Abstract
A low-computational intensive laser control approach is proposed for implementing an embedded control system, using pattern recognition by relevant principal component analysis for laser induced breakdown spectroscopy applications. The laser energy is directly related to the resulting spectral pattern and is determined by iterations in the feature space. Results show that single shot iterations until optimum energy can be significantly reduced by pattern recognition. A performance benchmark with minerals, alloys and pellets from material collected from a drill demonstrated an average of 50% improvement, significantly reducing sample deterioration and improving measurement safety.

Abstract
Spectral information is characterized by multi-scaled interference, convolution and variability. Spectral lines are fragmented and diffused along the spectra. In many cases, matrix and physical effects do not allow to determine specific bands. Despite this limitation, the observed spectra contains significant amounts of information about the sample composition and characteristics, which once understood, can make spectroscopy an ideal technology for analyzing complex samples, such as bodyfluids and tissues. Breaking down and deciphering the structure of spectral information is paramount for the development of reagent-free point-of-care devices. A self-learning artificial intelligence was developed to take advantage of spectral complex information structure. It determines the relationships between composition and/or spectral features in high-dimensional space, where different sub-spaces correlate to specific constituents or characteristics. It also establishes a knowledgebase, by feature space transformations and optimizing co-variance search direction under the correct 'matrix effect' context. An example of hemogram analysis with erythrocyte and leucocyte counts is presented to demonstrate the advantages of the developed methodology.

Abstract
Relation Extraction (RE) is part of Information Extraction (IE) and aims to obtain instances of semantic relations in textual documents. The countless possibilities of relations, the myriad of subjects, the difficulty in identifying emotions and the amount of unstructured and heterogeneous data, have challenged the researchers to define innovative and even more accurate methodologies. This paper presents the evaluation results obtained with a set of RE systems on identifying semantic relations in criminal police reports. We have evaluated different applications with documents in English and Portuguese. The results obtained give us useful insights to continue the research work, and to design the relation extraction system applied to related domain. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Abstract
This paper presents one methodology for teaching engineering students, which relies on open platform requiring basic knowledge of robotics, like mechanics, control or energy management. Walking robots are well known for being able to walk over rough terrain and adapt to various environments. Hexapod robots are chosen because of their better stability and higher number of different gaits. However, having to hold the whole weight of the body and a large number of actuators makes all walking robots less energetically efficient than wheeled robots. This platform endows students with an intuitive learning for current technologies, development and testing of new algorithms in the area of mobile robotics and also in generating good team-building. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Abstract
The objective of the present study was to investigate the influence of demineralization solution on the optical properties of chicken femoral samples. Biomaterials based on bone have gained importance in clinical applications due to their properties as better osseointegration and biocompatibility. Biomateriais (bone substitute) are essentials to auxiliary in treatment of diseases related to bones such as bone density disorder, low bone mineral mass and the deterioration of bone tissue. Our data shows that integrating sphere technique permits to determinate significant difference in optical properties between healthy and demineralized samples. In this work, the optical properties of bone samples from chicken femur have been measured over the wavelength range 700–1000 nm.

Abstract
This paper presents a novel radio localization system based on radio signal strength measurements to estimate the location of animals on a farm. The system uses low-cost mobile devices based on a microcontroller, a radio transceiver and an antenna. The developed solution works on the 433 MHz band and comprises innovative protocols that use the radio wake-up concept in order to minimize the mobile unit energy consumption, promoting that way its autonomy. A software application was developed to track the animals on a real-time basis using the Internet of Things paradigm. © 2019 IEEE.