Declare and identify any conflicts of interest you or any of your co-authors may have, and any funding sources that could potentially put you or a co-author in a conflict of interest.

Please indicate if you are one of the authors of this abstract, and if you are presenting this abstract if accepted. If you are not presenting the abstract, you will be asked to identify the presenter at the next screen when you enter the author names. Selections made here can be changes on the authors pages.

If you have already submitted an abstract to this Conference, the authors from that abstract will appear in the pull down list. The system tracks al authors that you have added. If one of those is an author of this abstract as well, simply choose them from the pull down list, check the information, and then press the “Save” button. If they do not appear on the list, then you will have to create a new author record, by completing the author details as required.

The State/Province field is for use by authors from Australia, Canada, and the USA. Authors from other countries may skip this field.

To add an affiliation, press on the first affiliation field, and select “add new affiliation”. A pop-up screen will appear, where you will enter the affiliation details. Press save, and then return to the first affiliation field, and select the affiliation you have just made from the pull down list. If the author has more than one affiliation, repeat this for each affiliation. You have add as many as three affiliations for any one author.

Please provide emails for authors if possible. All commutation with authors is by email. Even if the co-author is not presenting, having email addresses helps when we create the author index. If R. Smith and R.B. Smith of Imperial College London have the same email address we know they are the same person. If you do not know an authors email address, enter “nil” in the email field.

Repeat this until all co-authors have been entered. There is no limit on the number of authors attached to an abstract, but please consider using a corporate author (eg The New York Aids Study Group) where there is a very long list.

Please see the discussion under formatting and symbols for instructions on using Greek and math symbols in Titles, or preserving formatting such as italics, superscripts etc. The methods for handling these applies equally to the title field.

To copy and paste, open your word processor file, and select the body of your abstract with your mouse (do not include the authors or title, as you have already entered these). Copy the selected text, either by right mouse clicking and selecting “copy” (Mac users use Command C), or selecting “copy” under the edit menu of your software. After you have copied the text, return to your browser, place the cursor at the top of the input box, and select “paste” from either the edit menu of your browser, or on a right mouse click (for Mac users, Command P).

The body of your abstract should appear in the input box. At this point we suggest you preview your abstract (select the preview button below the input box), and then print it and proofread the printout . Close the preview screen, correct any text problems you found. If you do not have tables, graphics, or characters which are not displaying correctly, you may save your abstract by selecting the “Save” button. This will send your abstract to the server and save it in the database. For most authors, this nearly completed the process. However, if you have used Greek or math symbols, exponents, bold face, italics, graphics, or a table, you need to take additional steps – see below.

Why is the word limit an odd number, and why is my count different? All word count algorithms provide slightly different results, so the count you made in your software will no doubt be different than the count received on this site. As the most popular software used to write abstracts is MS Word, we have compared our algorithm against that of MS Word, and found we consistently get a slightly higher word count. For this reason we add a 10 percent margin to the desired limit. So if the organizers want a limit of X words, we set our algorithm limit = 1.1X.

One final issue on Word counts. You can fool the word count by creating a table with large amounts of text in it. However, this makes the abstract difficult to read, and reviewers tend to score difficult abstracts poorly, or can refuse to read it altogether if you have made it too long. Data tables are for data, not text.

Please note that the abstract is not finished until you click on the Submit for Review button; before that it is merely saved, but not yet approved for peer review. At close tech support will review all saved but not submitted abstracts, and submit those that appear to be complete.

The codes will not print. Look at the preview screen to see the result.

TIP: You can copy and paste the tags from this instruction sheet instead of re-keying them. Ensure that you select all of the code, or you browser won't recognize it as a tag. Check the Preview screen to see that it displays properly.

Greek or Math Symbols
If your computer has a newer operating system (XP, Vista, Windows 7, OS10) then you should be using Unicode typefaces, and all Greek, math and other symbols should copy and paste into your abstract without difficulty. (The site uses the UTF-8 standard). However if you have an older computer, or are using an older typeface, Greek or math symbols in your abstract may substitute with some other character when you paste the text into the input box. Check the preview to ensure that all Greek, math and other uncommon symbols are been captured correctly.

If you have a character substitution, you can use the provided special character link to apply Greek and math symbols. For example: If you have an old computer, or are using a non-unicode font, and had a β (Beta) in your abstract, it will may been replaced with a “b” when you pasted the text in the input window. This happens because your browser can only work in a single typeface at a time, and if it is the old 255 character style typeface, the browser will convert the beta into the default character mapped to the b key in your system – which will be b. To reapply the β, click on the Special Character Table link. A pop-up window will appear. Click on the β, and then close the pop up. A code for beta “β" will appear in the small window next to the Special Character Table Link. Copy this code, and, find the first instance where β should appear in your abstract. Highlight the b and then right mouse click and select paste. The b should have been replaced by the code “β. Click on the preview button, and you will see that the β character appears in the correct place. When your abstract is published, it will print as β.
TIP: After you have copied the code for β, replace all instances of β in your abstract before correcting the next Greek/math symbol.

Users with Asian or Arabic operating systems should pay close attention to Greek and math symbols, as your typefaces may not be Unicode. Use a Unicode typeface if possible.

If you need a character which is not in the table, and you can't copy and paste in, email Technical Support with the details. They will insert the correct character for you.

Click on “Create table” to create a table, and enter the number of rows and columns needed, and click update to create the table. Then use the align header and align data features to set the formatting for each column. The align header refers to the formatting of the first cell of that column, and align data refers to all other cells in that column. You may then enter the data into each cell of the table. After entering your data in the cells, click “Save”. Any Unicode characters entered in a table should save correctly.

After you save your table, you will return to your abstract, where you will now find a tag in the table list, which looks something like **table1** Copy this tag, and paste it in the body of your abstract where you want your table to appear. Select preview to view the table. Don’t worry about its appearance, as long as the correct data are in the correct cell, it will print properly. The graphic artist formatting the abstract volume will lay out the table correctly.

If you need to edit the table, click on the **table1** tag in the list of tables, make the edits needed and save. The table in your abstract will update automatically. Click Preview to check.

The Word Count algorithm will count each table as 50 words against your limit of 330 words.

You can have text span multiple columns by adjusting the column span values next to each table cell. For example, if you wanted the text "Active Agents" to span across columns 3, 4 and 5 in row 1, you would put "Active Agents" in cell 3 of row 1, and leave cells 4 and 5 blank. You should then set the span value for cell 3 to 3 using the pull-down next to the cell, and set the spam value for cells 4 and 5 to 0 using the pull-down. Active Agents will then appear as one cell spanning columns 3 - 5 in row 1.

What if I need some bold, italic or superscripts? This can be done, if you are up for the challenge. You can add these formatting effects using html codes (see section on preserving formatting).

What if I need some more complicated things like column spanning, merged cells etc.Merging cells and spanning columns is too difficult to attempt in a application like this. Please try and simplify the table, or if that is not possible, email Technical Support.