Abstract
Moored ship behavior inside harbors and, therefore, the operational and security conditions at a port terminal does not have a straightforward relationship with local environmental conditions. Due to the diversity and complexity of the phenomena involved it is important to use a methodology that combines physical model tests with numerical simulations, taking advantage of potential synergies. Results of prototype measurements are also a key element to making the validation and calibration of both physical and numerical models possible. This paper focuses on studying the behavior of moored tankers using combined methodology. Aspects related with the inclusion in the numerical models of shallow water effects, non-linear characteristics of mooring lines and fenders, the influence of harbor boundaries and viscous damping are analyzed and discussed. The role of physical modeling as a tool to address/quantify some of the conditions and to provide data for the calibration of numerical models is presented, as well as the methodology defined for the study of the operational conditions at an existing berth. This methodology includes the development of a computer vision system to measure ship motion at the port terminal (prototype). Actual operational conditions at the berth are also described in the paper.

Abstract
In this paper we analyze the magnitude of this propensity in engineering and economics/business courses. The reason for such focus is that traditionally these courses are viewed as the ones concentrating individuals that are more likely to create new ventures. The empirical results, based on a large-scale survey of 2430 final-year students, reveal that no statistical difference exists in entrepreneurial potential of economics/business and engineering students, and that these two latter groups have lower entrepreneurial potential than students from other courses. This result proves to be quite unfortunate given the focus that previous studies have placed on these two majors, and the fact that a substantial part of entrepreneurial education is undertaken in business and engineering schools.

Abstract
Manufacturing scheduling is it complex combinatorial problem, particularly in distributed and dynamic environments. This paper presents a holonic approach to manufacturing scheduling, where the scheduling functions are distributed by several entities, combining their calculation power and local optimization capability. In this scheduling and control approach, the objective is to achieve fast and dynamic re-scheduling using a scheduling mechanism that evolves dynamically to combine centralized and distributed strategies, improving its responsiveness to emergence, instead of the complex and optimized scheduling algorithms found in traditional approaches.

Abstract
Although there is a considerable amount of empirical evidence on inter-firm collaborations within technology-based industries, there are only a few works focussing on R&D cooperation by low-tech firms, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Providing further and new evidence based on a recently built database of CRAFT projects, this study analyses the relationship between technology and proximity in international R&D networks using HOMALS and statistical cluster techniques. The resulting typology of international cooperative R&D projects highlights that successful international cooperative R&D projects are both culturally/geographically closer and distant. Moreover, and quite interestingly, geographically distant projects are technologically more advanced whereas those located near each other are essentially low-tech. Such evidence is likely to reflect the tacit-codified knowledge debate boosted recently by the information and communication technology (ICT) "revolution" emphasized by the prophets of the "Death of Distance" and the "End of Geography".

Abstract

Abstract
Sorting is an important operation for a number of embedded applications. As sorting large datasets may impose undesired performance degradation, acceleration units coupled to the embedded processor can be an interesting solution for speeding-up the computations. This paper presents and evaluates three hardware sorting units, bearing in mind embedded computing systems implemented with FPGAs. The proposed architectures take advantage of specific FPGA hardware resources to increase efficiency. Experimental results show the differences in resources and performances among the three proposed sorting units and also between the sorting units and pure software implementations for sorting. We show that a hybrid between an insertion sorting unit and a merge FIFO sorting unit provides a speed-up between 1.6 and 25 compared to a quicksort software implementation.