Abstract
Nowadays, wind energy has an important role in the challenges of clean energy supply. It is the fastest growing energy source with a increasing annual rate of 20%. This scenario motivate the development of an optimization design tool to find optimal layout for wind farms. This paper proposes a mathematical model to find the best electrical interconnection configuration of the wind farm turbines and the substation. The goal is to minimize the installation costs, that include cable cost and cable installation costs, considering technical constraints. This problem corresponds to a capacitated minimum spanning tree with additional constraints. The methodology proposed is applied in a real case study and the results are compared with the ground solution.

Abstract
O projeto “Serious Game em contexto de formação profissional” teve por objetivo explorar o potencial da utilização de Serious Games nas atividades de formação da PT Inovação SA. O projeto, que decorreu entre Janeiro de 2011 e Maio de 2013, incluiu a conceção, prototipagem e validação de um Serious Game destinado a familiarizar os novos colaboradores da PT Inovação SA com a organização física e lógica da empresa, para o que foi desenvolvido um ambiente realista que permite a navegação em alguns espaços de referência da empresa bem como o contacto com a estrutura dirigente e com alguns produtos. Em diversas fases do jogo o utilizador é convidado a realizar atividades pedagógicas que permitem que tome consciência dos progressos de aprendizagem que está a realizar. O Serious Game desenvolvido foi validado com sucesso através de um modelo composto por parâmetros e estratégias de avaliação orientados para análise da usabilidade e do resultados de aprendizagem, tendo-se efetuado recolha de dados através de testes de usabilidade, observação direta não participativa, registo audiovisual, think-aloud protocol e questionário por inquérito pré e pós-sessão. As principais conclusões do trabalho realizado indicam que o Serious Game possui bom potencial enquanto instrumento de apoio à formação, pois possibilita uma aprendizagem rápida e eficaz promovendo positivamente para a integração do novo colaborador na empresa.;The project "Serious Game in the context of vocational training" aimed exploring the potential use of Serious Games in the training activities of PT Inovação SA. The project, which took place between September 2010 and June 2013, included design, prototyping and validation of a Serious Game intended to familiarize new employees of PT Inovação SA with the physical and logical organization of the company. For this purpose a realistic environment was developed allowing navigation in some reference spaces in the company, as well as contact with the managing structure and with some products. In various stages of the game the user is invited to perform educational activities that allow him to be aware of his learning progress. The Serious Game was validated successfully by a model consisting of parameters and assessment strategies oriented to the analysis of usability and the learning outcomes. Data collection was achieved through usability testing, nonparticipatory direct observation, audiovisual recording, think-aloud protocol and questionnaire survey before and after the session. The main conclusions of the work indicate that the Serious Game has good potential as a tool to support training, as it proved to enable quick learning and effectiveness in promoting positive integration of a new employee in the company.

Abstract
The paper introduces a new approach on design of distributed manufacturing control systems. It will be shown how multi-agent principles, self-learning, self-adaptation and a new engineering method for distributed production systems can be used to enhance integration of production control process quality control. It will be highlighted how multi-agent systems may be implemented to enforce interaction of manufacturing execution system and distributed control system, enhancing the exploitation of all available information at the quality control and process control levels. Additional focus is set on production process modeling, quality control algorithms and an engineering methodology integrating all these aspects within. The final results are validated in the field of white ware using a washing machine production line.

Abstract
Auscultation is widely applied in clinical activity, nonetheless sound interpretation is dependent on clinician training and experience. Heart sound features such as spatial loudness, relative amplitude, murmurs, and localization of each component may be indicative of pathology. In this study we propose a segmentation algorithm to extract heart sound components (S1 and S2) based on it's time and frequency characteristics. This algorithm takes advantage of the knowledge of the heart cycle times (systolic and diastolic periods) and of the spectral characteristics of each component, through wavelet analysis. Data collected in a clinical environment, and annotated by a clinician was used to assess algorithm's performance. Heart sound components were correctly identified in 99.5% of the annotated events. S1 and S2 detection rates were 90.9% and 93.3% respectively. The median difference between annotated and detected events was of 33.9 ms.

Abstract
This paper evaluates the benefits of introducing electricity powered vehicles (EV) in one island of the Azores archipelago in Portugal, the island of Flores. A Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) for the road transportation sector including EV was performed and the EV impacts in the electricity grid were evaluated. Two scenarios considering the introduction of EV were considered (Scenarios 2 and 3 with a shift in the car stock in 2050 of 30% and 70% to EV) and compared to the baseline scenario (Scenario 1 with no EV penetration). The results show that, if no alternative solutions are adopted, the road transportation sector LCA energy consumption will increase 58% in 2050, compared to 2009. In the most attractive scenario studied regarding EV integration in Flores, the LCA energy consumption in 2050 decreases by 34% and CO2 emissions by 39%, when comparing with Scenario 1. Moreover, the island's electricity network is ready for EV arrival, at least until 2020. Thereafter, a smart charging scheme should be implemented to manage the vehicles' energy demand according to the network technical limitations and the presence of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) should be reinforced, to decrease the island's dependency on fossil fuels and, consequently, CO2 emissions.

Abstract
All companies developing their business on the Web, not only giants like Google or Facebook but also small com- panies focused on niche markets, face scalability issues in data management. The case study of this paper is the content management systems for classified or commercial advertise-ments on the Web. The data involved has a very significant growth rate and a read-intensive access pattern with a reduced update rate. Typically, data is stored in traditional file systems hosted on dedicated servers or Storage Area Network devices due to the generalization and ease of use of file systems. However, this ease in implementation and usage has a disadvantage: the centralized nature of these systems leads to availability, elasticity and scalability problems. The scenario under study, undemanding in terms of the system's consistency and with a simple interaction model, is suitable to a distributed database, such as Cassandra, conceived precisely to dynamically handle large volumes of data. In this paper, we analyze the suitability of Cassandra as a substitute for file systems in content management systems. The evaluation, conducted using real data from a produc- tion system, shows that using Cassandra, one can easily get horizontal scalability of storage, redundancy across multiple independent nodes, and load distribution imposed by the periodic activities of safeguarding data, while ensuring a comparable performance to that of a file system.