Abstract
Logic programming is based on the idea that computation is controlled inference. The Extended Andorra Model provides a very powerful framework that supports both co-routining and parallelism. We present the BEAM, a design that builds upon David H. D.Warren’s original EAM with Implicit Control. The BEAM supports Warren’s original EAM rewrite rules plus eager splitting and sequential conjunctions. We discuss the main issues in the implementation of the BEAM and show that the EAM with Implicit Control can perform quite well when compared with other implementations that use the Andorra principle. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2001

Abstract
Virtual Home Environment is a new concept that emerged in the context of the 3(rd) generation networks for mobile communications, The objective of this paper is to present the work that currently takes place in VESPER1, an IST project in the area of the VHE. The paper presents the VESPER project approach to the VHE architecture, its main components, the way they interact and the way this architecture will facilitate the creation of services embedded with the VHE concept. The paper presents also two demonstration services, their main functional features and how they use the VHE architecture defined in VESPER.

Abstract
In this paper we present a novel microbend optical fibre sensor embedded in composite material, which acts as a load cell for structural monitoring in civil engineering. The sensing system is based on a self-referenced fibre optic intensity sensor supported by a Michelson topology with optical feedback. The sensing system is tested in a sand testing bed for different values of load. Results are presented and discussed.

Abstract
Traditional reliable broadcast protocols fail to scale to large settings. The paper proposes a reliable multicast protocol that integrates two approaches to deal with the large-scale dimension in group communication protocols: gossip-based probabilistic broadcast and semantic reliability. The aim of the resulting protocol is to improve the resiliency of the probabilistic protocol to network congestion by allocating scarce resources to semantically relevant messages. Although intuitively it seems that a straightforward combination of probabilistic and semantic reliable protocols is possible, we show that it offers disappointing results. Instead, we propose an architecture based on a specialized probabilistic semantically reliable layer and show that it produces the desired results. The combined primitive is thus scalable to large number of participants, highly resilient to network and process failures, and delivers a high quality data flow even when the load exceeds the available bandwidth. We present a summary of simulation results that compare different protocol configurations. © 2001 IEEE.

Abstract
Tabling is an implementation technique that improves the declarativeness and expressiveness of Prolog by reusing solutions to goals. Quite a few interesting applications of tabling have been developed in the last few years, and several are by nature non-deterministic. This raises the question of whether parallel search techniques can be used to improve the performance of tabled applications. In this work we demonstrate that the mechanisms proposed to parallelize search in the context of SLD resolution naturally generalize to parallel tabled computations, and that resulting systems can achieve good performance on multi-processors. To do so, we present the OPT Yap parallel engine. In our system individual SLG engines communicate data through stack copying. Completion is detected through a novel parallel completion algorithm that builds upon the data structures proposed for or-parallelism. Scheduling is simplified by building on previous research on or-parallelism. We show initial performance results for our implementation. Our best result is for an actual application, model checking, where we obtain linear speedups. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2001.

Abstract
The timetabling problem consists in fixing a sequence of meetings between teachers and students in a given period of time, satisfying a set of different constraints. There are a number of different versions of the timetabling problem. These include school timetabling (where students are grouped in classes with similar degree plans), university timetabling (where students are considered individually) and examination timetabling (i.e. scheduling of university exams, avoiding student double booking). Several other problems are also associated with the more general timetabling problem, including room allocation. meeting scheduling, staff allocation and invigilator assignment. Many data formats have been developed for representing different timetabling problems. The variety of data formats currently in use, and the diversity of existing timetabling problems, makes the comparison of research results and exchange of data concerning real problems extremely difficult. In this paper we identify eight timetabling sub-problems and, based on that identification, we present a new language (UniLang) for representing timetabling problems. UniLang intends to be a standard suitable as input language for any timetabling system. It enables a clear and natural representation of data, constraints, quality measures and solutions for different timetabling (as well as related) problems, such as school timetabling, university timetabling and examination scheduling.