Abstract
Participation of consumers in Demand Response (DR) programs improves system stability and reliability as well as market efficiency. Retailers and distributors purchase DR to advance business and system reliability, respectively. Meanwhile, large consumers, Distribution System Operators (DSOs), Load Service Entities (LSEs), and DR aggregators sell DR to increase their own profits. In this context, DR aggregators are key elements of power systems that enhance the participation of consumers in electricity markets. These market participants can negotiate their aggregated DR with other market players in Demand Response eXchange (DRX) markets, and participate in the energy and ancillary service markets. Hence, this paper proposes a stochastic model to optimize the performance of a DR aggregator to take part in the day-ahead energy, ancillary services and intraday DRX markets. In order to mitigate the negative impacts of uncertainties, Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) is also incorporated to the proposed model. Numerical studies indicate that the proposed model for DR aggregator can arrange its offering/bidding strategies to participate in the mentioned markets simultaneously. © 2016 IEEE.

Abstract
Private functional encryption guarantees that not only the information in ciphertexts is hidden but also the circuits in decryption tokens are protected. A notable use case of this notion is query privacy in searchable encryption. Prior privacy models in the literature were fine-tuned for specific functionalities (namely, identity-based encryption and inner-product encryption), did not model correlations between ciphertexts and decryption tokens, or fell under strong uninstantiability results. We develop a new indistinguishability-based privacy notion that overcomes these limitations and give constructions supporting different circuit classes and meeting varying degrees of security. Obfuscation is a common building block that these constructions share, albeit the obfuscators necessary for each construction are based on different assumptions. In particular, we develop a composable and distributionally secure hyperplane membership obfuscator and use it to build an inner-product encryption scheme that achieves an unprecedented level of privacy, positively answering a question left open by Boneh, Raghu-nathan and Segev (ASIACRYPT 2013) concerning the extension and realization of enhanced security for schemes supporting this functionality.

Abstract
This paper presents a new concept for a deep sea lander system combining both sea bottom permanence characteristics with autonomous repositioning functionalities and efficient ascent/descent motion in the water column. The TURTLE hybrid lander is a particular type of autonomous underwater vehicle designed to act as sea bottom fixed observation node or in operations of transport equipment to the deep sea. The paper discusses the general concept of operation and applications and also presents the developed prototype. This system was developed under a dual use EDA (European Defense Agency) project and with national and European funds. Considered as one of the dual use (civil and military) success stories, the demonstrator was equipped to sensors allowing both seismographic data gathering and acoustic monitoring applications.

Abstract
A general concept on the use of computer vision in a way in which objects in the scene act as visual markers is presented, with special focus on its ability to increase the contextual awareness of a blind user with relation to its surroundings. A demonstration of the concept has been developed and is presented in this work. Having a rough estimation of user location and previous knowledge, from memory, of which visual features should be present in an environment, the recognition of visual elements in a scene validates and provides a trust indicator about the estimated spatial context of a blind user of an assistive orientation device, reducing the gap naturally imposed by his impairment. © 2016 ACM.

Abstract

Abstract
Background: Poincare delay maps are widely used in the analysis of cardiac interbeat interval (RR) dynamics. To facilitate visualization of the structure of these time series, we introduce multiscale Poincare (MSP) plots. Methods: Starting with the original RR time series, the method employs a coarse-graining procedure to create a family of time series, each of which represents the system's dynamics in a different time scale. Next, the Poincare plots are constructed for the original and the coarse-grained time series. Finally, as an optional adjunct, color can be added to each point to represent its normalized frequency. Results: We illustrate the MSP method on simulated Gaussian white and 1/f noise time series. The MSP plots of 1/f noise time series reveal relative conservation of the phase space area over multiple time scales, while those of white noise show a marked reduction in area. We also show how MSP plots can be used to illustrate the loss of complexity when heartbeat time series from healthy subjects are compared with those from patients with chronic (congestive) heart failure syndrome or with atrial fibrillation. Conclusions: This generalized multiscale approach to Poincare plots may be useful in visualizing other types of time series.