Abstract
Movement-related diseases, such as Parkinson's disease (PD), progressively affect the motor function, many times leading to severe motor impairment and dramatic loss of the patients' quality of life. Human motion analysis techniques can be very useful to support clinical assessment of this type of diseases. In this contribution, we present a RGB-D camera (Microsoft Kinect) system and its evaluation for PD assessment. Based on skeleton data extracted from the gait of three PD patients treated with deep brain stimulation and three control subjects, several gait parameters were computed and analyzed, with the aim of discriminating between non-PD and PD subjects, as well as between two PD states (stimulator ON and OFF). We verified that among the several quantitative gait parameters, the variance of the center shoulder velocity presented the highest discriminative power to distinguish between non-PD, PD ON and PD OFF states (p = 0.004). Furthermore, we have shown that our low-cost portable system can be easily mounted in any hospital environment for evaluating patients' gait. These results demonstrate the potential of using a RGB-D camera as a PD assessment tool.

Abstract

Abstract
Biomedical wireless sensor networks are a key technology to support the development of new applications and services targeting patient monitoring, in particular, regarding data collection for medical diagnosis and continuous health assessment. However, due to the critical nature of medical applications, such networks have to satisfy demanding quality of service requirements, while guaranteeing high levels of confidence and reliability. Such goals are influenced by several factors, where the network topology, the limited throughput, and the characteristics and dynamics of the surrounding environment are of major importance. Harsh environments, as hospital facilities, can compromise the radio frequency communications and, consequently, the network's ability to provide the quality of service required by medical applications. Furthermore, the impact of such environments on the network's performance is hard to manage due to its random and unpredictable nature. Consequently, network planning and management, in general or step-down hospital units, is a very hard task. In such context, this work presents a quality of service based management tool to help healthcare professionals supervising the network's performance and to assist them managing the admission of new sensor nodes (i.e., patients to be monitored) to the biomedical wireless sensor network. The proposed solution proves to be a valuable tool both, to detect and classify potential harmful variations in the quality of service provided by the network, avoiding its degradation to levels where the biomedical signs would be useless; and to manage the admission of new patients to the network.

Abstract
Computational systems operating in open, dynamic and decentralized environments are required to share data with previously unknown computational systems. Due to this ill specification and emergent operation the systems are required to share the data's respective schemas and semantics so that the systems can correctly manipulate, understand and reason upon the shared data. The schemas and semantics are typically provided by ontologies using specific semantics provided by the ontology language. Because computational systems adopt different ontologies to describe their domain of discourse, a consistent and compatible communication relies on the ability to reconcile (in run-time) the vocabulary used in their ontologies. Since each computational system might have its own perspective about what are the best correspondences between the adopted ontologies, conflicts can arise. To address such conflicts, computational systems may engage in any kind of negotiation process that is able to lead them to a common and acceptable agreement. This paper proposes an argumentation-based approach where the computational entities describe their own arguments according to a commonly agreed argumentation meta-model. In order to support autonomy and conceptual differences, the community argumentation model can be individually extended yet maintaining computational effectiveness. Based on the formal specification, a software development framework is proposed.

Abstract
The use of distribution networks in the current scenario of high penetration of Distributed Generation (DG) is a problem of great importance. In the competitive environment of electricity markets and smart grids, Demand Response (DR) is also gaining notable impact with several benefits for the whole system. The work presented in this paper comprises a methodology able to define the cost allocation in distribution networks considering large integration of DG and DR resources. The proposed methodology is divided into three phases and it is based on an AC Optimal Power Flow (OPF) including the determination of topological distribution factors, and consequent application of the MW-mile method. The application of the proposed tariffs definition methodology is illustrated in a distribution network with 33 buses, 66 DG units, and 32 consumers with DR capacity.

Abstract
The purpose of this project was the development of tools that facilitate the musical expression of a well-defined group of physically and mentally challenged people. Knowing those people and becoming familiar with their capabilities, tastes and ambitions was the departing point for the design of solutions. Once developed, they remained in their institutions, to become a part of their lives, contributing to the range of occupational activities they can be involved with. The composition of a piece of music that uses those resources and its performance by these people in the main concert hall of Casa da Música in April 2010 was more than a proof of concept, it was a truly engaging, motivating experience and, indeed, a proper artistic challenge. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.