To understand the influence of trust on use choice in human-robot interaction via experimental investigation. Background: The general assumption that trusting a robot leads to using that robot has been previously identified, often by asking participants to choose between manually completing a task or using an automated aid. Our work further evaluates the relationship between trust and use choice and examines factors impacting choice. Method: An experiment was conducted wherein participants rated a robot on a trust scale, then made decisions about whether to use that robotic agent or a human agent to complete a task. Participants provided explicit reasoning for their choices. Results: While we found statistical support for the "trust leads to use" relationship, qualitative results indicate other factors are important as well. Conclusion: Results indicated that while trust leads to use, use is also heavily influenced by the specific task at hand. Users more often chose a robot for a dangerous task where loss of life is likely, citing safety as their primary concern. Conversely, users chose humans for the mundane warehouse task, mainly citing financial reasons, specifically fear of job and income loss for the human worker. Application: Understanding the factors driving use choice is key to appropriate interaction in the field of human-robot teaming.
Biofilms play an important role in nutrient cycling and retention in streams and rivers, altering transport of nitrate (NO3−) to downstream ecosystems. However, increased nutrient availability may alter biofilm composition and function.
We assessed effects of chronic N pollution on biofilm function by incubating initially thin (i.e., early stage) and well‐developed biofilms in laboratory chambers at four NO3− concentrations (0, 0.5, 5 and 25 mg N/L).
For initially thin biofilms, elevated NO3− resulted in greater photosynthesis, higher chlorophyll contents and greater biomass accrual. Elevated NO3− also increased heterotrophic activity by increasing extracellular enzyme activity and heterotrophic respiration. However, well‐developed biofilms had lower growth and were less responsive to added elevated NO3−.
Uptake kinetics showed a consistent decrease in cell‐specific maximum uptake (Umax) with elevated NO3− treatments. As a result, ambient NO3− uptake at experimental NO3− concentrations was essentially constant per unit photosynthesis across the range of NO3− concentration and uptake was apparently driven by biofilm growth.
Across treatments, initially thin biofilms shifted from a diatom‐dominated community to a community dominated by green algae and cyanobacteria. However, well‐developed biofilms were not affected by chronic NO3− in terms of biomass or enzyme activities.
Our results show that chronic NO3− loading alters biofilm growth patterns, physiology, algal community composition and relationship between algae and bacteria. Taken together, these results provide a set of mechanisms to explain the efficiency loss of uptake as a function of stream nitrogen concentration seen in field studies.
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