Carlos Duarte

A phase I clinical trial of a multi-epitope polypeptide TAB9 combined with Montanide ISA 720 adjuvant in non-HIV-1 infected human volunteers

A phase I clinical trial was performed to examine the safety and immunogenicity of a multi-epitope polypeptide comprising the central 15 amino acids of the V3 loop from six HIV-1 isolates. This protein called TAB9 was emulsified in Montanide ISA720 (Seppic, Paris) and administered intramuscularly at doses of 0, 0.2 and 1 mg to 24 healthy, HIV-1 seronegative adult males. Three immunisations were given at months 0, 1 and 6 in a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled clinical trial. The placebo was generally well tolerated. However, severe local reactions were observed in TAB9 vaccinated subjects after the second and third inoculations. Seven out of eight volunteers from the lower dose group showed moderate or severe local inflammation, while four out of eight subjects from the higher dose group developed granulomas and sterile abscesses. In general, the reactogenicity depended on the number of inoculations given and the dose of TAB9. Both doses were immunogenic, all immunised volunteers seroconverted and antibodies were broadly reactive against the V3 peptides included in the protein. All vaccines sera reacted against gp120 in Western blot and 50% of them also neutralised at least one out of five laboratory isolates tested. No differences between doses were found. Anti TAB9 lymphoproliferative responses were observed, being more intense in the high dose group. Due to the strong local reactions that were found in this study, a change in the formulation will be required for further trials with this vaccine candidate in humans.

A conceptual framework for developing adaptive multimodal applications

This article presents FAME, a model-based Framework for Adaptive Multimodal Environments. FAME proposes an architecture for adaptive multimodal applications, a new way to represent adaptation rules - the behavioral matrix - and a set of guidelines to assist the design process of adaptive multimodal applications. To demonstrate FAMEs validity, the development process of an adaptive Digital Talking Book player is summarized.

A literature survey on older adults' use of social network services and social applications

With aging, adults which once worked and were active become isolated from the world because with retirement comes a whole range of problems which span from the physical to the social scope. One of the most concerning is social isolation, which can only be fought by satisfying social needs. In terms of technology, the challenges are in designing social technologies that encourage older people to actively engage with each other and with the people around them. This paper presents a survey reviewing research surrounding the emergent field of Social Network Services (SNSs), along with other meaningful social applications, and its use by the older segment of the population. A total of thirteen domains are identified related with how these services can be improved to consider older adults characteristics: from the most important related with the family role and privacy control, to issues related with the design of the user interface, the importance of multimodal interaction and adaptive solutions to compensate age-related declines, to several other focusing on the importance of groups, photos, cultural and health information. Main contributions to the field of SNS and older adults are given in a set of recommendations which result from discussions on each domain and which aim at the design of a more inclusive SNS solution. We review literature surrounding Social Network Services and applications.Identified the 13 most relevant domains concerning older adults.Compiled a list of recommendations concerning the development of inclusive SNS.Family, interface complexity and privacy issues are the most important domains.Photos, multimodal interaction and adaptation play an important role on adoption.

Evaluating the accessibility of rich internet applications

The Web has been growing in size and complexity and is used for the most diverse activities in our every day life, becoming almost indispensable. Besides, Web applications are becoming more popular, and consequently used by a wide range of people. Thus, it is important to evaluate the accessibility of the new Rich Internet Applications (RIA) to guarantee that everyone can access the information. Currently, there are some tools to evaluate the accessibility of classical Web pages, which use WCAG guidelines. However, Web applications impose different challenges, so it is mandatory to find a way to automatically obtain the dynamically introduced HTML code, in order to evaluate what users really experience. This paper details a new process of accessibility evaluation of Web applications, which evaluates the content by triggering possible events that partially change the Web page. It also presents an experimental study with several Web applications, demonstrating the potential of this framework in evaluating Web applications.

Three web accessibility evaluation perspectives for RIA

With the increasing popularity of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), several challenges arise in the area of web accessibility evaluation. A particular set of challenges emerges from RIAs dynamic nature: original static Web specifications can change dramatically before being presented to the end user; a user triggered event may provide complete new content within the same RIA. Whatever the evaluation alternative, the challenges must be met. We focus on automatic evaluation using the current WGAG standards. That enables us to do extensive evaluations in order to grasp the accessibility state of the web eventually pointing new direction for improvement. In this paper, we present a comparative study to understand the difference of the accessibility properties of the Web regarding three different evaluation perspectives: 1) before browser processing; 2) after browser processing (dynamic loading); 3) and, also after browser processing, considering the triggering of user interaction events. The results clearly show that for a RIA the number of accessibility outcomes varies considerably between those tree perspectives. First of all, this variation shows an increase of the number of assessed elements as well as passes, warnings and errors from perspective 1 to 2, due to dynamically loaded code, and from 2 to 3, due to the new pages reached by the interaction events. This shows that evaluating RIAs without considering its dynamic components provides an erroneous perception of its accessibility. Secondly, the relative growth of the number of fails is bigger than the growth of passes. This signifies that considering pages reached by interaction reveals lower quality for RIAs. Finally, a tendency is shown for the RIAs with higher number of states also exposing differences in accessibility quality.

Mapping interaction onto media façades

This paper discusses the emergence and need of principles and guidelines for the design of interaction spaces based on media façades, as large public interactive spaces. Media façades, as new architectural creations, are being designed and built all over the world, and possibilities for interaction with individuals and groups of users are being discovered in multiple dimensions. This paper consolidates a number of empirically observed features of current projects and maps these onto a systematic framework of feature domains. We expect the framework to help in conceptualization, analysis and evaluation of current and future designs and to guide the design of the active and interactive solutions

BUILDING RICH USER INTERFACES FOR DIGITAL TALKING BOOKS

This paper presents a framework for the automatic production of Digital Talking Books (DTB). The production process converts existing audio tapes and OCR-based digitalisation of text books into full-featured, multi- synchronised, multimodal digital books. The framework deals with the standardisation processes, media enrichment and User Interface definition. The latter is based on abstract, yet DTB specific, pattern-based UI specifications. This allows the definition of various forms of interaction and presentation, required by the diversity and constraints of targets users (e.g. visually impaired persons) and situations of use (e.g., learning). Balancing the focus of production between personalised, situation-based UI and adaptive ones is also considered. The article also summarises some usability tests on generated DTBs that contributed to the refinement of the framework.

Identifying adaptation dimensions in digital talking books

In this paper we identify adaptation enabling variables, and components that can be adapted, in a setting specific to Digital Talking Books. We then propose an evolution to our Digital Talking Book builder framework, to enable the production of adaptive books.

Isolates from four different HIV type 1 clades circulating in Cuba identified by DNA sequence of the C2-V3 region.

According to the epidemiology of human immunodeficiency virus infection in Cuba, the main sources of infection have been persons coming from foreign countries, mainly from Africa, and individuals who have had sexual contacts with foreigners in Cuba. However, the first Cuban HIV-1 isolates sequenced have been all classified as subtype B. In this note we report the sequence of the gp120 C2/V3 region from 11 HIV-1 isolates from Cuban patients. DNA was isolated either directly from blood PBMC or from primary isolates, PCR amplified and sequenced. Six isolates were classified as subtype B and three of them had the atypical sequences GRGR, GWGR, and TPGR on the tip of the V3 loop. Besides, two other sequences were classified as subtype A, two as subtype H, and one as subtype C. These results confirm that although subtype B seems to be predominant, HIV-1 isolates from various subtypes do circulate in Cuba.

Mobile Interaction Design: Techniques for Early Stage In-Situ Design

The recent globalization of mobile technology and its overwhelming presence on everyday life through various societal groups and activities has raised its importance to unprecedented levels. Mobile devices’ diverse shapes, small size and distinctive characteristics impel their use in diverse and ubiquitous scenarios, cementing their presence within our work, social and entertainment activities. Accordingly, as they assume a greater meaning and a wider role of functionalities, a corresponding amount of new usage paradigms is also emerging. Consequentially, designers are increasingly faced with new design challenges, needing to cope with added difficulties of creating solutions for multiple contexts, users, purposes and new ubiquitous usage behaviours. Simultaneously, they need to cope with and leverage the small size factor and the peculiar or mixed interaction modalities (e.g., touch screen in concert with keyboard or voice) that define the trends of emerging mobile devices. Contrastingly, design problems for mobile devices, and corresponding solutions, have only recently begun to be partially and superficially addressed. Difficulties and challenges are spread through various stages of design. Three phases are particularly interesting: (1) requirements and data gathering on mobile contexts; (2) prototyping for small devices and (3) evaluation on real-world settings. Currently used approaches and existing methodologies still lack specific techniques to support design on such demanding conditions, hindering the design process and resulting in poor software regarding usability. Even recent approaches generally rely on simulations, lab experiences or derive directly from non-mobile techniques, colliding with studies that have clearly demonstrated the need to take the design process out of the lab when it comes to mobile devices. This book chapter focuses on these problems and discusses recent advances on mobile interaction design, reviewing existing attempts to overcome the added challenges brought by mobility, pervasiveness and mobile devices’ characteristics. As its main contribution, it identifies key concerns and issues brought by mobility, also presenting ways to complement current efforts and proposing new approaches that aim at overcoming existing challenges and problems. It introduces findings and work developed thus far, offering improvements and solutions that tackle out-of-the-lab design procedures and support in-situ participatory design and evaluation. These approaches are compiled within a User Centred Design (UCD) methodology that emphasizes initial stages of design and identifies techniques and