Abstract
In this study, a two-stage stochastic programming joint energy and reserve day-ahead market structure is proposed in order to procure the required load-following reserves to tackle with wind power production uncertainty. Reserves can be procured both from generation and demand-side. Responsive aggregations of loads, as well as large industrial consumers are considered. The proposed methodology is evaluated through various simulations performed on the insular power grid of Crete, Greece.

Abstract
Accurate measurements of global solar radiation, atmospheric temperature and relative humidity, as well as the availability of the predictions of their evolution over time, are important for different areas of applications, such as agriculture, renewable energy and energy management, or thermal comfort in buildings. For this reason, an intelligent, light-weight, self-powered and portable sensor was developed, using a nearest-neighbors (NEN) algorithm and artificial neural network (ANN) models as the time-series predictor mechanisms. The hardware and software design of the implemented prototype are described, as well as the forecasting performance related to the three atmospheric variables, using both approaches, over a prediction horizon of 48-steps-ahead.

Abstract
Quality control, failure analysis and improvement are central elements in manufacturing. Total Quality Management (TQM) provides several quality oriented tools and techniques which, in the event of things, are not always applicable. The increased use of Information Technology (IT) in manufacturing means increased data availability and improved potential for knowledge extraction. Exploiting this knowledge requires data storage and processing facilities with demanding, time consuming sessions for interpretation. Without suitable tools and techniques, knowledge remains hidden in databases. This paper presents a method to help identify root causes of nonconformities (NCs) using a pattern identification approach. Hereby, a general framework, Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD), is adapted. This adaptation involves incorporating an economic concentration measure, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), as the data mining algorithm. After presenting the theoretical background, a new methodology is proposed. The suggested approach can be regarded as a quality tool to help make root cause identification of failures simpler and more agile. A case study from the automotive industry is examined using this tool. Results are obtained and presented in the form of matrix based patterns. They suggest that concentration indices help indicate possible root causes of NCs, warranting further investigation in this area.

Abstract
Nowadays, video surveillance systems are taking the first steps toward automation, in order to ease the burden on human resources as well as to avoid human error. As the underlying data distribution and the number of concepts change over time, the conventional learning algorithms fail to provide reliable solutions for this setting. In this paper, we formalize a learning concept suitable for multi-camera video surveillance and propose a learning methodology adapted to that new paradigm. The proposed framework resorts to the universal background model to robustly learn individual object models from small samples and to more effectively detect novel classes. The individual models are incrementally updated in an ensemble-based approach, with older models being progressively forgotten. The framework is designed to detect and label new concepts automatically. The system is also designed to exploit active learning strategies, in order to interact wisely with operator, requesting assistance in the most ambiguous to classify observations. The experimental results obtained both on real and synthetic data sets verify the usefulness of the proposed approach.

Abstract
Airborne pollen emission model was used to determine pollen metrics and to examine their relationship with vineyard phenology in two wine regions of Northern Portugal: Vinhos Verdes (1993-2007) and Douro (1992-2011). A number of airborne pollen metrics were obtained through the rate of changes of logistic model adjusted to the time series of airborne pollen. In both regions, the mean absolute differences between observed phenology and model-predicted values for start, peak and final of flowering phenophases were always lower than 5 days and the slope of the regression through the origin is close to one. These metrics can be used to accurately and precisely predict the dynamic of Vitis flowering observed at field level. The model's simplicity and flexibility are of great advantage for its practical use in aerobiology.

Abstract
Owing to the current trends for higher performance and the ever growing availability of multiprocessors in the embedded computing (EC) domain, there is nowadays a strong push towards the parallelization of modern embedded applications. Several real-time task models have recently been proposed to capture different forms of parallelism. However, they do not deal explicitly with control flow information as they assume that all the threads of a parallel task must execute every time the task is activated. In contrast, in this paper, we present a multi-DAG model where each task is characterized by a set of execution flows, each of which represents a different execution path throughout the task code and is modeled as a DAG of sub-tasks. We propose a two-step solution that computes a single synchronous DAG of servers for a task modeled by a multi-DAG and show that these servers are able to supply every execution flow of that task with the required cpu-budget so that the task can execute entirely, irrespective of the execution flow taken at run-time, while satisfying its precedence constraints. As a result, each task can be modeled by its single DAG of servers, which facilitates in leveraging the existing single-DAG schedulability analyses techniques for analyzing the schedulability of parallel tasks with multiple execution flows.