Abstract
There is no generally accepted definition of conditional Renyi entropy. The (unconditional) Renyi entropy depends on a parameter alpha, which for the case of min-entropy takes the value infinity. Even for this particular case, there are several proposals for the definition of conditional entropy. This paper describes three general definitions of conditional Renyi entropy that were found or suggested in the literature. Their properties are studied and their values, as a function of alpha, are compared. The particular case of min-entropy is widely used in cryptography as a security parameter; this case is studied in some detail.

Abstract
The emergence of new business models, namely, the establishment of partnerships between organizations, the chance that companies have of adding existing data on the web, especially in the semantic web, to their information, led to the emphasis on some problems existing in databases, particularly related to data quality. Poor data can result in loss of competitiveness of the organizations holding these data, and may even lead to their disappearance, since many of their decision-making processes are based on these data. For this reason, data cleaning is essential. Current approaches to solve these problems are closely linked to database schemas and specific domains. In order that data cleaning can be used in different repositories, it is necessary for computer systems to understand these data, i.e., an associated semantic is needed. The solution presented in this paper includes the use of ontologies: (i) for the specification of data cleaning operations and, (ii) as a way of solving the semantic heterogeneity problems of data stored in different sources. With data cleaning operations defined at a conceptual level and existing mappings between domain ontologies and an ontology that results from a database, they may be instantiated and proposed to the expert / specialist to be executed over that database, thus enabling their interoperability. © 2012 IEEE.

Abstract
LARA is a programming language being developed to complement application code in a host programming language with instrumentation code, for monitoring, logging, and debugging, user's knowledge about specific characteristics of the application, non-functional requirements, and compiler, mapping and synthesis strategies to guide/control design-flows, especially the ones used to map computations to FPGA-based systems. This paper shows how the aspect-oriented approach provided by LARA allows developers to specify complementary program information that can be used by LARA aware design-flows to promote customized FPGA-based software/hardware implementations. Program and compiler/mapping specialization take advantage of specific properties of applications to optimize and customize specific application modules and software/hardware implementations, e. g., according to usage contexts. We illustrate the concept using a hotspot function from a real-life, industrial, application. The results show the importance of program specialization in deriving hardware/software implementations with higher-performance.

Abstract
This paper proposes a multi-objective approach to a distribution network planning process that deals with the challenges derived from the integration of Distributed Generation (DG). The proposal consists of a multi-objective version of the well-known Evolutionary Particle Swarm Optimization method (MEPSO). A broad performance comparison is made between the MEPSO and other multi-objective optimization meta-heuristics, the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) and a Multi-objective Tabu Search (MOTS), using two distribution networks in a given DG penetration scenario. Although the three methods proved to be applicable in distribution system planning, the MEPSO algorithm has presented promising attributes and a constant and high level performance when compared to other methods.

Abstract
An optical format conversion from nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) to quasicontinuous phase modulation (Qu-CPM) using two MachZehnder interferometer-semiconductor optical amplifiers in serial is presented, and its feasibility is demonstrated in a 2 x 10 Gb/s NRZ-OOK to one 10 Gbaud Qu-CPM conversion experiment. (C) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 54:12401242, 2012; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.26783

Abstract