Abstract
Checking language equivalence (or inclusion) of finite automata is a classical problem in Computer Science, which has recently received a renewed interest and found novel and more effective solutions, such as approaches based on antichains or bisimulations up-to. Several notions of equivalence (or preorder) have been proposed for the analysis of concurrent systems. Usually, the problem of checking these equivalences is reduced to checking bisimilarity. In this paper, we take a different approach and propose to adapt algorithms for language equivalence to check one prime equivalence in concurrency theory, must testing semantics. To achieve this transfer of technology from language to must semantics, we take a coalgebraic outlook at the problem. © Springer International Publishing 2013.

Abstract
Breast-conserving approaches aim to attain better aesthetic results in addition to local control and achieving survival rates equivalent to mastectomy in patients with breast cancer. While the oncologic outcome of breast conservation procedures is easily estimated objectively by disease-free and overall survival rates, the cosmetic outcome has no standard of evaluation. Although breast conservation techniques have been widely studied, different forms of evaluation and heterogeneous working practices have contributed to different aesthetic results. As this scenario suggests, the evaluation of aesthetic results should be mandatory in any institution performing breast cancer treatment, contributing to the improvement of current strategies by enabling the identification of variables which have a significant impact on the final aesthetic result. In the process of assessing cosmetic outcomes there are several important issues that should be considered: which factors have a crucial impact on the cosmetic outcome of Breast Cancer Conservation Treatment (BCCT); which parameters or features should be evaluated in the cosmetic assessment of BCCT; how patients are evaluated; which scales are used in this evaluation; which methods and technological solutions are available for the evaluation of cosmetic results of BCCT. In this paper we try to discuss all these questions, with an emphasis on the objective methods and corresponding technologies used in the aesthetic evaluation of BCCT. The most relevant publications related to the mentioned topics are presented, critically analysed and put in chronological perspective. Current and future trends are also discussed.

Abstract
The detection of staff lines is the first step of most Optical Music Recognition (OMR) systems. Its great significance derives from the ease with which we can then proceed with the extraction of musical symbols. All OMR tasks are usually achieved using binary images by setting thresholds that can be local or global. These techniques however, may remove relevant information of the music sheet and introduce artifacts which will degrade results in the later stages of the process. It arises therefore a need to create a method that reduces the loss of information due to the binarization. The baseline for the methodology proposed in this paper follows the shortest path algorithm proposed in [1]. The concept of strong staff pixels (SSP's), which is a set of pixels with a high probability of belonging to a staff line, is proposed to guide the cost function. The SSP allows to overcome the results of the binary based detection and to generalize the binary framework to grayscale music scores. The proposed methodology achieves good results.

Abstract
The aim of the research presented in this paper is the development of a novel approach to predict programming aptitude. The existing programming aptitude tests rely on the past academic performance of students, on their psychological features or on a combination of both. The novelty of the proposed approach is that it attempts to measure student capabilities to manipulate abstract concepts that are related with programming, namely time, state and causality. These concepts were captured in Oh Balls - a physical simulation of the path taken by a sequence of balls through an apparatus of conveyor belts and levers. An engine for this kind of simulation was implemented and deployed as a web application, creating a self-contained test. that was applied to a cohort of first-year undergraduate students to validate the proposed approach. This paper describes the proposed type of programming aptitude test, a software engine implementing it, a validation experiment, discusses the results obtained so far and points out future research.

Abstract
Camera networks have been considered for a large set of visual monitoring applications. For some of them, cameras may be continuously monitoring scenes or groups of targets, but some events may trigger a critical level of visual monitoring, as in public security, industrial automation, and response to natural disasters. In such way, some critical events as a bomb explosion, a volcanic eruption, forest wildfire, or a car accident must be captured with high relevance, potentially helping when identifying responsibilities and during rescue operations. New relevance levels, which can be reflected in higher quality of transmitted images or video streams or even higher priority during transmission over the network must be quickly assigned to cameras that can view the critical events. In this work we propose a methodology to dynamically assign relevancies to cameras that view the area of critical events, employing scalar sensors and a decentralized decision mechanism. The resulting multimodal camera network can considerably enhance the critical surveillance in different monitoring applications. We propose some optimizations that exploit the monitoring relevance in such scenarios.

Abstract
Understanding the molecular basis of within and between species phenotypic variation is one of the main goals of Biology. In Drosophila, most of the work regarding this issue has been performed in D. melanogaster, but other distantly related species must also be studied to verify the generality of the findings obtained for this species. Here, we make the case for D. americana, a species of the virilis group of Drosophila that has been diverging from the model species, D. melanogaster, for approximately 40 Myr. To determine the suitability of this species for such studies, polymorphism and recombination estimates are presented for D. americana based on the largest nucleotide sequence polymorphism data set so far analyzed (more than 100 data sets) for this species. The polymorphism estimates are also compared with those obtained from the comparison of the genome assembly of two D. americana strains (H5 and W11) here reported. As an example of the general utility of these resources, we perform a preliminary study on the molecular basis of lifespan differences in D. americana. First, we show that there are lifespan differences between D. americana populations from different regions of the distribution range. Then, we perform five F2 association experiments using markers for 21 candidate genes previously identified in D. melanogaster. Significant associations are found between polymorphism at two genes (hep and Lim3) and lifespan. For the F2 association study involving the two sequenced strains (H5 and W11), we identify amino acid differences at Lim3 and Hep that could be responsible for the observed changes in lifespan. For both genes, no large gene expression differences were observed between the two strains.