Abstract
This article describes a new approach to synthesize dedicated hardware from a system specification using the Java language. The new compiler named GALADRIEL starts from Java classfiles produced from the initial Java specification and processes the system information in order to exploit the concurrency implicit in each method, so that it can be efficiently implemented by multiple hardware and/or software components. The paper gives emphasis to the compiler techniques used to exploit the implicit concurrency and to the use of high-level synthesis to generate the hardware models from the Java bytecodes information.

Abstract
This papers reports on an ongoing project to create 3D virtual exhibitions for the Internet. Special emphasis to provide Internet users with interactive and animated virtual worlds, providing a 3D interface whenever possible, is one of our priorities. Furthermore our project allows the construction of exhibitions through the Internet providing art galleries and other institutions with the possibility to ask visitors to participate in the site, building their own exhibition. Providing VRML optimised code we can deliver models with low polygon count as well as small file size thereby making this project suitable for Internet viewing.

Abstract
The uncertainty of project networks has been mainly considered as the randomness of duration of the activities. However, another major problem for project managers is the uncertainty due to the randomness of the amount of resources required by each activity which can be expressed by the randomness of its cost. Such randomness can seriously affect the discounted cost of the project and it may be strongly correlated with the duration of the activity. In this paper, a model considering the randomness of both the cost and the duration of each activity is introduced and the problem of project scheduling is studied in terms of the project's discounted cost and of the risk of not meeting its completion time. The adoption of the earliest (latest) starting time for each activity decreases (increases) the risk of delays but increases (decreases) the discounted cost of the project. Therefore, an optimal compromise has to be achieved. This problem of optimization is studied in terms of the probability of the duration and of the discounted cost of the project falling outside the acceptable domain (Risk function) using the concept of float factor as major decision variable. This last concept is proposed to help the manager to synthetize the large number of the decision variables representing each schedule for the studied project. Numerical results are also presented for a specific project network.

Abstract
This paper presents the requirements and specifications of videotelephony services and applications that are being developed or adapted to take advantage and demonstrate the potential of the broadband access networks based on the adaptation of CATV networks for interactive services. Furthermore, it emphasises the experience, problems and conclusions that are being acquired by using the Digital Audio-Visual Council (DAVIC) framework to implement such type of services and applications.

Abstract

Abstract
The Department of Biology of the University of Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro analyses every year a large number of chestnut-tree leaves, in order to measure their biometric characteristics, namely the leaf area, dimensions of the enclosing rectangle, number of teeth and secondary veins. Because for a human operator this is a time consuming and error prone task, a computer vision system has been set up to improve the process. The task of measuring the leaf presents no major problems, while counting the number of teeth and secondary veins has proved to be complex at the resolutions used. This paper describes the state of the project, going into some detail on the algorithms. A complete system has been assembled, based on an PC connected to an imaging system. A windows-based application has been developed, which integrates the control of the operations to grab, store and analyse images of different varieties of chestnut-tree leaves in an organised way. Because the accuracy of the computer vision algorithms used is not sufficient for the system to be completely autonomous, a semi-automatic solution has been adopted. The operator validates or corrects the results of the automatic analysis. This solution leads to a significant improvement in the performance of the human operator, both in terms of speed and quality of the results.