Abstract
The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has grown substantially over the past few years. However, a portion of the world's society has not been able to keep up with these technological advances. For this purpose, we present a serious game with a multi-touch interface envisioned to encourage and teach digitally excluded people on how to use the Portuguese Automated Teller Machine (ATM): a commodity much needed by society, but still avoided by some, mainly due to their fear of the digital world. An exploratory study was conducted to investigate if a serious game based on a new interaction paradigm can have a positive influence in the struggle against the Portuguese digital divide. We believe that the findings of our pilot case study can be useful to determine if a multi-touch serious game, due to its intuitiveness and ease of use, can stimulate the digitally excluded people to handle the ATM on a regular basis. The results that were obtained suggest that this approach may indeed produce a positive impact in the attempt to bridge the Portuguese digital divide.

Abstract
Palladium-based fiber-optic sensors have been one of the most promising configurations for hydrogen sensing. In the latest decade, fiber-optic sensors have indeed earned a strong interest owing to their ability to monitor molecular hydrogen at specific spatial points-either as a sensing tip device or in large areas via multiple sensing regions distributed along the optical fiber. This review focuses on the various types of optical fiber hydrogen sensors, containing specifically palladium as active element. Three distinct working principles are described, viz. interferometric-, intensity-, and fiber grating-based sensors; their characteristics and sensing performances are critically overviewed.

Abstract

Abstract
Currently, in radiotherapy (RT) departments, there are different manufacturers and stand-alone information systems (IS) for single-purpose applications. These systems have most of the data distributed through different IS. The DICOM-RT extension has six objects that provide a standardized way of transferring the information circulating in the external beam RT. The aim of this study is to assess expert's opinion about DICOM-RT and IS interoperability in the RT context, through the characterization of Portuguese RT facilities, in terms of equipment and IS with the identification of existing interoperability problems. This study is cross-sectional, and the preliminary results presented in this paper are relative to the period May-July 2011. All Portuguese RT departments (i.e. 20) were invited to cooperate in the survey; the response rate was 40% (n=8), while 10% (n=2) of the institutions did not authorize the RT departments to participate. The preliminary results show that the RT departments have some equipment and IS from different vendors contributing for heterogeneity of RT workflows. The experts somehow attribute importance to interoperability, but have low knowledge about their own IS integrations, and DICOM-RT. Compliance with DICOM-RT is recommended when acquiring new RT IS to optimise the interoperability.

Abstract
In this paper, we propose an architecture based on three layers (infrastructure, server hardware and operating system, and business applications) for a unified communications solutions exclusively sustained on open source technologies and open standards. Additionally, we discuss the importance of open standards and open source in a fully integrated communications solution, exposing some factors that a company should consider when choosing open source software. Copyright 2012 ACM.

Abstract
In this Letter, a hybrid interferometer for simultaneous measurement of the partial pressures of O-2 and CO2 mixtures is reported. The sensing head consists in the combination of two interferometric structures, one a Fabry-Perrot cavity and the other a modal interferometer. The intrinsic Fabry-Perot was formed by splicing a single mode fiber with a graded index fiber length that was then subjected to chemical etching creating an air cavity. The second interferometer is based on a splice of a pure silica tube in series with the Fabry-Perot. It was observed for a particular gas that its refractive index changes with pressure variation in a specific way, a characteristic that permitted the simultaneous measurement of partial pressures of CO2 and O-2 with rms deviations of similar to +/- 48.7 kPa and similar to +/- 20.1 kPa, respectively. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America