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Item The veridical Near-Death Experience Scale: construction and a first validation with human and artificial raters(Frontiers Media S A, 2025-10-16) Greyson B; Long J; Holden JM; Jourdan J-P; King RA; Mays S; Mays R; Rivas T; Tassell-Matamua N; van Lommel P; Woollacott M; Tressoldi P; Panda RIntroduction: In this study, we describe the construction of the veridical Near-Death Experience Scale (vNDE Scale), a structured instrument for evaluating the evidential strength of perceptions reported during near-death experiences (NDEs), and its first validation by human and artificial raters. Methods: The construction was implemented using a typical Delphi Method. The first draft of the scale was evaluated by 13 experts in NDE, who were asked to suggest revisions and comments within a month for the first round and 20 days for the second round. Results: A general consensus was achieved on the second round on eight criteria related to the timing of the investigation, the medical and physical conditions, the level of third-person verification, and the number, type, and quality of perceptions reported by the near-death experiencer, to be rated on a four-level Likert scale. The validation phase consisted of the application of the vNDE Scale to 17 cases of potentially veridical NDEs by 11 independent human raters and three artificial raters based on Large-Language Models. In 14 of the17 cases (82.3%), the overall agreement between human and artificial judges was over 75%, considering the two close levels of evidence strength, i.e., moderate plus strong, low plus very low, or vice-versa. Discussion: The vNDE Scale is a practical tool for evaluating the evidential strength of perceptions reported by near-death experiencers.Item When AI Meets Livestreaming: Exploring the Impact of Virtual Anchor on Tourist Travel Intention(MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2025-09-03) Zhu Z; Hall CM; Tao L; Qin Z; Li Y; Khan J; Belk R; Zuo NThe development of Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has brought new ideas and opportunities to destination marketing. However, existing studies lack sufficient empirical research to explore the impact of AI anchors on tourists’ travel intentions. To fill this research gap, this study explores the influence of perceived anthropomorphism and perceived playfulness on tourists’ telepresence, inspiration, and travel intention in AI virtual anchor-based travel livestreaming. Through the analysis of 291 valid data sets, it was found that in AI virtual anchor-based travel livestreaming, perceived anthropomorphism positively affects telepresence but does not affect tourists’ inspiration. Playfulness positively affects tourists’ telepresence and inspiration in AI virtual anchor-based travel livestreaming. This study also found that neither perceived anthropomorphism nor perceived playfulness directly affects tourists’ travel intention, but both can be achieved through the mediating effect of telepresence. The findings provide empirical evidence of the value for tourism researchers and destinations in adopting AI technology for livestreaming.Item The Application of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data in the Food Industry(MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2023-12-18) Ding H; Tian J; Yu W; Wilson DI; Young BR; Cui X; Xin X; Wang Z; Li W; Yılmaz MTOver the past few decades, the food industry has undergone revolutionary changes due to the impacts of globalization, technological advancements, and ever-evolving consumer demands. Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data have become pivotal in strengthening food safety, production, and marketing. With the continuous evolution of AI technology and big data analytics, the food industry is poised to embrace further changes and developmental opportunities. An increasing number of food enterprises will leverage AI and big data to enhance product quality, meet consumer needs, and propel the industry toward a more intelligent and sustainable future. This review delves into the applications of AI and big data in the food sector, examining their impacts on production, quality, safety, risk management, and consumer insights. Furthermore, the advent of Industry 4.0 applied to the food industry has brought to the fore technologies such as smart agriculture, robotic farming, drones, 3D printing, and digital twins; the food industry also faces challenges in smart production and sustainable development going forward. This review articulates the current state of AI and big data applications in the food industry, analyses the challenges encountered, and discusses viable solutions. Lastly, it outlines the future development trends in the food industry.Item AI-based discovery of habitats from museum collections(Cell Press, 2024-04-02) Jones CB; Stock K; Perkins SEMuseum collection records are a source of historic data for species occurrence, but little attention is paid to the associated descriptions of habitat at the sample locations. We propose that artificial intelligence methods have potential to use these descriptions for reconstructing past habitat, to address ecological and evolutionary questions.Item Potential Predictors of Psychologically Based Stock Price Movements(MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2024-08) East R; Wright M; Stengos TInvestment in stocks is increasingly dependent on artificial intelligence (AI), but the psychological and social factors that affect stock prices may not be fully covered by the measures currently used in AI training. Here, we search for additional measures that may improve AI predictions. We start by reviewing stock price movements that appear to be affected by social and psychological factors, drawing on stock market behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic. A review of processes that are likely to produce such stock market movements follows: the disposition effect, momentum, and the response to information. These processes are then explained by regression to the mean, negativity bias, the availability mechanism, and information diffusion. Taking account of these processes and drawing on the consumer behaviour literature, we identify three factors which may not be covered by current AI training data that could affect stock prices: publicity in relation to capitalization, stock-holding penetration in relation to capitalization, and changes in the penetration of stock holding.Item The future of automated mobilities transition in Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Resource and Environmental Planning at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand. EMBARGOED until 15 October 2026.(Massey University, 2024-06-14) Shammut, MoayadAutomated vehicles (AVs) have been commonly regarded as disruptive technologies of the future with multifaceted implications for cities, economies, and people’s mobilities. However, fundamental to exploiting any benefit from AVs, is the issue of complexity in transitioning towards safer AVs in the future. This research aims to fill this gap in literature and explore the complexity of safer AVs transition in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). This research develops a theoretical framework based on the mobilities approach. The mobilities approach explains a wide array of economic, social, political practices and infrastructures that all involve various kinds of movement of people, information, or objects. This framework conceptualises AVs transition through three dimensions of mobilities. First, social mobilities explores how social meanings influence AVs transition. Second, governance mobilities explores how political-institutional factors influence AVs transition. Third, smart mobilities covers how technology risk and readiness influence AVs transition. This research used a qualitative approach by applying the case study of NZ. Data were collected through interviews with government officials and the AVs telecommunication industry, critically reviewing policy and planning documents as well as analysing social media. Firstly, social mobilities involved investigating how safety perceptions, feelings, and cultural practices of society influence AVs adoption. The content analysis of Facebook posts highlighted diversified social meanings for AVs safety, freedom, control and (un)employment that influence AVs adoption. This research found new evidence that developing trust in AVs is influenced by the reputation and achievements of both regulators and developers of technology. The informal driving style of NZ locals requires ‘remarkable competence’ from AVs to negotiate the road safely. NZ society tends to be inclined towards accepting lower-level AVs to maintain the ‘driving pleasure’, and to allow taking vehicle control during safety-critical scenarios. Secondly, governance mobilities involved investigating how political leadership, institutional capacity, and policy discourses steer AVs transition on the basis of their safety. The discourse and thematic analysis of government policy documents and interviews with government officials, revealed how different NZ governments steer AVs policy direction according to their political priorities. This research highlights the complexity of governing AVs due to the involvement of various government organisations with different hierarchical levels, fragmented responsibilities, high interdependencies and conflicting priorities. A strong political leadership coupled with investments for AVs could catalyse a smooth AVs transition. Thirdly, smart mobilities involved focussing on how infrastructure development, hardware, and software influence safe AVs uptake in the future. A focus group discussion and interviews with the AVs industry revealed the necessity for AVs to operate without significant interaction with other road users due to safety risks concerning object classification, GPS positioning, connectivity, and cybersecurity. Findings revealed various potential scenarios for surveillance and exploitation of AV users’ privacy including tracking their mobility habits and data monetisation. NZ roading network requires considerable adjustments to existing (physical and digital) infrastructure. Future infrastructure development may help ease introducing AVs in NZ, especially through developing collaboration between and across tech-industry and the government, to ensure safer uptake of AVs in the future. This research finds that achieving driving autonomy is complex. Transitioning towards safe AVs is dependent on a multitude of different types of factors including social meanings and practices, institutional cultures and norms, strategic visions, political leadership, various public and private sector organisations, technology readiness and enabling infrastructure, as well as influential pioneering actors. This research challenges the traditional technical rhetoric that assumes AVs capable to be deployed ‘everywhere’ and ‘under all conditions’, and rather argues for greater understanding of the complexity of real-life regulatory and urban environments within a specific country context. This research concludes that a successful transition towards safer automated mobility systems will require a holistic understanding of the complexities and interrelationships among the three ‘mobilities’ dimensions, which (each and collectively) significantly influence AVs transition in the future. All in all, the use of the mobilities paradigm in this thesis has been valuable in terms of revealing how the transition towards safer AVs is complex, entangled, heterogenous, and cannot be understood in silos. Existing research on AVs falls short in terms of capturing the complexity of AVs transition from these collective perspectives, hence the contribution of this research to the field. This overall thesis contributes to planning practice in terms of providing insights into a future-focused, long-term, strategic planning for the transition of AVs in NZ. Crucially, this thesis highly recommends the flexibility and openness of planners as AVs transition will occur outside the extant planning processes.Item The evolution of bacterial genome assemblies - where do we need to go next?(OAE Publishing Inc., 2022-04-12) Altermann E; Tegetmeyer HE; Chanyi RM; Ventura MGenome sequencing has fundamentally changed our ability to decipher and understand the genetic blueprint of life and how it changes over time in response to environmental and evolutionary pressures. The pace of sequencing is still increasing in response to advances in technologies, paving the way from sequenced genes to genomes to metagenomes to metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). Our ability to interrogate increasingly complex microbial communities through metagenomes and MAGs is opening up a tantalizing future where we may be able to delve deeper into the mechanisms and genetic responses emerging over time. In the near future, we will be able to detect MAG assembly variations within strains originating from diverging sub-populations, and one of the emerging challenges will be to capture these variations in a biologically relevant way. Here, we present a brief overview of sequencing technologies and the current state of metagenome assemblies to suggest the need to develop new data formats that can capture the genetic variations within strains and communities, which previously remained invisible due to sequencing technology limitations.Item Careering’ – toward radicalism in radical times: Links to human security and sustainable livelihoods(SAGE Publications, 2024-08-13) Hopner V; Carr SCIn this Age of the Anthropocene, the world of work is being radically disrupted by mass precarity, rising wage and income inequality, habitat destruction, and the rise of artificial intelligence. Facing such insecurity, people, we show, are careering toward radical ways of making a living. They range from radical professionals to social media influencing and environmental activism. Human security is fundamentally enhanced by sustainable livelihoods, and we explore ways not only to de-radicalise, but also to accept and embrace radical careering, if and whenever it serves the purpose of making people's livelihoods more sustainable for society, economies, and ecosystems. The article concludes by introducing an Index of Sustainable Livelihoods (SL-I). Success to the successful. The Sustainable Livelihoods Index (SL-I) is designed to be a ‘visible hand’ for end-users, including career counsellors, students, and workers undergoing career transitions, by Corporate Responsibility Officers, and by government ministries supporting just workforce transitions into sustainable livelihoods.Item Evolving and co-evolving meta-level reasoning strategies for multi-agent collaboration : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand(Massey University, 2024) Alshehri, Mona Abdulrahman MThis research presents a novel hybrid evolutionary algorithm for generating meta-level reasoning strategies through computational graphs to solve multi-agent planning and collaboration problems in dynamic environments using only a sparse training set. We enhanced Genetic Network Programming (GNP) by reducing its reliance on randomness, using conflict extractions and optimal search in computational mechanisms to explore nodes more systematically. We incorporated three algorithms into the GNP core. Firstly, we used private conflict kernels to extract conflict-generating structures from graph solutions, which enhances selection, crossover, and mutation operations. Secondly, we enhanced the GNP algorithm by incorporating optimal search and merged Conflict Directed A* with GNP to reduce the search branching factor. We call our novel algorithm Conflict-Directed A* with Genetic Network Programming (CDA*-GNP), which identifies the most effective combination of processing nodes within the graph solution. Additionally, we investigated the use of a chromosome structure with multiple subprograms of varying sizes that the algorithm automatically adjusts. Thirdly, we applied Conflict-Directed A* to a genetically co-evolving heterogeneous cooperative system. A set of agents with diversified computational node composition is evolved to identify the best collection of team members and to efficiently prevent conflicting members from being in the same team. Also, we incorporated methods to enhance the population diversity in each proposed algorithm. We tested the proposed algorithms using four cooperative multi-agent testbeds, including the prey and predator problem and the original tile world problem. More complex multi-agent and multi-task benchmarking testbeds were also introduced for further evaluation. As compared to existing variants of GNP, experimental results show that our algorithm has smoother and more stable fitness improvements across generations. Using the popular tile world problem as a benchmarking testbed, CDA*-GNP achieved better performance results than the best existing variant of GNP for solving the problem. Our algorithm returned 100% accuracy on the test set compared to only 83% reported in the literature. Moreover, CDA*-GNP is 78% faster in terms of the average number of generations and 74% faster in terms of the average number of fitness evaluations. In general, our findings suggest that a hybrid algorithm that balances the utilization of Genetic Network Programming and Optimal strategies leads to the evolution of high-quality solutions faster.Item Patients perceptions of Artificial Intelligence in diabetic eye screening(Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the Asia-Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology, 2022-05-01) Yap A; Wilkinson B; Chen E; Han L; Veghefi E; Galloway C; Squirrell DPurpose: Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is poised to revolutionize modern delivery of health care services. We set to evaluate the patient perspective of AI use in diabetic retinal screening. Design: Survey. Methods: Four hundred thirty-eight patients undergoing diabetic retinal screening across New Zealand participated in a survey about their opinion of AI technology in retinal screening. The survey consisted of 13 questions covering topics of awareness, trust, and receptivity toward AI systems. Results: The mean age was 59 years. The majority of participants identified as New Zealand European (50%), followed by Asian (31%), Pacific Islander (10%), and Maori (5%). Whilst 73% of participants were aware of AI, only 58% have heard of it being implemented in health care. Overall, 78% of respondents were comfortable with AI use in their care, with 53% saying they would trust an AI-assisted screening program as much as a health professional. Despite having a higher awareness of AI, younger participants had lower trust in AI systems. A higher proportion of Maori and Pacific participants indicated a preference toward human-led screening. The main perceived benefits of AI included faster diagnostic speeds and greater accuracy. Conclusions: There is low awareness of clinical AI applications among our participants. Despite this, most are receptive toward the implementation of AI in diabetic eye screening. Overall, there was a strong preference toward continual involvement of clinicians in the screening process. There are key recommendations to enhance the receptivity of the public toward incorporation of AI into retinal screening programs.
