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The objective of this manuscript is to describe the iterative user-centered development of the Mobile Device Assessment Tool (MoDAT) and to present early usability results involving persons with disabilities and assistive technology (AT) professionals. Smartphones have become a ubiquitous tool for use in everyday life. However, there are limited tools and resources available for AT providers to assess the needs of persons with disabilities in using smartphones. The MoDAT is being developed to help determine the most effective accessibility and AT options for smartphone use by individuals with functional limitations. A user-centered approach has been implemented, including preliminary guidance by advisory committees, focus groups, and usability testing by persons with disabilities and providers who recommend AT solutions. This process has guided the development of a pilot system that can generate personalized recommendations on smartphone device setup and configuration. The MoDAT consists of a series of simulated typical tasks completed on a smartphone application. Individuals complete these tasks to assess their functional capacity, with data regarding their performance gathered and sent to the provider portal. Data is securely stored in the portal for review to help determine accessibility settings and AT that may improve smartphone use. These results and the iterative process are described in this manuscript. Future research will focus on establishing the psychometric properties of the MoDAT as an assessment tool and outcomes. Full article

Previous research on moving object detection in traffic surveillance video has mostly adopted a single threshold to eliminate the noise caused by external environmental interference, resulting in low accuracy and low efficiency of moving object detection. Therefore, we propose a moving object detection method that considers the difference of image spatial threshold, i.e., a moving object detection method using adaptive threshold (MOD-AT for short). In particular, based on the homograph method, we first establish the mapping relationship between the geometric-imaging characteristics of moving objects in the image space and the minimum circumscribed rectangle (BLOB) of moving objects in the geographic space to calculate the projected size of moving objects in the image space, by which we can set an adaptive threshold for each moving object to precisely remove the noise interference during moving object detection. Further, we propose a moving object detection algorithm called GMM_BLOB (GMM denotes Gaussian mixture model) to achieve high-precision detection and noise removal of moving objects. The case-study results show the following: (1) Compared with the existing object detection algorithm, the median error (MD) of the MOD-AT algorithm is reduced by 1.2–11.05%, and the mean error (MN) is reduced by 1.5–15.5%, indicating that the accuracy of the MOD-AT algorithm is higher in single-frame detection; (2) in terms of overall accuracy, the performance and time efficiency of the MOD-AT algorithm is improved by 7.9–24.3%, reflecting the higher efficiency of the MOD-AT algorithm; (3) the average accuracy (MP) of the MOD-AT algorithm is improved by 17.13–44.4%, the average recall (MR) by 7.98–24.38%, and the average F1-score (MF) by 10.13–33.97%; in general, the MOD-AT algorithm is more accurate, efficient, and robust. Full article

Background: If analytical antiretroviral-treatment (ART) interruption (ATI) might significantly impact quantitative or qualitative peripheral-total HIV-DNA is still debated. Methods: Six chronically HIV-1 infected patients enrolled in APACHE-study were analysed for peripheral-total HIV-DNA and residual viremia, major-resistance-mutations (MRMs) and C2-V3-C3 evolution at pre-ATI (T1), during ATI (T2) and at achievement of virological success after ART-resumption (post-ATI, T3). These data were obtained at three comparable time-points in five chronically HIV-1 infected patients on suppressive ART for ≥1 year, enrolled in MODAt-study. Results: At T1, APACHE and MODAt individuals had similar peripheral-total HIV-DNA and residual viremia (p = 0.792 and 0.662, respectively), and no significant changes for these parameters were observed between T1 and T3 in both groups. At T1, 4/6 APACHE and 2/5 MODAt carried HIV-DNA MRMs. MRMs disappeared at T3 in 3/4 APACHE. All disappearing MRMs were characterized by T1 intra-patient prevalence <80%, and mainly occurred in APOBEC3-related sites. All MRMs persisted over-time in the 2 MODAt. C2-V3-C3 genetic-distance significantly changed from T1 to T3 in APACHE individuals (+0.36[0.11–0.41], p = 0.04), while no significant changes were found in MODAt. Accordingly, maximum likelihood trees (bootstrap > 70%) and genealogical sorting indices (GSI > 0.50 with p-value < 0.05) showed that T1 C2-V3-C3 DNA sequences were distinct from T2 and T3 viruses in 4/6 APACHE. Virus populations at all three time-points were highly interspersed in MODAt. Conclusions: This pilot study indicates that short ATI does not alter peripheral-total HIV-DNA burden and residual viremia, but in some cases could cause a genetic diversification of peripheral viral reservoir in term of both MRMs rearrangement and viral evolution. Full article