Trace elemental content was analysed in edible tissues of Mytilus galloprovincialis collected in five different sampling areas near the mouth of river Tagus estuary in Lisbon. The concentrations of essential elements (S, K, Ca, Fe, Cu, Zn, As, Br and Sr) were determined by energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) spectrometry, while toxic elements (Cr, Cd, Hg, Se and Pb) were measured by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). The results show that the essential elements K and S are present at the highest concentrations in all the studied samples reaching 2,920 and 4,520 μg g(-1) (fresh weight), respectively. The highest levels of heavy metals found were in two areas close to the city for Pb and Cd, but below the maximum allowed values.

Sandstone building stones are important in the building elements of Portuguese monuments, particularly in the western and southern regions. Alveolization due to salt crystallization was the most important degradation pattern found in the old sandstone façades of St. Leonardo’s Church, a Portuguese monument built in Atouguia da Baleia village in the Middle Age. Its sandstone façades have a widespread distribution of deep and large alveolization patterns mainly on portals and vaults that appeared as a result of the past and present vicinity of seashore. In this paper a summary of conservation interventions carried out in the past century in St. Leonardo’s Church is presented, as well as a summary of the studies carried out in the last decade. Then the degradation patterns on the sandstone walls of St. Leonard’s Church are shown and finally the evolution of the alveolization occurred on the sandstone walls over the last sixty to seventy years is analysed. Visual inspection of sandstone walls is compared with a survey performed by laser scanning, which seems to be a powerful technology to carry out 3D geometric modelling of the building elements of stone monuments and also the 3D mapping of stone degradation patterns.

The improved characteristics of Tunnel FETs (TFETs) like steep sub-threshold swing and low off-currents make them an attractive choice for low power operations compared to MOSFETs and Multi-gate FETs like FINFETs. Such characteristics are favorable to digital design, but the drain current saturation in their output characteristics can also benefit the analog design. In this paper, it is shown by simulations that analog characteristics as voltage gain, power consumption and bandwidth are improved using TFETs compared to their counterparts, at a sub-22 nm technology node and 0.8 V supply voltage.

Abstract
Late Jurassic dinosaur footprints were found on a coastline cliff in Lourinhã, Porto das Barcas, Lagido do Forno (coordinate 39°14.178’N, 9°20.397’W, Portugal) in June 2001. The locality is characterized by steep cliffs with high slopes that are composed of gray and red sandstones/ siltstones. The location belongs to the successions of Lusitanian Basin representing the Porto Novo Member of the Lourinhã Formation. Three natural infills of tridactyl tracks, possibly ascribed to ornithopod, a bipedal herbivore were found, representing a left foot movement, a right and a left one, respectively. Footprints are 300- 400mm wide and have a height of 330-360mm. The footprints are characterized by round fingers, which are elongated due to some degradation/ erosion. The footprints were collected from the field in 2001 and subsequently cleaned, consolidated and glued in the laboratory of the Museum of Lourinhã before being exhibited in a museum display. Stone matrix was removed and a consolidation product was applied, probably a polyvinyl acetate. The footprint with broken central digit was glued with an epoxy resin, Araldite. Both applied products were confirmed by analysis of μ- FTIR and both presented colour change and detachment surface problems. The footprints have been exposed in the palaeontology hall of the Museum of Lourinhã, Portugal from 2004 without climate controlling. These trace fossils form an important part of the palaeontological collection of Late Jurassic vertebrate fossils from Lourinhã Formation. Presently, it is considered a unique heritage in danger of disappearing due to high decay level of disaggregation of its geological structure. The footprints display several pathologies, such as “Blistering”, “Powdering”, “Exfoliation”’ as well as “Dirt”, “Fracture”’, “Inscriptions”, “Consolidants” and “Adhesives” and are now in very poor conditions. Laboratorial analysed were made to evaluate the presence of salts. Moreover a microclimatic study was conducted inside the museum to evaluate the influence of thermo-hygrometric parameters on the decay processes. The future interventions will depend on the results of consolidation trials that are currently under progress by using stone samples taken from the same layer and location from Porto das Barcas applying different commercial consolidation products.

— Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) faces a great challenges in what concerns the creation of a fully natural interface that is able to recognize a wide range of hand gestures in real-time. Lately efforts have been made by the research community catalyzed by the wide appearance of depth sensors such as the one from the Microsoft Kinect sensor. Nevertheless the available solutions struggle to robustly recognize hand gestures since, compared with the rest of the body, the hand is a small region with many joints, difficult to recognize and ultimately track. This paper proposes a hand shape recognition method that takes advantage of the depth sensor and the joint tracking ability of Microsoft Kinect sensor. The proposed method relies on the analysis of the hand contour or outline and compares it with previously stored templates achieving a good recognition ratio and proving it eligible
for real-time scenarios.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), through the Solar Heating and Cooling programme (SHC) Task 40 and the Energy Conservation in Buildings and Community Systems programme (ECBCS, now named EBC) Annex 52, works towards developing a common understanding and setting up the basis for an international definition framework for Net Zero Energy Buildings (Net ZEBs). One of the subtasks of this programme?SubTaskC focuses benchmarking the Net ZEBs around the world to identify the innovative solutions sets that makes up this new type of building. This paper presents an overview of the work conducted by the participants of Subtask C and of Zero Energy Building projects that have been identified.

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An increasing number of our interactions are mediated through e-technologies. In order to enhance the human’s feeling of presence into these virtual environments, also known as telepresence, the individual is usually embodied into an avatar. The natural adaptation capabilities, underlain by the plasticity of the body schema, of the human being make a body ownership of the avatar possible, in which the user feels more like his/her virtual alter ego than himself/herself. However, this phenomenon only occurs under specific conditions. Two experiments are designed to study the human’s feeling and performance according to a scale of natural relationship between the participant and the avatar. In both experiments, the human-avatar interaction is carried out by a Natural User Interface (NUI) and the individual’s performance is assessed through a behavioural index, based on the concept of affordances, and a questionnaire of presence The first experiment shows that the feeling of telepresence and ownership seem to be greater when the avatar’s kinematics and proportions are close to those of the user. However, the efficiency to complete the task is higher for a more mechanical and stereotypical avatar. The second experiment shows that the manipulation of the viewpoint induces a similar difference across the sessions. Results are discussed in terms of the neurobehavioral processes underlying performance in virtual worlds, which seem to be based on ownership when the virtual artefact ensures a preservation of sensorimotor contingencies, and simple geometrical mapping when the conditions become more artificial.

Nowadays there is a clear increase of products or tailored solutions with the goal of better adept to the needs of
clients. In another context there is a wide growth of computers’ presence in the class rooms, in order to assist
the teacher to captivate and motivate the students using educational games. However not all teachers have the
advanced computer knowledge that would allow them to personalize games, which would benefit children by
providing tailored solutions to their specific needs. Having this problem into consideration it was designed/idealized a system that relies on a framework of game creation that allows a user with less informatics skills to create a game based on a model. Although there are many games of this type it would be useful and innovative for a teacher to be able to create a game that is personalized to the students’ needs and according to the skills that they wish to develop. This system consists in an interface where the user has to follow some established steps, in order to achieve a file containing all the game features, which is later imported to
a framework. That system allows the creation of different games, as long as these games come under the same game mechanics.

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The thermal behavior and transport properties of several ion jellys (IJs), a composite that results from the combination of gelatin with an ionic liquid (IL), were investigated by dielectric relaxation spectroscopy (DRS), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and pulsed field gradient nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (PFG NMR). Four different ILs containing the dicyanamide anion were used: 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium dicyanamide (BMIMDCA), 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium dicyanamide (EMIMDCA), 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium dicyanamide (BMPyrDCA), and 1-butylpyridinium dicyanamide (BPyDCA); the bulk ILs were also investigated for comparison. A glass transition was detected by DSC for all materials, ILs and IJs, allowing them to be classified as glass formers. Additionally, an increase in the glass transition temperature upon dehydration was observed with a greater extent for IJs, attributed to a greater hindrance imposed by the gelatin matrix after water removal, rendering the IL less mobile. While crystallization is observed for some ILs with negligible water content, it was never detected for any IJ upon thermal cycling, which persist always as fully amorphous materials. From DRS measurements, conductivity and diffusion coefficients for both cations (D+) and anions (D–) were extracted. D+ values obtained by DRS reveal excellent agreement with those obtained from PFG NMR direct measurements, obeying the same VFTH equation over a large temperature range (ΔT ≈ 150 K) within which D+ varies around 10 decades. At temperatures close to room temperature, the IJs exhibit D values comparable to the most hydrated (9%) ILs. The IJ derived from EMIMDCA possesses the highest conductivity and diffusion coefficient, respectively, 10–2 S·cm–1 and 10–10 m2·s–1. For BMPyrDCA the relaxational behavior was analyzed through the complex permittivity and modulus formalism allowing the assignment of the detected secondary relaxation to a Johari–Goldstein process. Besides the relevant information on the more fundamental nature providing physicochemical details on ILs behavior, new doorways are opened for practical applications by using IJ as a strategy to produce novel and stable electrolytes for different electrochemical devices.

Transactional memory (TM) is an increasingly popular technique for synchronising threads in multi-threaded programs. To address both correctness and performance-related issues of TM programs, one needs to monitor and analyse their execution. However, monitoring concurrent programs (including TM programs) may have a non-negligible impact on their behaviour, which may hamper the objectives of the intended analysis. In this paper, we propose several approaches for monitoring TM programs and study their impact on the behaviour of the monitored programs. The considered approaches range from specialised lightweight monitoring to generic heavyweight monitoring. The implemented monitoring tools are publicly available to the scientific community, and the implementation techniques used for lightweight monitoring of TM programs may be used as an inspiration for developing other specialised lightweight monitors.

One possibility for strengthening existing flat slabs consists on gluing fibre reinforced polymers (FRPs) at the concrete surface. When applied on top of slab-column connections, this technique allows increasing the flexural stiffness and strength of the slab as well as its punching strength. Nevertheless, the higher punching strength is associated to a reduction on the deformation capacity of the slab-column connection, which can be detrimental for the overall behaviour of the structure (leading to a more brittle behaviour of the system). Design approaches for this strengthening technique are usually based on empirical formulas calibrated on the basis of the tests performed on isolated test specimens. However, some significant topics as the reduction on the deformation capacity or the influence of the whole slab (accounting for the reinforcement at mid-span) on the efficiency of the strengthening are neglected. In this paper, a critical review of this technique for strengthening against punching shear is investigated on the basis of the physical model proposed by the Critical Shear Crack Theory (CSCT). This approach allows taking into account the amount, layout and mechanical behaviour of the bonded FRP's in a consistent manner to estimate the punching strength and deformation capacity of strengthened slabs. The approach is first used to predict the punching strength of available test data, showing a good agreement. Then, it is applied in order to investigate strengthened continuous slabs, considering moment redistribution after concrete cracking and reinforcement yielding. This latter study provides valuable information regarding the differences between the behaviour of isolated test specimens and real strengthened flat slabs. The results show that empirical formulas calibrated on isolated specimens may overestimate the actual performance of FRP's strengthening. Finally, taking advantage of the physical model of the CSCT, the effect of the construction sequence on the punching shear strength is also evaluated, revealing the role of this issue which is also neglected in most empirical approaches.

We present a stratigraphic log supporting a preliminary magnetostratigraphy of a Tithonian–Berriasian section in Porto da Calada (Portugal). Based on biostratigraphy and reversed and normal magnetostratigraphy, the location of the Tithonian–Berriasian boundary is tentatively located at ca. 52 m, not in disagreement
with former proposals. Due to the occurrence of later remagnetization (diagenesis), the magnetostratigraphic definition of the Tithonian–Berriasian section at the Cabo Espichel (Portugal) location was not able to be established.