Abstract
In this research, the authors present a framework for developing Intercultural Competence (IC) and use Tridimensional Digital Virtual Worlds (3DVW) as environments for developing Intercultural Competence. They developed an artifact, via Design Research, constituted by an educational method using the 3DVW Second Life® as the place for a virtual exchange program between 92 Brazilian and Portuguese master students. The results of the authors' study indicate that the 3DVW can be used for the development of IC because it allows rich experiential and relational/conversational learning opportunities, especially due to the affordances of immersion/sense of presence, social interaction, content production and knowledge sharing.

Abstract
The emergence and evolution of Digital Platforms in different sectors of society has caused significant changes in their way of living and operating. In education, the use and construction of these platforms is a reality in continuous expansion, now enhanced by the pandemic, due to the need for physical isolation. However, in order to understand their evolution in education and the transformations it has caused in the habitation of teaching and learning, is necessary to analyze, in addition to the digital technological evolution in relation to the type of connectivity, the understanding of education implicit in it’s architecture, evidenced by the possibilities it offers for the teaching and learning processes to develop. We propose a conceptual framework that allows us to understand digital interaction platforms as a complex relational ecology that carries a specific communicative way of living. In this context, we created a typology that resulted in four main models: Platforms for providing and accessing content, Interactive Platforms, Open World Platforms and Ecological Interaction Platforms. The latter, due to its openness and because it allows for a network connection, hybrid between different entities, gives them a symbiotic «living» ecosystem character, which would allow us to name as Inventive Connective Ecosystem Platforms.

Abstract
The unprecedented pervasiveness of IoT systems is pushing this technology into increasingly stringent domains. Such application scenarios become even more challenging due to the demand for encompassing the interplay between safety and security. The IEEE 802.15.4 DSME MAC behavior aims at addressing such systems by providing additional deterministic, synchronous multi-channel access support. However, despite the several improvements over the previous versions of the protocol, the standard lacks a complete solution to secure communications. In this front, we propose the integration of TAKS, an hybrid cryptography scheme, over a standard DSME network. In this paper, we describe the system architecture for integrating TAKS into DSME with minimum impact to the standard, and we venture into analysing the overhead of having such security solution over application delay and throughput. After a performance analysis, we learn that it is possible to achieve a minor impact of 1% to 14% on top of the expected network delay, depending on the platform used, while still guaranteeing strong security support over the DSME network.

Abstract
Advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) pose stringent requirements to a system’s control and communications, in terms of timeliness and reliability, hence, wireless communications have not been seriously considered a potential candidate for such deployments. However, recent developments in these technologies are supporting unprecedented levels of reliability and predictability. This can enable a new generation of ADAS systems with increased flexibility and the possibility of retrofitting older vehicles. However, to effectively test and validate these systems, there is a need for tools that can support the simulation of these complex communication infrastructures from the control and the networking perspective. This paper introduces a co-simulation framework that enables the simulation of an ADAS application scenario in these two fronts, analyzing the relationship between different vehicle dynamics and the delay required for the system to operate safely, exploring the performance limits of different wireless network configurations.

Abstract
In a platoon-based vehicular cyber-physical system (PVCPS), a lead vehicle that is responsible for managing the platoon's moving directions and velocity periodically disseminates control messages to the vehicles that follow. Securing wireless transmissions of the messages between the vehicles is critical for privacy and confidentiality of the platoon's driving pattern. However, due to the broadcast nature of radio channels, the transmissions are vulnerable to eavesdropping. In this article, we propose a cooperative secret key agreement (CoopKey) scheme for encrypting/decrypting the control messages, where the vehicles in PVCPS generate a unified secret key based on the quantized fading channel randomness. Channel quantization intervals are optimized by dynamic programming to minimize the mismatch of keys. A platooning testbed is built with autonomous robotic vehicles, where a TelosB wireless node is used for onboard data processing and multi-hop dissemination. Extensive real-world experiments demonstrate that CoopKey achieves significantly low secret bit mismatch rate in a variety of settings. Moreover, the standard NIST test suite is employed to verify randomness of the generated keys, where the p-values of our CoopKey pass all the randomness tests. We also evaluate CoopKey with an extended platoon size via simulations to investigate the effect of system scalability on performance.

Abstract
Deterministic Synchronous Multichannel Extension (DSME) is a prominent MAC behavior first introduced in IEEE 802.15.4e. It can avail deterministic and best effort Service using its multisuperframe structure. RPL is a routing protocol for wireless networks with low power consumption and generally susceptible to packet loss. These two standards were designed independently but with the common objective to satisfy the requirements of IoT devices in terms of limited energy, reliability and determinism. A combination of these two protocols can integrate real-time QoS demanding and large-scale IoT networks. In this paper, we propose a new multi-channel, multi-timeslot scheduling algorithm called Symphony that provides QoS efficient schedules in DSME networks. In this paper we provide analytical and simulation based delay analysis for our approach against some state of the art algorithms. In this work, we show that integrating routing with DSME can improve reliability by 40% and by using Symphony, we can reduce the network delay by 10--20% against the state of the art algorithms.