Proceedings of the 22nd Course of the International School of Quantum Electronics, held 27 November-2 December 1997, in Erice, Italy. In recent years, fiber optical sensors and optical microsystems have assumed a significant role in sensing and measurement of many kinds. These optical techniques are utilised in a wide range of fields, including biomedicine, environmental sensing, mechanical and industrial measurement, and art preservation. This volume, an up-to-date survey of optical sensors and optical microsystems, aims at combining a tutorial foundation with analysis of current research in this area, and an extensive coverage of both technology and applications.

The book explores various aspects of existing and emerging fiber and waveguide optics sensing and imaging technologies including recent advances in nanobiophotonics. The focus is both on fundamental and applied research as well as on applications in civil engineering, biomedical sciences, environment, security and defence. The book aims to provide a reference of state-of-the-art overviews covering a variety of topics on the interface of engineering and biomedical sciences.

Fibre Optics has gained prominence in: telecommunications, data transmission and distribution, cable television networks, sensing and control, light probing and instrumentation. The 1990's shows an increased expansion of optical fibre networks which respond to the rapid growth on a world scale of long distance trunk lines combined with a family of emerging optical based services in which fibre-to-the-home will have the greatest impact. There is already evidence that optical communications are moving toward higher bit-rates, wavelength transparency and irrelevance of signal formats. The rate of change in fibre optics and the emergence of new services will be a mere consequence of economics. The actual increasing of cost and the demand for high-date-rates or large bandwidth per transmission channels, and the lack of available space in the congested conduits in urban areas, strongly favour the technological change to fibre optics. The recognised advantages of fibre optic technologies and the unchallenged potential to respond to future needs requires the inclusion of fibre optics networking into new installations. Concomitantly, current progress in the field of optical fibres (optical fibre amplifiers, optical fibre switching, WDM, fibre gratings, etc.) unfold major technical advances and greater flexibility in the designs and engineering of networks, optical fibre components and instrumentation. The explosion of growth in fibre sensors, fibre probes and the myriad of fibre based components shows that we are only using a fraction of optical fibre potential.

Advances in reactor designs, materials and human-machine interfaces guarantee safety and reliability of emerging reactor technologies, eliminating possibilities for high-consequence human errors as those which have occurred in the past. New instrumentation and control technologies based in digital systems, novel sensors and measurement approaches facilitate safety, reliability and economic competitiveness of nuclear power options. Autonomous operation scenarios are becoming increasingly popular to consider for small modular systems. This book belongs to a series of books on nuclear power published by InTech. It consists of four major sections and contains twenty-one chapters on topics from key subject areas pertinent to instrumentation and control, operation reliability, system aging and human-machine interfaces. The book targets a broad potential readership group - students, researchers and specialists in the field - who are interested in learning about nuclear power.

The 35 papers in this volume were presented at the Industrial and Environmental Monitors and Biosensors Symposium, January 1999. They are divided into nine sessions addressing subjects such as: sensors for energy industry; sensors for engine industry; and sensors for materials evaluation.