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Salinity determinations are usually made indirectly, measuring electrical conductivity, which depends on salinity and temperature. Unusual conductivity and salinity are indicative of pollution, regardless anthropogenic or natural sources. Aquatic species adapt to specific salinity levels. If this level is altered, it can result in the death of them, because there are changes in the oxygen concentrations. The goal of this work is the development of a low cost, high autonomy inductive salinity sensor to integrate into a sensor network for water column measurement from estuaries to deep ocean applications., This work is co-funded by the projects SONDA (PTDC/EME-SIS/1960/2020), ATLÂNTIDA (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000040) and CMEMS R&D centre - UIDB/04436/2020.

Apresentação de Poster em conferência Nacional., Presentation of a wave profile and tide monitoring system, with low-cost and low-power pressure sensors connected to a datalogger in a wired or acustic network.

Na última década, os μplásticos tornaram-se um dos principais problemas de poluição nos oceanos, cursos de água e rios, atraindo atenção devido aos efeitos nocivos que provocam no meio ambiente e na saúde. Os métodos atuais para quantificação de μplásticos incluem imagiologia hiperespectral, espectroscopia de Raman e espectroscopia de infravermelho por transformadade Fourier (FTIR). No entanto, estes equipamentos são volumosos, dispendiosos e requerem pessoal altamente treinado pelo que não podem ser aplicados para deteção in-situ.Este sensor visa revolucionar o paradigma das estratégias portáteis e in-situ para deteção de μplásticos, baseado em Lab-on-a-chip (LoC) e optoacústica em infravermelho (IR) num único dispositivo. Propõe-se uma plataforma com multissensores LoC para colocação massiva em ambientes subaquáticos para identificação e quantificação μplásticos in-situ. Cada dispositivo deve ser preciso, portátil, autónomo, barato e de fácil operação.

[Excerpt] The ocean has a huge impact on our way of life; therefore, there is a need to monitor and protect its biodiversity. Additionally, the ocean industrial potential for health, minerals, and oil has promoted the need for constant and real-time monitoring. Due to all of these concerns, it is important to develop efficient and smart marine sensors to improve our knowledge of the sea environment and to support marine sustainable development. [...]

This work reports the development and test of an energy harvester (few centimetres sized) designed to power the miliwatts required in submersible monitoring systems, that uses water movements as energy source. The device was fabricated with moulded materials (epoxy resin and silicone), using additive manufacturing for mould fabrication. The device was characterized with movements from 0.1 Hz to 0.4 Hz, and the maximum power of 7 Mw WAS measured in emulated environment. Power was used to charge a lithium rechargeable battery (for levelling energy sourcing and demanding) and tested to power turbidity sensors, FEDER funds through the COMPETE 2020 – Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI)

Robust wireless communication networks are a cornerstone of the modern world, allowing data to be transferred quickly and reliably. Establishing such a network at sea, a Maritime Internet of Things (MIoT), would enhance services related to safety and security at sea, environmental protection, and research. However, given the remote and harsh nature of the sea, installing robust wireless communication networks with adequate data rates and low cost is a difficult endeavor. This paper reviews recent MIoT systems developed and deployed by researchers and engineers over the past few years. It contains an analysis of short-range and long-range over-the-air radio-frequency wireless communication protocols and the synergy between these two in the pursuit of an MIoT. The goal of this paper is to serve as a go-to guide for engineers and researchers that need to implement a wireless sensor network at sea. The selection criterion for the papers included in this review was that the implemented wireless communication networks were tested in a real-world scenario., cofunded by the project K2D: Knowledge and Data from the Deep to Space with reference POCI-01-0247-FEDER-045941, cofinanced by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), through the Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalization (COMPETE2020), and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the MIT Portugal Program. This work is also cofinanced by national funds through FCT–Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., under project SONDA (PTDC/EME-SIS/1960/2020). T.M. thanks FCT for grant SFRH/BD/145070/2019

Beliefs, expectations and values are often assumed to drive decisions about climate change adaptation. We tested hypotheses based on this assumption using survey responses from 508 European forest professionals in ten countries. We used the survey results to identify communication needs and the decision strategies at play, and to develop guidelines on adequate communications about climate change adaptation. We observed polarization in the positive and negative values associated with climate change impacts accepted by survey respondents. We identified a mechanism creating the polarization that we call the 'blocked belief' effect. We found that polarized values did not correlate with decisions about climate change adaptation. Strong belief in the local impacts of climate change on the forest was, however, a prerequisite of decision-making favoring adaptation. Decision-making in favor of adaptation to climate change also correlated with net values of expected specific impacts on the forest and generally increased with the absolute value of these in the absence of 'tipping point' behavior. Tipping point behavior occurs when adaptation is not pursued in spite of the strongly negative or positive net value of expected climate change impacts. We observed negative and positive tipping point behavior, mainly in SW Europe and N-NE Europe, respectively. In addition we found that advice on effective adaptation may inhibit adaptation when the receiver is aware of effective adaptation measures unless it is balanced with information explaining how climate change leads to negative impacts. Forest professionals with weak expectations of impacts require communications on climate change and its impacts on forests before any advice on adaptation measures can be effective. We develop evidence-based guidelines on communications using a new methodology which includes Bayesian machine learning modeling of the equivalent of an expected utility function for the adaptation decision problem.

This paper presents a novel lab-on-a-chip (LOC) device for seawater pH quantification based on spectrophotometric methods. The device integrates optical, electronics and microfluidic systems, providing an autonomous, compact and portable platform for in-situ, long-term and low-cost seawater pH measurements. The developed system was validated in laboratory with measurement of various seawater samples, of different pH, within the seawater pH interval (7.50-8.30). The response of the LOC shows a high reproducibility and stability with a resolution of 0.01 pH units. Thus, the device has a high potential to be use in moored oceanic applications., This publication/presentation was financed by FCT with the reference project UID/EEA/04436/2013, by FEDER funds through the COMPETE2020– Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) with the reference project POCI-01- 0145-FEDER- 006941 and the work was funded by Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (NORTE2020), through Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER), Project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000032 – NextSea.

Article In developing countries such as Brazil, research on low-cost remote sensing and computational techniques become essential for the development of precision agriculture (PA), and improving the quality of the agricultural products. Faced with the scenario of increasing production of emerald grass (Zoysia Japônica) in Brazil, and the value added the quality of this agricultural product. The objective of this work was to evaluate the performance of RGB (IV) vegetation indices in the identification of exposed soil and vegetation. The study was developed in an irrigated area of 58 ha cultivated with emerald grass at Bom Sucesso, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The images were obtained by a RGB digital camera coupled to an remotely piloted aircraft. The flight plan was setup to take overlapping images of 70% and the aircraft speed was 10 m s -1 . Six RGB Vegetation index (MGVRI, GLI, RGBVI, MPRI, VEG, ExG) were evaluated in a mosaic resulting from the images of the study area. All of the VIs evaluated were affected by the variability of lighting conditions in the area but MPRI and MGVRI were the ones that presented the best results in a qualitative evaluation regarding the discrimination of vegetation and soil.

The number of falls is growing as the main cause of injuries and deaths in the geriatric community. As a result, also the cost of treating the injuries associated with falls is increasing. Thus, the development of fall detection and prediction systems with the capability of real-time monitoring without user restriction is imperative. For this reason, canes can be a great choice to embed fall-related systems. This paper aims to achieve a complete state-of-the-art concerning the development of fall detection and prediction algorithms implemented in canes. In order to accomplish this goal, a comprehensive search was performed. This search includes the IEEE, Scopus and Web of Science databases regarding developed systems in the literature. Also, a commercial search on Google and a patent search on Espacenet and the United States Patent and Trademark Office was performed. To this day, it has not been developed any type of cane related system which focuses on the temporal window preceding a fall and that accesses the risk of falling, even though a considerable amount of fall detection systems have already been presented., This work has been supported by the FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - with the scholarship reference PD/BD/141515/2018, by the FEDER funds through the COMPETE 2020 - Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) and P2020 with the Reference Project EML under Grant POCI-01-0247-FEDER-033067, and through the COMPETE 2020 POCI with the Reference Project under Grant POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006941.

The influence of substrate type in boosting thermoelectric properties of co-evaporated Bi2Te3 and Sb2Te3 films (with 400 nm-thick) is here reported. Optimized power factor values are 2.7 × 10−3 W K−2 m−1 and 1.4 × 10−3 W K−2 m−1 for flexible Bi2Te3 and Sb2Te3 films, respectively. This is an important result as it is at least 2 times higher than the power factor found in the literature for flexible Bi2Te3 and Sb2Te3 films. A flexible infrared thermopile sensor was developed with high detectivity (2.50 × 107 cm √HzW−1)., This work is supported by FCT with the reference project UID/EEA/04436/2013, by FEDER funds through the COMPETE 2020—Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) with the reference project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006941. EMFV and JF is grateful for financial support through the FCT grants SFRH/BPD/95905/2013 and SFRH/BD/121679/2016.

This work aims to study a new energy harvesting device to be anchored on the ocean floor and convert any type of currents, tides or oscillation movement into electrical energy using linear electromagnetic generators. The final application is to supply energy to a set of moored monitoring sensors that collects data and allowing the system to be energetically autonomous. The proposed setup is a spherical buoy with no external moving parts, to be more biofouling proof. The maximum output power measured for a 4 Hz movement was 9.9 mW with only one linear electromagnetic generator. Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (NORTE), through Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER) [NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000032] FCT [UID/EEA/04436/2013]

Medication resistant neurological and psychiatric disorders, RNPD, are devastating multicausal chronic diseases that cannot be adequately controlled using conventional pharmaco and/or psychotherapies, being epilepsy a well-known RNPD. Wireless biomedical device availability is growing at an impressive rate, and the systems' miniaturization, integration and complexity is also increasing, unveiling new therapies based on such new devices. This paper presents a new wireless implantable device as a solution for thermal neuromodulation of brain cells, which can be used to treat or study the brain's behavior when cooled down. The obtained results show that, despite these systems' potential to be power hungry, they may operate within acceptable electrical power values, while reaching the required neuromodulation temperatures., This work has been supported by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) in the scope of the project PTDC/EEITEL/5250/2014, project PTDC/CTM-NAN/5414/2014 and under grant SFRH/BD/100649/2014., info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion