Abstract
In this work, the fabrication of optical waveguides embedded in fused silica (Suprasil1) and boro-aluminosilicate glass (Eagle2000) is demonstrated with femtosecond laser direct writing, as well as their suitability to be brought to the surface, through wet etching, for enhanced evanescent coupling with the external dielectric medium. Fused silica demonstrated to be inappropriate in this particular application, as the guiding region is at the bottom of the induced modification, creating a barrier between the guided mode and the substrate’s boundary. Furthermore, the existence of nanogratings meant that, upon contact of the top of the induced modification with the substrate’s boundary, the waveguide is quickly etched. Eagle2000 demonstrated to be superior to fused silica due to its characteristic modification cross-section and absence of nanogratings, which allowed the placement of the guiding region as close to the substrate’s surface as required. However, surface roughness arising from the creation of insoluble products in the HF solution was found. The addition of HCl to dissolve these products was implemented.

Abstract
The possibility to engage in autonomous flight through geolocation-based missions turns Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) into valuable tools that save time and resources in services like deliveries and surveillance. Amazon is already developing a drop-by delivery service, but there are limitations regarding the client’s id, that can be analyzed in three phases: the approach to the potential receiver, the authorization through the client id and the delivery itself. This work shows a solution for the first of these phases. Firstly, the receiver identifies the GPS coordinates where he wants to receive the package. The UAV flights to that place and tries to locate the receiver on the arrival through Computer Vision (CV) techniques, more precisely Deep Neural Networks (DNN), to continue to the next phase, the identification. After the proposal of the system’s architecture and the prototype’s implementation, a test scenario to analyze the feasibility of the proposed techniques was created. The results were quite good considering a system to look for one person in a limited area defined by the destination coordinates, confirming the detection of one person with an up to 92% accuracy from a 10 m height and 5 m horizontal distance in low resolution images. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.

Abstract
In the new smart grid paradigm, the residential prosumers can more actively participate in the energy exchange mechanisms by adjusting their consumption through demand response programs and their own available local generation and energy storage system. On these bases, a new model of home energy management system (HEMS) is proposed and analyzed in this paper. Numerical studies show that the proposed HEMS is able to find the optimal operating scenario in different situations and to achieve a reduction of the billing costs by providing some electric flexibility to an aggregator or to a system operator.

Abstract
Laser diagnostics and treatment procedures are commonly performed for visible and near-IR wavelengths. The knowledge of the wavelength dependences for the optical properties of various biological tissues in this spectral range is useful for clinical applications. Since the optical properties of human liver have been previously known only for near-IR wavelengths, the aim is to estimate their wavelength dependences between 400 and 1000 nm. Using spectral measurements from liver samples in this range, we determine their optical properties with the inverse adding-doubling method. The obtained results indicate the presence of bile, oxyhaemoglobin and deoxyhaemoglobin in human liver. The combination of these biological components results in strong absorption for wavelengths between 400 and 600 nm, with peaks at unusual wavelengths. For wavelengths above 600 nm, the wavelength dependences for all optical properties present the typical behavior, but strong and shifted absorption observed for wavelengths below 600 nm has been previously unknown and can be useful for clinical procedures with lasers working in this range.

Abstract

Abstract
There is a great worldwide desire to launch new technology-based business. In this sense, and increasingly, entrepreneurship courses have arisen in several universities and many of the courses in the management, administration and engineering areas already offer entrepreneurship curricular units. Throughout those programs, the teams develop key integrated competencies in innovation, entrepreneurship and technology that will ultimately enable the students to create and develop new technology-based businesses. The Business Plan Reference Manual for IT Businesses provides a reference manual for undergraduate and graduate students that intend to launch their start-up business in the IT field. It helps them to create and model the business plan of their business. Therefore, this manual is mainly aimed at instructors who want to offer a practical view of the process of modeling, designing and developing an IT start-up. Additionally, it can be individually used by entrepreneurs who wish to launch their start-up businesses in IT field. The structure of the book was defined taking into account different approaches to the construction of the business plan, which basically consider a disaggregation of some of these chapters in others smaller (e.g., marketing plan into products/services and market, financial plan into investment plan and economic-financial projections). We chose to aggregate these dimensions into a single chapter, which in our view facilitates the process of analyzing a business plan. It is also relevant to mention the inclusion of "Chapter V - Prototype description" which is innovative and intends to take into account the application of this business plan template to the information technology sector. © 2018 River Publishers. All rights reserved.