Introduction: Chatbots are increasingly utilized in education, offering real-time, personalized communication. While research has explored technical aspects of chatbots, user experience remains under-investigated. This study examines a model for evaluating user experience and satisfaction with chatbots in higher education. Methodology: A four-factor model (information quality, system quality, chatbot experience, user satisfaction) was proposed based on prior research. An alternative two-factor model emerged through exploratory factor analysis, focusing on “Chatbot Response Quality” and “User Experience and Satisfaction with the Chatbot.” Surveys were distributed to students and faculty at a university in Ecuador to collect data. Confirmatory factor analysis validated both models. Results: The two-factor model explained a significantly greater proportion of the data’s variance (55.2%) compared to the four-factor model (46.4%). Conclusion: This study suggests that a simpler model focusing on chatbot response quality and user experience is more effective for evaluating chatbots in education. Future research can explore methods to optimize these factors and improve the learning experience for students.

The food supply chain in South Africa faces significant challenges related to transparency, traceability, and consumer trust. As concerns about food safety, quality, and sustainability grow, there is an increasing need for innovative solutions to address these issues. Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising tool to enhance transparency and accountability across various industries, including the food sector. This study sought to explore the potential of blockchain technology in revolutionizing through promoting transparency that enable the achievement of sustainable food supply chain infrastructure in South Africa. The study found that blockchain technology used in food supply chain creates an immutable and decentralized ledger of transactions that has the capacity to provide real-time, end-to-end visibility of food products from farm to table. This increased transparency can help mitigate risks associated with food fraud, contamination, and inefficiencies in the supply chain. The study found that blockchain technology can be leveraged to enhance supply chain efficiency and trust among stakeholders. This technology used and/or applied in South Africa can reshape the agricultural sector by improving production and distribution processes. Its integration in the food supply chain infrastructure can equally improve data management and increase transparency between farmers and food suppliers.There is need for policy-makers and scholars in the fields of service delivery and food security to conduct more research in blockchain technology and its roles in creating a more transparent, efficient, and trustworthy food supply chain infractructure that address food supply problems in South Africa. The paper adopted a qualitative methodology to collect data, and document and content analysis techniques were used to interpret collected data. 

In this research, we employed multivariate statistical methods to investigate the perspectives of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) concerning the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulation and their apprehensions related to EPR compliance. The EPR regulation, which places the responsibility of waste management on producers, has significant financial and administrative implications, particularly for SMEs. A sample of 114 businesses was randomly selected, and the collected data underwent comprehensive analysis. Our findings highlight that a notable proportion of businesses (44.7%) possess knowledge of the EPR regulation’s provisions, whereas only a marginal fraction (1.8%) lacks sufficient familiarity. We also explored the interplay between opinions on the EPR regulation and concerns regarding its financial and administrative implications. Our results establish a significant correlation between EPR regulation opinions and concerns, with adverse opinions prominently influencing concerns, particularly regarding financial burdens and administrative workloads. These outcomes, derived from the application of multivariate statistical techniques, provide valuable insights for enhancing the synergy between environmental regulations and business practices. EPR regulation significantly affects SMEs in terms of financial, administrative, and legal obligations, thus our study highlights that policymakers may need to consider additional support mechanisms to alleviate the regulatory burden on SMEs, fostering a more effective and sustainable implementation of the EPR regulation.

The rapid expansion of smart cities has led to the widespread deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices for real-time data collection and urban optimization. However, these interconnected systems face critical cybersecurity risks, including data tampering, unauthorized access, and privacy breaches. This paper proposes a blockchain-based framework designed to enhance the security, integrity, and resilience of IoT data in smart city environments. Leveraging a private blockchain, the system ensures decentralized, tamper-proof data storage, and transaction verification through digital signatures and a lightweight Proof of Work consensus mechanism. Smart contracts are employed to automate access control and respond to anomalies in real time. A Python-based simulation demonstrates the framework’s effectiveness in securing IoT communications. The system supports rapid transaction validation with minimal latency and enables timely detection of anomalous patterns through integrated machine learning. Evaluations show that the framework maintains consistent performance across diverse smart city components such as transportation, healthcare, and building security. These results highlight the potential of the proposed solution to enable secure, scalable, and real-time IoT ecosystems for modern urban infrastructures.

Background: In an increasingly globalized world, public health is a challenge in the future of health systems. Nursing is a fundamental profession in health systems and the purpose of the study is to quantify the scientific production in global public health carried out by nursing to demonstrate its competence, capacity and specialization in this subject. Methods: A bibliometric study was carried out to understand the scientific production of public health nursing in WoS. A total of 17,545 documents were analyzed using Bibliometrix software in version 4.0.5. Results: A notable increase in production is observed over time, a sign of specialization and capacity. The theme focuses on three stages: hygiene and sanitation, infectious diseases and quality, prevention and non-communicable diseases coinciding with the real social needs of each moment. Most of the production is in English and produced by countries with developed economies. Nursing is aligned with current public health needs. Conclusions: Bibliometrics is a good method to quantify scientific production. The results show extensive scientific production in public health nursing, which translates into extensive knowledge of public health by nursing. There is a growth in production in accordance with time as well as an adaptation to the most current themes in accordance with population needs. Public health is an area of concern to countries and nursing can actively participate in studies, planning and leadership of health systems. Public health nursing should not be considered relegated to medicine but independent and of crucial importance to the “Onehealth” concept. Public, private and educational administrations must promote and support nursing research in public health, and it is not advisable to reduce the teaching load of global public health in nursing studies, in favor of the family and community environment.

In Industry 4.0, the business model innovation plays a crucial role in enabling organizations to stay competitive and capitalize on the opportunities presented by digital transformation. Industry 4.0 is driven by digitalization and characterized by integrating various emerging technologies. These technologies can potentially change traditional business models and create new value propositions for customers. This paper aims to analyze and review the research papers through a bibliometric approach scientifically. The data were extracted from reputable Clarivate Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection sources from 2010 to 2023 (June). However, the publication started in 2018 for the research fields. The results show that scientific publications on research domains have increased significantly from 2020. VOSviewer, R Language, and Microsoft Excel were utilized for analysis. Bibliometric and Scientometric approaches conducted to determine and explore the publication patterns with significant keywords, topical trends, and content clustering better discussions of the publication period. The visualization of the data set related to research trends of Industry 4.0 in relation to Business Model Innovation resulted in several co-occurrence clusters namely: 1) Business Model Innovation; 2) Industry 4.0; 3) Digital transformation; and 4) Technology implementation and analysis. The study results would identify worldwide research trends related to the research domains and recommendations for future research areas.