Abstract
Airborne pollen emission model was used to determine pollen metrics and to examine their relationship with vineyard phenology in two wine regions of Northern Portugal: Vinhos Verdes (1993-2007) and Douro (1992-2011). A number of airborne pollen metrics were obtained through the rate of changes of logistic model adjusted to the time series of airborne pollen. In both regions, the mean absolute differences between observed phenology and model-predicted values for start, peak and final of flowering phenophases were always lower than 5 days and the slope of the regression through the origin is close to one. These metrics can be used to accurately and precisely predict the dynamic of Vitis flowering observed at field level. The model's simplicity and flexibility are of great advantage for its practical use in aerobiology.

Abstract
The phenolic compound concentration of olives and olive oil is typically quantified using HPLC; however, this process is expensive and time consuming. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the potential of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy combined with chemometrics, as a rapid tool for the quantitative prediction of phenol content and antioxidant activity in olive fruits and oils from "Cobran double dagger osa" cultivar. Normalized spectral data using standard normal variate (SNV) and first and second Savitzky-Golay derivatives were used to build calibration models based on principal component regression (PCR) and on partial least squares regression (PLS-R), the performance of both models have been also compared. It was shown the possibility of establishing optimized regression models using the combined frequency regions of 3050-2750 and 1800-790 cm(-1) instead of the full mid-infrared spectrum was shown. It was concluded that, in general, the first derivative of data and PLS-R models offered enhanced results. Low root-mean-square error (RMSE) and high correlation coefficients (R (2)) for the calibration and for the validation sets were obtained.

Abstract
Among the groups of naturally occurring pigments, carotenoids serve numerous purposes in plants, including antioxidant activity and protection of the photosynthetic apparatus from the excess of light. Alongside with essential mineral elements, these pigments are well known to have high impact on human health. Therefore, accumulation of carotenoids in wheat grain is an important trait in view to improving nutritional value of cereals. Wheat is one of the major staple foods in Portugal because of its agronomical adaptability and the usage of its flour into various traditional products. In the present investigation, the seeds of ninety-four Old Portuguese wheat cultivars grown over two years were analysed. Significant genetic variability for content of carotenoids was observed in the studied lines. Within the 47 bread wheat genotypes the Yellow Pigment Content (YPC) values varied from 2.7 - 5.8 mu g/g and 3.0 - 8.0 mu g/g for 2004/2005 and 2009/2010, respectively. On the other hand, during 2004/2005 and 2009/2010, the 47 durum wheat cultivars exhibited the YPC values from 1.1 - 8.0 mu g/g and 3.4 - 8.3 mu g/g, respectively. In addition, multivariate methods were also explored to assess the wheat grains quality, resorting to FTIR spectroscopy (Figure 1). Preliminary analyses of FTIR spectra clearly revealed differences among the distinct studied genotypes. Thus, in order to find spectroscopical patterns related to carotenoids accumulation and antioxidant activity, efforts are being made to develop a model that will allow the assessment of these parameters through FTIR, in the near-future. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Abstract
Olive (Olea europaea L.) represents one of the most important and ancient crops in the Mediterranean countries, being widely known due to the optimal organoleptic characteristics of its oil, besides the important health benefits assigned to this product in the last few years. Since olive oil composition, respecting specific trace elements, has a direct impact on the quality and safety of this product, eleven monovarietal and twelve commercial olive oils were analysed spectrometrically concerning their metal composition. Regarding quality parameters, the monovarietal olive oils display larger quantities of Mg, Fe, Mn, while the commercial samples are characterized by greater amounts of Na, Ca, Cu and Zn. In which respects to safety parameters, the commercial samples present higher values for Al and Pb, and lower quantities of Cd, respecting the monovarietal ones. The assessment of the values observed for the trace elements, resorting to multivariate statistical methods, allowed to clearly distinguish the type of olive oil production monovarietal or commercial blend. For this purpose, besides Cluster analysis, the data have been subjected to Principal Component Analysis undertaken for either all the evaluated parameters simultaneously, or the quality/safety parameters separately, both data sets allowing the discrimination of the samples.

Abstract
This paper presents a planar antenna using low temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) substrate for extreme environment applications. An ultra wideband (UWB) elliptical patch antenna was designed and fabricated using an LTCC Ceramtec GC substrate to demonstrate the capabilities of the technology for wideband applications. The simulated results were further validated experimentally. The fabricated antenna provides a peak gain of 5dB over a bandwidth of 4 GHz (3 GHz 7 GHz) with return loss better than -10dB. The radiation pattern is omni-directional in the horizontal plane (theta=90 degrees) over the whole frequency range.

Abstract
The integrate-and-fire model of a biological neuron is an amplitude to time encoding in the spacing between action potentials (spikes). In principle, this encoding can be used to modulate signals in an Impulse Radio Ultra Wide-Band (IRUWB) transmitter suitable for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). This paper presents a system level study on power efficiency using MATLAB/ Simulink to evaluate the required energy for an IR-UWB Transmitter using integrate-and-fire encoding technique. Also, a simple but clear comparison with common systems utilizing Nyquist rate Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADC) is presented. This study has been carried out on a band-limited random Gaussian signal and the results show that IR-IF transmitter consumes roughly seven times less energy than a digital UWB transmitter; moreover, in the proposed architecture the need for power hungry ADC is relaxed.