First results from the modular multi-channel dispersion interferometer at the TEXTOR tokamak

At the TEXTOR tokamak in Ju?lich, Germany, a modular dispersion interferometer was installed and operated for the first time. Equipped with four lines of sight, the line-integrated density could be measured in parallel at different major radii with a resolution of better than 3 × 10(17) m(-2). This paper will describe the setup and show the first measurement results. Among others, it was possible to detect the evolution of a disruption with a time resolution of 4 μs. The movement of the runaway beam following the disruption could be resolved spatially and temporarily.     

Reconfigurable logistics systems in production and disassembly networks

The importance of the recycling of resources is continuously increasing in Europe and around the world. The major driver is the scarcity of both natural resources and disposal capacities. In this context, the efficient design of logistics processes is of high importance as high costs for collection, return, treatment and redistribution are combined with a low value added. There are already some (logistics) recycling concepts for quantitatively significant material flows like packaging materials, high-quality products like end-of-life vehicles or very hazardous products like batteries. However, the problem remains unsolved for those end-of-life products that have?‘a bit of everything but not enough of anything’: household appliances. For these end-of-life products, logistics plant concepts have been developed that accommodate the high number of options and the low value added.     

A case study in hardware Trojan design and implementation

As integrated circuits (ICs) continue to have an overwhelming presence in our digital information-dominated world, having trust in their manufacture and distribution mechanisms is crucial. However, with ever-shrinking transistor technologies, the cost of new fabrication facilities is becoming prohibitive, pushing industry to make greater use of potentially less reliable foreign sources for their IC supply. The 2008 Computer Security Awareness Week (CSAW) Embedded Systems Challenge at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU highlighted some of the vulnerabilities of the IC supply chain in the form of a hardware hacking challenge. This paper explores the design and implementation of our winning entry.     

Preventing IC Piracy Using Reconfigurable Logic Barriers

Editor's note:Hardware metering to prevent IC piracy is a challenging and important problem. The authors propose a combinational locking scheme based on intelligent placement of the barriers throughout the design in which the objective is to maximize the effectiveness of the barriers and to minimize the overhead.—Farinaz Koushanfar, Rice University     

Introducing a light-weight autonomic network middleware based on stigmergic mechanisms

Autonomous systems are capable of performing activities by taking into account the local environment and adapting to it. No planning is necessary therefore autonomous systems have to make the best of the resources at hand. Locality in this case is no longer geographical but rather the information and applications on the boundary of the autonomic communicating element which may be distributed over a wide area. The aim of autonomous communication systems is that they exhibit self-awareness properties, in particular self-contextualisation, self-programmability and self-management. In this paper, we identify the need for autonomous systems, their architecture, the path of evolution from traditional network elements, the need for open networks and future trends within autonomic computing.     

A computational intelligence method for traversing dynamically constructed networks of knowledge

A core goal for autonomous systems such as proposed here is automated collaboration in order to perform tasks or share information. The system is always distributed by default and frequently on a large-scale. It can be argued that robustness and economy demand the deployment of a tested autonomic supporting infrastructure whenever possible. A knowledge network is a generic structure that organises distributed knowledge of any format into a system that will allow it to be retrieved efficiently. The rationale of the knowledge network is to act as a middle layer that connects to a multitude of sources, organises them based on various concepts and finally provides well-structured, pre-organised knowledge to individual services and applications. To use the knowledge network we need a querying mechanism to be able to retrieve information. The knowledge network will organise itself in an autonomous manner and it is possible to use the querying mechanism also as part of the knowledge organization mechanism, to autonomously create temporary views that reflect the use of the system. This paper is an attempt to investigate the peculiarities of node behaviour in traversing such a knowledge network. We investigate a variety of methods of traversing a knowledge network.     

A novel marker design for magnetic marker monitoring in the human gastrointestinal tract

Magnetic marker monitoring (MMM) is a technique to determine the motility of the gastrointestinal tract and to observe the dissolution of pharmaceutical compounds. Today's magnetic markers usually consist of magnetized magnetite. Because of their weak magnetic fields, highly sensitive sensor systems are required. For a wider class of applications, stronger markers and more flexible measurement setups are necessary. In this paper, a novel marker design is introduced. This marker comprises one permanent magnet and a compartment of iron powder in a magnetically unstable configuration. During dissolution of the pharmaceuticals, the powder is redistributed around the magnet, thereby altering the externally measured magnetic induction. Based on this design, magnetically marked tablets and capsules were prepared and their magnetic field during dissolution was observed. Magnetic induction values were between 16 and 0.2 μT at distances of 5-30 cm, which is considerably higher compared to the pico-Tesla range of conventional markers. During dissolution, the magnetic induction decreased by between 14% and 27%. These values could be confirmed in detailed finite element method simulations. In conclusion, the present results indicate that our novel marker design is well suited for MMM with more flexible sensor technologies, such as magnetoresistive sensors.