Abstract
Thin films of titanium dioxide (TiO2) and titanium (Ti) were deposited onto glass and optical fiber supports through DC magnetron sputtering, and their transmission was characterized with regard to their use in optical fiber-based sensors. Deposition parameters such as oxygen partial pressure, working pressure, and sputtering power were optimized to attain films with a high reflectance. The films deposited on glass supports were characterized by UV-Vis spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Regarding the deposition parameters, all three parameters were tested simultaneously, changing the working pressure, the sputtering power, and the oxygen percentage. It was possible to conclude that a lower working pressure and higher applied power lead to films with a higher reflectance. Through the analysis of the as-sputtered thin films using X-ray diffraction, the deposition of both Ti and TiO2 films was confirmed. To study the applicability of TiO2 and Ti in fiber sensing, several thin films were deposited in single mode fibers (SMFs) using the sputtering conditions that revealed the most promising results in the glass supports. The sputtered TiO2 and Ti thin films were used as mirrors to increase the visibility of a low-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity and the possible sensing applications were studied.

Abstract
TCP is typically the default transport protocol of choice for its supposed reliability, even for message-oriented middleware (e.g., ZeroMQ) or inter-actor communication (e.g., distributed Erlang). However, under network issues, TCP connections can fail, which requires ensuring both at-least-once and at-most-once delivery at the upper middleware layer. Moreover, the use of TCP at scale, in highly concurrent systems, can lead to drastic performance loss due to the need for TCP connection multiplexing and the resulting head-of-line blocking. This paper introduces Exon, an oblivious exactly-once messaging protocol, and a corresponding lightweight library implementation. Exon uses a novel strategy of a per-message four-way protocol to ensure oblivious exactly-once messaging, with on-demand protocol-level soft half-connections that are established when needed and safely discarded. This achieves correctness, obliviousness, and performance, through merging and pipelining basic protocol messages. The empirical evaluation of Exon demonstrates significant improvements in throughput and latency under packet loss, while maintaining a negligible overhead over TCP in healthy networks.

Abstract
Technological evolution has allowed that tasks, usually performed by humans, can now be performed accurately by automated systems, often with superior performance. The healthcare area has been paradigmatic in the automation of processes, as the need to optimize costs, ensuring the provision of quality care, is crucial for the success of organizations. Diabetes, whose prevalence has increased significantly in the last decade, could be a case of application of several technologies that facilitate diagnosis, tracking and monitoring. Such tasks demand a great effort from health systems, requiring the allocation of material, human and financial resources, under penalty of worsening symptoms and emergence of serious complications. In this chapter the authors will present and explore how different technologies can be integrated to provide better healthcare, ensuring quality and safety standards, with reference to the case of diabetes.

Abstract
This paper presents a model predictive control (MPC) framework for battery energy storage systems (BESS) management considering models for battery degradation, system efficiency and V-I characteristics. The optimization framework has been tested for microgrids with different renewable generation and load mix considering several operation strategies. A comparison for one-year simulations between the proposed model and a naïve BESS model, show an increase in computation times that still allows the application of the framework for real-time control. Furthermore, a trade-off between financial revenue and reduced BESS degradation was evaluated for the yearly simulation, considering the degradation model proposed. Results show that a conservative BESS usage strategy can have a high impact on the asset's lifetime and on the expected system revenues, depending on factors such as the objective function and the degradation threshold considered.

Abstract

Abstract
Comparing companies solely based on tax incentives for R&D activities can be misleading. Hence, this research aims to assess how Portuguese companies that make use of tax incentives for R&D activities on an ongoing basis behave in terms of promoting and appropriating value through innovation. From an initial population of 3,156 companies, a final database with 339 Portuguese companies that made use of fiscal credits from 2013 to 2016 was analyzed. The tax incentive program targeted was the Fiscal Incentive System supporting R&D in Enterprises (SIFIDE). Using the analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA), the main results suggest that, considering the internal resources, there are no statistically significant differences between the promotion and appropriation of value through innovation according to the size and age of companies. The data indicate that good management regarding the generation and implementation of innovations may occur independently of size and age of firms, in the Portuguese case. Albeit the averages of the indicators of value appropriation of the intangible (e.g. patents, trademarks, and new processes), and the efficiencies of assets and liabilities for the promotion of the intangible are different according to the level of technological intensity. These results point to the need to reevaluate the tax incentives for R&D activities, since its generic nature may not meet the different innovation needs arising from the distinctive characteristics of these enterprises and their technological dynamics. Implications and future research directions are provided.