Invasive diseases: new vaccines and vaccination strategies

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Influenza (AH1N1v) Pandemic 2009: an update

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Delivering Green Persuasion Strategies with a Conversational Agent: a Pilot Study

Climate change is undeniable. The drastic consequences it may have on our lives make a collective effort crucial. Our research explores how Conversational Agents (CAs) can persuade people into environmentally sustainable behaviors, particularly in domestic spaces where these technologies are becoming increasingly popular. In this research work, we conducted an empirical evaluation (N=29) exploring the effectiveness and stance towards the adoption of different persuasive strategies compared to a CA delivering messages referring to just one persuasion strategy. Furthermore, this contribution reports on a custom dialogue manager's implementation, designed to enable the execution of the experiment. Although study results suggested no significant difference in persuasion effectiveness and usability of the conversational agents, participants reported a significant difference in the perceptions of parasocial interactions and dialogue with the CA, preferring the one delivering multiple persuasive strategies

The intradermal vaccination: past experiences and current perspectives

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MCTK: a Multi-modal Conversational Troubleshooting Kit for supporting users in web applications

Conversational Interfaces for user assistance are becoming persuasive. Today, though, most chatbots are not integrated into the application in which they are placed, but only superimposed, with no communication between the conversational and the graphical interface. We propose Multi-modal Conversational Troubleshooting Kit (MCTK), a Python package to easily integrate a conversational agent for troubleshooting in web applications. MCTK is multi-modal: once the system recognizes the problem the user is encountering, the textual solution in the chat is coupled with visual hints in the GUI. On top of that, MCTK is easy to configure and offers separation of concerns: dialogue designers can work on the conversation without the necessity of modifying the code, and vice versa

MagicMuseum: Team-based Experiences in Interactive Smart Spaces for Cultural Heritage Education

MagicMuseum is a set of team-based, immersive, full-body activities for Cultural Heritage Education of primary school children. MagicMuseum exploits the interactive and multisensory capability of the Magic Room, an indoor smart space equipped with IoT-enriched components such as floor and wall projections, smart lighting, music and sound, motion and gesture sensors, and smart objects. The paper describes MagicMuseum and briefly reports an exploratory study involving 22 children at a local primary school

The epidemiology of Varicella Zoster Virus infection in Italy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The epidemiological importance of varicella and zoster and the availability of an efficacious and safe vaccine have led to an important international debate regarding the suitability of mass vaccination. The objective of the study was to describe the epidemiology of varicella and zoster in Italy and to determine whether there have been changes with respect to observations provided by an analogous study conducted 8 years ago, in order to define the most appropriate vaccination strategy.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A number of data sources were evaluated, a cross-sectional population-based seroprevalence study was conducted on samples collected in 2004, and the results were compared with data obtained in 1996.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The data from active and passive surveillance systems confirm that varicella is a widespread infectious disease which mainly affects children. VZV seroprevalence did not substantially differ from that found in the previous study. The sero-epidemiological profile in Italy is different from that in other European countries. In particular, the percentage of susceptible adolescents is at least nearly twice as high as in other European countries and in the age group 20–39 yrs, approximately 9% of individuals are susceptible to VZV.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results of this study can contribute to evaluating the options for varicella vaccination. It is possible that in a few years, in all Italian Regions, there will exist the conditions necessary for implementing a mass vaccination campaign and that the large-scale availability of MMRV tetravalent vaccines will facilitate mass vaccination.</p

The epidemiology of mumps in Italy

In Italy, although vaccination has been recommended for a number of years, vaccination coverage for mumps is still sub-optimal. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the seroprevalence of mumps antibodies in the Italian population, stratified by age, gender and geographical area. The proportion of individuals positive for mumps antibodies remained stable in the age classes 0-11 months and 1 year (25.4% and 30.8%, respectively) and showed a continuous increase after the second year of life. The percentage of susceptible individuals was higher than 20% in persons 2-14 years of age and exceeded 10% in persons 15-39 years of age. No statistically significant differences were observed by gender or geographical area. Comparison between these results and the data obtained from a 1996 survey showed a statistically significant increase in seroprevalence in the age class 2-4 years. No changes were observed in the other age-groups. The results of this study confirm that the efforts made in recent years to improve vaccination coverage within the second year of life should be strengthened. \ua9 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved