Factors Affecting the Growth of E-Shopping Consumers Over Traditional Shopping After Covid-19: GCC Countries' Perspective

Purpose: The study aims to explore the factors that have led to a significant shift in consumer behavior from traditional shopping methods to e-shopping in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It seeks to identify and analyze the various elements that contribute to consumers' growing preference for online shopping and to understand how this trend is reshaping the retail landscape in the GCC region.   Theoretical Framework: The research is anchored in the theory of consumer behavior and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), like perceived usefulness, consumer psychology, ease of payment, budget considerations, health issues, and cultural and traditional values which helps in understanding the factors influencing consumers' acceptance and use of technology, in this case, e-shopping platforms.   Design/Methodology/Approach: This study adopts a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative data from structured online consumer surveys and qualitative insights from expert interviews. The authors used the PLS-SEM approach to investigate the survey of 380 responses to examine the impact of various factors on e-shopping behavioral intention among consumers in the GCC countries.   Findings: The findings reveal that perceived usefulness, consumer psychology, ease of payment, budget considerations, health issues, and cultural and traditional values significantly and positively impact the e-shopping behavioral intention of consumers. However, product variety does not significantly influence the e-shopping behavioral intention in the GCC region.   Research, Practical & Social Implications: The study opens new avenues for research in consumer behavior and e-commerce, especially in the context of unforeseen global events like pandemics. The insights are valuable for retailers, e-commerce platforms, and marketers in the GCC region for strategizing and aligning with changing consumer preferences. It aids in developing targeted marketing strategies and enhancing the online shopping experience.   Originality/Value: This research offers original insights into the shift towards e-shopping in the GCC region post-COVID-19. It contributes to the broader discourse on consumer behavior in the context of pandemics and technological acceptance, providing a region-specific perspective that enhances understanding in this field

Multimodal Behavioral Biometric Authentication in Smartphones for Covid-19 Pandemic

The usage of mobile phones has increased multi-fold in recent decades, mostly because of their utility in most aspects of daily life, such as communications, entertainment, and financial transactions. In use cases where users’ information is at risk from imposter attacks, biometrics-based authentication systems such as fingerprint or facial recognition are considered the most trustworthy in comparison to PIN, password, or pattern-based authentication systems in smartphones. Biometrics need to be presented at the time of power-on, they cannot be guessed or attacked through brute force and eliminate the possibility of shoulder surfing. However, fingerprints or facial recognition-based systems in smartphones may not be applicable in a pandemic situation like Covid-19, where hand gloves or face masks are mandatory to protect against unwanted exposure of the body parts. This paper investigates the situations in which fingerprints cannot be utilized due to hand gloves and hence presents an alternative biometric system using the multimodal Touchscreen swipe and Keystroke dynamics pattern. We propose a HandGlove mode of authentication where the system will automatically be triggered to authenticate a user based on Touchscreen swipe and Keystroke dynamics patterns. Our experimental results suggest that the proposed multimodal biometric system can operate with high accuracy. We experiment with different classifiers like Isolation Forest Classifier, SVM, k-NN Classifier, and fuzzy logic classifier with SVM to obtain the best authentication accuracy of 99.55% with 197 users on the Samsung Galaxy S20. We further study the problem of untrained external factors which can impact the user experience of authentication system and propose a model based on fuzzy logic to extend the functionality of the system to improve under novel external effects. In this experiment, we considered the untrained external factor of ‘sanitized hands’ with which the user tries to authenticate and achieved 93.5% accuracy in this scenario. The proposed multimodal system could be one of the most sought approaches for biometrics-based authentication in smartphones in a COVID-19 pandemic situation

Behavioral biometric based personal authentication in feature phones

The usage of mobile phones has increased multifold in the recent decades mostly because of its utility in most of the aspects of daily life, such as communications, entertainment, and financial transactions. Feature phones are generally the keyboard based or lower version of touch based mobile phones, mostly targeted for efficient calling and messaging. In comparison to smart phones, feature phones have no provision of a biometrics system for the user access. The literature, have shown very less attempts in designing a biometrics system which could be most suitable to the low-cost feature phones. A biometric system utilizes the features and attributes based on the physiological or behavioral properties of the individual. In this research, we explore the usefulness of keystroke dynamics for feature phones which offers an efficient and versatile biometric framework. In our research, we have suggested an approach to incorporate the user’s typing patterns to enhance the security in the feature phone. We have applied k-nearest neighbors (k-NN) with fuzzy logic and achieved the equal error rate (EER) 1.88% to get the better accuracy. The experiments are performed with 25 users on Samsung On7 Pro C3590. On comparison, our proposed technique is competitive with almost all the other techniques available in the literature

Polarized light microscopy in reproductive and developmental biology

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2013. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of John Wiley & Sons for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Molecular Reproduction and Development (2013), doi:10.1002/mrd.22221.The polarized light microscope reveals orientational order in native molecular structures inside living cells, tissues, and whole organisms. Therefore, it is a powerful tool to monitor and analyze the early developmental stages of organisms that lend themselves to microscopic observations. In this article we briefly discuss the components specific to a traditional polarizing microscope and some historically important observations on chromosome packing in sperm head, first zygote division of the sea urchin, and differentiation initiated by the first uneven cell division in the sand dollar. We then introduce the LC-PolScope and describe its use for measuring birefringence and polarized fluorescence in living cells and tissues. Applications range from the enucleation of mouse oocytes to analyzing the polarized fluorescence of the water strider acrosome. We end by reporting first results on the birefringence of the developing chick brain, which we analyzed between developmental stages of days 12 through 20.This work was supported by funds from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (grant 1R01GM100160-01A1 awarded to TT) and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (grant EB002045 awarded to RO)

pH dependent isotropic to nematic phase transitions in graphene oxide dispersions reveal droplet liquid crystalline phases

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2014. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Royal Society of Chemistry for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Chemical Communications 50 (2014): 6668-6671, doi:10.1039/C4CC00970C.Size fractionation, amplified by the surface charge density of graphene oxide (GO) sheets, broadens the pH dependent isotropic (I) to nematic (N) phase transition in aqueous dispersions of graphene oxide (GO). In this biphasic region, a highly organized droplet nematic phase of uniform size (20 ± 2.8 μm diameter) with an isotropic interior is observed.Supports from the Australian Research Council (LP110100612 to MM), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (R01EB002045 to RO) and HFSP fellowship (to SM) are acknowledged.2015-05-0

Dissection of Molecular Assembly Dynamics by Tracking Orientation and Position of Single Molecules in Live Cells

Regulation of order, such as orientation and conformation, drives the function of most molecular assemblies in living cells but remains difficult to measure accurately through space and time. We built an instantaneous fluorescence polarization microscope, which simultaneously images position and orientation of fluorophores in living cells with single-molecule sensitivity and a time resolution of 100 ms. We developed image acquisition and analysis methods to track single particles that interact with higher-order assemblies of molecules. We tracked the fluctuations in position and orientation of molecules from the level of an ensemble of fluorophores down to single fluorophores. We tested our system in vitro using fluorescently labeled DNA and F-actin, in which the ensemble orientation of polarized fluorescence is known. We then tracked the orientation of sparsely labeled F-actin network at the leading edge of migrating human keratinocytes, revealing the anisotropic distribution of actin filaments relative to the local retrograde flow of the F-actin network. Additionally, we analyzed the position and orientation of septin-GFP molecules incorporated in septin bundles in growing hyphae of a filamentous fungus. Our data indicate that septin-GFP molecules undergo positional fluctuations within ∼350 nm of the binding site and angular fluctuations within ∼30° of the central orientation of the bundle. By reporting position and orientation of molecules while they form dynamic higher-order structures, our approach can provide insights into how micrometer-scale ordered assemblies emerge from nanoscale molecules in living cells

Quantification of collagen organization in histopathology samples using liquid crystal based polarization microscopy

Author Posting. © The Optical Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of The Optical Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Biomedical Optics Express 8 (2017): 4243-4256, doi:10.1364/BOE.8.004243.A number of histopathology studies have utilized the label free microscopy method of Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) to investigate collagen organization in disease onset and progression. Here we explored an alternative label free imaging approach, LC-PolScope that is based on liquid crystal based polarized light imaging. We demonstrated that this more accessible technology has the ability to visualize all fibers of interest and has a good to excellent correlation between SHG and LC-PolScope measurements in fibrillar collagen orientation and alignment. This study supports that LC-PolScope is a viable alternative to SHG for label free collagen organization measurements in thin histology sections.Morgridge Institute for Research and National Institutes of Health (NIH) (U54DK104310 and R01GM114274); The University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center Cancer Center Biocore and Histology core (UWCCC) (P30 CA014520)

The effect of activity and novelty on response frequency in a two-choice learning situation.

Originally published in Optics Express on 23 March 2015 (oe-23-6-7734