The transition to IFRS: disclosures by Portuguese listed companies

In the context of the CESR and of the Portuguese market regulator recommendations regarding the disclosure of the impacts of the transition to IFRS, this paper analyses the content of those disclosures by Portuguese listed companies. We found a high degree of variability among the disclosure either regarding the qualitative (narrative explanations of transition) or quantitative (reconciliations) disclosures. The results show that the objective of comparability, relevance and understandability stated in CESR’s recommendation were not achieved. Regarding accounting changes, the analysis shows that the reported impacts by companies confirmed expectations based on prior de jure studies on major impacts of changing from Portuguese GAAP to IFRS; these major impacts regard the recognition of intangibles, the accounting treatment of goodwill and financial instruments. Finally, Gray’s (1980) “conservatism” index was computed using the reconciliated profits to IFRS reported by companies. This analysis shows that Portuguese standards are more conservative than IFRS. This study is relevant to several parties: to the market regulators and policy makers in predicting the level of compliance with IFRS and calling attention for the importance of enforcement mechanisms; to the preparers, auditors and users in identifying the most problematic areas of implementation of IFRS.International Accounting, Disclosure, IAS/IFRS, Portugal

FastM: Design and Evaluation of a Fast Mobility Mechanism for Wireless Mesh Networks

Although there is a large volume of work in the literature in terms of mobility approaches for Wireless Mesh Networks, usually these approaches introduce high latency in the handover process and do not support realtime services and applications. Moreover, mobility is decoupled from routing, which leads to inefficiency to both mobility and routing approaches with respect to mobility. In this paper we present a new extension to proactive routing protocols using a fast mobility extension, FastM, with the purpose of increasing handover performance in Wireless Mesh Networks. With this new extension, a new concept is created to integrate information between neighbor wireless mesh routers, managing locations of clients associated to wireless mesh routers in a certain neighborhood, and avoiding packet loss during handover. The proposed mobility approach is able to optimize the handover process without imposing any modifications to the current IEE 802.11 MAC protocol and use unmodified clients. Results show the improved efficiency of the proposed scheme: metrics such as disconnection time, throughput, packet loss and control overhead are largely improved when compared to previous approaches. Moreover, these conclusions apply to mobility scenarios, although mobility decreases the performance of the handover approach, as expected

IVY 2-A model-based analysis tool

The IVY workbench is a model-based tool that supports the formal verification of interactive computing systems. It adopts a plugin-based architecture to support a flexible development model. Over the years the chosen architectural solution revealed a number of limitations, resulting both from technological deprecation of some of the adopted solutions and a better understanding of the verification process to support. This paper presents the redesign and implementation of the original plugin infrastructure, originating a new version of the tool: IVY 2. It describes the limitations of the original solutions and the new architecture, which resorts to the Java module system in order to solve them.This work is financed by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project: UID/EEA/50014/2019

Improving solar power forecasting through advanced feature engineering

The production of solar energy is undoubtedly dependent on weather conditions and the time of day in which it occurs. Therefore, this source of energy being extremely variable and difficult to predict with high accuracy after many studies, the need for a new approach surges in order to increase it. With this project, it is proposed the use of images as input for deep learning structures with the purpose to achieve automatic feature extraction that can be replicated to other data sets. The images are generated from a grid of numerical weather predictions of, particularly, surface downelling shortwave flux and cloud cover at different levels. In this thesis, several neural network models with be analysed according to its input data: numerical, numerical conjugated with images and images. The models with numerical input data will serve as reference for comparison and evaluation of the added value brought by the images to the forecasts, since the reference's predictions used variables obtained by manual feature extraction

Inactivation tests of the dinoflagellate Amyloodinium ocellatum parasite of marine fish

The ectoparasite Amyloodinium ocellatum is the most common and important dinoflagellate affecting fish, causing severe morbidity and mortality in both brackish and marine warmwater aquaculture fishes worldwide. A. ocellatum has a triphasic life cycle, consisting of a free-living flagellate, the dinospore, a parasitic stage, the trophont, and a resting and reproductive cyst, the tomont. Tomonts of A. ocellatum can settle in the bottom of tanks and ponds and resist for long periods of time maintaining the ability to reinfest. Biosecurity in ponds is changeling, due to the size of the aquaculture farms and because they are normally located near natural water reservoirs, which limits the application of aggressive chemical treatments. Chemotherapy has shown efficacy in eliminating the dinospore but not the tomont, which is very resistant to treatments. This work focused on the development of in vitro inactivating tests for the cystic stage of the parasite. To propagate the parasite, an infection system with 6 European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax was established with parasites collected during the season of higher prevalence in fish aquaculture production earthen ponds. Preservation tests of the tomont were also performed to reduce the need of keeping the infection system for long periods. Different chemicals and physical methods were tested for their capacity to inactivate the tomonts. Efficacy of the inactivation was evaluated through germination tests, dinospores concentration and motility.. This work showed that tomonts can be inactivated by several chemicals and physical methods, in particular by chemicals with a lesser impact on the environment, like peroxides. this work also presents the first documented results on the efficacy of UV-C irradiation on tomont inactivation. Overall, this study shows that A. ocellatum treatment and prevention can be achieved following more sustainable environmental strategies.O ectoparasita Amyloodinium ocellatum é o dinoflagelado mais comum e importante que afeta peixes, causando morbidade e mortalidade graves em peixes de aquacultura de água salobra e marinha em todo o mundo. A. ocellatum tem um ciclo de vida trifásico, consistindo num flagelado de vida livre, o dinósporo, um estágio parasitário, o trofonte, e um cisto de repouso reprodutor, o tomonte. Os tomontes de A. ocellatum podem instalar-se no fundo de tanques e tanques de terra e resistir por longos períodos mantendo a capacidade de reinfestação. A biossegurança em tanques de terra é desafiante, devido ao tamanho das estruturas de aquacultura e por estarem normalmente localizadas próximo de reservatórios naturais de água, o que limita a aplicação de tratamentos químicos agressivos. Os tratamentos químicos têm- se demonstrado eficazes na eliminação do dinósporo, mas não do tomonte, que é muito resistente aos tratamentos. Este trabalho teve como foco o desenvolvimento de testes de inativação in vitro para a fase cística do parasita. Para a propagação do parasita, foi estabelecido um sistema de infeção com 6 robalos Dicentrarchus labrax e parasitas recolhidos durante a estação de maior prevalência em viveiros de produção de aquacultura de peixes. Foram realizados testes de preservação do tomonte para reduzir a necessidade de manter o sistema infecioso por longos períodos. Diferentes testes químicos e físicos foram aplicados ao estágio de tomontes. A eficácia da inativação foi avaliada por meio de testes de germinação, concentração e motilidade de dinosporos. Este estudo mostrou que os tomontes podem ser inativados por diversos produtos químicos e desafios físicos. Resultados promissores foram obtidos com produtos químicos de menor impacto ambiental, como os peróxidos. Além disso, são apresentados os primeiros resultados documentados sobre a eficácia da irradiação UV-C em tomontes. No geral, este estudo mostra que o tratamento e a prevenção do A. ocellatum podem ser alcançados seguindo estratégias ambientais mais sustentáveis.I also thank to the project SAUDE&AQUA (MAR-02.05.01-FEAMP-0009) and DIVERSIAQUA II (MAR2020-P02M01- 0656P) for supporting this work. Also, I thank to project EMSO-PT: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022157 for allowing the opportunity to use the scanning electron microscope

High assurance on cyber-physical interactive systems

Cyber-Physical Systems, as distributed systems of computational elements interacting with the physical world, are highly complex systems. They can, in many instances, be considered safety critical interactive systems, as errors in interaction can have disastrous consequences (consider the case of autonomous vehicles or integrated clinical environments). High assurance is, then, an underlying requirement, also at their user interface. In this position paper we identify five challenges to be solved both in the short and in the long term, regarding the modelling of (1) distributed and (2) heterogeneous interactive systems, (3) the analysis and relation between the different abstraction layers of Cyber-Physical Systems, (4) the modelling of real time/hybrid systems, and (5) the modelling of the dynamic nature of such systems. Solutions for these challenges are not presented, but possible directions are discussed.This work was financed by National Funds through the Portuguese fundingagency, FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project: UID/EEA/50014/201

GreenSource: A large-scale collection of android code, tests and energy metrics

This paper presents the GreenSource infrastructure: a large body of open source code, executable Android applications, and curated dataset containing energy code metrics. The dataset contains energy metrics obtained by both static analysing the applications' source code and by executing them with available test inputs. To automate the execution of the applications we developed the AnaDroid tool which instruments its code, compiles and executes it with test inputs in any Android device, while collecting energy metrics. GreenSource includes all Android applications included in the MUSE Java source code repository, while AnaDroid implements all Android's energy greedy features described in the literature, GreenSource aims at characterizing energy consumption in the Android ecosystem, providing both Android developers and researchers a setting to reason about energy efficient Android software development.INCT-EN - Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia para Excitotoxicidade e Neuroproteção (UID/EEA/50014/2019)This work is financed by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundação para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia within project: ˆ UID/EEA/50014/2019. Second author is also sponsored by FCT grant SFRH/BD/132485/2017. This work is financed by the ERDF – European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation – COMPETE 2020 Programme and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT, within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER016718