Evaluating the effectiveness of automatic image captioning for web accessibility.

The web has become a fundamental tool for carrying out many activities spanning from education to work and private life. For this reason, it must be accessible to every user regardless of any form of impairment or disability. Images on the web are a primary means for communicating information, and specific HTML elements were defined to enrich images with textual descriptions, which can be read aloud by screen readers or rendered by braille displays.

The nonstructural proteins of Pneumoviruses are remarkably distinct in substrate diversity and specificity.

Background: Interferon (IFN) inhibits viruses by inducing several hundred cellular genes, aptly named 'interferon (IFN)-stimulated genes' (ISGs). The only two RNA viruses of the Pneumovirus genus of the Paramyxoviridae family, namely Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and Pneumonia Virus of Mice (PVM), each encode two nonstructural (NS) proteins that share no sequence similarity but yet suppress IFN. Since suppression of IFN underlies the ability of these viruses to replicate in the host cells, the mechanism of such suppression has become an important area of research.

Identification of Interferon-Stimulated Gene Proteins That Inhibit Human Parainfluenza Virus Type 3.

Unlabelled: A major arm of cellular innate immunity is type I interferon (IFN), represented by IFN-α and IFN-β. Type I IFN transcriptionally induces a large number of cellular genes, collectively known as IFN-stimulated gene (ISG) proteins, which act as antivirals. The IFIT (interferon-induced proteins with tetratricopeptide repeats) family proteins constitute a major subclass of ISG proteins and are characterized by multiple tetratricopeptide repeats (TPRs).

The Italian Diabetes and Exercise Study 2 (IDES-2): a long-term behavioral intervention for adoption and maintenance of a physically active lifestyle.

Background: Physical activity (PA)/exercise have become an integral part of the management of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). However, current guidelines are difficult to put into action in this population due to a number of barriers, especially the lack of acceptable, feasible, and validated behavioral intervention strategies. The present manuscript reports the rationale, study design and methods, and design considerations of the Italian Diabetes and Exercise Study (IDES)-2, a randomized controlled trial testing the efficacy of a behavior change strategy in increasing total daily PA and reducing sedentary time (SED-time) in patients with T2DM.

Water protection in the Baltic Sea and the Chesapeake Bay: institutions, policies and efficiency.

The Baltic Sea and the Chesapeake Bay share many characteristics. Both are shallow, brackish marine areas that suffer from eutrophication. Successful policies targeting point source pollution have lowered nutrient loads in both areas, but achieving the desired marine quality will require further abatement: efforts may be extended to more complicated and expensive pollution sources, notably agricultural nonpoint loads.