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A significant concern that is widely discussed in the field of Higher Education is declining student participation. In several institutions, attendance is optional, allowing students to attend lectures at their convenience. This study proposes the integration of Artificial Intelligence and Gamification to improve student engagement and attendance rates. The initiative combines advanced technological strategies with conventional educational methodologies to enhance the lecture experience. The initiative is significant as formal lectures often witness dwindling student interest and frequent absenteeism, undermining the educational process and student's future career prospects. This combination has the potential to revolutionise Higher Education by providing a more interactive and engaging learning experience. While gamification has positively impacted learning in various contexts, integration with Artificial Intelligence is a game-changer, paving the way for a modernised educational experience. This innovative exploration of the AI-gamification blend sets the stage for future research and the implementation of updated academic strategies, ultimately addressing student engagement and attendance. This position paper presents the bases and foundations for understanding the problem of student attendance and engagement and the role of AI and gamification in Higher Education in alleviating it.;Uma inquietação relevante e extensamente discutida no domínio do Ensino Superior é a diminuição da participação dos estudantes. Em diversas instituições, a assiduidade é facultativa, permitindo aos estudantes a frequência às aulas segundo a sua disponibilidade. Este estudo propõe a integração da Inteligência Artificial e da Gamification como meios para melhorar o envolvimento e as taxas de assiduidade dos estudantes. A iniciativa em causa articula estratégias tecnologicamente avançadas com metodologias educativas convencionais no intuito de enriquecer a experiência de ensino. Tal iniciativa assume importância dada à constante diminuição do interesse dos estudantes e a assiduidade irregular nas aulas formais, fatores que afetam negativamente o processo de ensino e as perspetivas de carreira dos estudantes. Esta combinação ostenta o potencial de revolucionar o Ensino Superior, proporcionando uma experiência de aprendizagem mais interativa e envolvente. Embora a Gamification já tenha impactado positivamente o processo de aprendizagem em diversos contextos, a sua integração com a Inteligência Artificial surge como um elemento transformador, abrindo caminho para uma experiência educacional modernizada. Esta investigação inovadora que combina a IA e Gamification prepara as bases para investigações futuras e a implementação de estratégias académicas aprimoradas, concentrando-se principalmente no envolvimento e na assiduidade dos estudantes. Este artigo de posicionamento apresenta as bases e os fundamentos necessários para a compreensão do problema da frequência e envolvimento dos estudantes no Ensino Superior, assim como o papel da IA e da Gamification na sua mitigação.

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The Industry 4.0 technologies and servitization are requiring manufacturers to reinvent themselves to remain competitive. In this sense, companies are putting more emphasis on the customer experience, while associating services to their products with the support of emerging technologies. At the same time, actors in the innovation ecosystem such as universities, research institutes, and service providers are involved in the value co-creation process. Thus, this study aims to systemize and present the main findings of a literature review regarding the role of digitalization, servitization, and innovation ecosystem actors in boosting innovation in business models. The study involved 585 articles in international journals and conference proceedings published till 2021. A detailed selection process led 10 articles for further analysis. As a consequence of digitalization and servitization, there has to be an alignment among ecosystem actors to capture the co-created value generated by BMI. Moreover, the combination of BMI, servitization, and digitalization may also be structured into frameworks according to the different levels of each of those factors, thus allowing for companies to assess and position themselves in such frameworks and identify the path to follow. However, any of these articles addressed the combination of the three topics proposed: digitalization, servitization, and the contribution of the innovation ecosystem actors, even if they showed a clear interdependence between these areas, leading to common findings impacting BMI.

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The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in different inspection tasks is increasing. This technology reduces inspection costs and collects high quality data of distinct structures, including areas that are not easily accessible by human operators. However, the reduced energy available on the UAVs limits their flight endurance. To increase the autonomy of a single flight, it is important to optimize the path to be performed by the UAV, in terms of energy loss. Therefore, this work presents a novel formulation of the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) and a path planning algorithm that uses a UAV energy model to solve this optimization problem. The novel TSP formulation is defined as Asymmetric Travelling Salesman Problem with Precedence Loss (ATSP-PL), where the cost of moving the UAV depends on the previous position. The energy model relates each UAV movement with its energy consumption, while the path planning algorithm is focused on minimizing the energy loss of the UAV, ensuring that the structure is fully covered. The developed algorithm was tested in both simulated and real scenarios. The simulated experiments were performed with realistic models of wind turbines and a UAV, whereas the real experiments were performed with a real UAV and an illumination tower. The inspection paths generated presented improvements over 24% and 8%, when compared with other methods, for the simulated and real experiments, respectively, optimizing the energy consumption of the UAV.

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The notion of a difunction was introduced by Jacques Riguet in 1948. Since then it has played a prominent role in database theory, type theory, program specification and process theory. The theory of difunctions is, however, less known in computing than it perhaps should be. The main purpose of the current paper is to give an account of difunction theory in relation algebra, with the aim of making the topic more mainstream.As is common with many important concepts, there are several different but equivalent characterisations of difunctionality, each with its own strength and practical significance. This paper compares different proofs of the equivalence of the characterisations. A well-known property is that a difunction is a set of completely disjoint rectangles. This property suggests the introduction of the (general) notion of the core of a relation; we use this notion to give a novel and, we believe, illuminating characterisation of difunctionality as a bijection between the classes of certain partial equivalence relations.& COPY; 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons .org /licenses /by /4 .0/).

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