Abstract
The software package TRANsySTEM developed for teaching and research purposes of the transient security assessment of a multimachine power system is presented. This package run in Windows environment.

Abstract
Competitive and cooperative artificial co-evolution using genetic algorithms are proposed to design PID control structures. A competitive coevolutionary based technique is proposed to design robust single-input single-output PID controllers to deal with prescribed parametric uncertainties. A cooperative coevolutionary approach and structured genetic algorithms are merged to cope with the identification of a multi-input multi-output plant within the problem of auto-tuning decentralised multivariable PI controllers. Simulated illustrative examples of both co-evolutionary techniques are presented. Copyright (C) 2000 IFAC.

Abstract
One of the advantages of logic programming is the fact that it offers several sources of implicit parallelism. One particularly interesting form of And-Parallelism is Independent And-Parallelism (IAP). Most work on the implementation of IAP is based on Hermenegildo's RAP-WAM. Unfortunately there are some drawbacks associated with the classical approaches based on the use of parcalls and markers. One first observation is that the introduction of parcall frames significantly slows down sequential execution. Moreover, it may result in fine-grained parallel work. We found these problems to be particularly significant in the context of the implementation of combined AND/OR systems. In this paper we take a fresh look at this issue. Our goal is to start from a standard sequential Prolog implementation and try to discover the minimal number of changes that would be required for an efficient implementation of IAP. The key ideas in our design are to (i) to always take advantage of analogy between or-parallelism and IAP; (ii) to avoid creating new structures by adapting preexistingx WAM data-structures wherever possible; and (iii) to avoid major changes to the compiler. The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the contribution and support from Fernando Silva. The work has also benefitted from discussions with Luis Fernando Castro, Ines de Castro Dutra, Kish Shen, Gopal Gupta, and Enrico Pontelli. Our work has been partly supported by Fundaçã da Ciencia e Tecnologia and JNICT under the projects Melodia (JNICT/PBIC/C/TIT/2495/95) and Dolphin (PRAXIS/2/2.l/TIT/1577/95). © 2000 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Abstract
The results of an investigation of the performance of a time-division-multiplexed (TDM) fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor array using a tunable laser source are reported. The system performance is found limited by the extinction ratio of the optical pulse modulator used for pulse amplitude modulation. Formulas that relate the crosstalk to the extinction ratio of the optical pulse modulator, the modulation parameters of the tunable laser, and the optical path differences among sensing channels are derived. Computer simulation shows that an array of 20 FBG sensors with 3 µe resolution can be realized with a commercially available single Mach-Zehnder type optical pulse modulator of -35-dB extinction ratio.

Abstract
A new paradigm far the description of image patter ns is presented. it is proposed that images are described by fuzzy IF... THEN rules instead of pixel values. This new approach may benefit from recognised fuzzy systems superior incorporation of measurement uncertainties, greater resources for managing complexity and better ability to deal with natural language [1]. The concept of relevance has been proposed as a measure of the relative importance of sets of rules [2] [3]. Based on this concept a new methodology was developed: SLIM (Separation of Linguistic Information Methodology) [2] [3]. An algorithm implementing SLIM is presented in this paper, derived from the fuzzy Gmeans clustering algorithm, here applied to organise the fuzzy IF... THEN rules that describe the image. The Lena and the Abington Grass images have been successfully used to illustrate the identification process. The proposed SLIM algorithm has been successfully applied to illustrate a segmentation operation in the "fuzzy rules domain", using the Abington Cross image.

Abstract