Abstract
Retention and dropout of higher education students is a subject that must be analysed carefully. Learning analytics can be used to help prevent failure cases. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the scientific production in this area in higher education in journals indexed in Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science and Elsevier's Scopus. We use a bibliometric and systematic study to obtain deep knowledge of the referred scientific production. The information gathered allows us to perceive where, how, and in what ways learning analytics has been used in the latest years. By analysing studies performed all over the world, we identify what kinds of data and techniques are used to approach the subject. We propose a feature classification into several categories and subcategories, regarding student and external features. Student features can be seen as personal or academic data, while external factors include information about the university, environment, and support offered to the students. To approach the problems, authors successfully use data mining applied to the identified educational data. We also identify some other concerns, such as privacy issues, that need to be considered in the studies.

Abstract
This paper reports a scoping review of the literature to identify the inquiry instruments being used to evaluate the usability of AAL solutions, which resulted in the inclusion of 35 studies. The results show that a significant number of the included studies reported the use of non-valid inquiry instruments, such as ad-hoc questionnaires. Among the studies using valid and reliable inquiry instruments, System Usability Scale (SUS) emerged as the most used one. In general, valid and reliable inquiry instruments are being used together with additional data gathering methods, to perform comprehensive usability evaluations. Moreover, in terms of the quality of the design of the included studies, it should be pointed the adequacy of the participants' characteristics and the tasks they performed. In turn, these studies did not present evidence of the preparation and independence of the evaluators.

Abstract
Agent-based simulation tools have found many applications in the field of Power and Energy Systems, as they can model and analyze the complex synergies of dynamic and continuously evolving systems. While some studies have been done w.r.t. simulation and decision support for electricity markets and smart grids, there is still a generalized limitation referring to the significant lack of interoperability between independently developed systems, hindering the task of addressing all the relevant existing interrelationships. This work presents the Semantic Services Catalog (SSC), developed and implemented for the automatic registry, discovery, composition, and invocation of web and agent-based services. By adding a semantic layer to the description of different types of services, this tool supports the interaction between heterogeneous multiagent systems and web services with distinct capabilities that complement each other. The case study confirms the applicability of the developed work, wherein multiple simulation and decision-support tools work together managing a microgrid of residential and office buildings. Using SSC, besides discovering each other, agents also learn about the ontologies and languages to use to communicate with each other effectively.

Abstract
This paper presents an effective hybrid supercapacitor-battery energy storage system (SC-BESS) for the active power management in a wind-diesel system using a fuzzy type distributed control system (DCS) to optimally regulate the system transient. It addresses a new online intelligent approach by using a combination of the fuzzy logic and DCS based on the particle swarm optimization techniques for optimal tuning and reduce the design effort of the control system. This mechanism combines the features of online fuzzy theory and distributed control system (DOFCS), which has a flexible structure. The proposed energy management algorithm for the hybrid SCBESS is well able to repel the peak-impact of the battery storage system during the wind speed and load changes. The high performance of the suggested methodology is represented on a typical wind-diesel test system.

Abstract
Forecasts of the effort or delivery date can play an important role in managing software projects, but the estimates provided by development teams are often inaccurate and time-consuming to produce. This is not surprising given the uncertainty that underlies this activity. This work studies the use of Monte Carlo simulations for generating forecasts based on project historical data. We have designed and run experiments comparing these forecasts against what happened in practice and to estimates provided by developers, when available. Comparisons were made based on the mean magnitude of relative error (MMRE). We did also analyze how the forecasting accuracy varies with the amount of work to be forecasted and the amount of historical data used. To minimize the requirements on input data, delivery date forecasts for a set of user stories were computed based on takt time of past stories (time elapsed between the completion of consecutive stories); effort forecasts were computed based on full-time equivalent (FTE) hours allocated to the implementation of past stories. The MMRE of delivery date forecasting was 32% in a set of 10 runs (for different projects) of Monte Carlo simulation based on takt time. The MMRE of effort forecasting was 20% in a set of 5 runs of Monte Carlo simulation based on FTE allocation, much smaller than the MMRE of 134% of developers' estimates. A better forecasting accuracy was obtained when the number of historical data points was 20 or higher. These results suggest that Monte Carlo simulations may be used in practice for delivery date and effort forecasting in agile projects, after a few initial sprints.

Abstract
Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems have spread among different application domains, from home automation to industrial manufacturing processes. The rushed development by competing vendors to meet the market demand of IoT solutions, the lack of interoperability standards, and the overall lack of a defined set of best practices have resulted in a highly complex, heterogeneous, and frangible ecosystem. Several works have been pushing towards visual programming solutions to abstract the underlying complexity and help humans reason about it. As these solutions begin to meet widespread adoption, their building blocks usually do not consider reliability issues. Node-RED, being one of the most popular tools, also lacks such mechanisms, either built-in or via extensions. In this work we present SHEN (Self-Healing Extensions for Node-RED) which provides 17 nodes that collectively enable the implementation of self-healing strategies within this visual framework. We proceed to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the approach using real devices and fault injection techniques.