Abstract
In this paper we address the problem of measuring syncopation in order to mediate a musically meaningful interaction between a live music performance and an automatically generated rhythm. To this end we present a simple, yet effective interactive music system we developed. We shed some light on the complex nature of syncopation by looking into MIDI data from drum loops and whole songs. We conclude that segregation into individual rhythmic layers is necessary in order to measure the syncopation of a music ensemble. This implies that measuring syncopation on polyphonic audio signals is not yet tractable using the current state-of-the-art in audio analysis. © 2012 International Society for Music Information Retrieval.

Abstract
The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has grown substantially over the past few years. However, a portion of the world's society has not been able to keep up with these technological advances. For this purpose, we present a serious game with a multi-touch interface envisioned to encourage and teach digitally excluded people on how to use the Portuguese Automated Teller Machine (ATM): a commodity much needed by society, but still avoided by some, mainly due to their fear of the digital world. An exploratory study was conducted to investigate if a serious game based on a new interaction paradigm can have a positive influence in the struggle against the Portuguese digital divide. We believe that the findings of our pilot case study can be useful to determine if a multi-touch serious game, due to its intuitiveness and ease of use, can stimulate the digitally excluded people to handle the ATM on a regular basis. The results that were obtained suggest that this approach may indeed produce a positive impact in the attempt to bridge the Portuguese digital divide.

Abstract
Hand-geometry biometric recognition is normally based on the detection of five points that correspond to the fingertips and four points between them (valley points). Specific methods often have to be implemented during the acquisition stage to make the detection of those points easier. This study presents techniques that have been developed to overcome the difficulties and limitations of the current systems. Moreover, a hand-geometry based recognition system that has no constraints during image acquisition is presented. A methodology was developed based on the hand skeleton for the points on the fingertips and for the valley points it was based on the curvature of the hand contour. The principal difficulties were found during the segmentation step, which often fails if the fingers are not spread out. Once the points have been located, the necessary features for authentication were extracted. Classification algorithms were implemented at this stage. Those showing the best results presented a Genuine Acceptance Rate (GAR) of 76% and 8% for the False Acceptance Rate (FAR).

Abstract
In the last few years the research community has witnessed significant progress in biometric technology, due to the availability of a wide variety of databases. However, the available databases that are currently available present significant setbacks in terms of restricted access to data, low-resolution and restrictions imposed on individuals during the acquisition phase. In this paper, two new public databases are described that have been created, with fingerprint and palm print images and their characteristics are compared with other databases available in the research community. The advantages of these databases are the great variety of individual characteristics, they have no restrictions during acquisition and they have manual ground truth annotation. They were presented in two different international competitions and have been used in research by different authors.

Abstract

Abstract
The effects of third-order dispersion (TOD) and intrapulse Raman scattering (IRS) on the erupting solitons of the complex cubic-quintic Ginzburg-Landau equation are investigated by direct numerical simulations and linear stability analysis. Our results indicate that positive TOD eliminates eruptions on the leading edge of the soliton, whereas negative TOD cancels them on the other side. Moreover, the combined action of TOD and IRS is in certain cases able to eliminate explosions on both sides of the soliton, at much lower IRS values than with IRS alone. The profiles of the stationary solutions are increasingly asymmetric with TOD, and their velocity varies almost linearly with IRS. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.