Abstract
The University of Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro is part of a consortium that is providing courses in an e-learning model. In this courses, the students' evaluation requires their physical presence. Currently, the consortium has the general objective of provide evaluation activities in all of the consortium's institutions, independently of the student's Higher Education Institution (HEI) of origin. That way, the student can go through the learning process on-line, using the Learning Management System (LMS), and attend an evaluation activity at the HEI geographically more conveniently located. In pursuing this objective, the consortium is creating a set of specific rooms with the sole purpose of supporting the evaluation of e-learning students. These rooms are located in each one of the HEIs, and equipped with thin personal computers (PC), connected to a local, properly configured, server. These PCs and server will run a customized version of the operating system, in a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) model, providing a controlled and safe infrastructure for the usage of the LMS to execute the evaluation activities. In a first phase, it is being created one room in each one of the consortium HEIs. A set of rules and a certification process will be designed, in order to have a standard level of service across all the rooms. Together with the certification process it will also be defined an audit process in order to regularly verify the compliance of the rooms with the previously designed certification standards.

Abstract
This work describes the development and characterization of a wide beam and wideband ultrasonic transducer, designed as an emitter for underwater communications up to 1.5 MHz. The active element being used is composed of two layers of 110 mu m PVDF (Polyvinylidene fluoride) film, with NiCu electrodes. The transducer has a semicircular shape with a diameter of 15 cm. Pool trials show a transmitting voltage response of approximately 150 dB re mu Pa/V @ 1m from 750kHz to 1MHz and higher than 130 dB re mu Pa/V @ 1m between 250kHz and 1.5MHz. At 1 MHz, when excited with 12V, the transducer has a power consumption of 37.5 mW.

Abstract
In the last decades, the weight of renewable energies sources (RES) in the electricity generation mix of most European countries has considerably increased. The implementation of these policies has been relying on different supporting schemes such as: the existence of a price premium for RES (feed-in tariffs); the assignment of priority access to renewable sources over conventional sources when entering the electricity network; and subsidizing investments in RE. While these incentives have certainly played a very important role in launching renewable energy production in Europe, more recently, both scholars and practitioners are claiming that RE generation should now be exposed to market incentives in order to promote economic efficiency. However, the inclusion of RE in the market may significantly affect equilibrium outcomes arising in electricity wholesale markets. Recent empirical studies, e.g. Puller (2007), point that the inclusion of RES in the market reduces average electricity prices at the cost of increasing price volatility (merit of order effect). Such outcomes can be explained by the intermittent nature of RES together with the asymmetry on generation marginal costs between RES and non-renewable energy sources (with the former being quite low for most of the available RES). However, the inclusion of RES in the wholesale electricity market may also yield strategic effects, as firms may strategically manipulate renewable energy production in order to have greater market power. In this paper, we provide an overview of the investment challenges following the introduction of market-based mechanisms for renewable production. The next step of this research project will be the development of a theoretical model, building on Milstein and Tishler (2011) in order to address the regulatory challenges related to capacity investment in a market with uncertain demand in which two firms offer two different electricity generation technologies, respectively using renewable and non-renewable energy sources. The renewable energy production is assumed to have an intermittent nature.

Abstract
The aim of this research is to analyze the correlates of adults' participation in sport and frequency of sport. A hurdle model approach comprising a binary choice regression to model participation in sport and a count model to address frequency of sport was applied to analyze the data obtained from 516 personal interviews in a Portuguese city. Participation in sport and frequent sport are associated with men, younger people, not married and without children under 2 years, nonsmokers and regular drinkers and with good perceived health. However, participation in sport and frequency of sport participation are associated with different levels of perception of the benefits of sport activity. Whereas awareness of the health and enjoyment benefits fosters participation, fitness, socializing and appearance might increase the frequency of sport. Sport communication strategies might play a prominent role in persuading potential participants of the benefits of sport activity and frequency.

Abstract
Utility companies rely on solar radiation forecasting models to control the supply and demand of energy as well as the operability of the grid. They use these predictive models to schedule power plan operations, negotiate prices in the electricity market and improve the performance of solar technologies in general. This paper proposes a novel method for global horizontal irradiance forecasting. The method is based on an ensemble approach, in which individual competing models are arbitrated by a metalearning layer. The goal of arbitrating individual forecasters is to dynamically combine them according to their aptitude in the input data. We validate our proposed model for solar radiation forecasting using data collected by a real-world provider. The results from empirical experiments show that the proposed method is competitive with other methods, including current state-of-the-art methods used for time series forecasting tasks.

Abstract
We investigate spectroscopic imaging ellipsometry for monitoring biomolecules at surfaces of nanoparticles. For the modeling of polarimetric light scattering off surface-adsorbed core-shell nanoparticles, we employ an extension of the exact solution for the scattering by particles near a substrate presented by Bobbert and Vlieger, which offers insight beyond that of the Maxwell-Garnett effective medium approximation. Varying thickness and refractive index of a model bio-organic shell results in systematic and characteristic changes in spectroscopic parameters ? and ?. The salient features and trends in modeled spectra are in qualitative agreement with experimental data for antibody immobilization and fibronectin biorecognition at surfaces of gold nanoparticles on a silicon substrate, but achieving a full quantitative agreement will require including additional effects, such as nanoparticle-substrate interactions, into the model. © 2017 Optical Society of America.