Abstract
Privacy sensitive applications that store confidential information such as personal identifiable data or medical records have strict security concerns. These concerns hinder the adoption of the cloud. With cloud providers under the constant threat of malicious attacks, a single successful breach is sufficient to exploit any valuable information and disclose sensitive data. Existing privacy-aware databases mitigate some of these concerns, but sill leak critical information that can potently compromise the entire system's security. This paper proposes d'Artagnan, the first privacy-aware multi-cloud NoSQL database framework that renders database leaks worthless. The framework stores data as encrypted secrets in multiple clouds such that i) a single data breach cannot break the database's confidentiality and ii) queries are processed on the server-side without leaking any sensitive information. d'Artagnan is evaluated with industry-standard benchmark on market-leading cloud providers.

Abstract
When dealing with electrocardiography (ECG) the main focus relies on the classification of the heart's electric activity and deep learning has been proving its value over the years classifying the heartbeats, exhibiting great performance when doing so. Following these assumptions, we propose a deep learning model based on a ResNet architecture with convolutional ID layers to classes the beats into one of the 4 classes: normal, atrial premature contraction, premature ventricular contraction and others. Experimental results with MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database confirmed that the model is able to perform well, obtaining an accuracy of 96% when using stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and 83% when using adaptive moment estimation (Adam), SGD also obtained F1-scores over 90% for the four classes proposed. A larger dataset was created and tested as unforeseen data for the trained model, proving that new tests should be done to improve the accuracy of it.

Abstract
In this paper, a daily plan model to the irrigation of a crop field using optimal control was developed. This daily plan model have in consideration: weather data (temperatures, rainfall, wind speed), the type of crop, the location, humidity in the soil at the initial time, the type of soil and the type of irrigation. The aim is to minimise the water used in the irrigation systems ensuring that the field crop is kept in a good state of preservation. MATLAB was used to develop our mathematical model and obtain its output. Its results were compared with experimental ones obtained from a real farm field of grass in Portugal. This comparison not only allowed us to validate our model, but also allowed us to conclude that, using optimal control considerable savings in water resources, while keeping the crop safe are obtained. Some real test cases were simulated and the comparison between the optimised water to be used by the irrigation system (calculated by software) and the real amount of water used in irrigation site (on-off control system for irrigation) produced water savings above 10%. © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Abstract
Providing public services through the internet is an effective approach towards an encompassing number of citizens being covered by them and for cost reduction. However, the fast development of this area has fostered discussion and legislation regarding information security and trustworthiness. In addition to security mechanisms for data processed and stored internally, service providers must ensure that data exchanged between their servers and citizens are not intercepted or modified when traversing heterogeneous and uncontrolled networks. Moreover, such institutions should provide means enabling the citizen to verify the authenticity of the services offered. In this way, the present work provides a comprehensive overview regarding the security posture of Portuguese public institutions in their online services. It consists of non-invasive robustness evaluation of the deployed solutions for end-to-end data encryption and the correct use of digital certificates. As a result, we provide some recommendations aiming to enhance the current panorama in the majority of the 111 online services considered in this study.

Abstract
A new type of irrigation system is being developed in the context of the research project 02/SAICT/2017-28247-FCT-TO-CHAIR. The output are irrigation plans based on optimal control theory that minimize water usage and keep crops safe. In this paper, we present the main features of the system prototype. The system uses soil moisture sensors in the field, weather forecasts and parameters that the farmer provides. This data is input to an Octave/Matlab program that implements an Optimal Control algorithm to compute the irrigation plan for the crop field. The system consists of an electronic device that interfaces the sensors in the field and a server computer. The field device reads data from any analogue sensors and uses mobile communications to upload the data to the server computer. The server provides a website for users to insert data about their crops and fields and it retrieves weather forecast data from a freely available service. Once a day the server runs the Optimal Control irrigation-planning algorithm and the result is provided on the user web page using both numerical and graphical formats. Due to the diversity of irrigation infrastructures installed in crop fields and water availability for irrigation, the system does not automatically control/actuate the irrigation. That task is left on the hands of the farmer.

Abstract
VirtuosoNext (TM) is a distributed real-time operating system (RTOS) featuring a generic programming model dubbed Interacting Entities. This paper focuses on these interactions, implemented as so-called Hubs. Hubs act as synchronisation and communication mechanisms between the application tasks and implement the services provided by the kernel as a kind of Guarded Protected Action with a well defined semantics. While the kernel provides the most basic services, each carefully designed, tested and optimised, tasks are limited to this handful of basic hubs, leaving the development of more complex synchronization and communication mechanisms up to application specific implementations. In this work we investigate how to support a programming paradigm to compositionally build new services, using notions borrowed from the Reo coordination language, and relieving tasks from coordination aspects while delegating them to the hubs. We formalise the semantics of hubs using an automata model, identify the behaviour of existing hubs, and propose an approach to build new hubs by composing simpler ones. We also provide tools and methods to analyse and simplify hubs under our automata interpretation. In a first experiment several hub interactions are combined into a single more complex hub, which raises the level of abstraction and contributes to a higher productivity for the programmer. Finally, we investigate the impact on the performance by comparing different implementations on an embedded board.