Twenty-two patients with CD4(+)cell counts

Recently, it has been emphasized that chronic generalized immune activation is a leading event in the pathogenesis of HIV-1 infection. Supporting evidence comes from observations that in cases of lack of activation, infected subjects maintain a high number of T cells and do not develop AIDS-related events. Despite intensive studies, the exact mechanisms of T-cell activation are still not well understood and options for their control are limited. Very promising in this direction is a recently described T-cell subpopulation--regulatory T cells. Their functional activity and vitality are strongly dependent on the presence of IL-2. Better understanding of the mechanisms of T-cell activation, as well as the contribution of regulatory T cells to its control will increase therapeutic options for HIV-1-infected subjects. The application of immune-based therapy together with highly active antiretroviral therapy will lend a helping hand to the natural regulatory mechanisms in the control of infection.

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Climate resilience competencies improve people’s capacity to recognize and adopt strategies for mitigating negative climate effects. Especially concerning the built cultural heritage protection in the coastal areas, both professionals and citizens have to be prepared for water-related extreme events, such as floods, sea-level rise, and altered precipitation. Considering these challenges, the authors explore the efficiency of serious video games and describe the process of design and validation of the pilot educational online maze game “Let us save Venice”. More specifically, the main research question motivating the study is to identify what the experience factors and the mini-games are that contribute mostly to raising awareness to climate resilience and built heritage sustainability. The question implies two main research objectives: first, to explore what role user-centered game design plays in creating immersive and enjoyable educational video maze games, and second, to investigate which factors influence user experience and game playability in the design phase, and how they contribute to learnability and raising awareness. The background section of the article focuses on a preliminary study of the educational potential of serious games and introduces the EU-funded project e-Creha. Then, it explores the process of game design, development, and validation, focusing on metrics such as game learnability and game experience. The results outline the main findings that immersion, positive affect, and competence appeared to be the main experience factors contributing to raising awareness to climate resilience and built heritage sustainability. Lastly, the discussion section provides further directions for game improvement and future work.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present principles for personalization of both learning content and gameplay in serious games for learning, which are based on a combined model of the student that comprises user, learner and player-related aspects of the student’s profile. Each of the considered user, learner and player sub-models has a static and dynamic group of characteristics. These characteristics assist general approaches for learning mazes game personalization applied to embedded mini-games (designed as information units, learning objects and educational tasks) so that to be adjustable and to enable learners to acquire knowledge more effectively. Design/methodology/approach A student modelling approach was applied to design the personalization of learning content in the educational maze game and each of them contained mini-games. To evaluate the student’s preferences about the types of mini-games and ways of their personalization depending on individual and group student characteristics, the authors conducted an online survey. Findings This study presents examples of personalization of four types of mini-games available in maze halls, namely, question, searching, arranging and action games. Next, the research discusses findings from an online survey aiming at the evaluation of the preferred types of mini-games and the way of their personalization. There are analysed results concerning the impact of the student model characteristics on the preferred ways of personalization in educational maze games, together with criteria for personalization of educational resources according to student’s level of knowledge, age, goals and learning style. Research limitations/implications A significant limitation of the research is the relatively small number of survey participants and the lack of studying the impact of learning and playing styles over game personalization. Another limitation of the study is the inclusion of only some of the mini-games within the demonstration maze, which respondents play before answering the survey questions. Originality/value This paper presents original research on the personalization of educational maze game based on a model of the student profile that comprises both static and dynamic properties reflecting user, learner and player-related aspects of the student character, together with results obtained from an online survey.

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