Abstract
It is now more than a decade since distributed generation (DG) began to excite major interest amongst electric power system planners and operators, energy policy makers and regulators as well as developers. This paper presents an overview of the key issues concerning the integration of distributed generation into electric power systems that are of most interest today. The main drivers behind the focus on DG integration, especially of the renewable type, in many countries around the world are discussed. A synopsis of the main challenges that must be overcome in the process is presented. Particular emphasis is placed on the need to move away from the fit and forget. approach of connecting DG to electric power systems to a policy of integrating DG into power system planning and operation through active management of distribution networks and application of other novel concepts. The paper also analyses the repercussions in transmission system operation and expansion that result from the connection of large amounts of DG of different energy conversion systems focusing on issues related with impacts in steady state operation, contingency analysis, protection coordination as well as dynamic behaviour analysis. A discussion on the possibility of provision of ancillary services by DG is also included. Some results from studies performed in the interconnected Portuguese transmission system are presented and discussed. Some of the opportunities that could be exploited in support of the integration and hence greater penetration of DG into electric power systems are also explored.

Abstract
The influence of reduced feedback from the cutaneous receptors in the hindpaw in rat locomotion is still unclear. To evaluate this question., we conducted a detailed hindlimb kinematic analysis in animals, which suffered complete loss of thermal sensation. Two-dimensional hindlimb kinematics, temporal and spatial measurements. and walking track analysis were performed in rats before and during hypothermic anesthesia. The walking velocity. duration of the step cycle and stance phase, and stride length between the two testing conditions were statistically indistinguishable. Swing phase duration was significantly decreased during sensory loss. Analysis of angular motion revealed an increased hip and knee extension and an ankle joint with increased flexion during the step cycle under plantar anesthesia. Also after plantar cooling, the hip and knee angular velocity was significantly affected along the step cycle. The remarkably geometric similarity of the angle-angle plots obtained in our experiments reflected an interjoint coordination: however. the interpretation of the cyclogram perimeter revealed a larger excursion by the ankle and hip in their respective joint spaces in rats deprived of sensation. Examination of the horizontal position of the ankle with respect to the hip and the extension before toe-off revealed no major changes. whereas, there was a slight decrease in distance of the hip to the ground during sensory loss. Also, the walking tracks revealed a significant functional deficit following reduced cutaneous information of the plantar aspect of the hindpaw. We therefore conclude that sensory feedback from the hindpaw is important in the maintenance of normal rat locomotion.

Abstract
Protein sequence motifs describe, through means of enhanced regular expression syntax, regions of amino acids that have been conserved across several functionally related proteins. These regions may have an implication at the structural and functional level of the proteins. Sequence motif analysis can bring significant improvements towards a better understanding of the protein sequence-structure-function relation. In this chapter, we review the subject of mining deterministic motifs from protein sequence databases. We start by giving a formal definition of the different types of motifs and the respective specificities. Then, we explore the methods available to evaluate the quality and interest of such patterns. Examples of applications and motif repositories are described. We discuss the algorithmic aspects and different methodologies for motif extraction. A brief description on how sequence motifs can be used to extract structural level information patterns is also provided. © 2008, IGI Global.

Abstract
Classification plays an important role in medicine, especially for medical diagnosis. Health applications often require classifiers that minimize the total cost, including misclassifications costs and test costs. In fact, there are many reasons for considering costs in medicine, as diagnostic tests are not free and health budgets are limited. Our aim with this work was to define, implement and test a strategy for cost-sensitive learning. We defined an algorithm for decision tree induction that considers costs, including test costs, delayed costs and costs associated with risk. Then we applied our strategy to train and evaluate cost-sensitive decision trees in medical data. Built trees can be tested following some strategies, including group costs, common costs, and individual costs. Using the factor of "risk" it is possible to penalize invasive or delayed tests and obtain decision trees patient-friendly.

Abstract
This paper describes an approach to fraud detection targeted at applications where this task is followed by a posterior human analysis of the signaled frauds. This is a frequent setup on fraud detection applications (e.g. credit card misuse, telecom fraud, etc.). In real world applications this human inspection is usually constrained by limited resources. In this context, standard fraud detection methods that simply tag each case as being (or not) a possible fraud are not very useful if the number of tagged cases surpasses the available resources. A much more useful approach is to produce a ranking of fraud that can be used to optimize the available inspection resources by first addressing the cases with higher rank. In this paper we propose a method that produces such ranking. The method is based on the output of standard agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithms, resulting in no significant additional computational costs. Our comparisons with a state of the art method provide convincing evidence of the competitiveness of our proposal.

Abstract
A compact sensor based on step-changed are-induced long-period fiber gratings was implemented to discriminate between temperature and strain. The proposed sensor consists of a single long-period grating with two sections written consecutively in the SMF-28 fiber using the electric are discharge technique. The two sections have the same period but different fabrication parameters. The operation of the sensor relies on the existence of a difference between the values of temperature and strain sensitivity of two neighboring resonances observed in the spectrum of the step-changed grating. The temperature and strain resolutions obtained for the sensor are 0.2 degrees C and 35 mu epsilon, respectively. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.