Abstract
This study gives suggestions on how to decrease academic cheating. This exploratory study discusses how engaging students, with the case study approach, has led to the submission of more honest course work. What needs to change is the challenge – requiring too much is worse than not requiring anything at all, as the former is an incentive to academic cheating. Students need reachable goals and not to be over-swamped with course work. In the UK this may seem obvious but not so in other countries, where a number of students are known for copying and for not submitting original work to their lecturers (Teixeira, 2011). How might one attempt to change this trend of trying to get around the education system? This paper is about how to engage students – be it in the classroom, be it when they are at home, doing their course work. If it may be true that success is all about how much work you put in (Oliveira, 1993; Mansfield and Oliveira, 1994, 1995), then success in academia is about how you motivate students to want to excel based on their own merit and hard work (Au-Yong-Oliveira and Almeida, 2015). Rather than measuring a lecturer’s success on his or her pass rates of students, or by judging him or her on satisfaction scores given by students, lecturers should recognize that what is required is that they have a lasting effect on their students – in essence, changing their lives. Why are starting salaries so low in Portugal? Why is it so hard for students who have just graduated to find a job in Portugal? Why is the immigration rate so high amongst Portugal’s youths? A lot has to do with the education system – which is, albeit, at some institutions, already very practical, in the management studies domain. What we discuss herein is how to elicit honest contributions and how to gain genuine interest from higher education students – both at the undergraduate as well as postgraduate levels. Certain academic environments need change. This paper is about how to bring about that change and what lecturers can do, in particular with regards to research methodology, to revolutionize academia and perhaps even youth employment rates in the country. The account is by lecturers with teaching experience in a dozen higher education institutions. Having worked with Erasmus students the authors are well aware that plagiarism is also a problem in other countries, besides Portugal – notably, in Spain, Greece, and new democracies in Eastern Europe.

Abstract
Multi-master replication in a distributed system setting allows each node holding a replica to update and query the local replica, and disseminate updates to other nodes. Obtaining high availability typically entails allowing replicas to diverge and requires a background mechanism for re-establishing consistency. Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) extend standard sequential data-Types with appropriate merge functions, and often can be composed together to create more complex ones. In this work we add a generic CRDT composition approach that explores the single-writer principle. By carefully controlling which part of the composition can be updated by each replica, we can derive efficient designs that cover new usecases. After introducing the new construction we exemplify some uses, including how to emulate a simple Doodle functionality for selecting a common meeting schedule among different participants. © 2017 Association for Computing Machinery.

Abstract
Sugarcane cultivation is important for the economy of many countries, particularly for Brazil. This plant has been used to produce sugar, ethanol, second generation ethanol, fertilizers, as well as bioelectricity. Due to production growth and the establishment of mechanized sugarcane harvesting, this process needs to be optimized. High costs are linked to mechanized harvesting, which affect the total cost of production. One of the costs of harvesting is related to the long time the sugarcane harvesting machine takes to change the crop row to be cut. To help reduce costs, this work proposes a mathematical model to the Route Planning Problem for Mechanized Harvesting. This mathematical model minimizes the time of maneuvering the harvesting machine and, consequently, reduces fuel and labor costs, among others. Computer tests were performed using data supplied by a company from the sugarcane energy sector located in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The results were compared to the traditional routes used by the company and proved the efficiency of the mathematical model in supplying solutions that minimize the time of harvesting machine maneuvers. Not only are there economic benefits, but also environmental ones that can be obtained.

Abstract
Cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are recently gaining wide adoption since the introduction of Bitcoin, being distributed, authority-free, and secure. Proof of Work (PoW) is at the heart of blockchain's security, asset generation, and maintenance. Although simple and secure, a hash-based PoW like Bitcoin's puzzle is often referred to as "useless", and the used intensive computations are considered "waste" of energy. A myriad of Proof of "something" alternatives have been proposed to mitigate energy consumption; however, they either introduced new security threats and limitations, or the "work" remained far from being really "useful". In this work, we introduce Proof of eXercise (PoX): a sustainable alternative to PoW where an eXercise is a real world matrix-based scientific computation problem. We provide a novel study of the properties of Bitcoin's PoW, the challenges of a more "rational" solution as PoX, and we suggest a comprehensive approach for PoX.

Abstract
Demand response is known as one of the basic components of smart grids that plays an important role in shaping load curves. In most of the prior reports on applying demand response programs, reactive power and load dependency to voltage magnitude have been ignored in distribution grids. In this paper, firstly, we show that the ignorance of the mentioned phenomena can cause a mismatch between the expected value of demand response and the experimental value. This mismatch is known as the demand response mismatch (DRM), which is dependent on some parameters such as load type, load reduction percentage, and network power factor. To overcome this problem, this paper presents a reactive power control model. In addition, a mixed integer nonlinear program is proposed to find the optimal size and location of STATCOMs and the optimal transformer tap settings that minimize the DRM. In this paper, the 16-bus U.K. generic distribution system (UKGDS) is employed to prove the capability of the presented method in DRM reduction.

Abstract
Taking the case of the University of Aveiro, we herein analyse why students choose to abandon their higher education degrees. To date, and as a result of focus group and brainstorming interactions, as well as of an analysis performed at the highest levels in the university, the following twelve causes for abandonment were identified: 1. Difficulty in adapting to the first year at university; 2. Financial difficulty and not being granted, as requested, a student scholarship; 3. Not being able to finish a satisfactory number of subjects, in the first year at university; 4. Missing a lot of lectures, which makes passing more difficult; 5. Being somewhat immature and subsequently not adapting to the challenges, often a long way from home; 6. Entering the university in a later recruitment stage, later than everyone else, and thus experiencing added difficulty in accompanying the syllabus; 7. Not being in a degree which was the first study choice, as the student's marks were not good enough, leading to low motivation levels; 8. Being one of the lower-end students in class, and thus having difficulty in keeping up; 9. Being a part-time student, while maintaining a full-time working job, which makes passing subjects harder; 10. Doing an internship, and subsequently being offered a job, which the student accepts, due to current financial priorities, leading to premature abandonment of university; 11. Having difficulty in passing one subject in particular (e.g. Calculus or Statistics), leading to the student abandoning higher education altogether; 12. Thinking that higher education is too theoretical, and therefore not worthwhile, and preferring to go right into the job market, to gain work experience. We also performed three interviews with students from various Higher Education Institutions (HEI), who dropped out of higher education, the data collected having confirmed what was stated above. Being aware of these issues and taking action (from a relationship marketing and services perspective) at the highest levels in a HEI is a good path towards success, as is occurring at the University of Aveiro. However, it will ultimately be up to the students, in the end, to decide whether studying is worthwhile thus keeping dropout to a minimum.