Abstract
The architectural pattern of micro-services is being increasingly adopted by developers, facilitating the maintenance and scalability of the systems’ code. The adoption and consumption of these micro-services are often seen on the front-end code of the Web applications. Nevertheless, this adoption obliges web designers/developers to know where to look for those web services, to read their documentation and to write the request/response code as well to control the corresponding UI rendering. This whole process is time-consuming and error-prone. This article introduces SeCoGen as an interactive code generator for Web service parsing and consumption. The generator benefits from an HTTP request template, a query normalizer and dynamic UI templates. In order, to validate the generator feasibility and usefulness, a REST API to search for countries is used. © Ricardo Queirós.

Abstract
Researchers are currently encouraged by their institutions and the funding agencies to deposit data resulting from projects. Activities related to research data management, namely organization, description, and deposit, are not obvious for researchers due to the lack of knowledge on metadata and the limited data publication experience. Institutions are looking for solutions to help researchers organize their data and make them ready for publication. We consider here the deposit process for a CKAN-powered data repository managed as part of the IT services of a large research institute. A simplified data deposit process is illustrated here by means of a set of examples where researchers describe their data and complete the publication in the repository. The process is organised around a Dublin Core-based dataset deposit form, filled by the researchers as preparation for data deposit. The contacts with researchers provided the opportunity to gather feedback about the Dublin Core metadata and the overall experience. Reflections on the ongoing process highlight a few difficulties in data description, but also show that researchers are motivated to get involved in data publication activities.

Abstract
The use of specialized accelerator circuits is a feasible solution to address performance and energy issues in embedded systems. This paper extends a previous field-programmable gate array-based approach that automatically generates pipelined customized loop accelerators (CLAs) from runtime instruction traces. Despite efficient acceleration, the approach suffered from high area and resource requirements when offloading a large number of kernels from the target application. This paper addresses this by enhancing the CLA with dynamic partial reconfiguration (DPR) support. Each kernel to accelerate is implemented as a variant of a reconfigurable area of the CLA which hosts all functional units and configuration memory. Evaluation of the proposed system is performed on a Virtex-7 device. We show, for a set of 21 kernels, that when comparing two CLAs capable of accelerating the same subset of kernels, the one which benefits from DPR can be up to 4.3x smaller. Resorting to DPR allows for the implementation of CLAs which support numerous kernels without a significant decrease in operating frequency and does not affect the initiation intervals at which kernels are scheduled. Finally, the area required by a CLA instance can be further reduced by increasing the IIs of the scheduled kernels.

Abstract
This investigation concerns the translation and validation of the ITC - Sense of Presence Inventory (ITC-SOPI) for the Portuguese-speaking population (in Europe), estimating the validity of the content and concepts and the maintenance of an equivalent semantics. It also sought to verify its psychometric properties, namely its factorial validity and internal consistency. The sample consisted of 459 individuals, 274 males and 185 females. The fidelity of the subscales varied between 0.67 and 0.89. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a theoretical model of 35 items, divided by four factors. After fixing some of the residual errors between items, the following adjustment indexes were calculated: chi(2)/df = 2.301; goodness fit index = 0.860; comparative fitness index = 0.889; root mean square error of approximation = 0.053; Akaike's information criterion = 1420. Based on the observed results and the robustness of the sample size used, the obtained theoretical model shows that the ITC-SOPI is recommended to measure presence in virtual reality research projects with samples of Portuguese language speakers.

Abstract
This paper considers the problem of scheduling jobs in a permutation flow shop with the objective of minimizing total earliness and tardiness. Unforced idle time is considered in order to reduce the earliness of jobs. It is shown how unforced idle time can be inserted on the final machine. Several dispatching heuristics that have been used for the problem without unforced idle time were modified and tested. Several procedures were also developed that conduct a second pass to develop a sequence using dispatching rules. These procedures were also tested and were found to result in better solutions.

Abstract
Among the wide application areas that Virtual Reality (VR) can have a major impact, one is Education. However, this potential is still unexplored, and one of these gaps has to do with language learning. Listening activities, which are often only supported by audio, are thought of to be demanding area when it comes to learning a second or foreign language and so therefore an interesting area for VR to take place. This pilot study therefore presents the perceptions of foreign language teachers regarding a novel medium for delivering listening activities to their students: Virtual Reality technology. The results show that foreign language teachers are of the opinion that this technology can help motivate students and potentiate the student’s learning curve regarding the listening of a foreign or second language. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.