Abstract

Abstract
In this work, a curvature sensor based on a highly birefringent (Hi-Bi) photonic crystal fibre loop mirror is presented. For this purpose, a novel Hi-Bi photonic crystal fibre was designed and fabricated. Half of the microstructured region of the photonic crystal fibre was composed by holes with large diameter, while the other half contained holes with small diameter. Due to this geometry, the fibre core was shifted from the centre and high birefringence appears in the optical fibre. The Hi-Bi photonic crystal fibre loop mirror was demonstrated as a curvature sensor. The curvature was applied for three different fibre directions for the range of 0.6 - 5 metres(-1). The configuration was also characterized for temperature and longitudinal strain, showing insensitivity for these two physical parameters.

Abstract
The Paul Wurth Bell-Less Top® (BLT) is the industrial standard for iron blast furnace charging systems. Since Paul Wurth's invention of the BLT in the early 1970s the system has evolved with the changes in iron-making technologies and market conditions. With the latest demands for high charging equipment availability and maintainability - new developments have been recently implemented. The paper will cover the evolution of the Bell-Less Top®, the latest operational requirements and the latest new developments and solutions.

Abstract
We report on the use of a frequency-reflectometry domain technique for referencing optical intensity sensors located between two fibre Bragg gratings. The experiment combines the concept of frequency modulated continuous wave with the spectrally selective mirror proper-ties of fibre Bragg gratings to interrogate with referencing properties intensity based sensors. Multiplexing two of these sensors using this technique in a parallel topology system was also experimentally demonstrated. Due to the use of different fibre lengths (delay lines), signals from the fibre Bragg gratings located at different positions in an array are separated in the frequency-domain.

Abstract
In this paper, a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP) for the container loading problem is presented. This approach is based on a constructive block heuristic that builds upon the concept of maximal space, a nondisjoint representation of the free space in a container. This new algorithm is extensively tested over the complete set of Bischoff and Ratcliff problems [Bischoff, E. E., M. S. W. Ratcliff. 1995. Issues in the development of approaches to container loading. Omega 23 377-390], ranging from weakly heterogeneous to strongly heterogeneous cargo, and outperforms all the known nonparallel approaches that, partially or completely, have used this set of test problems. When comparing against parallel algorithms, it is better on average but not for every class of problem. In terms of efficiency, this approach runs in much less computing time than that required by parallel methods. Thorough computational experiments concerning the evaluation of the impact of algorithm design choices and internal parameters on the overall efficiency of this new approach are also presented.

Abstract
Bytecode verification is a key point in the security chain of the Java platform. This feature is only optional in many embedded devices since the memory requirements of the verification process are too high. In this article we propose an approach that significantly reduces the use of memory by a serial/parallel decomposition of the verification into multiple specialized passes. The algorithm reduces the type encoding space by operating on different abstractions of the domain of types. The results of our evaluation show that this bytecode verification can be performed directly on small memory systems. The method is formalized in the framework of abstract interpretation. © 2008 ACM.