A sociedade organizou-se para fazer frente a necessidades como o tratamento e acompanhamento de crianças ou jovens com Síndrome de Down, Surdez, Autismo, entre outras patologias. Como resultado, surgiram distintas organizações com o objetivo de lidar com estes casos, compostas por médicos, terapeutas, psicólogos, sociólogos e outros profissionais, mas excluindo profissionais dedicados ao desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias. Por outro lado, alunos finalistas de cursos tecnológicos desenvolvem normalmente um projeto tecnológico do início na disciplina final dos seus cursos - Projeto/Dissertação de fim de curso. Este artigo propõe um método para aplicar o esforço e entusiasmo de tais alunos às causas sociais mencionadas através do desenvolvimento de Jogos.

Technology assessment (TA) and TA-like activities in countries like Japan have a unique history and continue to play a role in contemporary science, technology, and innovation (STI) processes. The aim of the discussion of TA’s experience in East Asia is how STI governance is locally enacted in Asian knowledge-driven economies, as TA activities develop in conjunction with STI policies and programs. To render these processes, policies, and programs visible and to understand their implications for STI governance, a panel at the Berlin conference on TA discussed contributions that described and conceptualized, for example, how TA activities have emerged in Asian knowledge-based economies (KBE), in which particular forms (e.g., academic and parliamentary TA programs), to which technologies and/or actors they are linked, and which methods are used and why. The panel also sought to compare and contrast how TA is (or is not) institutionalized in Asian countries and regions, and to point to prospects for expansion of TA capacity. In doing so, the panellists placed the development of TA in a historical, sociological, and comparative perspective, and opened space for critical reflection on the potential, problems, and limitations associated with initiating TA in Asia and with KBEs overall

The evolution of technology has risen new possibilities in the so called Natural User Interfaces research area. Among distinct initiatives, several researchers are working with the existing sensors towards improving the support to gesture languages. This article tackles the recognition of gestures, using the Kinect sensor, in order to create a gesture library and support the gesture recognition processes afterwards.

A spreadsheet usually starts as a simple and single- user software artifact, but, as frequent as in other software systems, quickly evolves into a complex system developed by many actors. Often, different users work on different aspects of the same spreadsheet: while a secretary may be only involved in adding plain data to the spreadsheet, an accountant may define new business rules, while an engineer may need to adapt the spreadsheet content so it can be used by other software systems. Unfortunately, spreadsheet systems do not offer modular mechanisms, and as a consequence, some of the previous tasks may be defined by adding intrusive “code” to the spreadsheet.

In this paper we go through the design and implementation of an aspect-oriented language for spreadsheets so that users can work on different aspects of a spreadsheet in a modular way. For example, aspects can be defined in order to introduce new business rules to an existing spreadsheet, or to manipulate the spreadsheet data to be ported to another system. Aspects are defined as aspect-oriented program specifications that are dynamically woven into the underlying spreadsheet by an aspect weaver. In this aspect-oriented style of spreadsheet development, different users develop, or reuse, aspects without adding intrusive code to the original spreadsheet. Such code is added/executed by the spreadsheet weaving mechanism proposed in this paper.

In this session we review the Upper Cretaceous marine amniote records from the west coasts of North America and Africa. Recent work by our group in Angola, on the west coast of Africa, has opened up new fossiliferous localities, producing well-preserved turtles, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs, ranging in age from Late Turonian to Late Maastrichtian. These African localities were deposited in arid latitudes and highly productive upwelling zones along the passive margin of a growing South Atlantic Ocean. The fossil record of Cretaceous marine amniotes from the West Coast of North America is relatively meager when compared to the African record and the prolific fossil beds laid down in the epicontinental seas of the Western Interior Seaway and northern Europe. Nonetheless, these localities provide an important glimpse of a marine ecosystem that developed on the active margins of a deep ocean basin. Historically considered to be depauperate and endemic, the west coast fauna was characterized by unusual forms such as Plotosaurus, arguably one of the most derived mosasaurs; however, in recent years, additional taxa have been described, revealing species diversity and ecological partitioning within these communities and in some cases, faunal interchange with other regions. The large quantity of well-preserved fossils from the west coast of Africa is influenced in part by its paleogeographic position, deposited within highly productive areas of Hadley Cell controlled upwelling zones. By contrast, the North American west coast localities have been deposited in temperate and higher latitudes since the Late Cretaceous. Nonetheless, the North American and African faunas share some common characteristics in a possessing a mix of endemic and more cosmopolitan forms. Habitat partitioning reflected in tooth form and body size is comparable between the Angolan and the North American west coast, and there is remarkable convergence in taxa which appear to exploit certain like-niches.

This paper focuses on the engineering procedures governing the synthesis of tungsten oxide nanocrystals and the formulation of printable dispersions for electrochromic applications. By that means, we aim to stress the relevancy of a proper design strategy that results in improved physicochemical properties of nanoparticle loaded inks. In the present study inkjet printable nanostructured tungsten oxide particles were successfully synthesized via hydrothermal processes using pure or acidified aqueous sol-gel precursors. Based on the proposed scheme, the structure and morphology of the nanoparticles were tailored to ensure the desired printability and electrochromic performance. The developed nanomaterials with specified structures effectively improved the electrochemical response of printed films, resulting in 2.5 times higher optical modulation and 2 times faster coloration time when compared with pure amorphous films. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015.

Abstract Saddle points (SPs), recirculation centres (RCs), and reattachment points (RPs) are examples of key points of the flow, also called critical or stationary points. Finding the location of these null velocity points is essential to the understanding of a flow pattern and may even spare measurements of the whole flow field. To that purpose, laser based techniques may render inappropriate, especially because of the difficulty in conveying seed particles to the vicinity of those points. The article details an original technique based on the measurement of pairs of profiles with Pitot tubes and finding their intersection. Two flows are taken as case-studies. These consist of jets emanating from the base of a cylindrical chamber: multiple jets arranged in a circular crown and a single central jet. While the location of SP and RP could be done in a single step, due to the symmetry of the flow, pinpointing RCs required an iterative procedure, in which the radial and longitudinal coordinates were determined alternately. The location of the RP was the least accurate. The technique has pedagogical value and will particularly interest young researchers and practicing engineers without access to elaborate and expensive techniques such as particle image velocimetry. © 2013, Society for Experimental Mechanics.

The present development of non-wafer-based photovoltaics (PV) allows supporting thin film solar cells on a wide variety of low-cost recyclable and flexible substrates such as paper, thereby extending PV to a broad range of consumer-oriented disposable applications where autonomous energy harvesting is a bottleneck issue. However, their fibrous structure makes it challenging to fabricate good-performing inorganic PV devices on such substrates. The advances presented here demonstrate the viability of fabricating thin film silicon PV cells on paper coated with a hydrophilic mesoporous layer. Such layer can not only withstand the cells production temperature (150 C), but also provide adequate paper sealing and surface finishing for the cell's layers deposition. The substances released from the paper substrate are continuously monitored during the cell deposition by mass spectrometry, which allows adapting the procedures to mitigate any contamination from the substrate. In this way, a proof-of-concept solar cell with 3.4% cell efficiency (41% fill factor, 0.82 V open-circuit voltage and 10.2 mA cm-2 short-circuit current density) is attained, opening the door to the use of paper as a reliable substrate to fabricate inorganic PV cells for a plethora of indoor applications with tremendous impact in multi-sectorial fields such as food, pharmacy and security. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

The present development of non-wafer-based photovoltaics (PV) allows supporting thin film solar cells on a wide variety of low-cost recyclable and flexible substrates such as paper, thereby extending PV to a broad range of consumer-oriented disposable applications where autonomous energy harvesting is a bottleneck issue. However, their fibrous structure makes it challenging to fabricate good-performing inorganic PV devices on such substrates. The advances presented here demonstrate the viability of fabricating thin film silicon PV cells on paper coated with a hydrophilic mesoporous layer. Such layer can not only withstand the cells production temperature (150 °C), but also provide adequate paper sealing and surface finishing for the cell's layers deposition. The substances released from the paper substrate are continuously monitored during the cell deposition by mass spectrometry, which allows adapting the procedures to mitigate any contamination from the substrate. In this way, a proof-of-concept solar cell with 3.4% cell efficiency (41% fill factor, 0.82 V open-circuit voltage and 10.2 mA cm-2 short-circuit current density) is attained, opening the door to the use of paper as a reliable substrate to fabricate inorganic PV cells for a plethora of indoor applications with tremendous impact in multi-sectorial fields such as food, pharmacy and security. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.