Accessible Ubiquitous Services for Supporting Daily Activities: A Case Study with Young Adults with Intellectual Disabilities

ABSTRACT

Ubiquitous environments have considerable potential to provide services supporting daily activities (using public transportation to and from workplace, using ATM machines, selecting and purchasing goods in ticketing or vending machines, etc.) in order to assist people with disabilities. Nevertheless, the ubiquitous service providers generally supply generic user interfaces which are not usually accessible for all potential end users. In this article, a case study to verify the adequacy of the user interfaces automatically generated by the Egoki system for two supporting ubiquitous services adapted to young adults with moderate intellectual disabilities was presented. The task completion times and the level of assistance required by participants when using the interfaces were analyzed. Participants were able to access services through a tablet and successfully complete the tasks, regardless of their level of expertise and familiarity with the service. Moreover, results indicate that their performance and confidence improved with practice, as they required fewer direct verbal and pointer cues to accomplish tasks. By applying observational methods during the experimental sessions, several potential improvements for the automated interface generation process were also detected.     

Automatic device-tailored evaluation of mobile web guidelines

Mobile web guidelines aim at providing developers with guidance to develop web content suitable for mobile devices. Automatic guideline review tools help evaluating conformance with respect to these guidelines in a systematic way. Yet, a number of mobile web guidelines refer to specific device features such as screen size, support for particular picture formats or support for pointing device. Since mobile devices are very diverse, in order to address the greater number of devices, guidelines adopt a device profile that may be considered as the common denominator device which is able to provide a satisfactory experience. While this approach is useful to define guidelines and make them more understandable, it introduces critical inaccuracies that make tool effectiveness decrease. This paper presents an application that considers specific device features in the evaluation process to produce device-tailored reports. As a result, higher rates of evaluation tool completeness, correctness and specificity are obtained.     

Targeting Fatty Acid-Binding Protein 4 Improves Pathologic Features of Aortic Stenosis

Aortic stenosis (AS) is a fibrocalcific disease of the aortic valves (AVs). Sex-differences in AS pathophysiology have recently been described. High levels of fatty acid-binding protein 4 (FAPB4) in atherosclerotic plaques have been associated with increased local inflammation, endothelial dysfunction, and plaque vulnerability. FABP4 pharmacological blockade has been shown to be effective for the treatment of atherosclerosis by modulating metabolic and inflammatory pathways. We aimed to analyze the sex-specific expression of FABP4 in AS and its potential role as a therapeutic target. A total of 226 patients (61.5% men) with severe AS undergoing surgical AV replacement were recruited. The FABP4 levels were increased in the AVs of AS patients compared to the control subjects, showing greater expression in the fibrocalcific regions. Male AVs exhibited higher levels of FABP4 compared to females, correlating with markers of inflammation (IL-6, Rantes), apoptosis (Bax, caspase-3, Bcl-2), and calcification (IL-8, BMP-2 and BMP-4). VICs derived from AS patients showed the basal expression of FABP4 in vitro. Osteogenic media induced upregulation of intracellular and secreted FABP4 levels in male VICs after 7 days, along with increased levels of inflammatory, pro-apoptotic, and osteogenic markers. Treatment with BMS309403, a specific inhibitor of FABP4, prevented from all of these changes. Thus, we propose FABP4 as a new sex-specific pharmacological therapeutic target in AS.     

An exact procedure for planning holidays and working time under annualized hours considering cross-trained workers with different efficiencies

Annualizing working hours (AH) is a means of achieving flexibility in the use of human resources to cope with the seasonal nature of demand. Some existing planning procedures are able to minimize costs through the use of overtime and temporary workers. However, due to the great difficulty in solving the problem, it is normally assumed both that holiday weeks are fixed beforehand and that workers from different categories who are able to perform a specific type of task have the same efficiency. Often the reality is different, and thus there is a gap between academic and real problems. In the present paper, those constraints are relaxed and a much more general and true-to-life problem is solved in an exact and very efficient way.     

Kinetic study and hydrogen peroxide consumption of phenolic compounds oxidation by Fenton’s reagent

Synthetic solutions of phenol, o-, m- and p-cresol were oxidised by using Fenton’s reagent. The application of substoichiometric dosage of H₂O₂ led to the formation of intermediate compounds, continuing later the oxidation to complete oxidation. An important objective was to analyze the effect of hydrogen peroxide dosage applied and the reaction pH together with the iron oxidation state on the degradation level. A kinetic model was derived from a reaction mechanism postulated which was used to analyze the results of the experiments. Another aim was to analyze the hydrogen peroxide consumption. Noteworthy results include an increase in oxidant consumption to intensify phenol removal. Furthermore, oxidant consumption was analyzed through the ratio H₂O₂ to phenol removed and the average specific rate of removal (ASRR). By analyzing these two parameters it has been possible to ascertain the most favorable strategy for an efficient application of H₂O₂.     

Validating the effectiveness of EvalAccess when deploying WCAG 2.0 tests

While automatic tools are not intended to replace human judgment, they are crucial in order to develop accessible websites. The release of WCAG 2.0 has caused great expectation, as it is supposed to be precisely testable with automated review tools. Therefore, more effective tools could be developed. However, so far few tools applying WCAG 2.0 have been developed. This paper presents an evaluation framework which has been updated in order to evaluate the new tests. In addition, it describes a validation process carried out in order to verify the effectiveness of the new version of the evaluation tool. The effectiveness is validated by conducting a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the results obtained by applying both versions of the tool (the one implementing WCAG 1.0 and the one implementing WCAG 2.0) to a set of selected web pages, as well as by manual evaluation of an expert for detecting the possible false positives and false negatives produced by each tool.     

Role of Grafting on Particle and Film Morphology and Film Properties of Zero VOC Polyurethane/Poly(meth)acrylate Hybrid Dispersions

Hybrid waterborne dispersions of polyurethane (PU)/poly(meth)acrylic are widely applied in coating and adhesive products, as well as in many other applications. The synergetic performance of the two component polymers is highly dependent on the ability to control the PU and (meth)acrylic network structure. In this work, the effect of grafting and the impact of macromolecular architecture on the particle and film morphology as well as on the properties of PU/(meth)acrylic hybrid films is investigated. It is shown that with grafting, the absolute molar mass distribution (MMD) is shifted toward higher values as the low molar mass PU chains become incorporated in the (meth)acrylic polymer network. Furthermore, by using different types of functional monomers, the nature of the MMD can be altered. Using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis, it is demonstrated that more homogeneous particle and film morphologies are obtained in the case of grafted hybrids. Finally, the impact of network structure on tensile strength is outlined highlighting that grafted polymer films have higher Young's modulus and strain hardening than the non‐grafted ones.     

The extraction of yellow gentian root (Gentiana lutea L .)

 Several solvents have been investigated for the preparation of bitter compounds of gentian roots (Gentiana lutea L.) for food applications. The highest concentrations of the bitter compounds, amarogentin and gentiopicroside, were obtained with ethanol : water 55 : 45 (v/v), propylene glycol: water 30 : 70 (v/v) and ethanol: propylene glycol: water 20 : 20 : 60 (v/v/v). Enzyme treatment prior to solvent extraction gave a greater extract yield (3.5%) but the amarogentin and gentiopicroside concentrations remained the same. The volatile fraction was affected by the solvent used through the formation of esters of organic acids from the plant. Received: 22 January 1997 / Revised version: 18 March 1997