Abstract

Abstract
Personality traits play a key role in the shaping of emotions, moods, cognitions, and behaviours of individuals interacting in a virtual environment. The personalities one exhibits reflect one's perception of the world and are demonstrated in the act of communication. Thus, the evaluation of a message can be changed due to stress and mood variations. Being able to identify the degree of relationship between one's personality characteristics and one's current stress state can thus facilitate the communication process. In particular, in this paper it is studied the correlation between some personality traits and the stress levels exhibited by users' interactions. To do so a novel approach was followed in which an intelligent environment is used to support the stress recognition process providing important personality related information. An experiment has been designed for the purpose of addressing the estimation of relevant aspects of interactions that occur in a rich sensory environment. Outputs from the experiment, such as the relation between personality characteristics and stress, can be used to maximize the benefits of virtual environments and its applications in fields such as learning, medicine or conflict resolution. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.

Abstract
A previously reported fluorescein-based dye containing a catechol unit showed high sensitivity to Fe(III) at physiological pH, but also undesirable pH sensitivity, mainly due to the lower pK(a) values of the phenolic hydroxyl groups of the fluorescein core. Aiming to synthesize compounds that interact with metal ions at physiological pH, exhibiting no pH sensitivity, we designed two novel fluorescent compounds by assembling, through amide linkage, a rhodamine fluorophore with two selected chelating moieties, catechol and 3-hydroxy-4-pyridinone, both possessing high affinity for Fe(III) but distinct pK(a) values. The fluorescent compounds were prepared using straightforward synthetic protocols and characterized by NMR, mass spectrometry and electronic spectroscopy (UV-Vis and fluorescence) and one of the compounds was also characterized by single crystal X-ray diffraction. The results reveal that, while the fluorescent 3-hydroxy-4-pyridinone derivative exhibits a significant dependence of fluorescence emission with increasing pH, due to the pK(a) values arising from the 3-hydroxy-4-pyridinone residue, the fluorescent catechol ligand responds mainly to interactions with metal ions, preferentially to Fe(III), showing less sensitivity to pH than the related ligands over the pH range 3-8, fact that is relevant concerning the application of this compound as an ion sensor in biological media.

Abstract
This paper showcases MDSheet, a framework aimed at improving the engineering of spreadsheets. This framework is model-driven, and has been fully integrated under a spreadsheet system. Also, its practical interest has been demonstrated by several empirical studies.

Abstract
"Generic Shooter 3000" is a First-Person shooter with semi-realistic interaction, where actions such as firing a gun or diving through underwater sections are performed with your own body- through the use of biofeedback technology. This prototype is the idealised version of a research game developed for a master's thesis project on "biofeedback interaction in video games".

Abstract
Robotic sailing vehicles can provide the support for carrying out long ocean sampling missions, using solely renewable energy for propulsion and for powering the computing, communication and electromechanical systems. The basic automatic sailing tasks required to visit a sequence of waypoints has already been correctly addressed by various teams. However, an effective system for specifying long term autonomous missions is necessary to fill the gap between the developers of the robotic platforms and the scientific end users, mainly interested in the data they can get. This paper presents a simple, flexible and easy to use mission programming system implemented in the autonomous sailing boat FASt. A mission is programmed by defining events and assigning to them sequences of high level actions. The support of conditional statements allows the implementation of a basic control flow mechanism to make route decisions during the deployment of the mission. Examples are presented to illustrate the construction of mission programs.