Abstract
The major achievements in the field of optical sensors in the past two decades have remained mostly limited to the laboratory demonstrations. There are very few examples of optical sensors, which have been reduced to practice, and have established themselves in major markets. The main bottleneck in this field is the issue of manufacturability. In this paper we present optical sensors based on slotted multimode interference waveguides. We show that the sensitivity increases proportionally to the number of slots. The sensor can be tuned to highest sensitivity in the refractive index ranges necessary to detect protein-based molecules or other water-soluble chemical or biological materials. The material of choice is a sol-gel (ORMOCER) matrix that after completion of the process becomes mostly glass and it is highly stable. Sensors made with this technology are suited to high volume manufacturing.

Abstract
This paper presents an automated synthesis procedure to design radio-frequency and microwave binary-weighted single-ended switched capacitor arrays (RFSSCAs) from user top-level specifications to components sizes. The method relies on closed-form symbolic mathematical expressions of the input impedance and quality factor of the RFSSCA. The genetic synthesis tool optimizes a fitness function based on user-specified performance constraints. The method determines several optimal solutions, which are completely independent of the starting point. Moreover, infeasible specifications are unambiguously detected. To validate the proposed design algorithm, two RFSSCAs are synthesized in a 0.35 mu m CMOS technology and verified by the SpectreRF simulator of the Cadence design environment. The results show that the synthesis and simulation outcomes are in very good agreement.

Abstract
The performance of a xenon high-pressure gas proportional scintillation counter (GPSC) instrumented with a large area avalanche photodiode (LAAPD) as the VUV-photosensor has been investigated for filling pressures from 1 up to 10 bar, for 22- and 60-keV photons. The LAAPD photosensor is placed directly within the xenon envelope, as a substitute for the photomultiplier tube, avoiding the constraints of the use of a quartz scintillation window for GPSC-photosensor coupling, which absorbs a significant amount of scintillation and is a drawback for applications where large detection areas and high filling pressures are needed. The lowest energy resolutions are achieved for pressures around 5 bar (4.5% and 3.0% full width at half-maximum (FWHM), for 22- and 60-keV photons, respectively). Increasing the pressure to the 8 bar range, competitive energy resolutions of 5.0% and 3.6% are still achieved for 22- and 60-keV photons, respectively. This detector could be a compelling alternative in applications where compactness, large detection area, insensitivity to strong magnetic fields, room temperature operation, large signal-to-noise ratio and good energy resolution are important requirements.

Abstract
An all-optical scheme for simultaneous determination of oxygen and temperature is presented. A ruthenium complex immobilized in a non-hydrolytic sol-gel matrix is used as oxygen sensor. Temperature information is provided by CdSe quantum dots immobilized in the same material. While the dye luminescence is quenched by oxygen and temperature, the nanocrystals luminescence depends only on temperature. Results presented demonstrate that the combined luminescence response allows to simultaneously assess both parameters using a single optical fiber system.

Abstract
In this paper we present a case study involving mathematical modeling, system identification, and controller design of a two tank fluid level system. The case study is motivated by a realistic application of a two tank problem. We address some fundamental control oriented issues such as physical plant design and identification, transformation from discrete-time to continuous-time, and finally the controller design. We also introduce a novel physical system identification algorithm consisting of subspace identification, followed by a similarity transformation computation to extract the physical parameters of the system. The controller design is done by Pole Placement.

Abstract
An automated synthesis procedure, based on genetic algorithms, to design optimum performance Si-integrated radio-frequency and microwave binary-weighted single-ended switched capacitor arrays (RFSSCAs), is presented in this paper. The method determines the RFSSCA circuit size and the circuit components values from the top-level system specifications. The genetic synthesis tool optimizes a fitness function based on user-specified performance constraints. Besides that, the algorithm uses a sharing scheme in order to achieve a set of optimal solutions. The solutions set, obtained by the genetic algorithm, give to the designer the liberty of choosing several possible implementations maintaining the performance objective. To confirm the circuit solutions obtained by the algorithm, two RFSSCAs are synthesized in a 2-poly 4-metal 0.35 mu m standard CMOS technology. The circuit is then simulated in SpectreRF. Since the synthesized results are in very good agreement with the simulated outcomes, it can be stated that the proposed genetic synthesis method is a very useful tool to design optimum performance KFSSCAs.