About using serious games to teach (Portuguese) sign language

Sign language is the form of communication used by Deaf people, which, in most cases have been learned since childhood. The problem arises when a non-Deaf tries to contact with a Deaf. For example, when non-Deaf parents try to communicate with their Deaf child. In most cases, this situation tends to happen when the parents did not have time to properly learn sign language. This dissertation proposes the teaching of sign language through the usage of serious games. Currently, similar solutions to this proposal do exist, however, those solutions are scarce and limited. For this reason, the proposed solution is composed of a natural user interface that is intended to create a new concept on this field. The validation of this work, consisted on the implementation of a serious game prototype, which can be used as a source for learning (Portuguese) sign language. On this validation, it was first implemented a module responsible for recognizing sign language. This first stage, allowed the increase of interaction and the construction of an algorithm capable of accurately recognizing sign language. On a second stage of the validation, the proposal was studied so that the pros and cons can be determined and considered on future works.

Utopia III or an Ambiguous Humanist Utopia for the Second Millenium

Portuguese literature does not have many examples of successful and renowned utopias, though the considerable amount of published utopias written in foreign languages and translated to Portuguese language being quite relevant. However, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, almost at the eve of the second millennium an important Portuguese utopia was published: Utopia III, written by Pina Martins (1998). This long novel is structured as being the sequel of More’s Utopia, presenting the history and actual status of the mother of all literary utopias. The question at the basis of the whole novel is, “What would More’s Utopia be like today?” The main goal of this text will be to presente a literary analysis of Utopia III, focusing on the humanist principles and their adaptation to contemporary society, the search for a harmonious relationship between city and nature, the defence of a Portuguese identity and the appeal to a humanist renewal.

Generic system for human-computer gesture interaction: applications on sign language recognition and robotic soccer refereeing

Hand gestures are a powerful way for human communication, with lots of potential applications in the area of human computer interaction. Vision-based hand gesture recognition techniques have many proven advantages compared with traditional devices, giving users a simpler and more natural way to communicate with electronic devices. This work proposes a generic system architecture based in computer vision and machine learning, able to be used with any interface for human-computer interaction. The proposed solution is mainly composed of three modules: a pre-processing and hand segmentation module, a static gesture interface module and a dynamic gesture interface module. The experiments showed that the core of visionbased interaction systems could be the same for all applications and thus facilitate the implementation. For hand posture recognition, a SVM (Support Vector Machine) model was trained and used, able to achieve a final accuracy of 99.4%. For dynamic gestures, an HMM (Hidden Markov Model) model was trained for each gesture that the system could recognize with a final average accuracy of 93.7%. The proposed solution as the advantage of being generic enough with the trained models able to work in real-time, allowing its application in a wide range of human-machine applications. To validate the proposed framework two applications were implemented. The first one is a real-time system able to interpret the Portuguese Sign Language. The second one is an online system able to help a robotic soccer game referee judge a game in real time.

Vision-based portuguese sign language recognition system

Vision-based hand gesture recognition is an area of active current research in computer vision and machine learning. Being a natural way of human interaction, it is an area where many researchers are working on, with the goal of making human computer interaction (HCI) easier and natural, without the need for any extra devices. So, the primary goal of gesture recognition research is to create systems, which can identify specific human gestures and use them, for example, to convey information. For that, vision-based hand gesture interfaces require fast and extremely robust hand detection, and gesture recognition in real time. Hand gestures are a powerful human communication modality with lots of potential applications and in this context we have sign language recognition, the communication method of deaf people. Sign lan- guages are not standard and universal and the grammars differ from country to coun- try. In this paper, a real-time system able to interpret the Portuguese Sign Language is presented and described. Experiments showed that the system was able to reliably recognize the vowels in real-time, with an accuracy of 99.4% with one dataset of fea- tures and an accuracy of 99.6% with a second dataset of features. Although the im- plemented solution was only trained to recognize the vowels, it is easily extended to recognize the rest of the alphabet, being a solid foundation for the development of any vision-based sign language recognition user interface system.

Ontological representation of tumor-node-metastasis classification and an ontology-driven classifier: a study on colorectal cancer

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Biomédica (área de especialização em Informática Médica)

Quality management for education (second level schools)

Quality Management is a well-developed and widely used approach within industry to gain competitive edge and increased market share. It is a new management approach for schools who are now applying it without having the culture or experience of its evolution. Industrially based Quality management systems and excellence models have been developed. These excellence models and frameworks are based on the principles and concepts of TQM which are recognised as essential elements of high performing organisations. Schools are complex social institutions that provide a service. Like any other service industry, the customers of education are expecting and demanding a better service or else they will go elsewhere. Schools are beginning to reform and change to adapt to such demands. This has been reflected in Ireland in the Education Act, 1998. It is now the right time to develop a quality management system specifically for schools. The existing industrial excellence models have been modified for use in the private and public sector and some have been specifically tailored for education. The problem with such models is that they are still too sophisticated and the language still too industrial for schools. This Thesis develops and Excellence Model for Second Level Schools and provides guidance and school specific tools for its implementation.

How universal is behavior? A four country comparison of spite, cooperation and errors in voluntary contribution mechanisms

This paper studies behavior in experiments with a linear voluntary contributions mechanism for public goods conducted in Japan, the Netherlands, Spain and the USA. The same experimental design was used in the four countries. Our 'contribution function' design allows us to obtain a view of subjects' behavior from two complementary points of view. If yields information about situations where, in purely pecuniary terms, it is a dominant strategy to contribute all the endowment and about situations where it is a dominant strategy to contribute nothing. Our results show, first, that differences in behavior across countries are minor. We find that when people play "the same game" they behave similarly. Second, for all four countries our data are inconsistent with the explanation that subjects contribute only out of confusion. A common cooperative motivation is needed to explain the date.

Decision Errors, Legal Uncertainty and Welfare: a General Treatment

This paper provides a general treatment of the implications for welfare of legal uncertainty. We distinguish legal uncertainty from decision errors: though the former can be influenced by the latter, the latter are neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of legal uncertainty. We show that an increase in decision errors will always reduce welfare. However, for any given level of decision errors, information structures involving more legal uncertainty can improve welfare. This holds always, even when there is complete legal uncertainty, when sanctions on socially harmful actions are set at their optimal level. This transforms radically one’s perception about the “costs” of legal uncertainty. We also provide general proofs for two results, previously established under restrictive assumptions. The first is that Effects-Based enforcement procedures may welfare dominate Per Se (or object-based) procedures and will always do so when sanctions are optimally set. The second is that optimal sanctions may well be higher under enforcement procedures involving more legal uncertainty.

English as a Global Language

How far has English already spread? How much further can we expect it to go? In response to the first question, this chapter tries to identify the areas of life where English already serves as a lingua franca in the world (more or less) and those where the language faces sharp competition and does not threaten to marginalize the other major languages. The former areas of life are international safety, the internal business of international organizations, internal communication within the international news industry, international sports and science. The latter areas are the press, television, the internet, publishing and international trade. As to the second question, about the future prospects of English, the chapter argues that the advance of English will depend heavily on the motives to learn the other major languages in the world as well. Based on the empirical evidence, the same model applies to the incentives to learn English and these other languages. On the important topic of welfare, the cultural market is the single one where it is arguable that the progress of English has gone too far. English dominance in the song, the cinema and the best-seller is indeed extraordinary and difficult to reconcile with the evidence popular attachments to home languages, which is otherwise strong and apparent.

The second internal transcribed spacer of nuclear ribosomal DNA as a tool for Latin American anopheline taxonomy: a critical review

Among the molecular markers commonly used for mosquito taxonomy, the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) of the ribosomal DNA is useful for distinguishing among closely-related species. Here we review 178 GenBank accession numbers matching ITS2 sequences of Latin American anophelines. Among those, we found 105 unique sequences corresponding to 35 species. Overall the ITS2 sequences distinguish anopheline species, however, information on intraspecific and geographic variations is scarce. Intraspecific variations ranged from 0.2% to 19% and our analysis indicates that misidentification and/or sequencing errors could be responsible for some of the high values of divergence. Research in Latin American malaria vector taxonomy profited from molecular data provided by single or few field capture mosquitoes. However we propose that caution should be taken and minimum requirements considered in the design of additional studies. Future studies in this field should consider that: (1) voucher specimens, assigned to the DNA sequences, need to be deposited in collections, (2) intraspecific variations should be thoroughly evaluated, (3) ITS2 and other molecular markers, considered as a group, will provide more reliable information, (4) biological data about vector populations are missing and should be prioritized, (5) the molecular markers are most powerful when coupled with traditional taxonomic tools.

A mi què m'expliques?

Els alumnes i les alumnes de primer cicle d'ESO s'enfronten amb les dificultats de la nova etapa i la necessitat de demostrar les seves competències lingüístiques, quant al redactat i la correcció en l'elaboració de textos diversos. Les noves tecnologies de la informació i la comunicació poden ajudar (i han de propiciar-ho) a desenvolupar aquestes capacitats, i han de ser un element motivador perquè els nois i les noies sentin la necessitat de crear produccions escrites pròpies, adequades lingüísticament, coherents i amb les idees ben organitzades.És necessari, a més, que l'avaluació d'aquestes tasques els serveixi per millorar l'expressió en llengua catalana, gramaticalment i ortogràficament, tot ajudant-los a establir sistemes d'autocorrecció i rectificació d'errors.L'exposició pública (en un mitjà com el d'internet) de les seves obres hauria de reblar l'aspecte de la motivació en la creació d'escrits, de manera que els aporti noves expectatives de comunicació i els animi a participar de l'espai virtual que els ofereix aquesta finestra oberta al món. El meu treball té la intenció de ser un projecte educatiu per aconseguir una millora en l'expressió escrita dels alumnes del primer curs d'ESO amb l'ajuda de les eines de les Tecnologies de la Informació i la Comunicació.

Estudio y construcción de herramientas de validación HTML

The Final Year Project consists of two essentially different parts, which share acommon theme: HTML code validation. The first of these two parts focuses on the study of the validation process. It supplies a brief introduction to the evolution of HTML and XHTML, the new tags introduced in HTML5 and the most common errors found in today's websites. Already developed HTML validation tools are analyzed and examined in detail in order to compare their features and evaluate their performances. Lastly, a comparison of the parsing process in the most common browsers found nowadays is provided. In the second part of the project the focus of the project is shifted towards the development of a XHTML5 validation tool. The input is a XHTML5 file whose content may or may not comply with the W3C specification, and therefore, may or may not be a valid XHTML5 document. The output provided by this tool will be a fixed XHTML5 document and an error log returned in the form of a XML file. Information as to the course of action pursued to fix the error and its location will also be included.

Regional and hemispheric determinants of language laterality: Implications for preoperative fMRI.

Language is typically a function of the left hemisphere but the right hemisphere is also essential in some healthy individuals and patients. This inter-subject variability necessitates the localization of language function, at the individual level, prior to neurosurgical intervention. Such assessments are typically made by comparing left and right hemisphere language function to determine "language lateralization" using clinical tests or fMRI. Here, we show that language function needs to be assessed at the region and hemisphere specific level, because laterality measures can be misleading. Using fMRI data from 82 healthy participants, we investigated the degree to which activation for a semantic word matching task was lateralized in 50 different brain regions and across the entire cortex. This revealed two novel findings. First, the degree to which language is lateralized across brain regions and between subjects was primarily driven by differences in right hemisphere activation rather than differences in left hemisphere activation. Second, we found that healthy subjects who have relatively high left lateralization in the angular gyrus also have relatively low left lateralization in the ventral precentral gyrus. These findings illustrate spatial heterogeneity in language lateralization that is lost when global laterality measures are considered. It is likely that the complex spatial variability we observed in healthy controls is more exaggerated in patients with brain damage. We therefore highlight the importance of investigating within hemisphere regional variations in fMRI activation, prior to neuro-surgical intervention, to determine how each hemisphere and each region contributes to language processing. Hum Brain Mapp, 2010. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

The interactional space in CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classrooms

Aquest estudi pretén investigar els intercanvis verbals mestre/a – aprenent(s) en dos contextos d'instrucció diferents: classes amb un enfocament AICLE (Aprenentatge Integrat de Continguts Curriculars i Llengua Estrangera) on s’aprenen continguts no lingüístics a través de l’anglès, per una banda, i classes 'tradicionals' d'anglès com a llengua estrangera, on l’anglès és alhora objecte d’estudi i vehicle de comunicació, per una altra banda. Més concretament, les preguntes que formula el/la mestre/a, la producció oral dels aprenents i el 'feedback' del/de la mestre/a en els episodis d’atenció a la forma s’han estudiat a la llum de les principals teories provinents del camp de l’Adquisició de Segones Llengües (SLA) per tal de demostrar el seu paper en l’aprenentatge de l’anglès. El corpus de dades prové de l’enregistrament de 7 sessions AICLE i d'11 sessions EFL enregistrades en format àudio i vídeo en dos centres públics d’Educació Primària (EP) de Catalunya. A cadascuna de les escoles, el/la mateix/a mestre/a és l’encarregat/da dels dos tipus d’instrucció amb el mateix grup d’aprenents (10-11 anys d’edat), fet que permet eliminar variables individuals com l'aptitud dels aprenents o l'estil del/de la mestre/a.Els resultats mostren un cert nombre de similituds discursives entre AICLE i EFL donat que ambdós enfocaments tenen lloc en el context-classe amb unes característiques ben definides. Tal com apunta la recerca realitzada en aquest camp, la instrucció AICLE reuneix un seguit de condicions idònies per un major desenvolupament dels nivells de llengua anglesa més enllà de les classes ‘tradicionals’ d’anglès. Malgrat això, aquest estudi sembla indicar que el potencial d'AICLE pel que fa a facilitar una exposició rica a l’anglès i una producció oral significativa no s’explota degudament. En aquest sentit, els resultats d’aquest estudi poden contribuir a la formació dels futurs professors d'AICLE si es busca l’assoliment d’una complementarietat d’ambdós contextos amb l’objectiu últim de millorar els nivells de domini de la llengua anglesa.

Contribution to Asterisk Open Source Project

With this final master thesis we are going to contribute to the Asterisk open source project. Asterisk is an open source project that started with the main objective of develop an IP telephony platform, completely based on Software (so not hardware dependent) and under an open license like GPL. This project was started on 1999 by the software engineer Mark Spencer at Digium. The main motivation of that open source project was that the telecommunications sector is lack of open solutions, and most of the available solutions are based on proprietary standards, which are close and not compatible between them. Behind the Asterisk project there is a company, Digum, which is the project leading since the project was originated in its laboratories. This company has some of its employees fully dedicated to contribute to the Asterisk project, and also provide the whole infrastructure required by the open source project. But the business of Digium isn't based on licensing of products due to the open source nature of Asterisk, but it's based on offering services around Asteriskand designing and selling some hardware components to be used with Asterisk. The Asterisk project has grown up a lot since its birth, offering in its latest versions advanced functionalities for managing calls and compatibility with some hardware that previously was exclusive of proprietary solutions. Due to that, Asterisk is becoming a serious alternative to all these proprietaries solutions because it has reached a level of maturity that makes it very stable. In addition, as it is open source, it can be fully customized to a givenrequirement, which could be impossible with the proprietaries solutions. Due to the bigness that is reaching the project, every day there are more companies which develop value added software for telephony platforms, that are seriously evaluating the option of make their software fully compatible withAsterisk platforms. All these factors make Asterisk being a consolidated project but in constant evolution, trying to offer all those functionalities offered by proprietaries solutions. This final master thesis will be divided mainly in two blocks totally complementaries. In the first block we will analyze Asterisk as an open source project and Asterisk as a telephony platform (PBX). As a result of this analysis we will generate a document, written in English because it is Asterisk project's official language, which could be used by future contributors as an starting point on joining Asterisk. On the second block we will proceed with a development contribution to the Asterisk project. We will have several options in the form that we do the contribution, such as solving bugs, developing new functionalities or start an Asterisk satellite project. The type of contribution will depend on the needs of the project on that moment.