Abstract
A transmission between two agents, Alice and Bob, over a set of parallel sub-channels is overheard by a third agent Eve, through a second set of parallel sub-channels. All sub-channels are flat with random and independent gains and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). Alice splits the total amount of available power among the sub-channels, with the purpose of maximizing the communication rate to Bob, under reliability and secrecy constraints. To this end, two schemes are considered. In one case the secret message is encoded with a single wiretap code and then split among the sub-channels. In the latter case the secret message is first split into a number of sub-messages, each separately encoded and transmitted on a different sub-channel. The achievable secrecy rates under a constraint on the secrecy outage probability (SOP) are derived and closed form expressions for Rayleigh fading sub-channels are obtained. In order to limit the complexity of resources optimization (power and rates) we also consider suboptimal solutions based on the selection of active sub-channels over which power is split either equally or according to a waterfilling algorithm with respect to the Alice-Bob channel.

Abstract
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) has heterogeneous clinical and biological behavior. Whole-genome and -exome sequencing has contributed to the characterization of the mutational spectrum of the disease, but the underlying transcriptional profile is still poorly understood. We have performed deep RNA sequencing in different subpopulations of normal B-lymphocytes and CLL cells from a cohort of 98 patients, and characterized the CLL transcriptional landscape with unprecedented resolution. We detected thousands of transcriptional elements differentially expressed between the CLL and normal B cells, including protein-coding genes, noncoding RNAs, and pseudogenes. Transposable elements are globally derepressed in CLL cells. In addition, two thousand genes-most of which are not differentially expressed-exhibit CLL-specific splicing patterns. Genes involved in metabolic pathways showed higher expression in CLL, while genes related to spliceosome, proteasome, and ribosome were among the most down-regulated in CLL. Clustering of the CLL samples according to RNA-seq derived gene expression levels unveiled two robust molecular subgroups, C1 and C2. C1/C2 subgroups and the mutational status of the immunoglobulin heavy variable (IGHV ) region were the only independent variables in predicting time to treatment in a multivariate analysis with main clinico-biological features. This subdivision was validated in an independent cohort of patients monitored through DNA microarrays. Further analysis shows that B-cell receptor (BCR) activation in the microenvironment of the lymph node may be at the origin of the C1/C2 differences. © 2014 Hansen et al.

Abstract
Scheduling continues to play an important role in manufacturing systems. It enables the production of suitable scheduling plans, considering shared resources between several different products, through several manufacturing environments including networked ones. High levels of uncertainty characterize networked manufacturing environments. Processes have specific and complex requirements and management requisites, along with diversified objectives, which are dynamic and often conflicting. Dynamic adaptation and a real-time response for manufacturing scheduling is still possible and is critical in this new manufacturing environments, which have a flexible nature, where disturbances on working conditions occur on a continuous and even unexpected basis. Therefore, scheduling systems should have the ability of automatically and intelligently maintain a real-time adaptation and optimization of orders production, to effectively and efficiently adapt these manufacturing environments to the inherent dynamic of markets. In this paper a collaborative framework for supporting dynamic scheduling in networked manufacturing environments is proposed, based on a hyper-organization model and on hyper-heuristics, in order to obtain feasible and robust scheduling plans. Copyright © 2014, IGI Global.

Abstract
Vision-based hand gesture recognition is an area of active current research in computer vision and machine learning. Being a natural way of human interaction, it is an area where many researchers are working on, with the goal of making human computer interaction (HCI) easier and natural, without the need for any extra devices. So, the primary goal of gesture recognition research is to create systems, which can identify specific human gestures and use them, for example, to convey information. For that, vision-based hand gesture interfaces require fast and extremely robust hand detection, and gesture recognition in real time. Hand gestures are a powerful human communication modality with lots of potential applications and in this context we have sign language recognition, the communication method of deaf people. Sign languages are not standard and universal and the grammars differ from country to country. In this paper, a real-time system able to interpret the Portuguese Sign Language is presented and described. Experiments showed that the system was able to reliably recognize the vowels in real-time, with an accuracy of 99.4% with one dataset of features and an accuracy of 99.6% with a second dataset of features. Although the implemented solution was only trained to recognize the vowels, it is easily extended to recognize the rest of the alphabet, being a solid foundation for the development of any vision-based sign language recognition user interface system.

Abstract

Abstract
Bonding is an important process used in all fields of industry, where the tight joining of two materials is required. It includes a wide variety of processing technologies that can be placed in a framework of chemistry, physics, and materials science. Although most of these bonding processes have only recently appeared in textbooks, the basic phenomena have been known and used for many centuries. Choosing an appropriate bonding process may result in the improved end-use performance, increased efficiency, and greater design flexibility. Through various bonding techniques, this study aims at investigating the following ones: direct bonding, thermocompression bonding, surface activated bonding, eutectic bonding, adhesive bonding, and glass frit bonding. The characteristic features of these techniques with respect to their many-sided aspects and a review of the current state of the art of each technique are briefly outlined in this chapter.