Abstract
We present an overview of the applications of the electric arc technique related to optical fibre technology. The use of arc discharges ranges from the well-known fibre splicing, going through the fabrication of basic devices such as fibre tapers and microspheres, to tailoring the spectra of UV-induced gratings such as in the apodization of fibre Bragg gratings and also in the fabrication of phase-shifted and sampled fibre Bragg gratings. However, in the past decade a topic more intensively investigated was probably long-period fibre gratings. Therefore, some devices based on arc-induced gratings, namely, phase-shifted and step-changed gratings and bandpass filters are discussed. We also present an electrically insulated thermocouple assembled in situ using arc discharges. This sensor is very useful in the determination of the temperature attained by the fibre during an arc discharge, this property being fundamental for the discussion of the mechanisms of formation and for the understanding of the thermal properties of arc-induced devices.

Abstract
The usage of information and communication technologies has been growing among students and teachers. In order to improve the use of the Internet as a tool to support teaching and learning it is necessary to understand the Internet usage habits of students. Thus, a study was conducted with 1397 students from five schools of the Polytechnic of Porto. The data was collected through an online questionnaire abd was analized by age range, gender and scientific field. In this paper,gender differences are analyzed and presented in 3 dimensions: type of Internet usage, communication tools and the role of the Internet tools in education.

Abstract
Producing good quality clustering of data streams in real time is a difficult problem, since it is necessary to perform the analysis of data points arriving in a continuous style, with the support of quite limited computational resources. The incremental and evolving nature of the resulting clustering structures must reflect the dynamics of the target data stream. The WiSARD weightless perceptron, and its associated DRASiW extension, are intrinsically capable of, respectively, performing one-shot learning and producing prototypes of the learnt categories. This work introduces a simple generalization of RAM-based neurons in order to explore both weightless neural models in the data stream clustering problem.

Abstract
The study of the blogosphere can provide sociologically relevant data. We analyze the links between blogs in the portuguese blogosphere, in order to understand how they group and interact, to identify clusters and to characterize them. Our data set contains post data for more than 70,000 blogs, with over 400,000 links. The linkage data is represented as a blog graph and partitioned into several slices, according to their in-degree. We then study the evolution of blog features, and observe a consistent pattern of decrease in posting frequency, number of out-links, and post length, as we move from the highly-cited blogs to the less cited ones. Copyright 2010 ACM.

Abstract
In these days the learning experience is no longer confined within the four walls of a classroom. Computers and primarily the Internet have broadened this horizon by creating a way of delivering education that is known as eLearning. In the meantime, the Internet or, more precisely, the Web is heading towards a new paradigm where the user is no longer just a consumer of information and becomes an active part in the communication. This two-way channel where the user takes the role of the producer of content triggered the appearance of new types of services such as Social Networks, Blogs and Wikis. To seize this second generation of communities and services, educational vendors are willing to develop eLearning systems focused on the new and emergent users needs. This paper describes the analysis and specification of an eLearning environment at our School (ESEIG) towards this new Web generation, called PEACE - Project for ESEIG Academic Environment. This new model relies on the integration of several services controlled by teachers and students such as social networks, repositories, libraries, e-portfolios and e-conference systems, intelligent tutors, recommendation systems, automatic evaluators, virtual classrooms and 3D avatars.

Abstract
Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are critical components of today's software. Developers are dedicating a larger portion of code to implementing them. Given their increased importance, correctness of GUIs code is becoming essential. This paper describes the latest results in the development of GUISurfer, a tool to reverse engineer the GUI layer of interactive computing systems. The ultimate goal of the tool is to enable analysis of interactive system from source code.