The quality and composition of biomass as used in Portugal's thermal power plants is highly variable. The biomass consists mainly of residual forest biomass derived from forestry operations and wood waste from industrial processes, in particular paper and pulp industry. Its quality and composition is influenced by the presence of moisture and inert fragments, the latter being incorporated during collection or a...
Dry eye is a symptomatic disease which affects a wide range of population and has a negative impact on their daily activities. Its diagnosis can be achieved by analyzing the interference patterns of the tear film lipid layer and by classifying them into one of the Guillon categories. The manual process done by experts is not only affected by subjective factors but is also very time consuming. In this paper we p...
In many applications of information systems learning algorithms have to act in dynamic environments where data are collected in the form of transient data streams. Compared to static data mining, processing streams imposes new computational requirements for algorithms to incrementally process incoming examples while using limited memory and time. Furthermore, due to the non-stationary characteristics of streami...
HDR video on mobile devices is in its infancy and there are no solutions yet that can achieve full HDR video reproduction due to computational power limitations. In this paper we present a novel and versatile solution that allows the delivery of HDR video on mobile devices by taking into account contextual information and retro-compatibility for devices that do not have the computational power to decode HDR vid...
Data aggregation is a fundamental building block of modern distributed systems. Averaging based approaches, commonly designated gossip-based, are an important class of aggregation algorithms as they allow all nodes to produce a result, converge to any required accuracy, and work independently from the network topology. However, existing approaches exhibit many dependability issues when used in faulty and dynami...
Although hardware is generally seen as the main culprit for a computer's energy usage, software too has a tremendous impact on the energy spent. Unfortunately, there is still not enough support for software developers so they can make their code more energy-aware. This paper proposes a technique to detect energy inefficient fragments in the source code of a software system. Test cases are executed to obtain ene...
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to create a movement within the service research community that aspires to help the billions of impoverished people across the world achieve better service from each other, from their communities, from corporations, from their governments, and from nongovernmental organizations. The authors believe every human being is worthy of being served properly. To achieve this purpo...
Angiogenesis, the formation of blood vessels from pre-existing ones, is a key event in pathology, including cancer progression, but also in homeostasis and regeneration. As the phenotype of endothelial cells (ECs) is continuously regulated by local biomechanical forces, studying endothelial behaviour in altered gravity might contribute to new insights towards angiogenesis modulation. This study aimed at charact...
The present evolution of fuel prices together with the reduction of premiums for renewable energies make it of vital importance to improve renewable production management. This paper proposes a model of a single renewable power producer to compete more efficiently against other generators. The single unit is composed of a wind power producer and a hydro-pump storage power producer. The synergies between both re...