Examining the factors influencing citizen adoption of e-government chatbot services in Jordan: A longitudinal survey study

Many governments are focusing on adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based chatbot technology to enhance work efficiency and improve e-government services. Jordan was among the first Middle Eastern countries to implement AI chatbots to offer various e-services to its citizens. While previous studies have examined the adoption of AI chatbots, they have not explored citizen adoption within the Jordanian context. This research investigates the key factors influencing citizen adoption of e-government chatbot services in Jordan by extending the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) theory with additional external variables. A longitudinal survey of 319 Jordanian citizens was conducted, with data collected at two different points using Structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. Results demonstrate that attitude, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, facilitating conditions, self-efficacy, anthropomorphism, personal innovativeness, and trust - positively impacted Jordanian citizens' intentions to use e-government chatbot services, whilst anxiety had a negative effect. Behavioral intentions, facilitating conditions, synchronicity, active control, and ubiquitous connectivity, positively influenced usage behavior, which in turn significantly influenced satisfaction. Satisfaction also influenced citizens' future continuance usage intentions. This study offers valuable insights for enhancing e-government chatbot features to meet citizens' needs within a Middle Eastern context

Photo-potentiometry: Sensing of sugars using a pH-probe coated with a film of intrinsically microporous polyamine containing graphitic carbon nitride photocatalyst

At proof-of-concept level, the photochemical transformation of glucose (or more generally of carbohydrates) can be detected analytically as a localised pH change. Using a conventional potentiometric pH-probe, a microporous coating is developed to explore carbohydrate sensing in the 200-800 μM concentration range based on localised pH changes induced by light. The photo-responsive film is based on fibrous cellulose (to aid permeability), photocatalytic graphitic carbon nitride (g-C N ), and an intrinsically microporous polyamine host (PIM-EA-TB, as reaction environment and binder). The film-modified pH-probe is pre-conditioned in a pH 4 buffer (containing phthalate buffer). When immersed in an aqueous solution, switching on a blue LED (λ = 385 nm, approx. 60 mW cm ) causes a pH transient towards alkaline, which is correlated with the carbohydrate concentration (all three glucose, fructose, or sucrose give very similar signals). The LOD is typically 70 μmol dm , with a linear range up to 800 μmol dm . Non-linearity beyond 800 μmol dm is tentatively attributed to limited oxygen availability. The photo-electroanalytical mechanism is discussed in terms of competing proton generation and consumption in the photoactive film linked to oxygen depletion (causing alkaline drift) at the pH-probe surface

The Women’s Liberation Movement and the gendering of undercover police surveillance in 1970s Britain: the public inquiry as (un)ethical archive

In the 1970s an undercover police officer was planted in the feminist movement in Britain. Across two years, this female officer shared activist plans, notes from large and small meetings, and feminist print material with officers in Special Branch. Nothing of interest was uncovered during this extended spell in the movement, and no plans that threatened state security were thwarted. But her time in the movement is important to historians, nonetheless; not only does it reveals the patriarchal investments of the secret state, but she inadvertently created an archive of feminist activist documents. The use of this archive, made openly available online by the Undercover Policing Inquiry (2015-ongoing), opens up knotty questions about consent and complicity for historians. This article uses evidence given to the Undercover Policing Inquiry to explore the Women’s Liberation Movement’s perceived threat to social order, arguing that the testimony shows that the movement – in significant part because of activists’ links with other movements on the Left – was taken more seriously by the British state than has previously been acknowledged. Through a focus on a female police officer, I explore women’s position as both perpetrators and victims of state surveillance in this period. The article also examines the ethics of using materials that have been made available by a public inquiry into state surveillance for historical research. It does not seek to resolve the tensions between privacy, openness, justice, and feminist research methods that this public inquiry exposes, but rather formulates some of the questions, and suggests some tentative responses to the issues it invokes. It suggests that the testimony of spied-upon activists can be seen as a reclamation of control and a retrieval of power, and that their contributions to the Inquiry are entwined with a broader tradition ‘talking back’ and reclaiming power from the state

Are all brachyuran crabs found in the intertidal zone intermediate hosts for digenean parasites?

Digenean trematodes with complex life cycles often use marine crabs as intermediate hosts, but their distribution across crab species is not fully understood. Previous reports of Microphallus similis in edible crabs (Cancer pagurus) relied on morphological identification, leaving potential for misidentification. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence, identity, and host range of digenean parasites in intertidal brachyuran crabs from South Wales, U.K. Over six months, crabs were collected from two rocky shore sites and examined for metacercariae in the hepatopancreas. Parasites were morphologically assessed and identified by sequencing the 28S rDNA region. Metacercariae were found exclusively in juvenile C. pagurus, with ∼ 30 % prevalence and low individual burdens ranging from 1 to 69 cysts. All sequenced parasites were confirmed as M. similis. No infections were detected in Necora puber, Xantho pilipes, or X. hydrophilus. Logistic regression indicated that infection prevalence in C. pagurus varied significantly with month and crab size. This study provides the first molecular confirmation of M. similis in edible crabs from the U.K. and highlights species-specific susceptibility linked to differences in ecology and feeding behaviour. The absence of infection in co-occurring crabs suggests that C. pagurus plays a uniquely important role in the parasite’s transmission cycle in intertidal environments

Local food and the nomadic ethical placemaking of the rural idyll: Towards a non-anthropocentric ‘rural of the future’

The rural idyll is a geographical imagination envisioning a utopian escape from urban modernity and industrial values. However, this imaginary typically serves anthropocentric, neoliberal market logics, which landscape the rural as other. Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) may navigate this tension when committing to the ethico-political relocalisation of food systems. Drawing on Braidotti's nomadic ethics, this study develops a non-anthropocentric (new materialist and posthuman) understanding of the rural idyll, grounded in the narratives of local food consumers participating in AFNs in the Italian region of Marche. Based on 20 in-depth interviews, this research explores how participants' narratives can express a life-affirming desire that (re)configures the rural idyll as a not-yet-sustained condition of more-than-human rural spatial assemblages, providing a counter-point to the negative realities presently landscaping non-human nature as other. Findings show that these narratives contribute to the nomadic ethical placemaking of a non-anthropocentric rural idyll – a virtuality foregrounding a ‘rural of the future’ committed to fostering human and non-human intra-actions based on the ontological dissolution of the human subject in rural space. This process repositions non-human life discourse as ethico-politically central in agri-food practices and fosters a non-linear, inclusive reinterpretation of local food autochthony. Thus, this study contributes to food geographies and rural studies by showing how AFN-driven local food consumption can help overturn anthropocentric rural landscaping by positioning a non-anthropocentric idyllic image of non-human nature as a harbinger of alternative patterns of becoming, thereby opening up a novel, nomadic ethical understanding of placemaking possible rural futures

Multi-contextual Analysis for Physiological Behaviour for Estimating Trust in Human-Robot Interaction

Existing work on estimating user trust in robotic systems has primarily utilised datasets that monitored variations in physiological behaviours (PBs), evolving from one context of interaction. Consequently,in this paper, we created two datasets from two different human-robot interaction (HRI) contexts, namely competitive and collaborative, to explore trust dynamics comprehensively. The datasets consisted of participants’ electrodermal activity (EDA), blood volume pulse (BVP), heart rate (HR), skin temperature (SKT), blinking rate (BR), and blinking duration (BD) across multiple sessions of collaborative HRI during trust and distrust states. We investigated the differences in PBs between trustand distrust states and explored the potential of incremental transfer learning methods in predicting trust levels during HRI using the two datasets. The findings showed significant differences in HR between trust and distrust groups. It further showed that the Decision Tree classifier achieved the best accuracy of 89% in classifying trust, outperforming the previous work, while HR, BVP, and BR were the important features. Overall, the findings indicate the potential for applying incremental transfer learning to real-time datasets collected from different HRI contexts to estimate trust during HRI