingly used as programming languages, in the construction of large and complex systems. The fact is that spreadsheets, being a highly flexible framework, lack important programming language features such as abstraction or encapsulation. This flexibility, however, comes with a price: spreadsheets are populated with significant amounts of errors. One of the approaches that try to overcome this problem advocates the use of model-driven spreadsheet development: a spreadsheet model is defined, from which a concrete spreadsheet is generated. Although this approach has been proved effective in other contexts, still it needs to accommodate for future evolution of both the model and its instance, so that they remain synchronized at all moments. In this paper, we propose a pair of transformation sets, one working at the model level and the other at the instance level, such that each transformation in one set is related to a transformation in the other set. With our approach, we ensure model/data compliance while allowing for model and data evolution.

Abstract
In this paper, we analyze environmental regulation based on tradable emission permits in the presence of strategic interaction in an output market with differentiated products. We characterize firms' equilibrium behavior in the permits and in the output market and we show that both firms adopt "rival's cost-rising strategies". Then, we study the problem of the regulator that aims at maximizing social welfare, proposing an efficient criterion to allocate permits between firms. We find that the optimal allocation criterion requires a perfect balance between the difference on firms' price-cost margins in the permits market and the difference on firms' mark ups in the output market. In light of the previous result, we use a simulation to obtain the optimal allocation of permits between firms as a function of output market characteristics, in particular as a function of goods substitutability. © 2012 World Scientific Publishing Company.

Abstract
In this paper we present three hybrid heuristics for the single machine scheduling problem with quadratic earliness and tardiness costs, and no machine idle time. Our heuristic is a combination of a steady-state genetic algorithm and three improvement procedures. The two computationally less expensive of these three improvement procedures are used inside the genetic algorithm to improve the schedule obtained after the application of genetic operators, whereas the more expensive one is used to improve the best solution returned by the genetic algorithm. We have compared our hybrid approaches against existing recovering beam search and genetic algorithms. The computational results show the effectiveness of our hybrid approaches. Indeed, our hybrid approaches outperformed the existing heuristics in terms of solution quality as well as running time.

Abstract

Abstract
In this work, two all-fiber interferometric configurations based on suspended core fibers (SCF) are investigated. A Fabry-Perot cavity (FPC) made of SCF spliced in-between segments of single-mode and hollow-core fiber is proposed. The interferometric signals are generated by the refractive-index mismatches between the two fibers in the splice region and at the end of the suspended-core fiber. An alternative sensing head configuration formed by the insertion of a length of SCF as a birefringence element in a Sagnac loop interferometer is also demonstrated. In this structure, the interferometric signals are generated by interfering two counter propagating beams with different polarization states which propagate through a length of SCF as a birefringence element. The sensitivity to pressure and temperature was determined for both configurations. The results show that the pressure sensitivities are -4.68 x 10(-5) nm/psi and 0.032 nm/psi for FPC and Sagnac loop interferometers, respectively. The temperature sensitivity of both structures has been obtained and the results have been discussed.