Abstract
Purpose: The study purpose was to analyse the excellence and operational efficiency of Portuguese industrial companies through the measurement of lean practices implementation. Additionally, it intended to propose a new model to assess the lean production system. Design/methodology/approach: The research presents an in-depth lean literature review that served as a basis for the creation of a questionnaire. The survey was addressed to Portuguese industrial companies to obtain data about their lean implementation success. Collected data were analysed, resorting descriptive and exploratory statistics. A principal component analysis was applied to reduce the amount of data and define a new model that characterizes the lean practices adoption level. Some Chi-square tests were used to assess the independence of some variables. Findings: The results indicate that a significant percentage of organizations use lean practices within their activity. Concerning the lean implementation maturity, a plus side revealed by the study concerns the adoption of the teamwork, internal information shared principles, increase of process capability to produce conforming products, and reduction in set up times. On the other hand, responsibilities decentralization, more employees acting as team leaders, implementation of employees' suggestions, and interconnection with suppliers, are some of the principles that need to be given greater attention by the Portuguese industrial organizations. The key contribution consists of a new model for lean determinants based on three dimensions: work method, productive process elements, and work efficiency. Originality/value: The present research provides a new Lean determinants model that allows understanding the importance of the operational efficiency provided by a mature lean production system, being the key to the competitiveness in the global business market.

Abstract
This research aims to contribute to bridging the gap between the connection of logistics and regional development. Firstly, based on the available literature, the contribution of logistics to socioeconomic development was analyzed, and having in mind the importance of Regional Development for economic and social development, this research brings to the light the importance of logistics activities to regional social development, and framework to assess these connections is proposed. Then a framework comprising a set of indicators to evaluate logistics performance was proposed. As a main result, a framework for the assessment of regional logistics performance is proposed together with several logistics performance indicators to assess the impact of logistics on regional development.

Abstract
Aims. We aim to demonstrate that the presence and mass of an exoplanet can now be effectively derived from the astrometry of another exoplanet. Methods. We combined previous astrometry of beta Pictoris b with a new set of observations from the GRAVITY interferometer. The orbital motion of beta Pictoris b is fit using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations in Jacobi coordinates. The inner planet, beta Pictoris c, was also reobserved at a separation of 96 mas, confirming the previous orbital estimations. Results. From the astrometry of planet b only, we can (i) detect the presence of beta Pictoris c and (ii) constrain its mass to 10.04(-3.10)(+4.53) M-Jup . If one adds the astrometry of beta Pictoris c, the mass is narrowed down to 9.15(-1.06)(+1.08) M-Jup. The inclusion of radial velocity measurements does not affect the orbital parameters significantly, but it does slightly decrease the mass estimate to 8.89(-0.75)(+0.75) M-Jup.With a semimajor axis of 2.68 +/- 0.02 au, a period of 1221 +/- 15 days, and an eccentricity of 0.32 +/- 0.02, the orbital parameters of beta Pictoris c are now constrained as precisely as those of beta Pictoris b. The orbital configuration is compatible with a high-order mean-motion resonance (7:1). The impact of the resonance on the planets' dynamics would then be negligible with respect to the secular perturbations, which might have played an important role in the eccentricity excitation of the outer planet.

Abstract
Data acquisition is a critical task for localisation and perception of mobile robots. It is necessary to compute the relative pose between onboard sensors to process the data in a common frame. Thus, extrinsic calibration computes the sensor’s relative pose improving data consistency between them. This paper performs a literature review on extrinsic sensor calibration methods prioritising the most recent ones. The sensors types considered were laser scanners, cameras and IMUs. It was found methods for robot–laser, laser–laser, laser–camera, robot–camera, camera–camera, camera–IMU, IMU–IMU and laser–IMU calibration. The analysed methods allow the full calibration of a sensory system composed of lasers, cameras and IMUs. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.

Abstract
Energy hubs (EHs) are units in which multiple energy carriers are converted, conditioned and stored to simultaneously supply different forms of energy demands. In this research, the objective is to develop a new stochastic model for unit commitment in EHs including an intelligent electric vehicle (EV) parking lot, boiler, photovoltaic (PV) module, fuel cell, absorption chiller, electric heat pump, electric/thermal/ cooling storage systems, with electricity and natural gas (NG) as inputs and electricity, heat, cooling and NG as demands. The uncertainties of demands, PV power and initial energy of EV batteries are modeled with Monte Carlo Simulation. The effect of demand response and demand participation factors as well as effect of EVs and storage systems on EH operation are investigated. The results indicate that thermal demand response is more effective than electric and cooling demand response; as it decreases EH operation cost by 12%, while electric demand response and cooling demand response decrease it respectively by 9.3% and 4.2%. The results show that at low electric/thermal/cooling demand participation factors, an increase in participation factor sharply decreases EH operation cost, while the same amount of increase at higher participation factors leads to a smaller decrease in operation cost. The results also indicate that thermal storage system and cooling storage system have significant effect on reduction of EH operation cost, while the effect of electric storage system is trivial.

Abstract
The 2019/2020 school year will always be remembered for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time in recent history, countries closed schools and forced instructors and students to quickly adjust to online classes. This sudden and forced shift to a method of teaching that was completely different from what we were used to presented several challenges and opportunities on a pedagogical level. In this paper we describe our experience as instructors in a course on microprocessor programming in the Master's Degree in Computer Science and Computing Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. Our approach included changes to the assessment plan, which became more distributed, and improvements in communication between students and instructors through the use of Slack. We found that the changes introduced were not only very well received by students, but also resulted in the best exam attendance and average final grade in the last 10 years of the course's history.