Abstract
The increasing demand for human activity analysis in surveillance scenarios has been triggered by the emergence of new features and concepts to help in identifying activities of interest. However, the characterisation of individual and group behaviours is a topic not so well studied in the video surveillance community due to not only its intrinsic difficulty and large variety of topics involved, but also because of the lack of valid semantic concepts that relate human activity to social context. In this paper, we address the topic of social semantic meaning in a well-defined surveillance scenario, namely shopping mall, and propose new definitions of individual and group behaviour that consider environment context, a relational descriptor that emphasises position and attention-based characteristics, and a new classification approach based on mini-batches. We also present a wide evaluation process that analyses the sociological meaning of the individual features and outlines the performance impact of automatic features extraction processes into our classification framework. We verify the discriminative value of the selected features, state the descriptor performance and robustness over different stress conditions, confirm the advantage of the proposed mini-batch classification approach which obtains promising results, and outline future research lines to improve our novel social behavioural analysis framework.

Abstract
The chemical abundances for five metal-poor stars in and towards the Galactic bulge have been determined from the H-band infrared spectroscopy taken with the RAVEN multi-object adaptive optics science demonstrator and the Infrared Camera and Spectrograph at the Subaru 8.2-m telescope. Three of these stars are in the Galactic bulge and have metallicities between -2.1<[Fe/H] < -1.5, and high [a/Fe]~+0.3, typical of Galactic disc and bulge stars in this metallicity range; [Al/Fe] and [N/Fe] are also high, whereas [C/Fe] < +0.3. An examination of their orbits suggests that two of these stars may be confined to the Galactic bulge and one is a halo trespasser, though proper motion values used to calculate orbits are quite uncertain. An additional two stars in the globular cluster M22 show [Fe/H] values consistent to within 1s, although one of these two stars has [Fe/H] = -2.01 ± 0.09, which is on the low end for this cluster. The [a/Fe] and [Ni/Fe] values differ by 2s, with the most metal-poor star showing significantly higher values for these elements. M22 is known to show element abundance variations, consistent with a multipopulation scenario though our results cannot discriminate this clearly given our abundance uncertainties. This is the first science demonstration of multiobject adaptive optics with high-resolution infrared spectroscopy, and we also discuss the feasibility of this technique for use in the upcoming era of 30-m class telescope facilities.

Abstract
This paper proposes a predictive dispatch model to manage energy flexibility in the domestic energy system. Electric Vehicles (EV), batteries and shiftable loads are devices that provide energy flexibility in the proposed system. The proposed energy management problem consists of two stages: day-Ahead and real time. A hybrid method is defined for the first time in this paper to model the uncertainty of the PV power generation based on its power prediction. In the day-Ahead stage, the uncertainty is modeled by interval bands. On the other hand, the uncertainty of PV power generation is modeled through a stochastic scenario-based method in the real-Time stage. The performance of the proposed hybrid Interval-Stochastic (InterStoch) method is compared with the Modified Stochastic Predicted Band (MSPB) method. Moreover, the impacts of energy flexibility and the demand response program on the expected profit and transacted electrical energy of the system are assessed in the case study presented in this paper.

Abstract
We consider linear sampled data dynamical systems subject to additive and bounded disturbances, and study properties of their forward and backward reach sets as well as robust positively invariant sets. We propose topologically compatible notions for the sampled data forward and backward reachability as well as robust positive invariance. We also propose adequate notions for maximality and minimality of related robust positively invariant sets.

Abstract
With the collapse of communism, some former communist States of Eastern Europe managed to muddle through their way to a market economy and entered the European Union. This brought about the acceleration of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) among the European economies and accelerated the globalization process. Although there is plenty of research on FDI and trade among countries, the aim of this chapter is to analyze how trade between Portugal and the Czech Republic have evolved over form 2000 until 2015. The chapter seeks to complement previous studies on FDI and trade as Portugal and the Czech Republic are part of the European Union, but have had different historical, cultural, and economic paths. The main conclusion of the chapter is that trade between both countries has grown significantly. The main reason affecting trade between both countries is the economic unrest Portugal has been through since 2008. © 2017 by IGI Global.

Abstract
The general energy demand of the residential sector and the ensuing option for fossil fuels produce adverse results by both CO2, greenhouse gases (GHG) and extra air pollutant emissions. As domestic energy demand consists mostly of energy necessities for space and water heating alongside the energy dedicated for appliances, distinct strategies that target to foment a practical consumption of energy have to be reinforced at all levels of human activity. In this paper the aim is to make a comparison between proportional-integral-derivative (PID), thermostat (ON/OFF) control and Model Predictive Control (MPC) models of a domestic heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system controlling the temperature of a room. The model of the household with local solar microgeneration is implicit to be located in a Portuguese city. The house of the case study is at the mercy to the local solar temperature, irradiance and 5 Time-of-Use (ToU) electricity rates applied on a complete week of August, 2016. The second purpose of this study is to assess which is the best electricity ToU rate option provided by the local electricity retailer for the residential sector.