A Survey of Expectations About the Role of Robots in Robot-Assisted Therapy for Children with ASD: Ethical Acceptability, Trust, Sociability, Appearance, and Attachment.

The use of robots in therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) raises issues concerning the ethical and social acceptability of this technology and, more generally, about human-robot interaction. However, usually philosophical papers on the ethics of human-robot-interaction do not take into account stakeholders' views; yet it is important to involve stakeholders in order to render the research responsive to concerns within the autism and autism therapy community. To support responsible research and innovation in this field, this paper identifies a range of ethical, social and therapeutic concerns, and presents and discusses the results of an exploratory survey that investigated these issues and explored stakeholders' expectations about this kind of therapy. We conclude that although in general stakeholders approve of using robots in therapy for children with ASD, it is wise to avoid replacing therapists by robots and to develop and use robots that have what we call supervised autonomy. This is likely to create more trust among stakeholders and improve the quality of the therapy. Moreover, our research suggests that issues concerning the appearance of the robot need to be adequately dealt with by the researchers and therapists. For instance, our survey suggests that zoomorphic robots may be less problematic than robots that look too much like humans.

Tourism at the Crossroads between Well-Being, Public Health and the Environment: Panel Data Evidence from the European Union.

The recent pandemic crisis led to a drop in tourism, and it highlighted the connection between tourism, healthcare, environmental concerns and well-being. In this context, the purpose of the research is to clarify the relationship between tourism, happiness, healthcare and environmental expenditure. Statistical data provided by the World Bank, Eurostat and the World Happiness Database from the EU27 countries, from 2000 to 2019, were used. In order to investigate the relationship between these indicators, the panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method was used. In the long run, happiness and environmental and healthcare expenditure have a statistically significant and positive impact on tourism arrivals and receipts. It follows that a 1% increase in happiness supports between 4% and 9% of international tourism, while a 1% increase in environmental expenditure supports an increase of 2% in international tourism. Additionally, there is a significant interaction between happiness and either environmental or healthcare expenditure in the long run. This means that increasing happiness diminishes the effect of the later on tourism arrivals and receipts. No short-term relationship was identified between arrivals and any of the above-mentioned variables. In the same context, healthcare expenditure has a negative short-term effect on tourism receipts. The research contributes to the literature by suggesting that increasing national happiness, healthcare and environmental expenditure has a beneficial spillover effect on tourism arrivals and receipts in the long run.

Self-Efficacy, Job Satisfaction and Teacher Well-Being in the K-12 Educational System.

Teacher job satisfaction and well-being have a significant impact on educational outcomes, considering that teaching is the main objective of the educational process. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between teacher job satisfaction and four main categories of determinants: self-efficacy, relational aspects (colleague collaboration, student behavior, school management), work-related aspects (administrative workload, teaching tasks), and working conditions, in order to identify various implications for teachers' well-being. The study employs a survey delivered to 658 K-12 (pre-university) teachers, from the North-West region of Romania. We used factorial analysis and a structural equation model to test eight proposed hypotheses. The results showed that self-efficacy, promotion, positive student behavior, and working conditions have significant effects on job satisfaction. These factors influence job satisfaction and well-being in the teaching profession because they ensure a positive work environment in which teachers and students thrive, thus leading to higher levels of involvement from teachers, students, and parents alike. An efficient work environment decreases attrition, burnout, emotional exhaustion, and teacher turnover, while increasing job satisfaction, well-being, and teacher retention.

The Relative Effects of Economic Growth, Environmental Pollution and Non-Communicable Diseases on Health Expenditures in European Union Countries.

National and global health policies are increasingly recognizing the key role of the environment in human health development, which is related to its economic and social determinants, such as income level, technical progress, education, quality of jobs, inequality, education or lifestyle. Research has shown that the increase of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita can provide additional funds for health but also for environmental protection. However, often, economic growth is associated with the accelerated degradation of the environment, and this in turn will result in an exponential increase in harmful emissions and will implicitly determine the increasing occurrence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), mainly cardiovascular diseases, cancers and respiratory diseases. In this paper, we investigate the role and effects of economic growth, environmental pollution and non-communicable diseases on health expenditures, for the case of EU (European Union) countries during 2000-2014. In order to investigate the long-term and the short-term relationship between them, we have employed the Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method. Using the Pedroni-Johansen cointegration methods, we found that the variables are cointegrated. The findings of this study show that economic growth is one of the most important factors influencing the health expenditures both in the long- and short-run in all the 28 EU countries. With regards to the influence of CO2 emissions on health expenditure, we have found a negative impact in the short-run and a positive impact on the long-run. We have also introduced an interaction between NCDs and environmental expenditure as independent variable, a product variable. Finally, we have found that in all the three estimated models, the variation in environmental expenditure produces changes in NCDs' effect on health expenditure.

Do infants perceive the social robot Keepon as a communicative partner?

This study investigates if infants perceive an unfamiliar agent, such as the robot Keepon, as a social agent after observing an interaction between the robot and a human adult. 23 infants, aged 9-17 month, were exposed, in a first phase, to either a contingent interaction between the active robot and an active human adult, or to an interaction between an active human adult and the non-active robot, followed by a second phase, in which infants were offered the opportunity to initiate a turn-taking interaction with Keepon. The measured variables were: (1) the number of social initiations the infant directed toward the robot, and (2) the number of anticipatory orientations of attention to the agent that follows in the conversation. The results indicate a significant higher level of initiations in the interactive robot condition compared to the non-active robot condition, while the difference between the frequencies of anticipations of turn-taking behaviors was not significant.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Make a Fruit Salad with Probo, the Social Robot: An Interaction Study.

Social robots are thought to be motivating tools in play tasks with children with autism spectrum disorders. Thirty children with autism were included using a repeated measurements design. It was investigated if the children's interaction with a human differed from the interaction with a social robot during a play task. Also, it was examined if the two conditions differed in their ability to elicit interaction with a human accompanying the child during the task. Interaction of the children with both partners did not differ apart from the eye-contact. Participants had more eye-contact with the social robot compared to the eye-contact with the human. The conditions did not differ regarding the interaction elicited with the human accompanying the child.