Abstract
This paper presents an overview of the RoboCup Rescue Simulation League and the rescue team FC Portugal. RoboCup Rescue Simulation is an international joint project that promotes research on distributed artificial intelligence and intelligent robotics. It offers a comprehensive urban disaster simulator and a competitive evaluation for researchers. This paper explains the objectives of the league, the mechanics of the simulator system and the main challenges in the research conducted using the RoboCup Rescue simulator. In this ever evolving and extensive urban disaster simulator, heterogeneous teams of agents try to minimize damage to both people and urban property after the occurrence of an earthquake. The city is filled with burning buildings, civilians trapped under debris and blocked roads. Teams of simulated fire brigades, policeman and ambulances collaborate in order to face the disaster. In this context, an overview of FC Portugal's rescue team is presented, including the major coordination algorithms and implemented agent's behaviours. Some of the most interesting league problems are discussed and FC Portugal's solutions are introduced. Results achieved in international competitions are also briefly presented, with emphasis on the last European championship, held in 2006, in Eindhoven, which FC Portugal won.

Abstract
Using recent results from numerical relativity simulations of nonspinning binary black hole mergers, we revisit the problem of detecting ringdown waveforms and of estimating the source parameters, considering both LISA and Earth-based interferometers. We find that Advanced LIGO and EGO could detect intermediate-mass black holes of mass up to similar to 10(3)M(circle dot) out to a luminosity distance of a few Gpc. For typical multipolar energy distributions, we show that the single-mode ringdown templates presently used for ringdown searches in the LIGO data stream can produce a significant event loss (> 10% for all detectors in a large interval of black hole masses) and very large parameter estimation errors on the black hole's mass and spin. We estimate that more than similar to 10(6) templates would be needed for a single-stage multimode search. Therefore, we recommend a "two-stage" search to save on computational costs: single-mode templates can be used for detection, but multimode templates or Prony methods should be used to estimate parameters once a detection has been made. We update estimates of the critical signal-to-noise ratio required to test the hypothesis that two or more modes are present in the signal and to resolve their frequencies, showing that second-generation Earth-based detectors and LISA have the potential to perform no-hair tests.

Abstract
In production planning in the glass container industry, machine-dependent setup times and costs are incurred for switch overs from one product to another. The resulting multi-item capacitated lot-sizing problem has sequence-dependent setup times and costs. We present two novel linear mixed-integer programming formulations for this problem, incorporating all the necessary features of setup carryovers. The compact formulation has polynomially many constraints, whereas the stronger formulation uses an exponential number of constraints that can be separated in polynomial time. We also present a five-step heuristic that is effective both in finding a feasible solution (even for tightly capacitated instances) and in producing good solutions to these problems. We report computational experiments.

Abstract
Automatic multimedia retrieval requires the use of complex features, which are typically captured by multidimensional descriptors. A basic operation in a multimedia retrieval system is similarity computation, making use of descriptor-dependant metrics. Many data structures have been proposed for managing the representation of multidimensional descriptors, each geared towards efficiency in some set of basic operations. The paper describes a framework for evaluating multidimensional descriptor indexing structures and reports a set of experiments with selected descriptors indexing methods. The extensibility of the framework is illustrated by incorporating a recently-proposed structure, the BitMatrix. Data sets and experiment conditions can be set up so as to provide results that can be used in the choice of appropriate indexing structures for a class of multimedia retrieval applications.

Abstract
In wireless sensor networks, poor performance or unexpected behavior may be experienced for several reasons, such as trivial deterioration of sensing hardware, unsatisfactory implementation of application logic, or mutated network conditions. This leads to the necessity of changing the application behavior after the network has been deployed. Such flexibility is still an open issue as it can be achieved either at the expense of significant energy consumption or through software complexity. This paper describes an approach to adapt the behavior of running applications by intercepting the calls made to the operating system services and changing their effects at run-time. Customization is obtained through small fragments of interpreted bytecode, called adaptlets, injected into the network by the base station. Differently from other approaches, where the entire application is interpreted, adaptlets are tied only to specific services, while the bulk of the application is still written in native code. This makes our system able to preserve the compactness and efficiency of native code and to have little impact on the overall application performance. Also, applications must not be rewritten because the operating system interfaces are unaffected. The adaptation layer has been implemented in the context of TinyOS using an instruction set inspired to the Java bytecode. Examples that illustrate the programming of the adaptation layer are presented together with their experimental validation.

Abstract
The internal impedance of a wire is the function of the frequency. In a conductor, where the conductivity is sufficiently high, the displacement current density can be neglected. In this case, the conduction current density is given by the product of the electric field and the conductance. One of the aspects of the high-frequency effects is the skin effect (SE). The fundamental problem with SE is it attenuates the higher frequency components of a signal. The SE was first verified by Kelvin in 1887. Since then many researchers developed work on the subject and presently a comprehensive physical model, based on the Maxwell equations, is well established. The Maxwell formalism plays a fundamental role in the electromagnetic theory. These equations lead to the derivation of mathematical descriptions useful in many applications in physics and engineering. Maxwell is generally regarded as the 19th century scientist who had the greatest influence on 20th century physics, making contributions to the fundamental models of nature. The Maxwell equations involve only the integer-order calculus and, therefore, it is natural that the resulting classical models adopted in electrical engineering reflect this perspective. Recently, a closer look of some phenomenas present in electrical systems and the motivation towards the development of precise models, seem to point out the requirement for a fractional calculus approach. Bearing these ideas in mind, in this study we address the SE and we re-evaluate the results demonstrating its fractional-order nature.