Microsystems are an important factor that contribute to an automobile model's success. To meet the customers's desire for safety, convenience and vehicle economy, and to satisfy environmental standards, microsystems are the critical factor. Microsystems applications (MST) have already resulted in improved performance and better value for money. But the advances implemented reveal only the beginning of a revolution in the vehicle sector, which aims at a complete transition from the mechanically driven automobile system to a mechanically based but ICT-driven system. The selected contributions from AMAA 2003 treat safety (both preventive and protective), powertrain (online measurement and control of engine and transmission subsystems), comfort and HMI (systems to enhance the comfort of passengers and human machine interface issues), and networked Vehicle (all aspects of intra car systems and ambient communication networks). Selected proceedings for the seventh conference on microsystems in the automotive sector, a regular event now with an increasing number of participants on a modern and promising field taking place in Berlin in May 2003.

How fast and powerful can computers become? Will it be possible someday to create artificial brains that have intellectual capabilities comparable to those of human beings? The answers to these questions depend to a very great extent on a single factor: how small and dense we can make computer circuits. Very recently, scientists have achieved revolutionary advances that may very well radically change the future of computing.

This book is the result of a long friendship, of a broad international co­ operation, and of a bold dream. It is the summary of work carried out by the authors, and several other wonderful people, during more than 15 years, across 3 continents, in the course of countless meetings, workshops and discus­ sions. It shows that neither language nor distance can be an obstacle to close scientific cooperation, when there is unity of goals and true collaboration. When we started, we had very different approaches to handling the mys­ terious, almost magical world of asynchronous circuits. Some were more theo­ retical, some were closer to physical reality, some were driven mostly by design needs. In the end, we all shared the same belief that true Electronic Design Automation research must be solidly grounded in formal models, practically minded to avoid excessive complexity, and tested "in the field" in the form of experimental tools. The results are this book, and the CAD tool petrify.

The book presents the best contributions, extracted from the theses written by the students who have attended the second edition of the Master in Microelectronics and Systems that has been organized by the Universita degli Studi di Catania and that has been held at the STMicroelectronics Company (Catania Site) from May 2000 to January 2001. In particular, the mentioned Master has been organized among the various ac­ tivities of the "Istituto Superiore di Catania per la Formazione di Eccellenza". The Institute is one of the Italian network of universities selected by MURST (Ministry University Research Scientific Technology). The first aim of tl;te Master in Microelectronics and Systems is to increase the skills of the students with the Laurea Degree in Physics or Electrical Engineering in the more advanced areas as VLSI system design, high-speed low-voltage low-power circuitS and RF systems. The second aim has been to involve in the educational program companies like STMicroelectronics, ACCENT and ITEL, interested in emergent microelectronics topics, to cooperate with the University in developing high-level research projects. Besides the tutorial activity during the teaching hours, provided by national and international researchers, a significant part of the School has been dedicated to the presentation of specific CAD tools and experiments in order to prepare the students to solve specific problems during the stage period and in the thesis work.

Un ordre pour lequel les vies palestiniennes sont sacrifiables, comme celles de nombreuses victimes de l’inaction climatique à travers le monde : détruire la Palestine c’est détruire la Terre.

Consisting of selected technical contributions to the European Project COST252 (Evolution of Satellite Personal Communications from 2nd to Future Generation Systems) this volume provides many innovative results which can be the basis for new global (mobile /terrestrial/satellite) telecommunications systems providing multimedia services at high rates.

The NATO-sponsored Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on "Emerging Applications of Vacuum-Arc-Produced Plasma, Ion and Electron Beams" was held at the Baikal Dunes Resort, Lake Baikal, Russia, on June 24-28, 2002. Participants were from NATO countries Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Turkey and the USA, and from NATO partner countries Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. The goal of the meeting was to bring together researchers involved in novel applications of plasmas and ion/electron beams formed from vacuum arc discharges, especially in less conventional or emerging scientific areas such as new perspectives on vacuum arc phenomena, generation of high charge state metal ions, heavy ion accelerator injection, multi-layer thin film synthesis, biological applications, generation of high-current high-density electron beams, and more. It was our hope that the meeting would engender new research directions and help to establish new collaborations, prompt new thinking for research and technology applications of vacuum arc science, and in general foster development of the field. The Workshop was a great success, as was clearly felt by all of the attendees. The small number of participants at the meeting tended to encourage a high level of closeness and communication between individuals. The location, a small resort on the western side of Lake Baikal in the vicinity of Irkutsk, was ideal - the isolated location, small and quiet, was excellent and was most conducive to discussion among individuals and small groups quite apart from the formal presentations.

Computational methods in Power Systems require significant inputs from diverse disciplines, such as data base structures, numerical analysis etc. Strategic decisions in sparsity exploitation and algorithm design influence large-scale simulation and high-speed computations. Selection of programming paradigm shapes the design, its modularity and reusability. This has a far reaching effect on software maintenance.

In a world of almost permanent and rapidly increasing electronic data availability, techniques of filtering, compressing, and interpreting this data to transform it into valuable and easily comprehensible information is of utmost importance. One key topic in this area is the capability to deduce future system behavior from a given data input.

Sensors are the key to life and survival - and to the success of modern technology. Nature has provided living creatures with a wealth of sensors for a variety of measurands, such as light, sound, temperature, speed, motion, distance, force, pressure, acceleration, odor and so on - sensors, whose performance and specifications have often not been matched yet by man-made devices. Even at today's high level of electronics and information technology, sensors remain the crucial and decisive interface needed to reliably relate phenomena occurring in the environment to corresponding electric signals that can be processed to obtain the desired information and subsequent correct reaction of systems. Although the literature on sensors is extremely vast, there is one type of sensors which so far has received little attention: the piezoelectric sensor. Certainly, most handbooks on measurement mention briefly this type of sensor yet there is not a single book in the English language dedicated entirelyto piezoelectric sensors and giving a reasonably complete overview. There are only the books by [Gohlke 1955 and 1959] and [Tichy and Gautschi 1980], all in German.

Among analog-to-digital converters, the delta-sigma modulator has cornered the market on high to very high resolution converters at moderate speeds, with typical applications such as digital audio and instrumentation. Interest has recently increased in delta-sigma circuits built with a continuous-time loop filter rather than the more common switched-capacitor approach. Continuous-time delta-sigma modulators offer less noisy virtual ground nodes at the input, inherent protection against signal aliasing, and the potential to use a physical rather than an electrical integrator in the first stage for novel applications like accelerometers and magnetic flux sensors. More significantly, they relax settling time restrictions so that modulator clock rates can be raised. This opens the possibility of wideband (1 MHz or more) converters, possibly for use in radio applications at an intermediate frequency so that one or more stages of mixing might be done in the digital domain.