Abstract
This paper describes some developing issues for ACS based software tools to support decision making process and solve the problem of generating a sequence of jobs that minimizes the total weighted tardiness for a set of jobs to be processed in a single machine. An Ant Colony System (ACS) based algorithm performance is validated with benchmark problems available in the OR library. The obtained results were compared with the optimal (best available results in some cases) and permit to conclude about ACS efficiency and effectiveness. The ACS performance and respective statistical significance was evaluated. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Abstract
In cloud environments, resources should be acquired and released automatically and quickly at runtime. Thereby, the implementation of traditional query optimization strategies in cloud platforms can have a poor performance, because they cannot predict future availability and/or release of resources. In such scenarios, adaptive query processing can adapt itself to the available resources to run queries and, consequently, present an acceptable performance in response to a query. However, traditional and adaptive query optimizers main objective is to reduce response time. Moreover, in the context of cloud computing, users and providers of services expect to get answers in time to guarantee the SLA. Therefore, we propose a framework that uses adaptive query processing based on heuristic rules and cost of failing the SLA. It will be implemented on structured data, considering that some cloud computing platforms support SQL queries directly or indirectly, which makes this problem relevant.

Abstract
Extracting the semantic relatedness of terms is an important topic in several areas, including data mining, information retrieval and web recommendation. This paper presents an approach for computing the semantic relatedness of terns in RDF graphs based on the notion of proximity. It proposes a formal definition of proximity in terms of the set paths connecting two concept nodes, and an algorithm for finding this set and computing proximity with a given error margin. This algorithm was implemented on a tool called Shakti that extracts relevant ontological data for a given domain from DBpedia - a community effort to extract structured data from the Wikipedia. To validate the proposed approach Shakti was used to recommend web pages on a Portuguese social site related to alternative music and the results of that experiment are also reported.

Abstract

Abstract
Soccer Humanoid robots must be able to fulfill their tasks in a highly dynamic soccer field, which requires highly responsive and dynamic locomotion. It is very difficult to keep humanoids balance during walking. The position of the Zero Moment Point (ZMP) is widely used for dynamic stability measurement in biped locomotion. In this paper, we present an omnidirectional walk engine, which mainly consist of a Foot planner, a ZMP and Center of Mass (CoM) generator and an Active balance loop. The Foot planner, based on desire walk speed vector, generates future feet step positions that are then inputs to the ZMP generator. The cart-table model and preview controller are used to generate the CoM reference trajectory from the predefined ZMP trajectory. An active balance method is presented which keeps the robot's trunk upright when faced with environmental disturbances. We have tested the biped locomotion control approach on a simulated NAO robot. Our results are encouraging given that the robot has been able to walk fast and stably in any direction with performances that compare well to the best RoboCup 2012 3D Simulation teams.

Abstract
This study analyses the distribution of power among the several blockholders of a firm and the identity of those blockholders as a determinant of firm leverage. Using a sample of 694 firms from 12 Western European countries, our results support a negative relationship between ownership concentration in the hands of the main blockholder and firm leverage. Moreover, we detect that the presence of a second and third large shareholder (beyond the first blockholder) has a significant positive effect on the leverage ratio. In addition, the results show that contestability in family firms plays a more relevant role. Finally, we show that family firms do have significant impact on firm leverage level, and this impact varies depending on the legal framework and institutional environment. In our main sample the results show family firms negatively affect market leverage, supporting the theory that family firms are more averse to an increase in the debt level due to the risk of bankruptcy and financial distress as a result of having an under-diversified portfolio. In contrast, the opposite effect is found in the sample that excludes the United Kingdom. This last result cannot be explained by agency theory, given that family businesses are those that suffer less from Type I agency problems. This result suggests either some difficulty in financing their investments by issuing new equity or the need to use debt as a signal of the quality of its investments. Our results prove to be stable against a battery of robustness tests. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.