I, chatbot! the impact of anthropomorphism and gaze direction on willingness to disclose personal information and behavioral intentions

The present research focuses on the interplay between two common features of the customer service chatbot experience: gaze direction and anthropomorphism. Although the dominant approach in marketing theory and practice is to make chatbots as human-like as possible, the current study, built on the humanness-value-loyalty model, addresses the chain of effects through which chatbots' nonverbal behaviors affect customers' willingness to disclose personal information and purchase intentions. By means of two experiments that adopt a real chatbot in a simulated shopping environment (i.e., car rental and travel insurance), the present work allows us to understand how to reduce individuals' tendency to see conversational agents as less knowledgeable and empathetic compared with humans. The results show that warmth perceptions are affected by gaze direction, whereas competence perceptions are affected by anthropomorphism. Warmth and competence perceptions are found to be key drivers of consumers' skepticism toward the chatbot, which, in turn, affects consumers' trust toward the service provider hosting the chatbot, ultimately leading consumers to be more willing to disclose their personal information and to repatronize the e-tailer in the future. Building on the Theory of Mind, our results show that perceiving competence from a chatbot makes individuals less skeptical as long as they feel they are good at detecting others' ultimate intentions

QR code and the wine sector: What contents? an exploratory research study on the wine industry

This paper presents an explorative analysis of the contents shared through QR codes as a tool of proximity marketing. The aim of the research is to identify the most common links shared through the QR code technology, in order to investigate the use of this tool from a marketing point of view. Moreover, the research explores the main aspects of the communications related to the contents shared through QR codes. Specifically, the authors focus on hedonic aspects and functional ones. Finally, the research aims at identifying preliminary best practices in the use of QR code technology. Due to the widespread use of this tool in the sector, the research focuses on the wine industry, as one of the most involved with QR code practices. The study adopts a qualitative approach based on a content analysis of 91 wine labels. Considering the importance of this integrated communication, the purpose of this explorative analysis is to deduce implications that enable managers to master the use of this tool, exploiting all its potential

Improved Cloud resource allocation: how INDIGO-Datacloud is overcoming the current limitations in Cloud schedulers

Trabajo presentado a: 22nd International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP2016) 10–14 October 2016, San Francisco.Performing efficient resource provisioning is a fundamental aspect for any resource provider. Local Resource Management Systems (LRMS) have been used in data centers for decades in order to obtain the best usage of the resources, providing their fair usage and partitioning for the users. In contrast, current cloud schedulers are normally based on the immediate allocation of resources on a first-come, first-served basis, meaning that a request will fail if there are no resources (e.g. OpenStack) or it will be trivially queued ordered by entry time (e.g. OpenNebula). Moreover, these scheduling strategies are based on a static partitioning of the resources, meaning that existing quotas cannot be exceeded, even if there are idle resources allocated to other projects. This is a consequence of the fact that cloud instances are not associated with a maximum execution time and leads to a situation where the resources are under-utilized. These facts have been identified by the INDIGO-DataCloud project as being too simplistic for accommodating scientific workloads in an efficient way, leading to an underutilization of the resources, a non desirable situation in scientific data centers. In this work, we will present the work done in the scheduling area during the first year of the INDIGO project and the foreseen evolutions.The authors want to acknowledge the support of the INDIGO-DataCloud (grant number 653549) project, funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme.Peer Reviewe

Contraception in chronic kidney disease: a best practice position statement by the Kidney and Pregnancy Group of the Italian Society of Nephrology

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INDIGO-DataCloud: A data and computing platform to facilitate seamless access to e-infrastructures

This paper describes the achievements of the H2020 project INDIGO-DataCloud. The project has provided e-infrastructures with tools, applications and cloud framework enhancements to manage the demanding requirements of scientific communities, either locally or through enhanced interfaces. The middleware developed allows to federate hybrid resources, to easily write, port and run scientific applications to the cloud. In particular, we have extended existing PaaS (Platform as a Service) solutions, allowing public and private e-infrastructures, including those provided by EGI, EUDAT, and Helix Nebula, to integrate their existing services and make them available through AAI services compliant with GEANT interfederation policies, thus guaranteeing transparency and trust in the provisioning of such services. Our middleware facilitates the execution of applications using containers on Cloud and Grid based infrastructures, as well as on HPC clusters. Our developments are freely downloadable as open source components, and are already being integrated into many scientific applications

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat