A Socio-Ecological Approach to Activity Games for Girls

Most American girls are not meeting physical activity guidelines, placing them at risk for adverse health consequences. In response, our team developed Frolic, an evidence-based mobile application to address this problem through play. Frolic uses a socio-ecological framework and behavioral design principles to address barriers and social norms that are specific to girls. Parents are leveraged as important sources of support and motivation, with key design elements to help girls initiate play, adapt to the space, and play independently. The current paper contributes design principles for creating socio-ecological activity games for girls. In addition, we contribute the design of Frolic itself, a game constructed according to these guidelines, and outline future intervention studies with the app itself. Finally, we provide the perspectives of professional game designers and health experts on our work and interpretative insights for game designers and researchers who hope to work in this space.

A Behavioral Design to Reform Italy’s Evaluation Policy

Drawing on the extensive ethnographic research I conducted on Italy’s performance evaluation system, this article highlights the cognitive biases associated with evidence use in decision making and institution working. Framing effects, status quo bias, motivated reasoning, and tacit conflicts between personal and organizational interests were only some of the behavioral phenomena policy makers, managers, and evaluators showed to limit their exposure to performance information. Integrating behavioral findings with theories of governance, evaluation utilization, and critical evidence–informed policymaking, this article discusses behavioral reform strategies to overcome (i) tacit conflicts of interests among evaluators, (ii) the compliance mentality with performance assessment among managers, and (iii) adversarial relationships between courts and administrative agencies as well as polarized politics with respect to evidence use and experts’ behavior. A behavioral design is relevant to reform evaluation policies, especially in countries where performance regimes have been criticized, contested, resisted, and/or perceived as red tape and surveillance mechanisms.

Convergent coding of recent and remote fear memory in the basolateral amygdala

Animals must learn to anticipate recently encountered threats as well as dangers experienced long ago. In both rodents and humans, the basolateral amygdala (BLA) is essential for the encoding and retrieval conditioned fear memories. Although the BLA is a putative storage site for aversive memory, recent evidence suggests that these memories undergo time-dependent reorganization and no longer require the BLA after the passage of time. To explore this question, we systematically examined the role for the BLA in recent and remote fear memory using optogenetic, electrophysiological, and calcium imaging methods in male and female Long-Evans rats. Critically, we used a behavioral design that permits within-subjects comparison of recent and remote memory at the same time point. We found that BLA c-Fos expression was similar after the retrieval of recent (1 day) or remote (2 weeks) fear memories. Extracellular recordings in awake, behaving animals revealed that the majority of BLA neurons encoded both recent and remote memories, suggesting substantial overlap in the allocation of temporally distinct events. Fiber photometric recordings of BLA principal neurons also revealed similar patterns of CS-evoked activity to recent and remote CSs. Consistent with these results, continuous or CS-specific optogenetic inhibition of BLA principal neurons impaired conditioned freezing to both recent and remote CSs. Collectively, these data reveal that single BLA neurons encode both recent and remote fear memories. This may underlie the broad generalization of fear memories across both space and time. Ultimately, these results provide robust evidence that the BLA is a long-term storage site for emotional memories.

Effects of Human Personal Space on the Robot Obstacle Avoidance Be havior: A Human-in-the-loop Assessment

To ensure both the physical and mental safety of humans during human-robot interaction (HRI), a rich body of literature has been accumulated, and the notion of socially acceptable robot behaviors has arisen. To be specific, it requires the motion of robots not only to be physically collision-free but also to consider and respect the social conventions developed and enforced in the human social contexts. Among these social conventions, personal space, or proxemics, is one of the most commonly considered in the robot behavioral design. Nevertheless, most previous research efforts assumed that robots could generate human-like motions by merely mimicking a human. Rarely are the robot’s behavioral algorithms assessed and verified by human participants. Therefore, to fill the research gap, a Turing-like simulation test, which contains the interaction of two agents (each agent could be a human or a robot) in a shared space was conducted. Participants (33 in total) were asked to identify and label the category of those agents followed by questionnaires. Results revealed that people who had different attitudes and prior expectations of appropriate robot behaviors responded to the algorithm differently, and their identification accuracy varied significantly. In general, by considering personal space in the robot obstacle avoidance algorithm, robots could demonstrate more humanlike motion behaviors which are confirmed by human experiments.

Development of functionalities extension approach and implementation of address routing for IFogSim based simulators

The object of research is an approach of functionality extension for simulation toolkits based on iFogSim. It is assumed by the native approach that enhancement of functionalities should be achieved by inheriting the fog device class and defining new features in its body. However, this approach makes it impossible to use inherited simulators together and significantly decreases flexibility even when utilizing a single simulator. Another problem related exclusively to iFogSim is a specific communication scheme between application modules, which results in data routing limitations in fog architectures and odd data streams taken into account. This paper introduces an alternative extension approach incorporating a peculiar inheritance scheme which tries to reconsider the standard approach from a behavioral design patterns point of view. The key feature of the suggested approach is an extraction of fog device features from the native class into separate behavioral classes. Meanwhile, the designed inheritance scheme allows to flexibly override and combine behaviors. According to the approach principles the developed simulator extends iFogSim with application modules addressing capabilities solving limitations, along with implementing users’ mobility and dynamic wireless connectivity as it is done in MobFogSim. With the aim to check its correctness, the designed toolkit was validated with the standard for iFogSim case study of «EEG Tractor Beam game» application. The validation included four scenarios. In the first two scenarios the features of users’ mobility and dynamic base station connectivity were validated. And in the next scenarios that utilized address routing the obtained delay and network usage values were compared with theoretically calculated ones. The validation results indicated the correct simulator behavior, and introduced functionalities extension approach, being more complex in comparison with the inative one, can significantly improve flexibility of the simulator

From Behavioral Design to Reverence for Life: Care Policies for the Digital Environment

The article raises the problem of the ecology of a human being in a digital reality, namely, the issue of caring for a resource accessible to any person living in new conditions. The aim of the study is to substantiate the need for a transition from the behavioral design as well as the corresponding ethological paradigm to the existential design, involving a more responsible and careful approach to ecology and ethics in human capital management in the context of cognitive capitalism and digitalization of life. In the modern world it is often the question of productivity growth and technological advancement. Meanwhile, the question of human capacities and incapacities (mental, physical, behavioral) does not arise. Taking into account the absence of a caring attitude towards human capacities, this resource will never go turn into human capital. The research demonstrates that the design of digital media allows the use of the available human resources more properly if technical requirements of speed, quantity, simplicity are changed in compliance with existential requirements (changes in the subject of herself/himself, not in the objects of her/his activities) increasing his/her role, ethical meaning, feeling of presence in the event, tracking the results of actions and a deeper awareness of the results. The article is aimed at media philosophers, anthropologists and theorists of digital culture.

Promoting Respectful Maternity Care using a Behavioral Design Approach in Zambia: Results from a Mixed-Methods Evaluation

Background: Respectful maternity care (RMC) has been elevated in the global discourse, however, instances of disrespect and abuse remain prevalent. While several studies have highlighted promising approaches to promote RMC, this body of literature is still limited and few approaches have been scaled outside the initial study sites. Building on formative research conducted through a behavioral science lens, we sought to develop and test evidence-based, low-cost solutions to promote RMC which would be well-positioned for scale-up. Our study highlights the effectiveness of the solution package on provider provision of better care and client satisfaction, as well as intermediary outcomes and behavioral mechanisms. Methods: A quasi-experimental evaluation, informed by the behavioral design approach, was completed to test the effectiveness of a 5-component solution package in Chipata, Zambia. Quantitative surveys were collected from health facility providers and postpartum clients at baseline and endline in intervention and comparison facilities. Additional qualitative interviews were conducted with health facility providers and postpartum clients at endline. We also conducted interviews with health facility in-charges and observed labor and delivery practices at intervention facilities over the course of implementation. Results: Evidence suggested that at endline, clients at implementation facilities were less likely to experience disrespect and abuse compared to clients at comparison facilities (ß= -0.15 p=.01). Clients at intervention facilities were more likely to request pain management compared to clients at comparison facilities (ß=.33, p=.003). The solutions were simple for providers to implement and were easily integrated into existing services by providers during labor and delivery. Providers at intervention facilities also described the pain management toolkit as helpful in expanding the types of pain management techniques used during labor.Conclusions: The results of this small-scale study act as a proof of concept, demonstrating that the behavioral design approach can lead to solutions that show potential for impact. In other settings where providers face similar barriers to providing RMC, an adaptation of this solution package might lead to similarly positive results. Given the global scale of disrespectful care, these low-cost solutions hold promise for improving the quality of care women receive during labor and delivery.

SmartUAV’sDelivery System using Fingerprint Authentication

In general, it is not possible to complete the delivery of the package competently because the main challenge is insufficient smart technology to identify the user for a package authentication. Therefore, fingerprint authentication is one of the intelligent authentication ideas of the package used as one solution to the above reference problem. The model should be properly prepared with regard to behavioral design in order to incorporate the UAV transport system in cities. The drone activity preparation and fingerprint authentication model for providing solutions is suggested in this regard. In terms of the computing time of the UAV and the optimality difference, the experimental results indicate a feasible solution and provide an efficient solution model.