Alexa, Who Am I Speaking To?: Understanding Users’ Ability to Identify Third-Party Apps on Amazon Alexa

Many Internet of Things devices have voice user interfaces. One of the most popular voice user interfaces is Amazon’s Alexa, which supports more than 50,000 third-party applications (“skills”). We study how Alexa’s integration of these skills may confuse users. Our survey of 237 participants found that users do not understand that skills are often operated by third parties, that they often confuse third-party skills with native Alexa functions, and that they are unaware of the functions that the native Alexa system supports. Surprisingly, users who interact with Alexa more frequently are more likely to conclude that a third-party skill is a native Alexa function. The potential for misunderstanding creates new security and privacy risks: attackers can develop third-party skills that operate without users’ knowledge or masquerade as native Alexa functions. To mitigate this threat, we make design recommendations to help users better distinguish native functionality and third-party skills, including audio and visual indicators of native and third-party contexts, as well as a consistent design standard to help users learn what functions are and are not possible on Alexa.

Application of Interpretative Structural Modeling (ISM) to Determine Port Waste Management Strategies for African Swine Fever (ASF) Prevention at Tanjung Priok Port

African Swine Fever (ASF) is one of the infectious diseases affecting swine with high mortality rate. Disease transmission occurs direct and indirect. Indirect transmission through feed, virus contaminated object and swill feeding produced by ships. Ships berthing in the port of Tanjung Priok mostly comes or transits from a country which ASF exist. Among those ships, some discharge their garbage and take over into the final dumping site without any further treatment. There are many institution and a third parties involved in garbage management in the port of Tanjung Priok. This research aims is to identify an obstacle, actors and strategies in managing garbage from the ships to prevent ASF spread in the port of Tanjung Priok using Interpretative Structural Modelling (ISM). The results of this research shows the biggest obstacle in managing garbage from the ships, in order to prevent ASF spread in the port of Tanjung Priok is the absence of standard operating procedures (SOP), The most important actor is Indonesia Port Corporation II and the most important strategy is develop an integrated SOP for ship waste management. is to develop an integrated SOP for ship waste management.

How to Stop a Fight - A Qualitative Video Analysis of How Third-parties De-escalate Real-life Interpersonal Conflicts in Public

Objective: While previous research agrees that third-parties often manage to de-escalate interpersonal conflicts when they intervene, we still know little about how they achieve this influence. The aim of the current study is to address this gap in the literature by investigating how third-parties de-escalate conflicts. Method: We conduct a two-part qualitative analysis of CCTV footage of 48 real-life conflicts from the streets of Amsterdam. The first part consists of an inductive analysis of CCTV-footage investigating the typical sequence of de-escalatory interventions. The second part consists of a deductive coding based on the findings from part 1 of the analysis. Results: We identify an ideal-typical model of de-escalation consisting of three phases: objection, separation, and placation. This model describes how third-parties adapt their intervention to the reaction of the antagonists of the conflict through a contingency principle: when the current phase of intervention fails to de-escalate the conflict, the third-party proceeds to the following phase of the model. We also identify observable intervention behaviors that are characteristic of each of the three phases. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that there is not one way to de-escalate a conflict, but rather that third-parties are successful because they adapt their intervention to the situation at hand. The findings of this study imply that if we want to get closer to understanding when third-party interventions are effective, we need to acknowledge the complexity of these interventions and move beyond the action/inaction dichotomy.

Conflict Management in the Workplace

Conflict is a component of interpersonal interactions, and therefore natural in the workplace. While neither inevitable nor intrinsically bad, conflict is commonplace. Conflicts may arise in different forms, exist between and among different levels of the organizational hierarchy, and involve supervisors, peers, or subordinates, as well as customers, clients, suppliers, and other stakeholders. The central idea of conflict management is that organizations can improve in the way conflict is managed by accepting conflict as part of organizational dynamics and by learning to deal with it effectively and efficiently. Given the ubiquity of conflict, it is perhaps unsurprising that the study of its management and resolution has become a popular topic in the last decades, particularly in the fields of management, human resources, and psychology. The aim of this article is to cover current topics in the area of conflict management in the workplace. To do so, the article is divided into different sections. In the different sections of the article, the reader will find academic sources on conflict and conflict behavior, types of conflict in the workplace at different levels, such as interpersonal, team, and intergroup, and a variety of resolution strategies, particularly negotiation and mediation, covering interventions by supervisors, colleagues, and (internal and external) third parties. Further, studies on the link between diversity, culture, and conflict, mistreatment in the workplace, and conflict in specific contexts, such as family business or start-ups, are presented. This article concludes with a collection of works on conflict management systems and tools to measure and evaluate conflict behavior in organizations. The sections included were chosen given the relevance from an academic point of view as well as from a practitioner perspective, where these aspects all are inevitable parts of the understanding of organizational conflict at different levels of complexity, and from understanding these conflicts and the conflict behavior to third parties. Complexity also adds in specific types, as harassment and bullying, often related to diversity and inclusion in organizations, and in specific contexts, as start-ups or family businesses, both rapidly growing fields of academic interest and of high importance to the global economy. Conflict management should also be understood as a system, as the alignment of different possible actors and interventions is essential for effective prevention and intervention. The article ends giving a closer look at validated instruments of use in research and practice to assess conflict behaviors. Regarding the methodology, a systematic approach was followed to select the works appearing in this bibliography. The following keywords were included in the search: “conflict resolution,” “conflict management,” “workplace conflict,” “conflict resolution,” “relationship conflict,” “leader conflict,” “conflict process,” “interpersonal conflict,” “conflict dynamic,” “negotiation,” and “mediation.” Articles were gathered from the academic databases Scopus and Web of Science, and their titles and abstracts were reviewed against the authors’ selection criteria.

Third-party punishers do not compete to be chosen as partners in an experimental game

Third-party punishment is thought to act as an honest signal of cooperative intent and such signals might escalate when competing to be chosen as a partner. Here, we investigate whether partner choice competition prompts escalating investment in third-party punishment. We also consider the case of signalling via helpful acts to provide a direct test of the relative strength of the two types of signals. Individuals invested more in third-party helping than third-party punishment and invested more in both signals when observed compared to when investments would be unseen. We found no clear effect of partner choice (over and above mere observation) on investments in either punishment or helping. Third-parties who invested more than a partner were preferentially chosen for a subsequent Trust Game although the preference to interact with the higher investor was more pronounced in the help than in the punishment condition. Third-parties who invested more were entrusted with more money and investments in third-party punishment or helping reliably signalled trustworthiness. Individuals who did not invest in third-party helping were more likely to be untrustworthy than those who did not invest in third-party punishment. This supports the conception of punishment as a more ambiguous signal of cooperative intent compared to help.

Lessons from UNCITRAL for Reforming the South African Legal Framework Concerning Security Rights in Movable Property

This article analyses the South African legal framework governing security rights in movable property with the view to inspire law reform. The analysis is based on a comparison of the current South African framework with the UNCITRAL Legislative Guide on Secured Transactions, a soft-law instrument containing international best practice. The problematic aspects of the South African framework benchmarked against the UNCITRAL Guide are: (1) not having a common legal framework that equally applies to all types of (including quasi-) real security transactions; (2) the scope of the current framework not being comprehensive (inclusive) enough; (3) not having an efficient enough method of creating the security right; (4) the current publicity method, particularly concerning special notarial bonds, being overly cumbersome and not providing effective public notice to third parties; and (5) the current enforcement measures potentially not being the most efficient. Regarding each of these problem areas, the article makes proposals on how the South African legislature could reform the current framework into one that is legally efficient and in step with international best practice.

An Adaptive Trust Model Based on Fuzzy Logic

In cooperative environments is common that agents delegate tasks to each other to achieve their goals since an agent may not have the capabilities or resources to achieve its objectives alone. However, to select good partners, the agent needs to deal with information about the abilities, experience, and goals of their partners. In this situation, the lack or inaccuracy of information may affect the agent's judgment about a given partner; and hence, increases the risk to rely on an untrustworthy agent. Therefore, in this work, we present a trust model that combines different pieces of information, such as social image, reputation, and references to produce more precise information about the characteristics and abilities of agents. An important aspect of our trust model is that it can be easily configured to deal with different evaluation criteria. For instance, as presented in our experiments, the agents are able to select their partners by availability instead of the expertise level. Besides, the model allows the agents to decide when their own opinions about a partner are more relevant than the opinions received from third parties, and vice-versa. Such flexibility can be explored in dynamic scenarios, where the environment and the behavior of the agents might change constantly.

Blockchain Technology and Healthcare Applications

Blockchain technology (BCT) is an evolving digital technology that changes digital operations' dimensions by conducting distributed ledger transactions without the involvement of third parties. The chapter aims to examine the use of BCT in healthcare and develop a hierarchical theoretical framework. The framework is based on the stakeholder principle and exposes BC's effect on smart healthcare. Its decentralised existence is an ideal catalyst for the much-needed transition toward well-organised healthcare as it solves the most pressing issues.