Abstract

Abstract
The Software-Independent Archival of Relational Databases (SIARD) project developed a tool known as the "SIARD Suite" for preserving relational databases. The tool converts a relational database to a XML format. This paper presents the components of the SIARD Archive Browser which is a simple to use and platform-independent tool for browsing a SIARD Archive. This may be helpful for users interested in using the software. Moreover, it may be useful for people who want to re-use the code and develop software for browsing a SIARD archive with more functionality. © Springer International Publishing 2013.

Abstract
In object oriented languages the problem of crosscutting concerns, due to limitations in the composition mechanisms, is recurrent. In order to reduce this problem we propose to use roles as a way of composing classes that extends the Object Oriented approach and can be used to model crosscutting concerns. To support our approach we developed a role language that extends Java, while being compatible with existing virtual machines. As validation we conducted a case study using three open source systems. We identified crosscutting concerns in the systems and then modeled them using our role approach. Results show that roles are a viable option for modeling crosscutting concerns. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Abstract
Assessing child well-being through composite summary indexes is one of the most recent developments regarding child well-being measurement. Using a new index that takes into account the children's own perspectives, this paper presents empirical evidence on the main determinants of overall child wellbeing. Econometric estimations, based on a sample of 1246 children enrolled in the 3rd-6th grades of schools located in the Northern region of Portugal, convey two main results: (1) the parents' educational background and professional status, in particular, an unemployed father, are the most important factors affecting child well-being and (2) children from households with double or foreign nationality are worse off than those with Portuguese nationality. These results support the positive role of policies targeting the qualifications and employment opportunities for parents, as well as the need for inclusive policies for immigrant households as a way to improve their children's well-being.

Abstract
Percussive musical instrument sounds figure among the most challenging to model using sinusoids particularly due to the characteristic attack that features a sharp onset and transients. Attack transients present a highly nonstationary inharmonic behaviour that is very difficult to model with traditional sinusoidal models which use slowly varying sinusoids, commonly introducing an artifact known as pre-echo. In this work we use an adaptive sinusoidal model dubbed eaQHM to model percussive sounds from musical instruments such as plucked strings or percussion and investigate how eaQHM handles the sharp onsets and the nonstationary inharmonic nature of the attack transients. We show that adaptation renders a virtually perceptually identical sinusoidal representation of percussive sounds from different musical instruments, improving the Signal to Reconstruction Error Ratio (SRER) obtained with a traditional sinusoidal model. The result of a listening test revealed that the percussive sounds modeled with eaQHM were considered perceptually closer to the original sounds than their traditional-sinusoidal-modeled counterparts. Most listeners reported that they used the attack as cue.

Abstract
According to previous researches, automated guided vehicles and quay cranes in container terminals have a high potential synergy. In this paper, a mixed integer programming model is formulated to optimize the coordinated scheduling of cranes and vehicles in container terminals. Objectives of the model are to minimize total traveling time of the vehicles and delays in tasks of cranes. A genetic algorithm is developed to solve the problem in reasonable computational time. The most appropriate control parameters for the proposed genetic algorithm are investigated in a medium size numerical test case. It is shown that balanced crossover and mutation rates have the best performance in finding a near optimal solution for the problem. Then, ten small size test cases are solved to evaluate the performance of the proposed optimization methods. The results show the applicability of the genetic algorithm since it can find near optimal solutions, precisely and accurately.