First of all, I would like to introduce the Slovenian education program which we have in our schools. Most of you probably do not even realize that Slovenia's school system is at the bottom of the ladder where innovations in computer science and electrical engineering are concerned. This is especially the case in primary school, because children don't have lessons in computer science, or anything similar. Even simple things such as typing are not even considered, where, for instance, in american schools this has been taught for at least ten years. The main stress is on the mathematics, the main language in our country, this is of course Slovenian, and English. This means that children get knowledge only from these subjects, but they don't know how to do anything useful on a computer, be it write a letter, put up an internet page, or even learn to type correctly (most young people who can type fast learned because of things like IRC or instant messaging). The first thing which will to be done in the future is to introduce children to computer science. And to do so in a fun, interesting manner. This means not to bombard them with facts and figures about how computers are made and how they came to be, but just to teach them to use the computer as they would use any other tool.

Then there is secondary school, or high school, where most high schools only have one year of so-called 'information technology'. This is pretty close to useless, because those students which do not use computers often are bored by all of the facts and figures (because they just do not care that CPU means central processing unit...) while those students who use computers often already know most of what is taught, and they become bored. Again, students are not taught anything really useful, some basic DOS commands (as if any high-schooler needs to know DOS commands), and a bit about Microsoft Word (as if it is the only existing word processor). Then there are some technical schools which have computer lessons, but not enough of them. They usually have only one year of these lessons, and they are not much better than the lessons at the regular high schools. Sometimes it seems that schools have no interest in educating the professors in computer science! The professors only know what they were taught, which is pretty much out-dated. Maybe they read a third of the manual for the new version of Windows, but that is all. On one hand this is logical, after all, if they were any good at computer science, they would not be teaching but rather working as programmers or system administrators. But in any case, their attitude is all wrong.

So if it would be at all possible in the near future for the school system to change, we would all benefit. Most people in Slovenia would like to see something new being taught in our schools, would like to see our schools move with the times, so to speak. We all know, being future engineers, about how important computer science and electrical engineering are. These two subjects are going to be popular in the future, and not just popular, they will be crucial. But unfortunately, the decisions are still up to the politicians.

The first 'good' thing is the university, because here you can get all the knowledge you need about computer scientist or electrical engineering. But at the university, most of the knowledge you gain is theoretical in nature. This means that the students understand a lot of complicated mathematics, but they couldn't write any complicated program in C. You have a semester of C programming, of course, but not enough to be able to really put it to good use. The same goes for something like assembler programming. When the students finish their diplomas and get a job, they usually spend a couple of months just learning how to do their job, be it programming microprocessors or designing applications.

If you would like to innovate, you would have to do it yourself, the school system in Slovenija is still stuck in the 80's. As you saw the innovations in computer science and electrical engineering in Slovenia aren't so good. But on the other hand, our engineers have excellent backround knowledge of many things, not just their chosen field. We have good engineers in telecommunications, automatics and robotics, electronics, power engineering, .... Because big companies need good engineers they hire students even before the students finish studying. The companies give students grants to study, as long as they come and work for them once they finish their diplomas.

Apache is one of the most popular web servers available today, not only because it is free and open-source, but because of its ability to serve almost any needs by making only a few changes in the configuration files. The reason for this is a modular architecture.

Modular programming
Without some guiding principle of organization, Larger programs can become difficult to understand and impossible to maintain. Modular programming is one way of managing the complexity.
Modular programming groups related sets of functions together into a module. The module is divided into an interface and an implementation. The module exports the interface; client's modules import the interface so that they can access the functions in the module. The implementation of the module is private and hidden from the view of clients. The division of programs into modules is a powerful organizing principle for designing non-trivial programs. Modules provide abstraction, encapsulation, and information-hiding, making the large-scale structure of a program easier to understand. Careful design of modules also promotes software reuse.
The programmer using a module sees the module's interface definition. On the other side of this interface is the module's implementation. The programmer should not use anything in the implementation that is not defined in the interface. Ideally, the module should ensure that the programmer cannot access the internals of the implementation. Such information-hiding is the only way that an implementation can protect the integrity of its data and guarantee the module's correctness. Hiding the implementation also allows an improved implementation to be substituted without affecting anything outside the module.

Modules for Apache
Apache is designed to be very flexible, so you can make it do whatever you want. Of course this is possible with any open source software, but in this case you don't need to change the existing code, thanks to a well formed API. In fact the base package of Apache is barely able to serve files at all. The power of Apache lies in its modules. Starting from basic authentication to secure socket layer and dynamic web content creation is only possible by adding additional modules.
Apache's API makes it possible to change the processing of a request from the first received to the last sent packet e.g. you are able to define a different communication protocol as HTTPS in mod_ssl or compress downloaded files on the fly to reduce network traffic.
And Apache also enables you to configure your modules differently for each virtual host and/or requested directory by using the standard configuration file httpd.conf.
To start writing your first module you just have to install apache together with its devel package on your Linux distribution.

More about the API and writing the modules in the presentation…

The ad-hoc networks are multi-hop self-organising computer networks without real infrastructure.
In a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) the nodes are mobile devices and can move about arbitrarily. However, generally they are working as fixed APs (access points) while working. The network must be self-adapting to the connectivity and propagation conditions, and also to the traffic and user mobility pattern.
Each node in a MANET will logically consists of a router that may have multiple hosts and that also may have multiple wireless communications devices or interfaces to other nodes. In principle, the network can be a standalone network. However, this offers only a limited functionality because of scaling problems. A usable network must be globally connected through one or more fixed networks. The alternatives range from using only fixed routable addresses in the ad hoc network to several tunnel based schemes including Virtual Private Network (VPN), Mobile IP and Network Address Translation (NAT) supported by catalogue systems.

The IETF working group on mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) develops routing protocols optimized for different conditions. Routing protocols can be divided into reactive and proactive protocols. Reactive protocols, such as AODV and DSR, start route determination only on demand. This means that route information may not be available when a route request is received, and thus there can be significant delay before a route to the wanted destination is determined. Also, there will be some control traffic when doing route discovery. Proactive protocols, such as OLSR and DSDV attempt to establish all routes within the network. This means that when a route is needed, the route is already known and can be immediately used.

While the technology (802.11b) is getting cheaper, more and more community founded and administrated radio network can be found. These are also ad-hoc networks. (There are no static rules, routing, and the users are not really permanent.)
There are some new implementations from these for mesh networking.
Mesh networking is a way to route data, voice and instructions between nodes. It allows for continuous connections and reconfiguration around blocked paths by "hopping" from node to node until a connection can be established.
Mesh network is a robust, reliable technology: the network can still operate even when a node breaks down or a connection goes bad.
Wireless mesh networking is mesh networking implemented over a Wireless LAN.
Networking infrastructure is therefore decentralized and inexpensive, as each node need only transmit as far as the next node. Extra capacity can be installed by simply adding more nodes. In this technology ad-hoc routing protocols are used able to handle direct mobile stations. In the mesh there are mobile clients and nodes with fixed connection also. Each node is able to act as a client or a repeater- to transmit data from nearby nodes to peers that are too far away to reach, resulting in a network that can span a large distance, especially over rough or difficult terrain.
These networks are working mainly in research labs. However where ad-hoc networks has been used until recently, these mesh-network technology could be also used.

• Military and space systems
• safety servers, catastrophe prevention,
• events with huge crowd,
• home network (intelligent house),
• VAN, BAN
• Sensor networks, low speed-networks

Intel has just announced its new WiFi standard called 802.11s. This new technology promises broader bandwidth and higher redundancy with easier configurability.
W. Steve Conner, Intel's WiFi engineer and his team developed the new standard. The recent mesh systems were not usable for home networks or smaller LANs. The new technology solved this problem. It is based on existing transmitting protocols (a/b/g) and on the security system of the 802.11i. In the meantime it is compatible with the earlier standards.

The WiFi nodes are automatically recognize, identify and connect each other and set up the most optimized routing for the data-transmission.
In QoS development the new thing is that the video stream can be transmitted separately from the data needed for the web connection.
This self-configuring network makes easier to set up the networks and the further maintenance of the system.

One of the best existing optimized routing protocol for mesh networks is:
OLSR is a pro-active routing protocol for MANETs.

The Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR). It operates as a table driven, proactive protocol, i.e., exchanges topology information with other nodes of the network regularly. Each node selects a set of its neighbor nodes as "multipoint relays" (MPR). In OLSR, only nodes, selected as such MPRs, are responsible for forwarding control traffic, intended for diffusion into the entire network. MPRs provide an efficient mechanism for flooding control traffic by reducing the number of transmissions required.
OLSR is developed to work independently from other protocols.

Future concepts of the Mobile Ad-hoc networks, are the Mobile Mesh, MIT roofnet and the CUWiN.
MANET is on the run, more user makes topic popular in the Info-communication sector. New aspects are the security and QoS problems for increasing number of users.
Mobile Mesh runs on Linux operating system. Consists of three different protocol (link discovery, routing and border discovery). With this two node who cannot see each other is able to communicate without an AP, through a node working as a repeater in between.
These Ad-hoc Networks are also used in space-research recently, because of mobility and robustness. Mesh would be more flexible for this territory also.
The MIT roofnet project covers the whole area of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with 802.11 technology and their self-developed ad-hoc routing protocol.

Other interesting research is the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN), they use and develop the mesh in a new aspect. To avoid the scaling problems they use the Hazy Sighted Link State (HSLS) routing which has the least overhead of the solutions available for mobile network. This algorithm helps to select the least busy route after the number of dropped/redirected packets (datagrams).
They try to invent and develop new possibilities like: controlling radio transmission capacity, using smart antennas.

For quite a long time the vision of space exploration has been keeping the people exited. The use of innovative robotic systems has already solved a couple of problems and is still evolving.

Robots can be classified based on their mobility. The manipulators have a fix base, and can operate on a limited workspace. Their mobility comes from their structure. Robot vehicles are able to move on two-dimensional surfaces, using wheels. Walking robots are designed to move through rough terrains using artificial legs.

The most famous robotic arm used in space is the Canadarm (or Space Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (RMS)). The 15-meter-long arm has contributed to the success of several space missions. The Canadarm-2 (or Mobile Servicing System (MSS)) has become the primary robotic arm of the International Space Station. It consists of several multifunctional parts and supports the assembly and the maintenance of ISS. It is able to handle large payloads and Orbital Replacement Unit, and to support Extra Vehicle Activities and transportation. During the planning phase, many ideas were considered to be built into the arm, to make it able to cope with unforeseeable situations.

Development of other advanced robotic arms is also in progress. JEM Remote Manipulator System is planned to be attached next year to the Japanese Experiment Module, and the European Robotic Arm is to be used on the Russian section of ISS. Further researches are in progress such as the NASA's Robonaut programme to feature end effectors based on human hand models to be capable of handling detailed and complex tasks. The design and structure of such manipulators is mainly based on the mechanism of the human arm and hand.

Arm-control is classically based on coordinates and motion is directed by their actuator's variables. The precise mapping from physical or sensory space to motor space is fundamental. Robot systems which use vision to track a target have to determine the correct mapping from the visual domain to the joints' domain. An important requirement for autonomous robotics is the ability to generate motion plans that achieve specified goals while satisfying environmental constrains. Classical control methods usually rely on a linear reference model, which causes significant error. Neural networks are essential tools for learning non-linear mappings, and can be used in adaptive nonlinear control. The adaptation of combined neural and fuzzy logic networks in high level control systems would result the rise of more human-like robotic arms with extended capabilities.

The tremendous effort invested in the development of advanced robotic arms seems to return. Space manipulators are already capable of solving several complex tasks, and the direction of further researches is clear. The aim is to invent more flexible, fully autonomous, multi-functional robotic arms to provide a reliable partner for long duration space missions. Servicing, maintaining, assembling and repairing tasks could be totally left for manipulators; and they could efficiently support the work of human crew.

Space robots may also have a future back on the Earth! The technology originally developed for space can solve various problems on the ground, producing innovative spin-offs. Many application fields can be seen for robots modeled from space manipulators. Medical surgery, waste clean ups, deep see exploration, military operations, industrial applications and many more.

Using space technology, engineers at NASA Langley Research Center have built a remotely controlled robot arm for the Federal Department of Energy to use for cleanups of contaminated sites.

With much of the same technology that went into Dextre, the Canadian MD Robotics has built a robot arm, called neuroArm, which is used to carry out brain surgery. Working on a smaller scale than the SPDM the neuroArm requires similar levels of precision, safety and user control as in space. MD Robotics also manufactures mining robots with vision systems that detect ice and chemicals from a distance, and has even sold dinosaur robots to film studios.

Advanced space manipulators have already had a bright history, and due to the ongoing development they continue their victorious march forward.

How it works, features and application in security fields.

Abstract
We are currently working on Global Positioning System Technologies, in fact our goal is to improve security into the authentication process.
We are not thinking to the GPS like the next killer technology into the authentication, but it can be a good improvement for some kind of application, total security probably doesn't exist, the authentication process has to be “smart enough” for his kind of application.

Technologies
A little overview of what GPS mean with references to its actual implementation and functionalities. The presentation will be about:

• Brief history of GPS
• How does GPS work?
• Actual application fields

Security
We think GPS technology can be useful also into security field, to do this we have studied a model that can “easily” added to a normal web browser ( like Mozilla Firefox's extension ) to let users authenticate themselves using their global position.

The Model
We are thinking to a particular porpoise GPS receiver, with some embedded extra functionalities.
We are thinking to an implementation (we hope to give a demo during the camp) where we will use a normal GPS receiver and a program to modify the data, instead of the special GPS device, this will be less secure but at least possible to develop.
We were thinking to adopt some cryptographic mechanism, but we don't have a definitive decision about the cryptographic technologies yet.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Devices) are small active or passive devices with at least an unique ID number, but most of them have readable/writable memory and some of them have the ability for dataprocessing.

I want to put the focus on the passive devices with memory. They are so called Smart Tags. They are used in manufactory, goods tracking, libaries and (some) stores. In the future they should identify every good you buy, do the billing for public transportation, identify/verify your entrance ticket or your passport.

So what are the side effects of its progress? Where are dangers for your privacy and how can you act to prevent these unwanted developments.

The majority of students in the field of Computer Science in Germany are male - no big surprise. Women form hardly 15 %. But it could be more as other European countries show.

4 years ago, the Federal Ministry for Education and Research & the federal state of Bremen started a pilot project: "Diploma in Computer Science", a degree program for women only.

No previous knowledge is required for this program, but interest and a high degree of commitment expected.

The program focuses on Software Engineering/Development:

1st and 2nd semester - basics of computer science, programming, practical course operating system, practical course computer architecture, mathematics of computer science, computer networks, database systems

3rd and 4th semester - software engineering, software ergonomics, computer science and media, computer architecture, programming practical system software, foreign language English 1, two compulsory optional subjects from the current offer of the faculty

5th semester - preparation for study abroad English 2, study abroad including 3 compulsory optional subjects from the current offer of the faculty, study abroad post-processing communication training

6th semester - project 1 und 2, computer science and society, two compulsory optional subjects from the current offer of the faculty

7th semester - internship preparation computer science and business management; internship (9 weeks), Bachelor-Thesis

Certificate - Bachelor of Science

The emphasis is put on three points:

• International orientation: taking into account globalisation and internationalisation, including a semester abroad
• Practical application: focusing on computer sciences and Society, Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction.
• Mono-educative: increase women's perspectives of a career in CS

These contents make sure that students who leave the faculty after seven semesters as a Computer Science Professional (Bachelor of Science) are not only capable of dealing with technology but also have social and intercultural competences at their disposal to be prepared for any professional demands.

Secure Shell (SSH, nowadays called Tectia) is a computer security application whose author - Tatu Ylönen - was studying computer science in Helsinki University of Technology. He released the first version in 1995, and soon founded SSH Communications Security. This presentation follows the outline rendered below:

• The layers (areas) of security in computing: assets, machinery, network, people
• The classical definitions for security: confidentiality, integrity, availability
• Basics of Secure Shell (SSH)
• who wrote it, when, and why
• what are the services SSH provides (replacing UNIX remote commands)
• RFC documents and the protocol
• modern version of Secure Shell is called Tectia
• Functionality of Secure Shell in detail
• Cryptography and practical software issues together make security
• What's wrong with TCP/IP: the threats and attack types
• Vulnerabilities in Secure Shell?
• The company: founding years, current financial status, the future

Presentation is about so called AUTT-1 robot, that is moving with four wheels. It has servo controlled laser head that is connected to PC/1041, which has QNX Neutrino as operating system.
There are gyros giving information where the robot is going and it is connected to PC/104 by CANbus (Controller area network).

With UML2 it is relatively easy to illustrate information flows and behavior of the system. For a beginner UML it might seem a little complex entity to understand, but when used correctly it can be very efficient way for development. Personally I use Rhapsody3 by I-Logix, that has support for various kind of operating systems – including Windows, QNX Neutrino4, and Linux.

After analyzing phase starts the design of the system. Designing systems can be divided into three levels of abstraction – architectural, mechanistic, and detailed design.

Architectural design considers key concepts and strategies among the large scale system. Mechanistic design is in middle level implementation and is more about some special case, e.g. Information flow between few blocks. Detailed design specifies attributes, implementation of associations, operations, etc. and is the design level that is applied in this presentation.

We have already defined requirement specification for this modeling case. It covers four different controlling modes of the laser head – straight trajectory drive, write coordinates, read coordinates, home positioning. In straight trajectory drive mode one module (active class) reads data from CAN-bus and laser head is controlled according to given coordinates. Read coordinates is used for driving head along predefined path. Write coordinates writes coordinates (received from CAN) into a file and those can be read later in Read coordinates -mode. Home positioning makes the laser head to go home position (0,0 center). All of these modes can be modeled very illustrative way with UML's statechart. While comparing the development processes between with UML and “scratch coding”, it is much more efficient and later on much more easier to modify and refine the model.

When developing a system with UML, we have to be sure that there are prerequisites ready. In practice that means drivers are fast enough (for example not too long interrupt handlers, support for different speeds of CAN) and actuators working in wanted way (trivial?).

Detailed design work in this environment begins with defining appropriate classes. Adding ports into classes/objects and connecting them via links. Classes send events through ports to other classes that reacts in some way. For example sending trajectoryDrive -event to main class makes it to get from Idle -state into TrajectoryDrive -state that has its own internal behavior.

As a conclusion UML is a formal way for modeling among others software systems. If you feel there is no solution ready for you, you can extend the usage of UML with extension mechanism that is meant to extend the semantics of UML.

Presentation is concerning a program to simulate engines which is called "GT-ISE resp. GT-Power".

It is used by engine and car manufacturers and those supliers to shorten the time of car component production (engine, turbocharcher, catalytic converter, etc)

It's a simulation program to design engines in a simple way. To precast power, torque, flow, emissions (NOx, HC, etc.), etc. as well to suport the already facturerd engine improvments.

Nowadays it has become important to be able to monitor data communication network performance in order to supply different kinds of network services, including VoIP, video streaming and other quality demanding services. "Cisco systems" has developed an embedded proactive performance monitoring technology in Cisco IOS software, which provides a scalable, effective, and low-cost solution for service level monitoring in computer networks. This technology is used my many large network service providers to ensure the SLA (Service Level Agreement) requirements.

In order to ensure the SLA requirements, a number of predefined measurements have to be done periodically in specific network places. So we need technical facilities and methodologies for making measurements, storing results into a database, comparing them together and using them then making decisions about the network development.

"Cisco systems" SAA (Service Assurance Agent) is one of the alternative network performance monitoring technologies. It is a proactive indirect technology: the "sender" device generates an artificial IP packet stream to the "responder" device. A number of parameters are calculated, and, according to the results, we can indirectly monitor the performance of all similar data packets, traveling in the network segment.

This technology can be used to measure RTT (Round Trip Time), One-way latency, Jitter (delay variation), packet loss and network service availability.

Cisco SAA technology was analyzed and examined and a lot of experiments were done in LITNET (Academic and Research Network in Lithuania) by using this technology.

But the technology itself cannot be easily used in real life situations, because it does not have a user-friendly interface and the results given are raw - they need to be processed additionally by network performance monitoring systems.

There is a number of commercial network performance monitoring systems, which are large and require a lot of technical and financial resources. They are not suitable for small and medium sized data networks, and especially for academic networks. None of them are open source and free. There was a need for a similar system, so there was created a network performance monitoring system, which uses this Cisco SAA technology to make measurements. The system is compact, created using an open source platform LINUX OS, Apache web server, MySQL DBMS. It has a user-friendly web GUI, it is easy to use, it can be used to measure RTT (Round Trip Time), One-way latency, Jitter and packet loss. It also provides a possibility to export data to other processing systems.

In this project we propose a method generating a dynamic story for a mobile tourist. The story generation is based on the position and preferences of the tourist. We suggest a database schema and an algorithm for implementing a dynamic story. The algorithm constructs a story tree containing the points of interest and the related facts. We consider the visibility area of the point of interest for selecting the initial point of interest in the dynamic story. A prototype of the dynamic story generator is implemented and the results of an empirical study are shown.

We aim at the mobile tourist who does not have a predefined path, but moves in arbitrarily chosen directions. She has a possibility to visit the points of interest (POI) in any order, without a need to specify it before starting a trip. The tourist is interested in stories about these POIs. If she is traveling alone or with a small group, it is not always convenient to hire a human guide. The purpose of the project is to make a concept of service DYNAMOTO that fulfils the wishes of the tourist. The sightseeing has to become independent on a human guide and predefined path.

The service extracts a set of facts from the database about the points of interest according to the Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates and the user preferences. Thus the fact is the atomic constituent of the story and the preferences are settings that tourist can specify, according to her wishes. The algorithm generates a dynamic story while the user is moving along the path. The story is dynamic in the sense that it is not defined in advance, but generated on the fly. It consists of a sequence of related facts sets. The sequence is obtained from a story tree constructed by the algorithm. In our service, the story is generated depending on the parameters transferred in real-time between the tourist and the provider. The service is context-aware, as it considers the current user context, in the form of preferences.

We designed the database schema and the algorithm for generating a dynamic story according to user preferences and GPS position. DYNAMOTO generates the story from the database on the fly. In the database POIs, facts, users and relations among them are stored for the future stories. The algorithm retrieves and filters POIs and facts according to the preferences of a tourist. Relations of the POIs and the facts are represented by the graphs. DFS is chosen for traversing the tree, because it is closer to natural story telling. Finally, we implemented the database and the algorithm prototype. In order to test the algorithm, we filled the database with test data and checked the logic of the system. The experiments show that the algorithm is implemented in a proper way and the story it generates is acceptable.

There are many ways to extend this project and we have a lot of plans for the future work. The first thing is to change visibility metrics by adopting it to some game graphics engine. Then we are planning to map the tourist path and the POIs location to a real world map. Thus could be other advices given and the story priorities considered. Also to add some properties to the context details, allowing more features for the user. Then we have some ideas to work on making the story coherent, by adding different criterion sorting or additional phrases to the dynamic story.

1) The characteristics and the present state of the project

A project, named "Earthquake Prediction System Based on Observing the Stress of Rocks by the Method of ULF Electric Field Measurement" is being carried out at Istanbul Technical University. The aim of this project is to collect the data of regional rock stress by using electrical measurement methods and analyzing the pattern of this collected data in order to be able to determine the anomalies related to possible earthquakes.

The project is also being supported by some other academic and scientific institutions. The study has been planned in two phases and the first phase is about forecasting the approximate place and time of earthquakes. A data collection system of 30 stations was started in the Marmara Region. However, earthquake prediction and early warning of earthquakes are two different stages of the project. If the first phase can be completed and the correlation of collected data and the earthquake occurrence proves accurate, the second phase, consisting of early warning studies will start.

In order to be able to discuss early warning, the approximate magnitude of possible earthquakes has to be determined. Even if a successful prediction system is installed in our country, where the average daily number of earthquakes with a magnitude of bigger than 2,5 is about 4, no success with early warning is possible unless the magnitude of a possible earthquake is distinguished clearly. In order to be able to consider the early warning function of the project we must await sufficient data collection. Any suspicious conditions will also be carefully evaluated throughout the study.

2) A brief summary of the study from the technical point of view

Depending upon their mineral structure, rocks consist of various quantities of piezoelectric characterized material such as quartz (SiO2). It is thought that it will be possible to observe piezoelectrically caused changes from the surface, that occur as a result of an increase in long term stress on the rocks at the fault zones and changes during the rupture period.

Greek scientists have developed a method called VAN for this purpose but no significant success has been achieved with it yet. In the VAN method the electrical potential distinction of two points on earth is being measured. Yet, the electrical characteristics of the earth not only change by seismological effects but also noticeably change due to environmental effects such as heat, humidity and pressure.

A digital measuring system, which minimizes the noise component by using a highly sensitive electronic signal processing method, was developed to be used for the project initiated at Istanbul Technical University. The data of the stations first around Istanbul and later the whole Marmara Region is being collected at a center and the patterns related to time and position are being evaluated. The plan is to gradually increase the number of stations in the Marmara Region (the area of the study) from 30 at first to 60 eventually.These types of studies take a long time as the regional mineralogical structure is varied and the earthquakes do not occur when wanted. A study that will last about 4 years is planned. Even though the records of the last one year are encouraging, the subject needs to be studied patiently for a longer time in order to be able to discuss the results of the project.

Explanation of the System's Patent Application

As is known, the very low (VLF) and ultra low (ULF) frequency electrical load emissions of the earth have been measured for two years. The measurements, taken by monopolar probes with spherical capacity are being analyzed by specially-designed signal processors and this data is being used in conjunction with the data collected prior to earthquakes which have occurred, in order to determine the approximate time and place of potential earthquakes.

A similar project was started in Greece a few years ago. Greek scientists inserted electrodes into the ground, but since the ground properties change for various reasons, the study was not successful. This project carried out by the Greek scientists, is called the VAN Method and is still ongoing. However, we provided important data on forecasting the approximate time and place of potential earthquakes using the method developed by our project group. This method has been under testing for the last two years and the measurements are being taken in the lower atmosphere, close to the earth's surface. This method was initiated five years ago and the first patent application was made on November 26, 1999. The current system was optimized by means of the size and location of the probe and is still under development. We have tried more than a hundred load measurement systems which used electro-mechanical and electrical methods until the probe progressed to its present stage.

Earthquakes are a common problem for all mankind and it is of vital importance to support research activities concerning them. Our project, where the aforementioned spherical electrodes are used to measure the earth's load emissions and determine the changes that take place before earthquakes occur, has a patent application with registration number TPE 1999/02911. Changing the physical dimensions of equipment using the same method does not necessarily change the method itself. Thus, any kind of similar or imitated usage is subject to our license. Any local or foreign person or association should apply to ITU Research Fund in writing in order to obtain the licence rights. If this is not done, we will pursue the matter legally.