Abstract
An evanescent wave fiber optic sensor for detection of E. coli outer membranes proteins (EcOMPs) is presented. The sensing probe is achieved by the functionalization of a Long Period Grating (LPG) inscribed in a single mode fiber (SMF28) with poly-L-lysine (PLL) resulting in a label-free configuration capable of specific recognition of EcOMPs in waters due to the resonance wavelength shift variation owing to refractive index changes of the medium (approximate to 100 nm/RIU). The sensing head was characterized and tested against EcOMP and applied to spiked environmental water samples. The sensor displayed linear responses in the range of 1x10(-10) M to 1x10(-8) M EcOMP and is regenerated (under low pH conditions) and the deviation of the subsequent detection was less than 0.1 %.

Abstract
Althought optimistic concurrency control protocols have increasingly been used in distributed database management systems, they imply a trade-off between the number of transactions that can be executed concurrently, hence, the peak throughput, and transactions aborted due to conflicts. We propose a novel optimistic concurrency control mechanism that controls transaction abort rate by minimizing the time during which transactions are vulnerable to abort, without compromising throughput. Briefly, we throttle transaction execution with an adaptive mechanism based on the state of the transaction queues while allowing out-of-order execution based on expected transaction latency. Preliminary evaluation shows that this provides a substantial improvement in committed transaction throughput. Copyright 2013 ACM.

Abstract
Sound morphing is a transformation that gradually blurs the distinction between the source and target sounds. For musical instrument sounds, the morph must operate across timbre dimensions to create the auditory illusion of hybridmusical instruments. The ultimate goal of sound morphing is to perform perceptually linear transitions, which requires an appropriate model to represent the sounds being morphed and an interpolation function to obtain intermediate sounds. Typically, morphing techniques directly interpolate the parameters of the sound model without considering the perceptual impact or evaluating the results. Perceptual evaluations are cumbersome and not always conclusive. In this work, we seek parameters of a sound model that favor linear variation of perceptually motivated temporal and spectral features used to guide the morph towards more perceptually linear results. The requirement of linear variation of feature values gives rise to objective evaluation criteria for sound morphing. We investigate several spectral envelope morphing techniques to determine which spectral representation renders the most linear transformation in the spectral shape feature domain. We found that interpolation of line spectral frequencies gives the most linear spectral envelope morphs. Analogously, we study temporal envelope morphing techniques and we concluded that interpolation of cepstral coefficients results in the most linear temporal envelope morph.

Abstract
Traditional follow-up of patients with cardiovascular devices is still an activity that, in addition to serving an increasing population, requires a considerable amount of time and specialized human and technical resources. Our aim was to evaluate the applicability of the CareLink (R) (Medtronic, Minneapolis, MN) remote monitoring system as a complementary option to the follow-up of patients with implanted devices, between in-office visits. Evaluated outcomes included both clinical (event detection and time to diagnosis) and nonclinical (patient's satisfaction and economic costs) aspects. An observational, longitudinal, prospective study was conducted with patients from a Portuguese central hospital sampled by convenience during 1 week (43 patients). Data were collected in four moments: two in-office visits and two remote evaluations, reproducing 1 year of clinical follow-up. Data sources included health records, implant reports, initial demographic data collection, follow-up printouts, and a questionnaire. After selection criteria were verified, 15 patients (11 men [73%]) were included, 63.4 +/- 10.8 years old, re-presenting 14.0 +/- 6.3 implant months. Clinically, 15 events were detected (9 by remote monitoring and 6 by patient-initiated activation), of which only 9 were symptomatic. We verified that remote monitoring could detect both symptomatic and asymptomatic events, whereas patient-initiated activation only detected symptomatic ones (p = 0.028). Moreover, the mean diagnosis anticipation in patients with events was approximately 58 days (p < 0.001). In nonclinical terms, we observed high or very high satisfaction (67% and 33%, respectively) with using remote monitoring technology, but still 8 patients (53%) stated they preferred in-office visits. Finally, the introduction of remote monitoring technology has the ability to reduce total follow-up costs for patients by 25%. We conclude that the use of this system constitutes a viable complementary option to the follow-up of patients with implantable devices, between in-office visits.

Abstract
Dermoscopy (dermatoscopy or epiluminescence microscopy) is a non-invasive diagnostic technique for the in vivo observation of pigmented skin lesions used in dermatology. There is currently a great interest in the prospects of automatic image analysis methods for dermoscopy, both to provide quantitative information about a lesion, which can be of relevance for the dermatologist, and as a stand-alone early warning tool. The standard approach in automatic dermoscopic image analysis has usually three stages: (i) segmentation, (ii) feature extraction and selection and (iii) lesion classification. This study evaluates the potential of an alternative approach based on the Menzies method - presence of one or more of six colour classes, indicating that the lesion should be considered a potential melanoma. This method does not require stages (i) and (ii) - lesion segmentation and feature extraction. The identification of colour classes in dermoscopic images is a subjective task, which poses great challenges for an automatic implementation. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the potential discrimination between the six Menzies colour classes in dermoscopic red, blue and green (RGB) images. The Jeffries-Matusita and transformed divergence separability distances were used to evaluate the colour class separability for an experimental evaluation with 28 dermoscopic images. Considering the skin as an additional class, an image intensity calibration was applied to the data-set, which improved the rate of separable colour class pairs. A nonlinear cluster transformation allowed almost the total separation of each colour class in the feature space. Several neural networks in competition were used as classifiers, which lead to loss of arbitrariness and perfect knowledge of each cluster surface. The discrimination between the various Menzies colour classes in dermoscopic RGB images achieved 93% of sensibility, 62% of specificity and 74% of accuracy (averaged measures). These results indicate that it might be possible to evaluate a lesion based on the presence of Menzies colours in dermoscopic images, mimicking the human diagnosis. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Abstract
The most relevant aspects related to the phase mask dithering/moving method for the fabrication of complex Bragg grating designs are reviewed. Details for experimental implementation of this technique is presented, including theoretical analysis of the calibration functions for the correct dither/displacement. Results from tailored Bragg grating structures fabricated by this method are shown. Apodized Bragg gratings with modeled spatial profiles were implemented, resulting in side mode suppression levels of more than 20 dB in gratings showing transmission filtering level higher than 30 dB. Chirped gratings with the spectral bandwidth up to 4 nm, p-shift and sampled Bragg gratings with equalized peaks equally spaced by 0.8 nm (100 GHz) were also fabricated. © 2012 The Author(s).