Abstract
In this paper it is presented an all-fiber implementation of the hot-wire needle probe concept, widely used to measure the thermal properties of materials, particularly the thermal conductivity. It is based on the heating of a metal thin film deposited on the surface of the fiber induced by the coupling of laser light into the cladding via a long period grating, and determination, using a fiber Bragg grating, of the time dependence of the temperature of the surrounding medium at a fixed distance of the fiber. The medium considered in this research was the air and the results obtained indicate the feasibility of this approach and point out future developments.

Abstract
The Geophysical Institute of the University of Porto (IGUP) is an important marker in the scientific and technological culture developed over more than a century in the city of Porto, thus a strategy is being planned out for its recovery. This mission aims to take advantage of all the activities in the history of this institution, taking into account several components such as research in areas of natural hazards, seismology, weather and radiometry, support for graduate and post-graduate education at the University of Porto, scientific dissemination, training addressed to students of the 2nd and 3rd cycles of basic education and in the context of extracurricular activities that are currently the responsibility of the municipality of Vila Nova de Gaia as well as the installation of a pole of the Science Museum of the University of Porto. This infrastructure has some instruments related to seismology, meteorology and radiation, which are directly related to the measurement of variables involved in the estimation of seismic, meteorological and radiological hazards and can thus relate to risk estimation. As such, it has the potential to become a center for research in Natural Hazards, which may contribute with studies, data and parameters for civil society and the scientific community. The recovery that is now underway in the previously integrated PTO seismic station - Worldwide Standardized Seismographic Network (WWSSN), can help to achieve the implementation of a center of research in seismology and simultaneously acknowledge the geopolitical importance of this station. As such, in the present work we intend to show part of the analysis of seismic records relating to previously unknown Soviet nuclear explosions as well as bringing back to life inactive equipment that was switched off since the 1990s and thus enabling the recording of more modern digital seismic records. © 2014 LNEG – Laboratório Nacional de Geologia e Energia IP.

Abstract
Negotiation is a collaborative activity that requires the participation of different parties whose behaviors influence the outcome of the whole process. The work presented here focuses on the identification of such behaviors and their impact on the negotiation process. The premise for this study is that identifying and cataloging the behavior of parties during a negotiation may help to clarify the role that stress plays in the process. To do so, an experiment based on a negotiation game was implemented. During this experiment, behavioral and contextual information about participants was acquired. The data from this negotiation game were analyzed in order to identify the conflict styles used by each party and to extract behavioral patterns from the interactions, useful for the development of plans and suggestions for the associated participants. The work highlights the importance of the knowledge about social interactions as a basis for informed decision support in situations of conflict.

Abstract
Hand gesture recognition, being a natural way of human computer interaction, is an area of active research in computer vision and machine learning. This is an area with many different possible applications, giving users a simpler and more natural way to communicate with robots/systems interfaces, without the need for extra devices. So, the primary goal of gesture recognition research is to create systems, which can identify specific human gestures and use them to convey information or for device control. This work intends to study and implement a solution, generic enough, able to interpret user commands, composed of a set of dynamic and static gestures, and use those solutions to build an application able to work in a real-time human-computer interaction systems. The proposed solution is composed of two modules controlled by a FSM (Finite State Machine): a real time hand tracking and feature extraction system, supported by a SVM (Support Vector Machine) model for static hand posture classification and a set of HMMs (Hidden Markov Models) for dynamic single stroke hand gesture recognition. The experimental results showed that the system works very reliably, being able to recognize the set of defined commands in real-time. The SVM model for hand posture classification, trained with the selected hand features, achieved an accuracy of 99,2%. The proposed solution as the advantage of being computationally simple to train and use, and at the same time generic enough, allowing its application in any robot/system command interface.

Abstract
A process of risk management in projects is a rational chain of practices by which decision-agents plan and execute actions and control the results in order to keep the implementation of the project under certain conditions (time, cost and quality parameters' set). With the purpose of providing guidelines for the selection of the best practices taking into account the organizational maturity and project complexity, a theoretical framework to classify and associate those practices to each phase of the project life cycle and to each project risk management process is proposed. Future research efforts will be directed towards refining the framework and testing it in multiple case studies. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract
The use of optimization techniques is well established in forest short-term planning and decision-making. Yet, existing techniques may pose some limitations for tackling with stochastic factors impacting in the execution of forest operations, such as delays, equipment breakdowns and other unexpected events. This paper explores the potential of using optimization techniques in combination with discrete-event simulation (DES) models for planning harvesting and logistics operations acknowledging uncertainty. DES models may be useful for assessing the performance and identifying bottlenecks associated with the execution of the deterministic plans retrieved with optimization techniques, when such stochastic events occur. This paper further presents an approach for the combination of a heuristic and a DES model developed in SIMIO. This approach was used to solve the raw material reception problem (RMRP) at a Portuguese pulp mill. This paper concludes with the analysis of the performance of deterministic schedules for the wood trucks considering uncertainty in their arrival at the mill.