Abstract
This chapter consists of a literature review regarding the use of ontologies on virtual environments and the procedural modelling solutions that have been proposed with focus in two approaches: (1) the production of virtual hollow buildings, uniquely composed by outer facades; and (2) the production of virtual traversable buildings, with interior divisions included. The integration of ontologies and semantics in procedural modelling is also addressed in each one of the referred approaches. © The Author(s) 2016.

Abstract
Social media is strongly present in people's everyday life and Twitter is one example that stands out. The data within these types of services can be analyzed in order to discover useful knowledge. One interesting approach is to use data mining techniques to perceive hidden behaviours and patterns. The primary focus of this paper is the identification of patterns of retweets and to understand how information spreads over time in Twitter. The aim of this work lies in the adaptation of the GetMove tool, that is capable of extracting spatio-temporal pattern trajectories, and TweeProfiles, that identifies tweet profiles regarding several dimensions: spatial, temporal, social and content. We hope that the more flexible clustering strategy from TweeProfiles will enhance the results extracted by GetMove. We study the application of said mechanism to one case study and developed a visualization tool to interpret the results.

Abstract
Massive changes in electricity markets have occurred during the last years, as a consequence of the massive introduction of renewable energies. These changes have led to a restructuring process that had an impact throughout the electrical industry. The case of the electricity markets is a relevant example, where new forms of trading emerged and new market entities were created. With these changes, the complexity of electricity markets increased as well, which brought out the need from the involved players for adequate support to their decision making process. Artificial intelligence plays an important role in the development of these tools. Multi-agent systems, in particular, have been largely explored by stakeholders in the sector. Artificial intelligence also provides intelligent solutions for optimization, which enable troubleshooting in a short time and with very similar results to those achieved by deterministic techniques, which usually result from very high execution times. The work presented in this paper aims at solving a portfolio optimization problem for electricity markets participation, using an approach based on NPSO-LRS (New Particle Swarm Optimization with Local Random Search). The proposed method is used to assist decisions of electricity market players. © 2016 IEEE.

Abstract

Abstract
The compilation of high-level languages, such as software programming languages, to FPGAs is of paramount importance for the mainstream adoption of FPGAs. An efficient compilation process will improve designer productivity and will make the use of FPGA technology viable for software programmers. When targeting the hardware resources provided by FPGAs, a compilation process usually requires a stage known as High-Level Synthesis (HLS) which is responsible for generating application specific hardware architectures from the input source code or from an intermediate representation of the input application. This chapter briefly describes HLS and its main processing stages. The chapter provides the indispensable knowledge for readers who want to follow the remaining chapters of this book.

Abstract
Core diameter mismatch structures are proposed and experimentally investigated for curvature and vibration sensing. Two configurations are suggested, one approach uses a structure formed by splicing an uncoated short section of multimode fiber between two standard single-mode fibers (SMFs) single-mode-multimode-single-mode (SMS), combined to a fiber optical mirror at its end, and the other approach uses a structure made by splicing a section of SMF between two multimode fibers (SMSMS). In the curvature analysis, the proposed SMS sensor generates the destructive interference patterns when it is bent, varying only the attenuation of the optical signal without wavelength shifts. The SMSMS vibration sensor proved to be suitable to monitor very low frequencies such as 0.1 Hz. The configuration of the proposed sensors presents several interesting features, such as easy fabrication, low cost, high efficiency, and high sensitivity. These advantages make such sensors very useful in a wide range of applications, for instance, structural health monitoring.