Abstract
When packets are transmitted over braided-paths in visual sensor networks some intermediate nodes may relay most part of the traffic, turning part or the entire network inactive when they run out of energy. Due to the nature of visual monitoring, source nodes may have different relevancies for the application, according to the desired monitoring tasks and the current sensors' poses and fields of view. Based on such relevancies, packets transmitted from different source nodes will have different relaying priorities, which are associated with energy thresholds. We propose an energy-efficient relay scheme where packets are forwarded to the next hop toward the sink only if the associated energy threshold is below the current energy level of the relaying node. Doing so, energy saving is achieved potentially prolonging the network lifetime, but with reduced impact to the overall monitoring quality of the application. © 2012 IEEE.

Abstract
In this paper, 10-years of ozone (O-3) hourly concentrations collected over the period 2000-2009 in the Iberian Peninsula (IP) are analyzed using records from 11 background sites. All the selected monitoring stations present an acquisition efficiency above 85%. The changes in surface ozone over the Iberian Peninsula are examined by means of quantile regression, which allows to analyse the trends not only in the mean but in the overall data distribution. In addition, the ozone hourly concentrations records are clustered on the basis of their resulting distributions. The analysis showed that high altitude stations (>900 m) have higher background O-3 concentrations (similar to 80 mu g m(-3)). The same magnitude of background O-3 concentrations is found in stations near the Mediterranean Sea. On the other hand, the rural stations near the Atlantic coast present lower background values (similar to 50-60 mu g m(-3)) than those of Mediterranean influence. The two sub-urban stations exhibit the lowest background concentrations (similar to 45 mu g m(-3)). The results of the quantile regression show a very distinct behaviour of the data distribution, the slopes for a fixed quantile are not the same over IP, reflecting the spatial dependence of O-3 trends. Hence the rate of temporal change is not the same for all parts of the data distribution, as implicitly assumed in ordinary regression. The lower quantile (percentile 5) presents higher rates of change than the middle (percentile 50) and the upper quantile (percentile 95). The clustering procedure reveals what has been already detected in the quantile regression. The station with highest rates of decrease on the O-3 concentrations (easternmost station of IP) is isolated and then other clusters are formed among the moderately positive/negative O-3 trends around the IP. The clustering procedure highlighted that the largest trends are found for the lower ozone O-3 values, with largest negative trend at the easternmost station of IP, and also in northern and mainland stations, and an opposite behaviour, with positive O-3 trends, is observed at the Atlantic coast stations.

Abstract
Technological advances in mobile phones make them appealing to support nursing care at the point of treatment, especially by combining the easy-of-use, mobility and wireless communications. Novel capabilities, such as picture capturing, enlarge the applications scope. In this work, we present the HOPE system to facilitate nursing care documentation, by leveraging on standard off-the-shelf mobile phones. The proposed system moves a substantial part of the work usually deferred and performed at desktop computers to the moment and place of care. In addition, health professionals can document the clinical cases with photos, using the mobile phone built-in camera, which is being applied in diabetic foot consultation. Basic support for wound measurement is available. The information acquired is integrated in the patient's Electronic Health Record and can be shared using the mobile devices or the workstations. The proposed system is in pilot use at two Portuguese hospitals targeting inpatient care and diabetic foot consulting.

Abstract
The development of applications for high-performance Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based embedded systems is a long and error-prone process. Typically, developers need to be deeply involved in all the stages of the translation and optimization of an application described in a high-level programming language to a lower-level design description to ensure the solution meets the required functionality and performance. This paper describes the use of a novel aspect-oriented hardware/software design approach for FPGA-based embedded platforms. The design-flow uses LARA, a domain-specific aspect-oriented programming language designed to capture high-level specifications of compilation and mapping strategies, including sequences of data/computation transformations and optimizations. With LARA, developers are able to guide a design-flow to partition and map an application between hardware and software components. We illustrate the use of LARA on two complex real-life applications using high-level compilation and synthesis strategies for achieving complete hardware/software implementations with speedups of 2.5x and 6.8x over software-only implementations. By allowing developers to maintain a single application source code, this approach promotes developer productivity as well as code and performance portability.

Abstract
The aim of the work presented in this paper describes the development of a decision support system based on a discrete-event simulation model of an automobile assembly line. The model focuses at a very specific class of production lines with a four closed-loop network configuration. One key characteristic in the closed-loop system is that the number of pallets inside the first three loops has been made constant. The impact of the number of pallets circulating on the first three closed-loops and of the proportion of four-door car bodies on the performance of the production line has been thoroughly investigated. This has been translated into the number of cars produced per hour, in order to improve the availability of the entire manufacturing system.

Abstract
In this paper we present an admission control mechanism to handle real-time traffic in IEEE 802.11 networks operating in open communication environments. The proposal is based on a non-preemptive EDF scheduling algorithm, combined with a measurement-based mechanism that assesses blockage times on medium access of real-time stations due to retransmissions and delays. This proposal will be part of the upper layer of the RT-WiFi architecture that was proposed by us in previous works. The main goal is to achieve a better compromise between medium utilization and timeliness. © 2012 IEEE.