Abstract

Abstract
The project addresses the urgent need to enhance student interest and performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, while fostering skills that are important prerequisites for IT careers. In the near term, the project is helping Portuguese schools and students meet state wide academic standards. Over the long term, the project will help inspire and prepare a new generation of IT professionals. This paper presents the robotics model of the Micromouse Project, how it works, how it is implemented, and its results. The Micromouse Project includes, in addition to the annual competition, the development of a kit, workshops for students and their teachers, and dissemination activities. The project was started in 2011 and all the preliminary phases are concluded. First results show that there is great interest and participation of all stakeholders. It was necessary to add to the project a graphical language (Blockly, Scratch, etc.) in order to facilitate and stimulate the participation of younger students.

Abstract
The goal of this paper is to present the development of a game aimed at making the process of learning sign language enjoyable and interactive, using the VirtualSign Translator. This game aims to make the process of learning sign language easier and enjoyable. In the game the player can control an avatar and interact with several objects and Non-player characters in order to obtain signs. Through the connection with VirtualSign Translator the data gloves and Kinect support this interaction and the gestures can then be represented by the character. This allows for the user to visualize and learn or train the various existing configurations of gestures. To improve the interactivity and to make the game more interesting and motivating, several checkpoints were placed along game levels. The game has as an inventory system where the signs are kept and can be checked allowing for the user to visualize and learn or train the various existing configurations of gestures. A High Scores system was also created, as well as a History option, to ensure that the game is a continuous and motivating learning process.

Abstract
This work presents a recommender system of economic news articles. Its objectives are threefold: (i) managing the vocabulary of the economic news domain to improve the system based on the seamlessly intervention of the documentalist (ii) automatically multi-classify the economic new articles and users profiles based on the domain vocabulary, and (iii) recommend the articles by comparing the multiclassification of the articles and profiles of the users. While several solutions exist to recommend news, multi-classify document and compare representations of items and profiles. They are not automatically adaptable to provide a mutual answer to previous points. Even more, existing approaches lacks substantial correlation with the human and in particular with the documentalist perspective. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.

Abstract
Portuguese teacher placements' system is a centralized system managed by the Portuguese government, specifically by the Ministry of Education and Science. It is a system with some issues and, therefore, has been criticized by its stakeholders, mainly by teachers. This paper aims to do a systematic review and a meta-analysis of the Portuguese teacher placements' system. An objective is to understand and describe how this system works in European Union countries. Another objective is to interview school leaders to find solutions for teacher placements' system. Finally, from solutions from European Union countries and from solutions arising from schools' leaders, a set of requirements is identified that the teacher placements' system should take into account, in order to avoid the issues identified.

Abstract
This paper presents a Direct Lyapunov based control technique for active power filtering in electric grids. The proposed technique through the interfacing system is designed with the goal to compensate the harmonic current components and reactive power provoked by the nonlinear grid-connected loads. In the method, based on multilevel converter topologies, active power in fundamental frequency is injected from the main grid, which results in unity PF (power factor) between grid currents and load voltages. The performance of the proposed control technique in a SAPF (Shunt Active Power Filter) model is validated in both dynamic and steady-state operating conditions. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can effectively compensate the system background harmonics and improve the performance of the line current harmonics. The main benefit of this approach is that it prevents current overshoot as the proposed model connects to the grid.