Abstract

Abstract
Indoor radon activities were measured during a period of 6 months, as well as several physical environmental variables (temperature, pressure, humidity and rainfall). The location was a small room at an administrative building of the University of Coimbra, usually undisturbed by human activities and situated over bedrock of low-uranium Triassic red sandstones. A low average activity of radon was observed (36 Bq m(-3)), however showing a very well marked daily periodicity (10 +/- 5 Bq m(-3)), with maximum values occurring more frequently between 9 and 10 a.m. Daily variations are shown to have no relation with earth tides, and their amplitudes exhibit a significant correlation with outdoor temperature; no dependence on barometric pressure was found. Rainfall disturbs the observed daily radon cycles through a strong reduction of their amplitude, but has no effect on the long-term variability of the gas concentration.

Abstract
Due to the degradation of the earth during the past years, we are assisting to the increase of the number and intensity of natural catastrophes, with growing material and human losses. There's a recognized need to either improve or establish new Early Warning Systems. In fact, it isn't yet well known a normalized proceeding to organize the gathering and treatment of data, for a posterior analyses and emission of alerts, nor the acceptance of a architecture, either in terms of data or system, that allow the integration with other similar systems, in order to do a consistent analysis over larger territories. This paper aims to contribute to a proposal of an architecture to organize the needed resources of a Catastrophes Early Warning System. © 2009 IADIS.

Abstract
Emotional contagion is a process by which a person or group induces emotions, consciously or unconsciously, to another person. In this work, the authors present a model for contagion of emotions using the Emotional Contagion Scale (ECS). The model focuses on the unconscious aspect of Emotional Contagion, and is implemented using the NetLogo environment. The results show that the model can simulate different contagious patterns according to different emotions and different sizes of the groups, simulating what is found in human groups. ©2009 IEEE.

Abstract

Abstract