Abstract

Abstract
Twenty-four experts from 13 different countries were asked to evaluate photographs taken of 60 women following conservative breast cancer treatment. The esthetic result of each case was classified as poor, fair, good or excellent. Agreement was evaluated using the kappa (k) and weighted kappa (wk) statistics, for all observers, mate and female participants, those younger and older than 50 years, those seeing more than 250 cases a year, and those with previous publications in this area. Consensus was obtained by way of a modified Delphi approach, when more than 50% of participants provided the same classification. In a second round, consensual cases were disclosed and a revised opinion was asked in non-consensual ones. Agreement between all participants was fair (k = 0.24, wk = 0.37) and remained within the same range (k = 0.20-0.31, wk = 0.31-0.45) in the subgroups analyzed. First round consensus was obtained in 46 out of 60 cases (77%) and in the second round in 59 out of 60 cases (98%). Evaluation of the esthetic results of conservative treatment for breast cancer is only fairly reproducible when performed by experts working in different geographical areas. Consensus is obtainable if a relatively low threshold of agreement is considered acceptable.

Abstract
Usage analysis of a Web Information System is a valuable help to predict user needs, to assess system's impact and to guide to its improvement. This is usually done analysing clickstreams, a low-level approach, with huge amounts of data that calls for data warehouse techniques. This paper presents a dimensional model to monitor user behaviour in Higher Education Web Information Systems and an architecture for the extraction, transformation and load process. These have been applied in the development of a data warehouse to monitor the use of SIGARRA, the University of Porto's Higher Education Web Information System. The efficiency and effectiveness of this monitorization method were confirmed by the knowledge extracted from a 3 month period analysis. A brief description of the main results and recommendations are also described.

Abstract
A method, postdomination, used to reduce the space requirements of data flow analysis (DFA) was discussed. A formal proof system was used that contained an approximation of the information collected at nodes when all paths were executed. The Java bytecode verification in particular fit the requirements and the proposed algorithm was used to develop a Verifier on memory limited embedded systems. The approach used has the potential to be feasible for a large number of programs, for a given amount of RAM, since the maximum nesting depth is largely independent from the total number of control instructions.

Abstract
Fractional calculus (FC) was originally developed in a pure mathematical viewpoint. However, nowadays FC is applied in many emerging fields of physics and engineering. This paper studies the fractional electrical impedance of vegetables and fruits having FC modelling in mind. In this line of thought, are developed several experiments for measuring the impedance of botanical elements, based in the Bode and polar diagrams. An electrical circuit that models these systems is presented and conclusions are drawn. Copyright © 2006 IFAC.

Abstract