Integration of sustainable street furniture in Tunisian urban public spaces

In order to develop the quality of urban spaces, street furniture seems to be the significant element that defines the city’s social attraction points. It stimulates outdoor spaces because of its location, buildings and sidewalk meet. This study explores the issues of design criteria that introduce sustainability into street furniture design in urban public space in Tunisia. This research is based on the role of street furniture and its importance in urban public spaces, and the possibility of supplementing a recycling design. This paper aims to explore the necessary criteria to design sustainable street furniture in order to present its importance in a way that helps to ameliorate the quality of living in urban areas and cities.

Self-grooming promotes social interaction in mice via chemosensory communication

Self-grooming is a stereotyped behavior displayed by nearly all animals. Among other established functions, self-grooming is implicated in social communication in some animals. However, whether self-grooming specifically influences behaviors of nearby individuals has not been directly tested, partly due to the technical challenge of inducing self-grooming in a reliable and temporally controllable manner. We recently found that optogenetic activation of dopamine D3 receptor expressing neurons in the ventral striatal islands of Calleja robustly induces orofacial grooming in mice. Using this optogenetic manipulation, here we demonstrate that observer mice display social preference for grooming over non-grooming mice regardless of biological sex. Moreover, grooming-induced social attraction depends on volatile chemosensory cues broadcasted from grooming mice. Collectively, our study establishes self-grooming as a means of promoting social interaction among mice via volatile cues, suggesting an additional benefit for animals to allocate a significant amount of time to this behavior.

Population ecology of seabirds in Mexican Islands at the California Current System

The Baja California Pacific Islands (BCPI) is a seabird hotspot in the southern California Current System supporting 129 seabird breeding populations of 23 species and over one million birds annually. These islands had a history of environmental degradation because of invasive alien species, human disturbance, and contaminants that caused the extirpation of 27 seabird populations. Most of the invasive mammals have been eradicated and breeding colonies have been restored with social attraction techniques. We have systematic information for most of the breeding populations since 2008. To assess population trends, we analyzed data and present results for 19 seabird species on ten island groups. The maximum number of breeding pairs for each nesting season was used to estimate the population growth rate (λ) for each species at every island colony. We performed a nonparametric bootstrapping to assess whether seabird breeding populations are increasing or decreasing. San Benito, Natividad, and San Jerónimo are the top three islands in terms of abundance of breeding pairs. The most widespread species is Cassin’s Auklet with 14 colonies. Twenty-three populations of 13 species are significantly increasing while eight populations of six species are decreasing. We did not find statistical significance for 30 populations, however, 20 have λ>1 which suggest they are growing. Seven of the 18 species for which we estimated a regional population trend are significantly increasing, including three surface-nesting species: Brown Pelican, Elegant Tern and Laysan Albatross, and four burrow-nesting species: Ainley’s and Ashy Storm-Petrels, and Craveri’s and Guadalupe Murrelet. Our results suggest that the BCPI support healthy and growing populations of seabirds that have shown to be resilient to extreme environmental conditions such as the “Blob”, and that such resilience has been strengthen from conservation and restoration actions such as the eradication of invasive mammals and social attraction techniques.

Influencers on Social Media as References: Understanding the Importance of Parasocial Relationships

Audiences’ purchase intentions are vital to the success of influencers on social media. This research examined how interpersonal attraction enhances parasocial relationships (PSRs) between influencers and audiences on social media, and how such parasocial relationships, in turn, affect audiences’ continuance intention. Interpersonal attraction contains three dimensions: task attraction, social attraction, and physical attraction. The results indicated that the three dimensions of interpersonal attraction significantly affected PSRs. The results also showed that informational influence and perceived credibility strengthened the relationship between PSRs and purchase intentions. Moreover, online comments positively moderated the effect of PSRs on informational influence and perceived credibility. The implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

Non-random Co-occurrence of Juvenile White Sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) at Seasonal Aggregation Sites in Southern California

Many terrestrial and aquatic taxa are known to form periodic aggregations, whether across life history or solely during specific life stages, that are generally governed by the availability and distribution of resources. Associations between individuals during such aggregation events are considered random and not driven by social attraction or underlying community structure. White sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) have been described as a species that exhibits resource-driven aggregative behaviors across ontogenetic stages and juvenile white sharks are known to form aggregations at specific nursery sites where individuals may remain for extended periods of time in the presence of other individuals. We hypothesized juvenile white sharks form distinct communities during these critical early phases of ontogeny and discuss how a tendency to co-occur across life stages may be seeded by the formation of these communities in early ontogeny. We present results from a series of social network analyses of 86 juvenile white sharks derived from 6 years of passive acoustic telemetry data in southern California, demonstrating the likelihood of association of tagged juvenile white sharks is greater when sharks are of similar size-classes. Individuals in observed networks exhibited behaviors that best approximated fission-fusion dynamics with spatiotemporally unstable group membership. These results provide evidence of possible non-resource driven co-occurrence and community structure in juvenile white sharks during early life stages.

How anthropomorphism affects trust in intelligent personal assistants

PurposeWith the continuous improvement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) based on AI have seen unprecedented growth. The present study investigates the effect of anthropomorphism on cognitive and emotional trust and the role of interpersonal attraction in the relationship between anthropomorphism and trust.Design/methodology/approachA structural equation modeling technique with a sample of 263 consumers was used to analyze the data and test the conceptual model.FindingsThe findings illustrate that the anthropomorphism of IPAs did not directly induce trust. Anthropomorphism led users to assign greater social attraction and task attraction to IPAs, which in turn reinforced cognitive or emotional trust in these assistants. Compared with task attraction, social attraction was more powerful in strengthening both cognitive trust and emotional trust. The present study broadens the current knowledge about interpersonal attraction and its role in AI usage by examining two types of interpersonal attraction of IPAs.Originality/valueAs trust plays an important role in the rapid development of human–computer interaction, it is imperative to understand how consumers perceive these intelligent agents and build or improve trust. Prior studies focused on the impact of anthropomorphism on overall trust in AI, and its underlying mechanism was underexplored. The findings can help marketers and designers better understand how to enhance users' trust in their anthropomorphic products, especially by increasing social interactive elements or promoting communication.

Agent-based analysis of contagion events according to sourcing locations

The first human infected with the Covid-19 virus was traced to a seafood market in Wuhan, China. Research shows that there are comparable types of viruses found in different and mutually distant areas. This raises several questions: what if the virus originated in another location? How will future waves of epidemics behave if they originate from different locations with a smaller/larger population than Wuhan? To explore these questions, we implement an agent-based model within fractal cities. Cities radiate gravitational social attraction based on their Zipfian population. The probability and predictability of contagion events are analyzed by examining fractal dimensions and lacunarity. Results show that weak gravitational forces of small locations help dissipate infections across country quicker if the pathogen had originated from that location. Gravitational forces of large cities help contain infections within them if they are the starting locations for the pathogen. Greater connectedness and symmetry allow for a more predictable epidemic outcome since there are no obstructions to spreading. To test our hypothesis, we implement datasets from two countries, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and two diseases, Ebola and Covid-19, and obtain the same results.