SmartEx: a case study on user profiling and adaptation in exhibition booths

An investigation into user profiling and adaptation with exhibition booth as a case study is reported. First a review of the field of exhibitions and trade fairs and a summary introduction to adaptation and profiling are given. We then introduce three criteria for the evaluation of exhibition booth: effectiveness, efficiency and affect. Effectiveness is related the amount of information collected, efficiency is a measurement of the time taken to collect the information, and affect is the perception of the experience and the mood booth visitors have during and after their visit. We have selected these criteria to assess adaptive and profiled exhibition booths, we call smart exhibition (SmartEx). The assessment is performed with an experiment with three test conditions (non-profiled/non adaptive, profiled/non-adaptive and profiled adaptive presentations). Results of the experiment are presented along discussion. While there is significant improvements of effectiveness and efficiency between the two-first test conditions, the improvement is not significant for the last test condition, for reasons explained. As for the affect, the results show that it has an under-estimated importance in people minds and that it should be addressed more carefully

Ω- produced in K-p reactions at 4.2 GeV/c

Forty Ω- events have been observed in a large (133 events/βb) experiment at 4.2 GeV/c incident K- momentum. Thirty nine of the events come from the three-body reaction K-p→Ω-K+K0. The Ω- is mainly produced in the forward hemisphere (direction of the incident K-). The lifetime is measured to be τ = (0.75 +0.14-0.11 × 10-10 sec substantially less than the Particle Data Group value of (1.3 -0.3+0.2) × 10-10 sec. The mass is determined to be 1671.7 ± 0.6 MeV, in good agreement with other determinations. The decay asymmetry parameter α (for the decay mode Ω- → ΛK-) is found to be -0.2 ± 0.4. © 1978

Immunosuppression overcomes insulin- and vector-specific immune responses that limit efficacy of AAV2/8-mediated insulin gene therapy in NOD mice

We report the restoration of euglycaemia in chemically induced diabetic C57BL/6 mice and spontaneously diabetic Non Obese Diabetic (NOD) mice by intravenous systemic administration of a single-stranded adeno-associated virus (ssAAV2/8) codon optimised (co) vector encoding furin cleavable human proinsulin under a liver-specific promoter. There were no immunological barriers to efficacy of insulin gene therapy in chemically induced C57BL/6 mice, which enjoyed long-lasting correction of hyperglycaemia after therapy, up to 250 days. Euglycaemia was also restored in spontaneously diabetic NOD mice, although these mice required a 7–10-fold higher dose of vector to achieve similar efficacy as the C57BL/6 mice and the immunodeficient NODscid mice. We detected CD8+ T cell reactivity to insulin and mild inflammatory infiltration in the livers of gene therapy recipient NOD mice, neither of which were observed in the treated C57BL/6 mice. Efficacy of the gene therapy in NOD mice was partially improved by targeting the immune system with anti-CD4 antibody treatment, while transfer of NOD mouse AAV2/8-reactive serum to recipients prevented successful restoration of euglycaemia in AAV2/8-HLP-hINSco-treated NODscid mice. Our data indicate that both immune cells and antibodies form a barrier to successful restoration of euglycaemia in autoimmune diabetic recipient mice with insulin gene therapy, but that this barrier can be overcome by increasing the dose of vector and by suppressing immune responses