Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse annual reports as media of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) by Portuguese listed companies and to evaluate size, industry and time effects on disclosure as well as the effects of ICD on the growth of a company. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines ICD in 2004, 2006 and 2008 annual reports using content analysis. Non?parametric statistical methods are used to test size and industry effects on disclosure, the effects of the level of disclosure on the growth of a company and to determine the significance of the differences in disclosure between the years under analysis. Findings – The analysis showed that size is significant in explaining ICD. The results also indicated that industrial affiliation is only partially a factor explaining ICD. It was not possible to confirm neither an increase in ICD over time, nor the relationship between ICD and growth. Research limitations/implications – The sample is small. There may be content analysis issues associated with subjectivity in the coding process and the use of a limited content analysis method. Originality/value – This paper adds to the scarce research on ICD by Portuguese companies by providing new empirical data. © 2010, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract
In the last years we have witnessed to a substantial increase on the number of people in need of care services, especially among the elderly, a phenomenon related to population ageing. However, this is becoming not exclusive of the elderly, as diseases like obesity, diabetes, and blood pressure have been increasing amongst young adults. This is a new reality which needs to be dealt by the healthcare sector, specifically the public one. Given these new scenarios, the importance of finding new and cost-effective ways for health care delivery are of particular relevance, especially when it is believed that these new patients should not be removed from their natural, day-to-day life, environment. The evolution of the, so called, new technologies may pay here a very important role as they may become part of the solution for this new problematic. Actually, they are already been used as, in recent years, several projects have raised in this relatively new area of work. These projects, although legitimate ones, were essential for delineating a path to pursue for others to come, as they were in some case, very simple ones (e.g. panic buttons), and, especially, reactive ones. In this paper, we are going to present how we are trying to evolve these projects a step further, through the introduction of proactiveness as a key factor, taking advantage of "new", as in applied to this areas, techniques of decision making, idea generation, argumentation and data quality, applied, not only to the in transit information, but also to the one provided by the several intervenient as well as themselves. In order to be able to pursue this delineated path, a new approach for knowledge representation, reasoning, and even for problem solving is proposed. To achieve these goals, the VirtualECare environment is presented, together with its sustaining infrastructure and architecture. Particular attention will be paidto how it may be used to simulate a virtual Assisted Living Environment in order to, later, better monitor real ones, attending to its customers' needs.

Abstract
In this study, the authors analyse the social welfare impact of the integration of Portugal and Spain in the Iberian electricity market (MIBEL), taking into account the CO(2) price for emissions trading. They model the impact of emissions trading on the daily clearing prices and generation scheduling, and its effects on the benefits of integration as a whole. They compare the impact of market integration in Portugal and Spain and show that the welfare impact of the MIBEL is dependent on the CO(2) prices. From their analysis, they conclude high CO2 prices lead to a change in the merit order. Moreover, natural gas is the generation technology that most benefits from transmission constraints and from high CO(2) prices, as in the base case it is mainly used as a peak technology. The authors have also found that increases in the CO(2) prices do not lead to higher profits. Overall, the introduction of the MIBEL will increase social welfare by reducing generation costs and prices.

Abstract
The Erlang programming language is a concurrency oriented functional language, based on the notion of independent processes and uses message passing for communication between processes. It is specially adapted to the realization of highly reliable distributed systems. In this paper it is analyzed the use of the Erlang's computational paradigm for the design and implementation of application specific heterogeneous computational systems. The main objective is to use for the low level implementation the same computational model used in high level view of the system. This will allow an easier and faster design space exploration and optimization. © 2010 IEEE.

Abstract
The Vital Jacket® (VJ) is a wearable vital signs monitoring system that joins textiles with microelectronics. After several years of development within the university lab, it has been licensed to a start-up company. Its evolutions have focused on cardiology and sports and scaled down from a jacket to a single T-shirt. The VJ manufacturing process has recently been certified to comply with the standards ISO9001 and ISO13485 and the cardiology version was approved as a Medical Device for the European market compliant with the MDD directive 42/93/CE, holding the CE1011 mark. The authors intend to wear VJs during the days of the congress to demonstrate its usefulness in first hand and will exemplify the different scenarios of use of this innovative wearable intelligent garment.

Abstract
The development of intelligent environments poses complex challenges, namely at the level of device heterogeneity and environment dynamics. In fact, we still lack supporting technologies and development approaches that can efficiently integrate different devices and technologies. In this paper we present how a recent integration of two important technologies, OSGi and Jade, can be used to significantly improve the development process, making it a more dynamic, modular and configurable one. We also focus on the main advantages that this integration provides to developers, from the Ambient Intelligence point of view. This work results from the development of two intelligent environments: VirtualECare, which is an intelligent environment for the monitorization of elderly in their homes and UMCourt, a virtual environment for dispute resolution.