Abstract
This paper presents part of the findings of a research project aiming at characterising high-performance collaborative business networks and at defining the conditions required for their creation and management. The project adopted a multiple case study research strategy and three different business networks are presented in this paper. Empirical studies have been performed in Northern Portugal. The results of the study include operational definitions based on a comprehensive literature review, a conceptual reference framework for the analysis of high-performance collaborative networks and recommendations for the creation and management of such networks.

Abstract
Organizations are increasingly concerned with process optimization, thus aiming on gaining competitive advantages in the market. Inherent to any business, company or institution there is a constant document creation, manipulation and treatment flow. In many cases a real bureaucratic chaos. These processes involve great efforts in terms of human resources and are highly susceptible to errors. Sousacamp is a group of companies in the agrifood area that are geographically distributed throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Given that the group companies buy and sell from each other, the paper volume inherent to documenting these transactions is significantly high. This paper presents a documental integration strategy supported on the development of an application using ASP, .NET and C#

Abstract
The intensity profile of a focused beam of light can exert small drift forces on particles with a few microns and even smaller, which can be used to confine or manipulate them. Optical trapping has several applications, in particular it has been adopted as a powerful tool in biology, allowing, for instance to manipulate in vivo single cells. A wide variety of optical setups have been implemented to optically trap microscopic bodies, however, the single beam trap using a tightly focused Gaussian beam continues to be the most used. Recent developments introduced an alternative to bulk optical trapping systems based on lensed optical fibers. This work presents simulations showing new designs of fiber optic and 2D waveguide tweezers based on studies of the forces acting on dielectric particles immersed in media with a distinct refractive index, which take into account the refractive index and structure of the particles.

Abstract
This paper describes an approach to the short term operation planning of hydro stations in market environment. The developed approach is based on the solution of an optimization problem to maximize the profit of a generation agent along a planning period discretized in hourly steps using a Genetic Algorithm. This problem includes the possibility of pumping since this is an important resource in the scope of electricity markets. The scheduling problem was developed starting with an initial simplified version in which the head loss is neglected and the head is assumed constant. Then, it was implemented a second model in which the nonlinear relation between the head, the hydro power and the water discharge is retained and finally an approach in which the hydro schedule obtained in a given step is used to update the hourly electricity prices used to compute the profit of the generation agent. The short term hydro scheduling problem is illustrated using two Case Studies - the first one was designed to run a set of initial tests to the developed algorithm and the second one refers to a set of hydro stations that mirrors a cascade of 8 stations in Portugal. © 2013 IEEE.

Abstract

Abstract
A model to optimize the water use in the irrigation of a farm field via optimal control (water flow) that take into account the evapotranspiration, rainfall, and losses by filtration and runoff was developed in [1]. Here we improve the previous model to take into account real data of rainfall. Model predictive control is applied to replan. We test and compare different nonlinear constrained optimization techniques for solving the nonlinear constrained optimization problem that arises from the discretization of the proposed optimal control problem. Furthermore, we test different time discretization steps.