Abstract
Nowadays, the prevalence of computing systems in our lives is so ubiquitous that it would not be far-fetched to state that we live in a cyber-physical world dominated by computer systems. These systems demand for more and more computational performance to process large amounts of data from multiple data sources, some of them with guaranteed processing response times. In other words, systems are required to deliver their results within pre-defined (and sometimes extremely short) time bounds. Examples can be found for instance in intelligent transportation systems for fuel consumption reduction in cities or railway, or autonomous driving of vehicles. To cope with such performance requirements, chip designers produced chips with dozens or hundreds of cores, interconnected with complex networks on chip. Unfortunately, the parallelization of the computing activities brings many challenges, among which how to provide timing guarantees, as the timing behaviour of the system running within a many-core processor depends on interactions on shared resources that are most of the time not know by the system designer. P-SOCRATES (Parallel Software Framework for Time-Critical Many-core Systems) is an FP7 European project, which developed a novel methodology to facilitate the deployment of standardized parallel architectures for real-time applications. This methodology was implemented (based on existent models and components) to provide an integrated software development kit, the UpScale SDK, to fully exploit the huge performance opportunities brought by the most advanced many-core processors, whilst ensuring a predictable performance and maintaining (or even reducing) development costs of applications. The presentation will provide an overview of the UpScale SDK, its underlying methodology, and the results of its application on relevant industrial use-cases.

Abstract
This research aims to explore the importance of tourism activities for student mobility, considering the decision process, the experience of the students while on mobility, and their loyalty to the host region, including their cooperation in promoting local attractions among relatives and friends. We present qualitative results obtained from focus groups with Erasmus students from diverse countries inside and outside Europe, who spent at least one semester in the University of Aveiro, Portugal. The discussions explored students' perceptions, experiences and practices before and during the mobility. Our results include evidence on how traveling opportunities are an inherent part of Erasmus students' mobility. Overall, their tourist activities are shown as strong enhancers of the learning process while on mobility, despite competing with limited resources of time and money. Traveling is also an opportunity to spend time with family and friends, namely with other mobility students at the same host university, fostering integration and a higher degree of satisfaction with the mobility experience. In turn, the extended exposure to a different language and culture transform mobility students into ideal ambassadors of the host country, contributing significantly to the promotion of their mobility destinations.

Abstract
By rethinking how digital information and media have evolved, we intend to discuss how Information Visualization is performing an essential role in the field of newspapers, and how it can evolve with particular emphasis on content archiving for future access. The presence of new visual structures used in fields such as digital archiving, have questioned digital methods of preservation and how the interrelation between information and access to knowledge is revealed. In digital newspapers, the development of access and information retrieval processes has become an essential part of their duties, but it is still in it’s infancy and dependent on text search rather then content awareness. By outlining the links between Visual Archives and Information Visualization, with focus on online press, we venture in a path of trial and error. This is present by the recognition of lack of efficient articulation between different types of contents, as well as between the user interaction and the contents outcomes. Thus proposing a visual lexicon that can adjust to the constraints of technology, different user devices, and the promptitude of publication that a Web context demands it is utmost relevant. A combination of fields, with attention to visual perception and arbitrary conventions in relation to image and content awareness, grants the association of concepts such as big data and thick data description, being part of the outcomes of this research a proposal to a theoretical model grounded on prototyping testing in a newsroom office.      This empirical methodological approach is supported by a low-fidelity prototype, for iterative formative evaluations, fostering field’s observations with potential users in order to identify the best visual components of a digital visual archive for online newspapers. The challenge is to develop visual structures that preserve and present the interconnections of news, information and knowledge to be seen, accessed and linked. By making use of a lo-fi prototype of a visual digital archive we aimed, to test, re-test, and find responses in dialogue, failure and retrial. The body of work shown here presents the practical outcomes of the theoretical model.

Abstract
The multi-facility layout problem involves the physical organization of departments inside several facilities, to allow flexible and efficient operations. This work studies the facility layout problem in a new perspective, considering a group of facilities, and two different concerns: the location of departments within a group of facilities, and the location of departments inside each facility itself. The problem is formulated as a Quadratic Programming Problem with multiple objectives and unequal areas, allowing layout reconfigurations in each planning period. The objectives of the model are: the minimization of costs (material handling inside facilities and between facilities, and re-layout); the maximization of adjacency between departments; and the minimization of the "unsuitability" of department positions and locations. This unsuitability measure is a new objective proposed in this work, to combine the characteristics of existing locations with the requirements of departments. The model was tested with data from the literature as well as with a problem inspired in a first tier supplier in the automotive industry. Preliminary results show that this work can be viewed as an innovative and promising integrated approach for tackling real, complex facility layout problems.

Abstract
A fundamental question that often occurs in statistical tests is the normality of distributions. Countless distributions exist in science and life, but one distribution that is obtained via permutations, usually referred to as permutation distribution, is interesting. Although a permutation distribution should behave in accord with the central limit theorem, if both the independence condition and the identical distribution condition are fulfilled, no studies have corroborated this concurrence in functional magnetic resonance imaging data. In this work, we used Anderson-Darling test to evaluate the accordance level of permutation distributions of classification accuracies to normality expected under central limit theorem. A simulation study has been carried out using functional magnetic resonance imaging data collected, while human subjects responded to visual stimulation paradigms. Two scrambling schemes are evaluated: the first based on permuting both the training and the testing sets and the second on permuting only the testing set. The results showed that, while a normal distribution does not adequately fit to permutation distributions most of the times, it tends to be quite well acceptable when mean classification accuracies averaged over a set of different classifiers is considered. The results also showed that permutation distributions can be probabilistically affected by performing motion correction to functional magnetic resonance imaging data, and thus may weaken the approximation of permutation distributions to a normal law. Such findings, however, have no relation to univariate/univoxel analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Overall, the results revealed a strong dependence across the folds of cross-validation and across functional magnetic resonance imaging runs and that may hinder the reliability of using cross-validation. The obtained p-values and the drawn confidence level intervals exhibited beyond doubt that different permutation schemes may beget different permutation distributions as well as different levels of accord with central limit theorem. We also found that different permutation schemes can lead to different permutation distributions and that may lead to different assessment of the statistical significance of classification accuracy.

Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate endothelial dysfunction and microvascular damage in secondary Raynaud Phenomenon (SRP) and Systemic sclerosis (SSc)-associated patients as possible predictors of ischemic fingertip digital ulcers (DU) in a 3-year clinical follow-up. METHODS: Flow-mediated dilatation (FMD), nailfold videocapillaroscopy (NVC), endothelin-1 (ET-1) and asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) were analysed in a 3-year observational cohort study of 77 SRP patients with systemic sclerosis. The primary outcome was the occurrence of a new DU. RESULTS: Risk factors for DU at baseline were low FMD% (p < 0.001), NVC pattern (p < 0.001), high microangiopathy evolution score (MES) (p < 0.001), increased ET-1 (p < 0.001) and increased ADMA serum levels (p = 0.001). Median time to the occurrence of a new DU was 4.50 (1.25-16.25) months. The risk factors for the occurrence of at least one new DU episode in follow-up included a history of at least one DU before enrolment (p < 0.001), autoantibody anti-scleroderma-70 (p = 0.012), NVC late pattern (p < 0.001), high MES score (p < 0.001), low FMD% (p < 0.001) and increased ET-1 serum levels (p < 0.001). We used univariate Cox regression analysis to show that FMD > 9.41% (HR: 0.37 95% CI: 0.14-0.99) and ET-1 > 11.85 pmol/L (HR: 3.81 95% CI: 1.41-10.26) and NVC (HR: 2.29 95% CI: 0.97-5.38) were predictors of DU recurrence. In terms of first DU event in naive DU patients at baseline, late NVC pattern (HR: 12.66 95% CI: 2.06-77.89) and MES score (HR: 1.693 95% CI: 1.257-2.279) were independent predictors. CONCLUSION: This study identified endothelium dysfunction biomarkers (FMD and ET-1) and severe microvascular damage in NVC as strong predictors of new DU in SSc patients.