Abstract
Benefits provided by music in humans have been reinforced through several studies, mainly by active participation in musical therapy sessons, with surprising results in physical and psychological rehabilitation. However, all the previous implemented approaches require specialized hardware to function and complex configurations to set-up. We define a computational system focused on the elderly to allow musical expressiveness through motion, solely using the resources available in an ordinary home computer. To evaluate our approach, we developed a prototype and piloted acceptance tests on several senior citizens, with an average age of eighty-three. Our experiments showed high levels of interest from the senior citizens, denoting positive capabilities of well-being and life quality enrichment. The performed experiments have also shown that an ordinary computer is capable of performing the proposed methodology, without any restriction. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Programme Committee of the 4th International Conference on Software Development for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion (DSAI 2012)

Abstract
In everyday life, people need to move, whether in business or leisure. Navigation requires spatial knowledge and ability to make decisions based on geographic information. Recently, powerful tools have been developed, enhancing the capabilities of geographical analysis and decision-making. This work presents a platform to handle and provide geographic information, including accessibility oriented features. This geographic information system (GIS) is part of a wider project, called SmartVision. The aim of this project is to create a system that allows blind users to navigate in the University of Tras-os-Montes and Alto Douro campus. The GIS platform, together with other modules of the SmartVision system prototype, provides information to blind users, assisting their navigation and giving alerts of nearby points-of-interest or obstacles. Together with the GIS platform, this paper also describes the handling of accessibility information by the SmartVision prototype, namely the Navigation Module, the Computer Vision Module and the Interface Module.

Abstract
The TIMEMESH game, developed in the scope of the European Project SELEAG, is an educational game for learning history, culture and social relations. It is supported by an extensible, online, multi-language, multi-player, collaborative and social platform for sharing and acquiring knowledge of the history of European regions. The game has been already used, with remarkable success, in different European countries like Portugal, Spain, England, Slovenia, Estonia and Belgium. © 2012 IEEE.

Abstract
A UML Protocol State Machine (PSM) is a behavioral diagram for the specification of the external behavior of a class, interface or component. PSMs have been used in the software development process for different purposes, such as requirements analysis and testing. However, like other UML diagrams, they are often difficult to validate and verify, specially when combined with other artifacts, such as Object Constraint Language (OCL) specifications. This drawback can be overcome by application of an off-the-shelf formal method, namely one supporting automatic validation and verification. Among those, we have the increasingly popular Alloy, based on a simple relational flavor of first-order logic. This paper presents a model transformation from PSMs, optionally complemented with OCL specifications, to Alloy. Not only it enables automatic verification and validation of PSMs, but also a smooth integration of Alloy in current software development practices. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Abstract
Language resources that include semantic equivalences at word level are common, and its usefulness is well established in text processing applications, as in the case of search. Named entities also play an important role for text based applications, but are not usually covered by the previously mentioned resources. The present work describes the WES base, Wikipedia Entity Synonym base, a freely available resource based on the Wikipedia. The WES base was built for the Portuguese Language, with the same format of another freely available thesaurus for the same language, the TeP base, which allows integration of equivalences both at word level and entity level. The resource has been built in a language independent way, so that it can be extended to different languages. The WES base was used in a Question Answering system, enhancing significantly its performance.

Abstract
A mixed corpus of Portuguese is one in which texts of different origins produce different spelling variants for the same word. A new norm, which will bring together the written texts produced both in Portugal and Brazil, giving then a more uniform orthography, has been effective since 2009, but what happens in the perspective of search, to corpora created before the norm came into practice, or within the transition period? Is the information they contain outdated and worthless? Do they need to be converted to the new norm? In the present work we analyse these questions. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.