Abstract

Abstract
Video Games may be used with different applications in mind, for entertainment, training and simulation or even as teaching tools. However, the production of contents for such games, namely game scenarios with virtual worlds composed by cities and related elements (streets, buildings, furniture and so on) may require a laborious effort by multidisciplinary teams which lead to an expensive and time consuming solution. In order to avoid the development burden, procedural modeling techniques have been created and applied to generate virtual models of buildings and cities expeditiously with high degree of detail and realism. Nevertheless, most of the existing techniques use complex sets of rules to produce models without being aware of the architectonic structures and its relationships. Thereby, in order to simplify the generation process and rule dealing we propose, in this paper, an ontology-based procedural modeling methodology which integrates an ontological structure, describing city elements and the relationships between each other, and a combined set of procedural techniques to generate roman houses. The preliminary results point to a method capable of producing roman houses expeditiously, including the interiors and the exteriors.

Abstract
The XXI Century society has developed a drive for Information and the Web, as one of the extremely important technologies of our times, represents the main channel to access it. As a result of this, one can perceive that the Web, and the inherent websites, must be accessible to all, in order to maintain the imperative social equality. Despite the legal requirements to the Portuguese Web content accessibility levels, in effect since 1999, the existent studies that focused on assessing those same levels of accessibility reported that the Portuguese websites, in their majority, were not compliant with the existent standards. In mid-2007 we started, within our research group and in partnership with both UMIC - Knowledge Society Agency and APDSI - Association for the Promotion and Development of the Information Society, a Web accessibility barometer. The goal of this barometer has been assessing the accessibility levels of the Portuguese websites, creating recommendations - for both the organizations and the civil society - towards the improvement of the referred websites, and publicly presenting the achieved results. One of the Portuguese enterprises that is adopting the accessibility standards into its public procurement platform anoGov is ANO. This company established a research project alongside UTAD University in order to achieve technical know-how and good practices that allowed them to develop accessible and usable Web content. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Abstract
This poster presents a pilot project on non-conventional learning strategies based on students' active participation in real-life FLOSS projects. The aim of the project is to validate the hypothesis that the peer-production model, which underlies most FLOSS projects, can enhance the learning-teaching process based on extensive and systematic collaborative practices. Consisting of a semester-long experiment with a class of 23 Master Information and Technology (MSc IT) students, organized in small groups, this pilot project aims at exploiting FLOSS communities and the respective FLOSS projects as learning opportunities. This pilot project is part of a course assignment on Teaching Software Engineering in the Master in Informatics taking place during the spring semester of 2013, at the University of Minho, in Portugal. The students participate in real FLOSS projects by choosing one of the following roles: 1) requirement analyst, writing software requirements; 2) programmer, developing source code; or 3) tester, writing bug reports. As a real-life experience conducted with students in Portugal, the project enables the systematic study of the dynamics of peer-to-peer learning and assessment of the didactic value and potential of this kind of non-standard learning experiences. Moreover, as a beneficial side effect, students have the opportunity to experience full immersion in a real FLOSS community and learn about project management and organized participation.

Abstract
A direct arterial pressure monitoring system for post EVAR procedure based on inductive-coupling is presented which avoids the need for more complex biomedical imaging systems. Post stent-graft implantation complications, such as endoleaks, can be detected with capacitive pressure sensors placed in the stent-graft and monitored externally after the measurement of the oscillation frequency of a LC resonant circuit created by sensors and inductive coupling. Several measurements were performed in order to characterize the system and compare the results with the expected values based on theoretical models. Different measurements were carried-out with the purpose of evaluating the system's frequency detection accuracy throughout the working bandwidth and varying distances between the reader and the sensors. Both air and a phantom with electrical characteristics similar to the human body were used between the reader and the sensors antennas in order to evaluate the influence of the transmission medium. It is shown that in both cases the system is capable of detecting the oscillation frequencies, even in the case a cluster of sensors is used.

Abstract
The Central Dogma of Biology states that genes made proteins that made us. This principle has been revised in order to incorporate the role played by a multitude of regulatory mechanisms that are fundamental in both the processes of inheritance and development. Evolutionary Computation algorithms are inspired by the theories of evolution and development, but most of the computational models proposed so far rely on a simple genotype to phenotype mapping. During the last years some researchers advocate the need to explore computationally the new biological understanding and have proposed different gene expression models to be incorporated in the algorithms. Two examples are the Artificial Regulatory Network (ARN) model, first proposed by Wolfgang Banzhaf, and the Grammatical Evolution (GE) model, introduced by Michael O'Neill and Conor Ryan. In this paper, we show how a modified version of the ARN can be combined with the GE approach, in the context of automatic program generation. More precisely, we rely on the ARN to control the gene expression process ending in an ordered set of proteins, and on the GE to build, guided by a grammar, a computational structure from that set. As a proof of concept we apply the hybrid model to two benchmark problems and show that it is effective in solving them.