Abstract
The WaveScalar is the first DataFlow Architecture that can efficiently provide the sequential memory semantics required by imperative languages. This work presents a speculative memory disambiguation mechanism for this architecture, the Transaction WaveCache. Our mechanism maintains the execution order of memory operations within blocks of code, called Waves, but adds the ability to speculatively execute, our-of-order operations front different waves. This mechanism is inspired by progress in supporting Transactional Memories. Waves are considered as atomic regions and executed as nested transactions. Wave that have finished the execution of all their memory operations are committed, as soon as the previous waves are also committed. If a hazard is detected in a speculative Wave, all the following Waves (children) are aborted and re-executed. We evaluated the Transactional WaveCache oil a set of benchmarks from Spec 2000, Mediabench and Mibench (telecomm). Speedups ranging from 1.31 to 2.24 (related to the original WaveScalar) where observed when the benchmark doesn't perform lots of emulated function calls or access memory very often. Low speedups of 1.1 to slowdowns of 0.96 were observed when the opposite happens or when the memory concurrency was high.

Abstract
Femtosecond Titanium: sapphire lasers can deliver high average power broadband spectra in a high quality beam, being therefore an optical source of choice for high-resolution optical coherence tomography (OCT) at high acquisition rates. We present a brief tutorial on the basic physics behind the operation and design of Kerr-lens modelocked lasers, where the high peak powers associated with femtosecond pulses give rise to nonlinear optical effects that play a major role in the laser operation itself and strongly influence the output spectrum. Additional nonlinear devices, in particular photonic crystal fibers (PCFs), can also be directly pumped with the generated femtosecond pulses to further extend the spectral range of the laser output, both in terms of bandwidth and center wavelength. Two specific laser systems employing different technologies for intracavity dispersion compensation (intracavity prisms in one case, and octave-spanning double-chirped mirrors in the other) will be described, and the corresponding advantages for OCT, namely the maximum achievable resolution and the applicability of spectral tuning and shaping techniques, will be briefly discussed.

Abstract
This paper presents a Genetic Algorithm approach with Harmonic Structure Evolution for Polyphonic Music Transcription. Automatic Music Transcription is a very complex problem that continues waiting for solutions due to the harmonic complexity of musical sounds. More traditional approaches try to extract the information directly from the audio stream, but by taking into account that a polyphonic audio stream is no more than a combination of several musical notes, music transcription can be addressed as a search space problem where the goal is to find the sequence of notes that best models our audio signal. By taking advantage of the genetic algorithms to explore large search spaces we present a new approach to the music transcription problem. In order to reduce the harmonic overfitting several techniques were used including the encoding of the harmonic structure of the internal synthesizer inside the individual's genotype as a way to evolve towards the instrument played on the original audio signal. The results obtained in polyphonic piano transcriptions show the feasibility of the approach.

Abstract

Abstract
The significant increase of production of energy from renewable sources led to the necessity of developing new ways of exploration of the power systems. The evaluation of the intermittent of the renewable generation, which characterizes some of the renewable sources, such as wind power, becomes very important to assess its impact on the generation reliability of power systems. This paper studies and analyses the reliability impact of a Portuguese wind farm in the power system using a computer model which represents the Portuguese wind farm by a Markov process. The probabilistic model combines the stochastic characteristics of wind speed with the characteristics of the wind turbines. The transition between the operative and failed states of the wind turbines, characterized by failure and repair rates, are combined with wind behaviour to allow the calculation of some performance indices used on the analysis of the wind power output expectation of the Portuguese wind farm. Some results obtained with the model applied to a Portuguese wind farm are presented. The results show the modelling of the mind form in reliability studies and the use of the model to evaluate the generation states and their probabilities, allied to several reliability indices.

Abstract
A new variety of nanoparticles showing unique and characteristic optical properties, appeals for its use as contrast agents in medical imaging. Gold nanospheres, nanorods and nanoshells with a silica core are new forms of promising contrast agents which can be tuned to specific absorption or scattering characteristics within the near-infrared (NIR) spectrum ranging from 650 - 1300 nm. They have the ability to be used for both image enhancement and as photosensitive markers due to their well designable scattering and absorption properties. Furthermore, their strong optical absorption permits treatment of malignant cells by photoablation processes, induced when heating them with a matched light source. Differential absorption optical coherence tomography (DA-OCT) allows for the detection and depth resolved concentration measurement of such markers. So far, reports on DA-OCT systems used A-scan based imaging systems to assess depth resolved information about the absorption properties and the concentration of a chemical compound. En-face OCT (B(T) or C(T) scan based) images allow for better depth localization and a depth resolved concentration measurement of the compound under investigation. For this aim, we evaluate the suitability of a multiscan time-domain OCT set-up, compatible with different light sources providing different wavelengths and bandwidths in the NIR, to perform differential absorption OCT measurements, using gold nanorods as the contrast agent.