Abstract
In critical situations, such as decision making in healthcare, is necessary to have access to all of the patient's information, the information must be reliable, and must be accessed in an easy and fast way. These requirements make medical information systems of extreme importance. However in today's molds and with the advent of the Internet and mobile devices, a paradigm shift, from the current isolated systems to interoperable distributed systems, that take advantage of ubiquitous computing, is needed. The present work proposes an architecture that aims to answer the needs of interoperability between heterogeneous systems and the need of ubiquity of medical information systems. A prototype was developed that tries to provide interoperability through a service-oriented architecture using web services. A mobile component was also developed to enable ubiquitous access to medical information. This work was based on the author's knowledge about the Portuguese National Health Service.

Abstract
Wireless sensor networks have found multiple applications in precision viticulture. Despite the steady progress in sensing devices and wireless technologies, some of the crucial items needed to improve the usability and scalability of the networks, such as gateway infrastructures and in-field processing, have been comparatively neglected. This paper describes the hardware, communication capabilities and software architecture of an intelligent autonomous gateway, designed to provide the necessary middleware between locally deployed sensor networks and a remote location within the whole-farm concept. This solar-powered infrastructure, denoted by iPAGAT (Intelligent Precision Agriculture Gateway), runs an aggregation engine that fills a local database with environmental data gathered by a locally deployed ZigBee wireless sensor network. Aggregated data are then retrieved by external queries over the built-in data integration system. In addition, embedded communication capabilities, including Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11 and GPRS, allow local and remote users to access both gateway and remote data, as well as the Internet, and run site-specific management tools using authenticated smartphones. Field experiments provide convincing evidence that iPAGAT represents an important step forward in the development of distributed service-oriented information systems for precision viticulture applications.

Abstract
Supercooling is still today one of the most challenging physical phenomena to be modelled in food bioprocess engineering. In this study, we evaluate the capacity of a finite-element-cellular automata (FEM-CA) approach to model the propagation of nucleation inside supercooled strawberries with five different morphologies (higher and lower volumes of vascular tissue, pulp, and central air void) frozen inside an air blast freezer under different operational conditions: initial temperature (0 to +20 A degrees C), air temperature (-45 to -20 A degrees C), and velocity (1 to 10 m s (-aEuro parts per thousand 1)). Results show that nucleation is highly affected by the initial temperature and heat transfer rate during phase change. The stochastic nature of nucleation only allowed us to consider it a random variable inside the model temperature restriction interval, it not yet being possible to know what triggers nucleation. However, this study allowed us to conclude that: (1) the structure of liquid water in the supercooled region plays a very significant role during the supercooling effect, (2) nucleation temperatures increase in the supercooled region due to the release of latent heat, and (3) strawberry morphology and operational variables have a profound effect on the supercooling capacity. In our opinion, supercooling is still an open subject, and only a deeper understanding of the structuring of water and dynamics of nucleation at the molecular level may lead to significant advances in the quality of frozen foods and cryopreservation.

Abstract
Landscape metrics were used to analyze landscape changes and related driving forces in a mountain rural landscape of Northeast Portugal over three decades. This landscape has great heterogeneity, which favors high levels of diversity and provides for a variety of habitats. The landscape metrics were obtained from land cover maps derived from Landsat images of 1979, 1989 and 2002. Results indicate a trend for increased landscape fragmentation, decrease of annual crop fields (-43%) and, mainly, increase of meadows (+60%). Results relate with decline and aging of the rural population, and to several measures and policies of subsidies implemented in the region in application of the Common Agriculture Policy, which contributed to the replacement of annual crops by meadows. Results are potentially useful to base appropriate policies for landscape management and conservation planning.

Abstract
The application of organic wastes to agricultural soils is not risk-free and can affect soil invertebrates. Ecotoxicological tests based on the behavioral avoidance of earthworms and springtails were performed to evaluate effects of different fertilization strategies on soil quality and habitat function for soil organisms. These tests were performed in soils treated with: i) slurry and chemical fertilizers, according to the conventional fertilization management of the region, ii) conventional fertilization + sludge and iii) unfertilized reference soil. Both fertilization strategies contributed to soil acidity mitigation and caused no increase in soil heavy metal content. Avoidance test results showed no negative effects of these strategies on soil organisms, compared with the reference soil. However, results of the two fertilization managements differed: Springtails did not avoid soils fertilized with dairy sludge in any of the tested combinations. Earthworms avoided soils treated with sludge as of May 2004 (DS1), when compared with conventional fertilization. Possibly, the behavioral avoidance of earthworms is more sensitive to soil properties (other than texture, organic matter and heavy metal content) than springtails

Abstract
Organic wastes have been reported to reduce saturation of the exchange complex by Al in Al-rich acid soils. For 3 years, the main soil fertility properties were studied in plots sown with mixed pasture species. These plots were fertilized with cattle slurry, dairy sludge (DS), or granulated broiler litter (BL) in comparison with mineral fertilizer. Al saturation levels were low after the initial inorganic liming treatment (19.00-33.71%) but tended to rise under all treatments (21.09-61.37%) except BL (8.45-30.98%), which was also associated with the highest average soil pH and the highest average levels of exchangeable Ca(2+), Mg(2+), and K(+). Treatment DS performed similarly to mineral fertilizer in most respects, but it led to greater available P levels. Under the dry conditions of the second and third years of the study, BL and DS treatments were associated with significantly greater forage yields than the other treatments. Under DS treatment, available P levels were too low to allow the maintenance of mixed pasture, clover being eliminated by the less P-dependent species.