A serious games platform for cognitive rehabilitation with preliminary evaluation

In recent years Serious Games have evolved substantially, solving problems in diverse areas. In particular, in Cognitive Rehabilitation, Serious Games assume a relevant role. Traditional cognitive therapies are often considered repetitive and discouraging for patients and Serious Games can be used to create more dynamic rehabilitation processes, holding patients' attention throughout the process and motivating them during their road to recovery. This paper reviews Serious Games and user interfaces in rehabilitation area and details a Serious Games platform for Cognitive Rehabilitation that includes a set of features such as: natural and multimodal user interfaces and social features (competition, collaboration, and handicapping) which can contribute to augment the motivation of patients during the rehabilitation process. The web platform was tested with healthy subjects. Results of this preliminary evaluation show the motivation and the interest of the participants by playing the games.- This work has been supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia in the scope of the projects: PEst-UID/CEC/00319/2015 and PEst-UID/CEC/00027/2015. The authors would like to thank also all the volunteers that participated in the study

The occurrence of pests on lemon balm (Mellisa officinalis) and garden sage (Salvia officinalis)

Production of medicinal plants is accompanied by many problems, out of which some are overcome. Problems in medicinal plant production, including the production of sage and lemon balm that cannot be avoided are pathogens, the presence of insects and weeds. During the summer of 2003 and 2004, the occurrence of animal pests and pathogens was investigated in the medicinal plants lemon balm (Mellisa officinalis) and garden sage (Salvia officinalis). The pathogens Alternaria alternata and Fusarium moniliforme and the insects Eupterix atropunctata and Empoasca pteridis (Homoptera, Cicadelidae) were identified as the cause of various damages to medicinal plants