Abstract
This study seeks the development of adaptive composites capable to monitor and actively damp vibrations. In the proposed material, vibrations measurements are performed by an embedded low finesse optical fibre extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer, while active damping will be performed by embedded piezoelectric ceramics. This paper focuses on the development of the monitoring procedure. The proposed interrogation procedure for the low finesse optical fibre extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer was successfully used to monitor the composite plate when submitted to four-point bending dynamic tests at different frequencies. The embedding of both sensing and actuating components in carbon-fibre reinforced composite laminates is also presented. In the case of the actuator, the efficiency of the embedding process was merely analysed from the capability of the piezoelectric ceramic to monitor dynamic strain of the composite using the PZT piezoelectric inverse effect.

Abstract

Abstract
Poly(amidoamine) dendrimers (generations 5 and 6) with amine termini were conjugated with peptides containing the arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) sequence having in view their application as gene delivery vectors. The idea behind the work was to take advantage of the cationic nature of dendrimers and of the integrin targeting capabilities of the RGD motif to improve gene delivery. Dendrimers were used as scaffolds for RGD clustering and, by controlling the number of peptides (4, 8, and 16) linked to each dendrimer, it was possible to evaluate the effect of RGD density on the gene delivery process. The new vectors were characterized in respect to their ability to neutralize and compact plasmid DNA (pDNA). The complexes formed by the vectors and pDNA were studied concerning their size, zeta potential, capacity of being internalized by cells and ability of transferring genes. Transfection efficiency was analyzed, first, by using a pDNA encoding for Enhanced Green Fluorescent Protein and Firefly Luciferase and, second, by using a pDNA encoding for Bone Morphogenetic Protein-2. Gene expression in mesenchymal stem cells was enhanced using the new vectors in comparison to native dendrimers and was shown to be dependent on the electrostatic interaction established between the dendrimer moiety and the cell surface, as well as on the RGD density of nanoclusters. The use of dendrimer scaffolds for RGD cluster formation is a new approach that can be extended beyond gene delivery applications, whenever RGD clustering is important for modulating cellular responses.

Abstract
This paper describes a long-term simulation model to help generation companies building expansion plans. Different from the past, the generation activity is now provided under competition, and investments are affected by uncertainties and by the decisions of other players. This paper describes the use of System Dynamics to model the evolution of the demand and of the electricity price along the planning horizon. These evolutions will then be used by individual agents to prepare their own expansion plans. These plans will globally have to comply with general constraints, typically present in Grid Codes, as for instance, a maximum value for an adequacy index as LOLE. This model and the corresponding solution algorithm will be illustrated using a Case Study to illustrate the use of the developed approach to build the expansion plans and to conduct sensitivity studies.

Abstract
The need for contact, sharing and socializing is part of human nature, so that the community's role is vital to the survival of the species. With the development of Information and Communication Technologies and their influence on society and everyday life, led the search for new ways to build relationships and create communities among people, creating virtual communities; turn social networks emerge as new forms of association that respond to more complex understanding of human interaction in a way that the wider community; these to promote your main goal, more integrated into the games as a tool of socialization. The impact of current games at various levels, as the social and economic development, and its applicability in various fields, it becomes important to analyze the contribution of the community. It is intended in this article, a description of the factors that motivate this research to a later stage to develop the proposed objectives: to analyze the new social reality and develop a model that allows adapting the health games to social games in order to foster the creation / sustainability of communities based on social networks, aiming to raise awareness of health issues, increasing knowledge and sharing of experiences of members of communities. © 2011 IEEE.

Abstract
Flow-Updating (FU) is a fault-tolerant technique that has proved to be efficient in practice for the distributed computation of aggregate functions in communication networks where individual processors do not have access to global information. Previous distributed aggregation protocols, based on repeated sharing of input values (or mass) among processors, sometimes called Mass-Distribution (MD) protocols, are not resilient to communication failures (or message loss) because such failures yield a loss of mass. In this paper, we present a protocol which we call Mass-Distribution with Flow-Updating (MDFU). We obtain MDFU by applying FU techniques to classic MD. We analyze the convergence time of MDFU showing that stochastic message loss produces low overhead. This is the first convergence proof of an FU-based algorithm. We evaluate MDFU experimentally, comparing it with previous MD and FU protocols, and verifying the behavior predicted by the analysis. Finally, given that MDFU incurs a fixed deviation proportional to the message-loss rate, we adjust the accuracy of MDFU heuristically in a new protocol called MDFU with Linear Prediction (MDFU-LP). The evaluation shows that both MDFU and MDFU-LP behave very well in practice, even under high rates of message loss and even changing the input values dynamically.