Do You Ever Get Off Track in a Conversation? The Conversational System’s Anatomy and Evaluation Metrics

Conversational systems are now applicable to almost every business domain. Evaluation is an important step in the creation of dialog systems so that they may be readily tested and prototyped. There is no universally agreed upon metric for evaluating all dialog systems. Human evaluation, which is not computerized, is now the most effective and complete evaluation approach. Data gathering and analysis are evaluation activities that need human intervention. In this work, we address the many types of dialog systems and the assessment methods that may be used with them. The benefits and drawbacks of each sort of evaluation approach are also explored, which could better help us understand the expectations associated with developing an automated evaluation system. The objective of this study is to investigate conversational agents, their design approaches and evaluation metrics. This approach can help us to better understand the overall process of dialog system development, and future possibilities to enhance user experience. Because human assessment is costly and time consuming, we emphasize the need of having a generally recognized and automated evaluation model for conversational systems, which may significantly minimize the amount of time required for analysis.

Investigating the Relationship between Governance and Key Processes of the Iran IoT Innovation System

Despite the emergence of unique opportunities for social-industrial growth and development resulting from the use of the Internet of Things (IoT), lack of a well-posed IoT governance will cause serious threats on personal privacy, public safety, industrial security, and dubious data gathering by unauthorized entities. Furthermore, adopting a systemic governance approach, particularly for the IoT innovation system, requires a precise clarification on the concept and scope of IoT governance. In this study, by employing the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach, the role of governance in the Iran IoT innovation system is investigated. Contacting respondents across the seven industries, including Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Healthcare, Transportation, Oil and Gas, Energy, Agriculture, and Banking over the course of three months, the authors performed statistical analysis on 319 fulfilled questionnaires using SPPS and Smart PLS software. Findings show that all IoT-related TIS processes have been affected by IoT governance functions. The main result of this study is the proposition of particular governance functions, including policy-making, regulation, facilitation, and service provision with more notable impact on the indicators of the key processes in the IoT-based TIS.

Distance-Entropy: An Effective Indicator for Selecting Informative Data

Smart agriculture is inseparable from data gathering, analysis, and utilization. A high-quality data improves the efficiency of intelligent algorithms and helps reduce the costs of data collection and transmission. However, the current image quality assessment research focuses on visual quality, while ignoring the crucial information aspect. In this work, taking the crop pest recognition task as an example, we proposed an effective indicator of distance-entropy to distinguish the good and bad data from the perspective of information. Many comparative experiments, considering the mapping feature dimensions and base data sizes, were conducted to testify the validity and robustness of this indicator. Both the numerical and the visual results demonstrate the effectiveness and stability of the proposed distance-entropy method. In general, this study is a relatively cutting-edge work in smart agriculture, which calls for attention to the quality assessment of the data information and provides some inspiration for the subsequent research on data mining, as well as for the dataset optimization for practical applications.

The Mediating Role of Policy-Related Factors in the Relationship between Practice of Waste Generation and Sustainable Construction Waste Minimisation: PLS-SEM

As the construction industry grows, it produces large volumes of construction waste, which has a tremendous environmental impact and generates public concern in the neighbouring towns. The construction industry generates a significant volume of waste and faces a challenge with poor construction waste minimisation in order to prevent adverse environmental and dumping impacts worldwide. In developing countries, regional waste management systems have increased problems. Environmental pollution (air, water, and soil) and human health issues are caused by waste produced in a country as a result of different cultural, social, and religious activities. Prior studies were reviewed to choose dimensions and items for the data gathering instrument. A pilot test was conducted to identify potential questionnaire adjustments, and hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). A total of 220 Malaysian construction professionals answered the survey, which yielded the results. Five hypotheses have direct correlations based on the findings, three of which have a significant effect. Furthermore, the findings reveal that policy-related factors mediate the relationship between improving factors and sustainable construction waste minimisation. In contrast, they did not mediate the relationship between current practices/generation and sustainable construction waste management. The established framework can help improve construction waste management and help achieve global sustainable development goals. The data reveal that adopting preventive plans to reduce construction waste is one of the most important aspects of enhancing profitability. This study could aid construction industry players in evaluating waste management components during the construction and design stages of a building project.

Transnational Parenthood and Migrant Subjective Well-Being in Italy

Transnational parents are migrant mothers and fathers who have at least one child left behind in the home country. Despite their non-negligible prevalence in many destination countries, scarcity of data on the topic has caused a lack of attention to this phenomenon in both policy and scholarship. In particular, little is known about how the interplay between migration and family relations at a distance affects the individual well-being of both migrant parents and their left-behind children, especially in a European context. This article evaluates the subjective well-being of migrant couples currently residing in Italy who have children left behind, compared with childless migrants and with migrant parents living with their children in Italy. Multivariate logistic regression applied to individual-level data from Istat's Survey on Social condition and integration of foreign citizens, 2011–2012, shows that transnational parents experienced lower levels of self-rated health compared with migrants with different family statuses and that the well-being loss associated with transnational parenthood is strongly gendered. Controlling for individual characteristics, socio-economic conditions, the presence of minor children, and migration background, our analysis demonstrates that men's subjective wellbeing did not vary based on their family status while transnational mothers experienced significantly lower well-being compared with childless migrant women. Our research suggests the need for adopting a transnational approach to migration starting from data gathering, for instance through the design and implementation of multi-sited and retrospective surveys.

The French domestic "sanitary pass" did not solve Covid-19 vaccination inequities in France

The French sanitary pass led to an increase in vaccination rates in France, but local heterogeneities in vaccination rates remain. To identify potential determinants of these heterogeneities and how the French sanitary pass influenced them, we used a data-driven approach on exhaustive nationwide data, gathering 181 socio-economic and geographic factors. Our analysis reveals that, both before and after the introduction of the French sanitary pass, factors with the largest impact are related to poverty, with the most deprived areas having greater than 10 times the odds of being among the districts with lower vaccination rates.

Integration of an ICU visualization dashboard (i-Dashboard) as a platform to facilitate multidisciplinary rounds: A cluster randomized trial (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Multidisciplinary rounds (MDRs) are scheduled, patient-focused communication mechanisms among multidisciplinary providers in the intensive care unit (ICU). OBJECTIVE i-Dashboard is a custom-developed visualization dashboard that supports 1) key information retrieval and reorganization, 2) time-series data and 3) display on large touchscreens during MDRs. The present study aimed to evaluate the performance, including the efficiency of pre-rounding data gathering, communication accuracy and information exchange, and clinical satisfaction of integrating i-Dashboard as a platform to facilitate MDRs. METHODS A cluster randomized trial was performed in two surgical ICUs at a university hospital. Study participants included all multidisciplinary care team members. The performances and clinical satisfaction of i-Dashboard during MDRs were compared with those of the established electronic medical record (EMR) through direct observation and questionnaire survey. RESULTS Between April 26, 2021, and July 18, 2021, 78 and 91 MDRs were performed with the established EMR and i-Dashboard, respectively. For pre-rounding data gathering, the median (interquartile range [IQR]) time was 10.4 (9.1-11.8) and 4.6 (3.5-5.8) minutes using the established EMR and i-Dashboard (P<.001), respectively. During MDRs, data misrepresentations were significantly less frequent with i-Dashboard (median [IQR]: 0 [0-0]) than with the established EMR (4 [3-5]; P<.001). Also, effective recommendations were significantly more frequent with i-Dashboard than with the established EMR (P<.001). The questionnaire results revealed that participants favored using i-Dashboard in association with the enhancement of care plan development and team participation during MDRs. CONCLUSIONS i-Dashboard increases the efficiency in data gathering. Displaying i-Dashboard on large touchscreens in MDRs may enhance communication accuracy, information exchange and clinical satisfaction. The design concepts of i-Dashboard may help develop visualization dashboards that are more applicable for ICU MDRs. CLINICALTRIAL ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04845698; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04845698

What Prevents You to Plug in to Online Surveys?

In today's world, which has been administered by computers and artificial intelligence in many areas, online data gathering has become an inevitable way of collecting data. Many researchers have preferred online surveying, considering the advantages of this method over the classical ones. Hence, the factors that may affect the response rate of online surveying have become a prominent research topic. In line with the popularity of this issue, the purpose of this chapter was to clarify the concept of online surveys; give information about their types, advantages, and usage; and investigate the factors that affect the participants' response behaviors. Besides the discussions on the theoretical framework of online surveying, an online survey aiming to determine the factors affecting the participation in online surveying was administered to a group of people to investigate the response behaviors thoroughly. The findings revealed that rs might affect ants' response behaviors to online surveys in various ways radically.