Effects of humanlikeness and conversational breakdown on trust in chatbots for customer service.

Trust in chatbots can be shaped by various factors such as humanlikeness in terms of visual appearance and conversational content, and conversational performance in terms of the chatbot’s ability to avoid conversational breakdown. The literature is inconclusive concerning the effect of humanlikeness and conversational performance on trust, especially their interaction effect. To examine the relations among these variables, we conducted a 2x3 (humanlikeness x conversational performance) factorial experiment with 251 participants, who were asked to perform three tasks with a chatbot for an online bank under one of the six conditions. Participants completed a questionnaire measuring trust and commented on trust factors. Results of between-group analysis showed that for the task with seeded breakdowns there were significant differences in trust across the six groups with the lowest ratings for the two groups experiencing breakdowns without repairs and that humanlikeness did not impact the extent to which the trust level changed. Results of within-group analysis showed significant differences in trust across the tasks but non-significant inter-task correlations on trust for the two groups. These observations challenge the effect of humanlikeness on trust while supporting the notion of trust resilience as the participants did not spill the impaired trust over the subsequent task. Thematic analysis showed that inter-group contrasts could be found for the theme ‘underlying functionality’ and ‘affective responses.’ Implications for research, practice and future work were drawn.acceptedVersio

Latest results show urgent need to address child restraint use.

Road traffic crashes are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children in South Africa (SA), and are preventable through implementing a systems approach to address the causes. Proper education, child passenger legislation and enforcement of the law are priority actions. It is well known that properly employed seatbelts and child restraints reduce the risk of serious injury and death to children. However, despite campaigns such as ‘Arrive Alive’ to increase the use of child restraints, a 2008 observational study conducted by Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital (RCWMH) in Cape Town, SA, found that a majority of adults and children entering the hospital gates did not use such restraints. It is possible that this was because there was no appropriate child restraint law

Clinical improvement of DM1 patients reflected by reversal of disease-induced gene expression in blood

Background: Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is an incurable multisystem disease caused by a CTG-repeat expansion in the DM1 protein kinase (DMPK) gene. The OPTIMISTIC clinical trial demonstrated positive and heterogenous effects of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) on the capacity for activity and social participations in DM1 patients. Through a process of reverse engineering, this study aims to identify druggable molecular biomarkers associated with the clinical improvement in the OPTIMISTIC cohort. Methods: Based on full blood samples collected during OPTIMISTIC, we performed paired mRNA sequencing for 27 patients before and after the CBT intervention. Linear mixed effect models were used to identify biomarkers associated with the disease-causing CTG expansion and the mean clinical improvement across all clinical outcome measures. Results: We identified 608 genes for which their expression was significantly associated with the CTG-repeat expansion, as well as 1176 genes significantly associated with the average clinical response towards the intervention. Remarkably, all 97 genes associated with both returned to more normal levels in patients who benefited the most from CBT. This main finding has been replicated based on an external dataset of mRNA data of DM1 patients and controls, singling these genes out as candidate biomarkers for therapy response. Among these candidate genes were DNAJB12, HDAC5, and TRIM8, each belonging to a protein family that is being studied in the context of neurological disorders or muscular dystrophies. Across the different gene sets, gene pathway enrichment analysis revealed disease-relevant impaired signaling in, among others, insulin-, metabolism-, and immune-related pathways. Furthermore, evidence for shared dysregulations with another neuromuscular disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, was found, suggesting a partial overlap in blood-based gene dysregulation. Conclusions: DM1-relevant disease signatures can be identified on a molecular level in peripheral blood, opening new avenues for drug discovery and therapy efficacy assessments.</p

Inhuman shields - children caught in the crossfire of domestic violence

Background. Child abuse is a worldwide scourge. One of its most devastating manifestations is non-accidental head injury (NAHI).Methods. This is a retrospective chart review of children presenting to the Red Cross Children's Hospital trauma unit with a diagnosis of NAHI over a 3-year period.Results. Sixty-eight children were included in the study and 2 different groups were identified. Fifty-three per cent of the children were deliberately injured (median age 2 years), while 47% were allegedly not the intended target of the assailant (median age 9 months). The assailant was male in 65% of the intentional assaults and male in 100% of the unintentional assaults, with the intended adult victim female in 85% of the latter cases. Overall, 85% of the assaults were committed in the child's own home.Conclusions. The high proportion of cases in which a young child was injured unintentionally suggests that these infants effectively become shields in assaults committed by adults. In this context any attempts to deal with child abuse must also address the concurrent intimate partner violence

An inherited complex organic molecule reservoir in a warm planet-hosting disk

Quantifying the composition of the material in protoplanetary disks is essential to determining the potential for exoplanetary systems to produce and support habitable environments. When considering potential habitability, complex organic molecules are relevant, key among which is methanol (CH3OH). Methanol primarily forms at low temperatures via the hydrogenation of CO ice on the surface of icy dust grains and is a necessary basis for the formation of more complex species such as amino acids and proteins. We report the detection of CH3OH in a disk around a young, luminous A-type star, HD 100546. This disk is warm and therefore does not host an abundant reservoir of CO ice. We argue that the CH3OH cannot form in situ, and hence that this disk has probably inherited complex-organic-molecule-rich ice from an earlier cold dark cloud phase. This is strong evidence that at least some interstellar organic material survives the disk-formation process and can then be incorporated into forming planets, moons and comets. Therefore, crucial pre-biotic chemical evolution already takes place in dark star-forming clouds

Greenland Ice Sheet surface melt amplified by snowline migration and bare ice exposure

Greenland Ice Sheet mass loss has recently increased because of enhanced surface melt and runoff. Since melt is critically modulated by surface albedo, understanding the processes and feedbacks that alter albedo is a prerequisite for accurately forecasting mass loss. Using satellite imagery, we demonstrate the importance of Greenland’s seasonally fluctuating snowline, which reduces ice sheet albedo and enhances melt by exposing dark bare ice. From 2001 to 2017, this process drove 53% of net shortwave radiation variability in the ablation zone and amplified ice sheet melt five times more than hydrological and biological processes that darken bare ice itself. In a warmer climate, snowline fluctuations will exert an even greater control on melt due to flatter ice sheet topography at higher elevations. Current climate models, however, inaccurately predict snowline elevations during high melt years, portending an unforeseen uncertainty in forecasts of Greenland’s runoff contribution to global sea level ris

Ratios of BB and DD Meson Decay Constants in Relativistic Quark Model

We calculate the ratios of $B$ and $D$ meson decay constants by applying the variational method to the relativistic hamiltonian of the heavy meson. We adopt the Gaussian and hydrogen-type trial wave functions, and use six different potentials of the potential model. We obtain reliable results for the ratios, which are similar for different trial wave functions and different potentials. The obtained ratios show the deviation from the nonrelativistic scaling law, and they are in a pretty good agreement with the results of the Lattice calculations.Comment: 13 pages, 1 Postscript figur