Abstract
<p class="western" align="justify"><span lang="en-US">The study of the electrical properties of the atmospheric marine boundary layer is important as the effect of natural radioactivity in driving near surface ionisation is significantly reduced over the ocean, and the concentration of aerosols is also typically lower than over continental areas, allowing a clearer examination of space-atmosphere interactions. Furthermore, cloud cover over the ocean is dominated by low-level clouds and most of the atmospheric charge lies near the earth surface, at low altitude cloud tops. </span></p> <p class="western" align="justify"><span lang="en-US">The relevance of electric field observations in the marine boundary layer is enhanced by the the fact that the electrical conductivity of the ocean air is clearly linked to global atmospheric pollution and aerosol content. The increase in aerosol pollution since the original observations made in the early 20th century by the survey ship Carnegie is a pressing and timely motivation for modern measurements of the atmospheric electric field in the marine boundary layer. Project SAIL (Space-Atmosphere-Ocean Interactions in the marine boundary Layer) addresses this challenge by means of an unique monitoring campaign on board the ship-rigged sailing ship NRP Sagres during its 2020 circumnavigation expedition. </span></p> <p class="western" align="justify"><span lang="en-US">The Portuguese Navy ship NRP Sagres departed from Lisbon on January 5th in a journey around the globe that will take 371 days. Two identical field mill sensors (CS110, Campbell Scientific) are installed </span><span lang="en-US">o</span><span lang="en-US">n the mizzen mast, one at a height of 22 m, and the other at a height of 5 meters. </span><span lang="en-US">A visibility sensor (SWS050, Biral) was also set-up on the same mast in order to have measurements of the extinction coefficient of the atmosphere and assess fair-weather conditions.</span><span lang="en-US"> Further observations include gamma radiation measured with a NaI(Tl) scintillator from 475 keV to 3 MeV, cosmic radiation up to 17 MeV, and atmospheric ionisation from a cluster ion counter (Airel). The</span><span lang="en-US"> 1 Hz measurements of the atmospheric electric field</span><span lang="en-US"> and from all the other sensors</span><span lang="en-US"> are </span><span lang="en-US">linked to the same rigorous temporal reference frame and precise positioning through kinematic GNSS observations. </span></p> <p class="western" align="justify"><span lang="en-US">Here the first results of the SAIL project will be presented, focusing on fair-weather electric field over the Atlantic. The observations obtained in the first three sections of the circumnavigation journey, including Lisbon (Portugal) - Tenerife (Spain), from 5 to 10 January, Tenerife - Praia (Cape Verde) from 13 to 19 January, and across the Atlantic from Cape Verde to Rio de Janeiro (Brasil), from January 22nd to February 14th, will be presented and discussed.</span></p>

Abstract
Internet of things (IoT) is increasingly present in our lives. As a consequence of connecting devices, IoT can make people's lives more convenient and comfortable. However, despite unquestionable benefits offered by IoT, there is still a great deal of concern from users and companies about the security and privacy of their data. In this sense, this study conducts a qualitative study based on three case studies of companies in the IoT field, which aims to characterize how these IoT companies look at the security and privacy challenges posed by IoT. The findings allowed the authors to identify the main challenges faced by IoT companies during the past years, the main privacy risks exposed by IoT devices, and the countermeasures that companies and users can adopt to increase the security of IoT.

Abstract
Ambient radioactivity and atmospheric electricity are inextricably linked phenomena. In order to assess the role of ambient radioactivity in the local variability of the atmospheric electric field at an urban site, simultaneous measurements of radon concentration, gamma radiation, and atmospheric electric field are carried out in the city of Porto, Portugal. Both radon and gamma radiation display an average daily cycle peaking before sunrise, but with considerable variability from day to day, particularly in amplitude. The atmospheric electric field displays a daily cycle with a minimum at dawn and maximum in the early afternoon, as well as a secondary peak in the early morning. The temporal variation of the daily patterns is analysed by means of an empirical orthogonal function analysis, and related to local meteorological parameters. The variability of the local atmospheric electric field is mainly determined by aerosol transport and accumulation close to the surface associated with local meteorological conditions and atmospheric stability rather than by conductivity variations associated with ambient radioactivity.

Abstract
We present a novel physics-based concatenative sound synthesis (CSS) methodology for congruent interactions across physical, graphical, aural and haptic modalities in Virtual Environments. Navigation in aural and haptic corpora of annotated audio units is driven by user interactions with highly realistic photogrammetric based models in a game engine, where automated and interactive positional, physics and graphics data are supported. From a technical perspective, the current contribution expands existing CSS frameworks in avoiding mapping or mining the annotation data to real-time performance attributes, while guaranteeing degrees of novelty and variation for the same gesture.

Abstract
An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a marketable security that tracks a stock index, a commodity, bonds, or a basket of assets. Therefore, returns of ETFs that track a benchmark index portfolio should mimic the returns of their benchmark indexes. If a benchmark index's performance exhibits a seasonal pattern, then the performance of its associated ETF should replicate that pattern. This type of ETF performance seasonality is induced by trends in the market of securities in the benchmark index portfolio. Any other seasonality can be considered to be idiosyncratic. Based on a sample of 148 ETFs listed in NYSE Arca, this article provides evidence of a half-year effect (higher performance in the first half-year), a quarter effect (outperformance of the second quarter and underperformance of the fourth quarter), and month within the quarter effect (higher and lower performance in the first and third months of each quarter, respectively). Additionally, superior and inferior performance were observed in April and December, respectively. These seasonal patterns are not visible on benchmark indexes, with the exception of the unusually positive performance in April, which can be considered induced seasonality. The other effects, which cannot be attributed to underlying markets, are evidence of idiosyncratic seasonality.

Abstract
Bayesian Monte Carlo (BMC) is a promising integration technique which considerably broadens the theoretical tools that can be used to maximize and exploit the information produced by sampling, while keeping the fundamental property of data dimension independence of classical Monte Carlo (CMC). Moreover, BMC uses information that is ignored in the CMC method, such as the position of the samples and prior stochastic information about the integrand, which often leads to better integral estimates. Nevertheless, the use of BMC in computer graphics is still in an incipient phase and its application to more evolved and widely used rendering algorithms remains cumbersome. In this article we propose to apply BMC to a two-level adaptive sampling scheme for illumination integrals. We propose an efficient solution for the second level quadrature computation and show that the proposed method outperforms adaptive quasi-Monte Carlo in terms of image error and high frequency noise. © 2016 The Eurographics Association.