Abstract
The Internet plays an important role in higher education institutions where Learning Management Systems (LMS) occupies a main role in the eLearning realm. In this chapter we aim to characterize the Internet and LMS usage patterns and their role in the largest Portuguese Polytechnic Institute. The usage patterns were analyzed in two components: characterization of Internet usage and the role of Internet and LMS in education. Using a quantitative approach, the data analysis describes the differences between gender, age and scientific fields. The carried qualitative analysis allows a better understanding of students' both motivations, opinions and suggestions of improvement. The outcome of this work is the presentation of the Portuguese students' profile regarding Internet and LMS usage patterns. We expect that these results can be used to select the most suitable digital pedagogical processes and tools to be adopted regarding the learning process and most adequate LMS's policies. © 2012, IGI Global.

Abstract

Abstract
We show that the full PCF language can be encoded in L-rec, a syntactically linear lambda-calculus extended with numbers, pairs, and an unbounded recursor that preserves the syntactic linearity of the calculus. We give call-by-name and call-by-value evaluation strategies and discuss implementation techniques for L-rec, exploiting its linearity.

Abstract
This chapter proposes a novel concept towards the deployment of a networked 'Media Ecosystem'. The proposed solution is based on a flexible cooperation between providers, operators, and end-users, finally enabling every user first to access the offered multimedia services in various contexts, and second to share and deliver his own audiovisual content dynamically, seamlessly, and transparently to other users. Towards this goal, the proposed concept provides content-awareness to the network environment, network- and user context-awareness to the service environment, and adapted services/content to the end user for his best service experience possible, taking the role of a consumer and/or producer. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Abstract
With the ongoing increase of the network technologies' diversity and the integration of the user level applications, the legacy-style content-independent configuration of the security mechanisms cannot yields in efficient security solutions farther. Our work aims to contribute on the design of auto-reconfigurable (adaptive) security services that are capable to satisfy the application's security level required with minimal network resources' usage. In this paper we propose a new networkcentric security architecture design that relies on the current network security conditions and content-aware mechanisms. The architecture main functional blocks and the corresponding relationships are defined. This architecture shall supply three inter-domain composite user security services, named "public traffic", "secret content" and "private communication", as well as, attack source traceback and distributed access control functionalities.

Abstract
IPTV services consist of multiple video channels grouped in bundles, such as sports, movies or generic bundles; users typically subscribe multiple bundles, including the generic bundle. Secure IP multicast can be used to implement IPTV services, but it still has problems to be addressed. Current solutions require high computational power in video channel zapping situations, lack support for groups sourced at the users, and present a weak support for admission control in IP multicast for both sources and receivers in dynamically configured environments. This work proposes a new, secure and efficient IPTV solution that, cumulatively: (a) enforces individual access control to groups of real-time IPTV video channels; (b) enforces IP multicast admission control for both multicast senders and receivers; (c) supports user generated videos; (d) generates low signaling overheads; (e) does not introduce perceivable delays, particularly in video channel zapping situations. Moreover, this solution can be easily integrated in the IPTV architectures being developed by ETSI and ITU-T.