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
IdSay is a Question Answering system for Portuguese that participated at QA@CLEF 2008 with a baseline version (IdSayBL). Despite the encouraging results, there was still much room for improvement. The participation of six systems in the Portuguese task, with very good results either individually or in an hypothetical combination run, provided a valuable source of information. We made an analysis of all the answers submitted by all systems to identify their strengths and weaknesses. We used the conclusions of that analysis to guide our improvements, keeping in mind the two key characteristics we want for the system: efficiency in terms of response time and robustness to treat different types of data. As a result, an improved version of IdSay was developed, including as the most important enhancement the introduction of semantic information. We obtained significantly better results, from an accuracy in the first answer of 32.5% in IdSayBL to 50.5% in IdSay, without degradation of response time.

Abstract

Abstract
In this paper, long (>40 years) hourly tide gauge records from the North Atlantic are analyzed. A new time series clustering approach which combines Bayesian methodology, extreme value theory, and classification techniques is adopted for the analysis of the regional variability of sea-level extremes. The tide gauge records are clustered on the basis of their corresponding predictive distributions for 25-, 50-, and 100-year return values. The results of the cluster analysis show a clear distinction between the higher latitude stations for which the return values are largest and the remaining locations. This distinction reflects in the U.S. east coast the transition between the Scottian shelf and Gulf of Maine area and the mid-Atlantic Bight area. For the stations at lower latitudes the results show a grouping based on return levels that is not a function of geographical proximity but reflects local effects in extreme sea levels associated with the specific location of each tide gauge.

Abstract
Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive noble gas generated within mineral grains of uranium bearing rocks by alpha decay from radium. The Amram tunnel (A. Bloch Geophysical Observatory) is a particularly suitable location for the investigation of radon variability. Located in the arid environment of the Arava desert, near Elat, the 170 m tunnel that constitutes the observatory enables radon monitoring in a desert environment and under fairly stable environmental conditions. The analysis of the temporal variability of continuous measurements of radon and environmental parameters at the Amram tunnel over a period of several years shows a complex temporal pattern characterized by non-stationary and multiscale features. Radon concentrations exhibit multiyear variability in the form of a increasing trend of similar to 1000 Bq m(-3) yr(-1) in the mean and much larger trends up to similar to 2500 Bq m(-3) yr(-1) in the maximum radon levels. Radon concentrations also display strong seasonal patterns, with maxima in summer and minima in winter, ranging from 2.5 kBq m(-3) in winter to 35 kBq m(-3) in summer. Intraseasonal variability is characterized by very large radon anomalies, with sharp increases of more than 20 kBq m(-3) relative to the base level, that occur in spring and summer and last for several days. Daily periodic variability with maxima around midnight appears also in spring and summer, being absent in the cold months. Radon variability at seasonal, intraseasonal and daily timescales is associated with the air temperature outside the tunnel, specifically the temperature gradient between the external environment and the more stable environment inside the tunnel where the measurements are performed.

Abstract
This paper describes a software application developed using the MATLAB language for a mobile mapping system (MMS) implemented at the University of Porto. An MMS includes a survey stage, where direct navigation and imaging sensors are mounted rigidly in a vehicle, to acquire time-synchronized navigation and image data. It also includes a processing stage which manipulates all the collected data to obtain absolute or relative coordinates for the object points appearing in the images. This report focuses mainly on the development of procedures to acquire images with time-tag information, perform several image manipulations, implement photogramrnetric and matching algorithms, and put it all together in a user-friendly graphic interface. One of the main objectives during the application development was to keep this standard MMS procedure as simple as possible. MATLAB has proven to be a very well-suited platform for achieving the proposed objectives, with the advantage that it made possible the construction of a user-friendly graphic interface. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.