Persuasive Technology in Games: A Brief Review and Reappraisal

Persuasive technology is a new field of research that has attracted considerable attention from game designers since there is a growing interest in games promoting positive behavioral changes. Persuasive games have been exploited to tremendous effect with applications ranging from mobile healthcare, which persuade users to exercise more often and adopt a healthy lifestyle, to government programs encouraging civic engagement. Therefore, persuasive technologies have become an indispensable part of the modern game designer’s toolkit, and their importance is only set to grow with time. In this paper, we begin by reviewing the existing body of work in this field while also explaining the pros and cons of emerging design models and theoretical frameworks. We then uncover major pitfalls in the current work and suggest directions for future research. Hopefully, this article will prove instructive to game designers and leave them with a better understanding of the central concepts in the field of persuasive technology

The Effect of Entrepreneurial Orientation and Organisational Culture on Firm Performance: The Mediating Role of Innovation

This study is concerned with conceptual model development, which examines the innovation influence on the relationship of organisational culture, entrepreneurial orientation and performance of large manufacturing firms in Pakistan. A total of 399 questionnaires were distributed to large manufacturing firms in Pakistan to assess the relationships between organisational culture, entrepreneurial orientation, innovation, and firm performance. The findings reveal that entrepreneurial orientation significantly influences the performance of large manufacturing firms in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the results also indicated that other factors such as organisational culture do not significantly relate to the manufacturing firm’s performance. Interestingly, the results had shown that the factor of innovation significantly mediated the relationships between organisational culture, entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance. Based on the results, it can be summarised that the mechanism used to enhance the innovative culture in the organisation will also contribute to the introduction, adoption and diffusion of innovations. Additionally, these factors would contribute to increased performance and achievement in the near future. Indeed, this statement is supported by numerous current and past studies conducted in Pakistan, where scholars found that innovation is the primary impetus of firm performance. However, there exists a very limited number of studies regarding the impact of innovation on organisational culture and entrepreneurial orientation in manufacturing firms in Pakistan. This study would lead to a significant contribution to the prevailing literature by empirically examining the relationship between organisational culture, entrepreneurial orientation, innovation and firm performance

The Role of Fiscal Policy in Human Development: The Pakistan’s Perspective

Human development considered as the engine of the economic growth as it improves the economy’s strength and increases the standard of living of the people, increases the choices and maximises the welfare of the society that is the prime objective of any government. The development of the human capabilities is also necessary for the sustainable growth, as there are many channels through which human development foster the economic growth. It increases the labour productivity, labour demand, employment and output. On the other hand, human capital also attracts physical capital.1 Empirically, it is very difficult to have an exact measure of human development and social welfare. Several proxies used to measure human development, e.g. GNI per capita as a measure of standard of living, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) criterion to measure the cost of living and to measure the welfare, average year of schooling, school enrolment rate and health expenditures as a percentage of GDP to capture this composite welfare and development indicator. A fair index of Human Development Index (HDI) was developed by United Nations Development Programme in 1990. This index based on the standard of living (natural logarithm of GDP PPP per capita), access to knowledge (adult literacy rate with two-third weighting and the remaining is the gross enrolment ratio) and a healthy life (life expectancy at birth). The value of index varies from 0 to 1, lower the HDI, lesser would be the human development and welfare in the country or vice versa

Access Permissions for Apple Watch Applications: A Study on Users\u27 Perceptions

© 2020 IEEE. The pervasiveness and sheer ubiquity of wearables, such as smartwatches, has given rise to a myriad of privacy concerns. In this paper, we examine the privacy issues which arise from the permission requests framework on Apple wearables and explore how end user\u27s perception of these can inform better and more inclusive privacy. We conduct an empirical study which explores issues pertaining to data protection, safety, trust, ethics, and cybersecurity. We conducted two Amazon Mechanical Turk studies that investigate users\u27 perception on app permission requests for different smartwatch applications. Our findings suggest that most users lack proper understanding of the cybersecurity risks posed and were unable to construe the rationale for permissions requests for popular smartwatch applications. Furthermore, the respondents believed that app developers might misuse their data, thereby, indicating lack of trust towards these app development enterprises. The respondents also believe that the application development companies should be held accountable for their alleged involvement in data breaches and privacy issues. Further, the majority of survey respondents indicated having some unease towards data usage policies of developers. Moreover, respondents consider all common types of private data (location, health and fitness, photos etc.) susceptible to some level of data breach. Lastly, our results indicate that the study participants experienced confusion in the \u27usability\u27 versus \u27security\u27 conundrum-while a bare majority of the users wanted ease of access, a similar minority preferred a higher level of security. We conclude by presenting a discussion to the quandaries that can help us interweave towards reliable, secure, trustworthy, and ethical technologies

Optimal Design of Box Composting Plant; A Case Study Of Pakistan

In this research, a feasible design framework has been developed in order to design a box composting facility. Box composting technique is potentially a sustainable method to deal with solid waste management issues. Three different existing composting facilities in the different provinces of Pakistan have been studied to investigate the duration of composting under different weather conditions and therefore baseline durations for composting against the varying climate of different regions in Pakistan have been established. The data validated that the duration of the composting decreases with the increase in temperature. Moreover, a design framework that incorporates the weather conditions, as well as the density of waste, has been presented to calculate the sizes of composting and maturing boxes. A numerical design example has been successfully solved by assuming the data which proved the feasibility of the developed framework to design the compost facility as per any given requirements

Toxicity of Four New Chemistry Insecticides against Spodoptera litura (Noctuidae: Lepidoptera) under Controlled Laboratory Conditions

Leaf worm, Spodoptera litura is one of the most destructive insect pests of several agricultural and horticultural crops all over the world including Pakistan. Insecticides have been widely used against different instar larvae of S. litura to minimize the pest population on various crops. New chemistry insecticides were tested to check their toxicity against S. litura on cabbage under laboratory conditions during 2019. Emamectin benzoate was highly toxic followed by chlorantraniliprole, flubendiamide and fipronil. LC50 and LC 90 values of emamectin benzoate were 30.54, 19.73 ppm and 459.07 and 275.65ppm after 24 and 48 h, respectively. 100% mortality of larvae was recorded at all concentrations of emamectin benzoate after 72 h of treatment. The lethal concentration, 50 % (LC50) values of chlorantraniliprole after 24, 48 and 72 h were 47.03, 32.49 and 17.58 ppm, respectively. Chlorantraniliprole was found to be extra lethal insecticide than flubendiamide and fipronil. Both (LC50 and LC90) values of fipronil after 24, 48 and 72 h were 55.76, 46.26, 28.47, and 801.03, 647.27, 510.44 ppm respectively. The results concluded that emamectin benzoate has potential to be used in integrated pest management strategies to significantly reduce the pest population

Augmented cytotoxic, mutagenic and genotoxic response triggered by carvedilol and celecoxib combinations

It is understood that drugs regardless of their order of administration can exhibit drug interactions. Established on the fact that treatment of hypertension may last for decades and prolong usage of multiple drug regimen may induce substantial pathophysiological changes. Hence, This study was designed to evaluate the possible synergistic toxic effects of anti-hypertensive (carvedilol), and anti-inflammatory drug (celecoxib) alone and in combinations. Well-established MTT assay, Single Cell Gel Electrophoresis (SCGE) and Ames assay were employed to evaluate the toxicity at cellular level. Results from MTT assay on Vero cell line revealed that drug combinations have more pronounced anti-proliferative activity with combine IC50 value of 13.7:47.8 µg/mL. Likewise, exposure of peripheral blood mononuclear cells with drug combinations revealed significant (