Software Transactional Memory algorithms associate metadata with the memory locations accessed during a transactions lifetime. This metadata may be stored in an external table and accessed by way of a function that maps the address of each memory location with the table entry that keeps its metadata (this is the out-place or external scheme); or alternatively may be stored adjacent to the associated memory cell by wrapping them together (the in-place scheme). In transactional memory multi-version algorithms, several versions of the same memory location may exist. The efficient implementation of these algorithms requires a one-to-one correspondence between each memory location and its list of past versions, which is stored as metadata. In this chapter we address the matter of the efficient implementation of multi-version algorithms in Java by proposing and evaluating a novel in-place metadata scheme for the Deuce framework. This new scheme is based in Java Bytecode transformation techniques and its use requires no changes to the application code. Experimentation indicates that multi-versioning STM algorithms implemented using our new in-place scheme are in average 6 × faster than when implemented with the out-place scheme.

Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) is a key topic on the Accessibility area, namely in what concerns a Smart-City environment, where humans have to interact with artefacts spread all around one particular city. In the last decade HCI has experienced a significant evolution towards a desired fully natural user interface, for example in what concerns the ability to recognize a wide range of hand gestures in real-time. Some efforts have lately been made in the hardware sector in order to deploy sensors that may gather information about the human body movements, as detailed as possible. One example of this effort is the Kinect Sensor from Microsoft. Nevertheless, although these solutions provide a solution for the body movement, they lack on the details, namely the hands, given their small dimension compared to the body as a whole. In other words, the SDKs provided by the vendors of these devices usually lack on the needed details concerning hand movements that would be needed for an accurate hand gesture recognition implementation. This paper presents an extension to the Kinect SDK based on a contour analysis for the estimation of the hand position. This algorithms are then used to provide the creation of a gesture library that might be used afterwards.

Software developers are expected to protect concurrent accesses to shared regions of memory with some mutual exclusion primitive that ensures atomicity properties to a sequence of program statements. This approach prevents data races but may fail to provide all necessary correctness properties.The composition of correlated atomic operations without further synchronization may cause atomicity violations. Atomic violations may be avoided by grouping the correlated atomic regions in a single larger atomic scope. Concurrent programs are particularly prone to atomicity violations when they use services provided by third party packages or modules, since the programmer may fail to identify which services are correlated. In this paper we propose to use contracts for concurrency, where the developer of a module writes a set of contract terms that specify which methods are correlated and must be executed in the same atomic scope. These contracts are then used to verify the correctness of the main program with respect to the usage of the module(s). If a contract is well defined and complete, and the main program respects it, then the program is safe from atomicity violations with respect to that module. We also propose a static analysis based methodology to verify contracts for concurrency that we applied to some real-world software packages. The bug we found in Tomcat 6.0 was immediately acknowledged and corrected by its development team.

Robotics technology has been applied to a wide variety of sectors and with a higher economic and social impact. In the last decades it has been one of the main elements of industrial manufacturing automation where about 1.5 million robots are currently operating, which means that 4 to 5 million workers are operating those systems. From 2014 to 2016, robot installations are estimated to increase by 6% on average per year. Besides this, in recent years the number of professional service robots has increased enormously in military and civil applications (around 130 thousand units).

Distributed transactional memory (DTM) presents itself as a highly expressive and programmer friendly model for con- currency control in distributed programming. Current DTM systems make use of both data distribution and replication as a way of providing scalability and fault tolerance, but both techniques have advantages and drawbacks. As such, each one is suitable for different target applications, and deployment environments. In this paper we address the support of different data replication models in DTM. To that end we propose ReDstm, a modular and non-intrusive framework for DTM, that supports multiple data replication models in a general purpose programming language (Java). We show its application in the implementation of distributed software transactional memories with different replication models, and evaluate the framework via a set of well-known benchmarks, analysing the impact of the different replication models on memory usage and transaction throughput.

Distributed transactional memory (DTM) presents itself as a highly expressive and programmer friendly model for concurrency control in distributed programming. Current DTM systems make use of both data distribution and replication as a way of providing scalability and fault tolerance, but both techniques have advantages and drawbacks. As such, each one is suitable for different target applications, and deployment environments. In this paper we address the support of different data replication models in DTM. To that end we propose ReDstm, a modular and non-intrusive framework for DTM, that supports multiple data replication models in a general purpose programming language (Java). We show its application in the implementation of distributed software transactional memories with different replication models, and evaluate the framework via a set of well-known benchmarks, analysing the impact of the different replication models on memory usage and transaction throughput.

{The P, O-type phosphinophenol proligands (1 center dot H, 2-PPh2-4-Me-6-Me-C6H2OH; 2 center dot H, 2-PPh2-4-Me-6-Bu-t-C6H2OH) readily react with one equiv. of ZnEt2 to afford in high yields the corresponding Zn(II)ethyl dimers of the type {[}(kappa(2)-P, O) Zn-Et](2) (3 and 4) with two mu-O-Ph bridging oxygens connecting the two Zn(II) centers, as determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies in the case of 3. Based on diffusion-ordered NMR spectroscopy (DOSY), both species 3 and 4 retain their dimeric structures in solution. The alcoholysis reaction of Zn(II) alkyls 3 and 4 with BnOH led to the high yield formation of the corresponding Zn(II) benzyloxide species {[}(kappa(2)-P, O) Zn-OBn](2) (5 and 6), isolated in a pure form as colorless solids. The centrosymmetric and dimeric nature of Zn(II) alkoxides 5 and 6 in solution was deduced from DOSY NMR experiments and multinuclear NMR data. Though the heteroleptic species 5 is stable in solution, its analogue 6 is instable in CH2Cl2 solution at room temperature to slowly decompose to the corresponding homoleptic species 8 via the transient formation of (kappa(2)-P, O)(2)Zn-2(mu-OBn)(mu-kappa(1):kappa(1)-P, O) (6'). Crystallization of compound 6 led to crystals of 6', as established by XRD analysis. The reaction of ZnEt2 with two equiv. of 1 center dot H and 2 center dot H allowed access to the corresponding homoleptic species of the type {[}Zn(P, O)(2)] (7 and 8). All gathered data are consistent with compound 7 being a dinuclear species in the solid state and in solution. Data for species 8, which bears a sterically demanding P, O-ligand, are consistent with a mononuclear species in solution. The Zn(II) alkoxide species 5 and the {[}Zn(P, O)(2)]-type compounds 7 and 8 were evaluated as initiators of the ring-opening polymerization (ROP) of lactide (LA), epsilon-caprolactone (epsilon-CL) and trimethylene carbonate (TMC). Species 5 is a well-behaved ROP initiator for the homo-, co- and terpolymerization of all three monomers with the production of narrow disperse materials under living and immortal conditions. Though species 7 and 8 are ROP inactive on their own, they readily polymerize LA in the presence of a nucleophile such as BnOH to produce narrow disperse PLA, presumably via an activated-monomer ROP mechanism.}

{The reactions of TCNE- and TCNQ-functionalized (TCNE: tetracyanoethylene and TCNQ: 7,7', 8,8'-tetra-cyanoquinodimethane) zwitterionic benzoquinonemonoimines with a Cu(I)-BIAN complex (BIAN = bis-(o, o'-bisisopropylphenyl)acenaphthenequinonediimine) have been investigated and found to follow a diversity of interesting patterns. The complexes {[}Cu(BIAN)(NCMe)(L2)]BF4 (2) and {[}Cu(BIAN)(L2)(2)]BF4 (4) were obtained by reacting {[}Cu(BIAN)(NCMe) 2] BF4 (1) with one and two equivalents of L2, respectively. Following similar procedures, the complexes {[}Cu(BIAN)(NCMe)(L3)] BF4 (6) and {[}Cu(BIAN)(L3)(2)]BF4 (7) were obtained by reaction of 1 with L3. The reaction of 2 with 0.5 equiv. of 4,4'-bipyridine afforded {[}\{Cu(BIAN)-(L2)\}(2)(mu-4,4'-bipyridine)](BF4)(2) (3). The complexes were characterized by multinuclear NMR, IR and UV-Vis spectroscopic techniques, mass spectrometry, cyclic voltammetry and elemental analysis. The molecular structures of complexes 3 center dot 4CH(2)Cl(2) and 4 center dot CH2Cl2 were determined by single crystal X-ray diffraction. An unexpected coordination polymer {[}Cu(L2(-))(2)](infinity) (5) was also structurally characterized, which contains Cu(II) centres chelated by two N, O-bound ligands resulting from the monodeprotonation of L2.}

A miniaturized version of the double cantilever beam (DCB) test is used to determine the fracture energy in human cortical bone under pure mode I loading. An equivalent crack length based data-reduction scheme is used with remarkable advantages relative to classical methods. Digital image correlation (DIC) technique is employed to determine crack opening displacement at the crack tip being correlated with the evolution of fracture energy. A method is presented to obtain the cohesive law (trapezoidal bilinear softening) mimicking the mechanical behavior observed in bone. Cohesive zone modeling (CZM) (finite-element method) was performed to validate the procedure showing excellent agreement.

Fracture characterization under mode I loading of a cement-based material using the single-edge-notched beam loaded in tree-point-bending was performed. A new method based on beam theory and crack equivalent concept is proposed to evaluate the Resistance-curve, which is essential to determine fracture toughness with accuracy. The method considers the existence of a stress relief region in the vicinity of the crack, dispensing crack length monitoring during experiments. A numerical validation was performed by finite element analysis considering a bilinear cohesive damage model. Experimental tests were performed in order to validate the numerical procedure. Digital image correlation technique was used to measure the specimen displacement with accuracy and without interference. Excellent agreement between numerical and experimental load–displacement curves was obtained, which validates the procedure.