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Background: Endotracheal intubation for inhalation anaesthesia in pigs is not considered a good anaesthetic method as it is technically difficult because of oral anatomy and the presence of excess tissues in the oropharyngeal region. Moreover, the major limitation of inhalation anaesthesia is that it requires the use of a cumbersome and costly anaesthetic machine, including a suitable breathing system and vaporizer and is the exposure of operating-room personnel to the pollution in the ambient air. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to evaluate the effect of propofol, ketamine and their combination 'Ketofol' as a TIVA in pigs. Methods: The study was conducted in eighteen piglets of either sex. The piglets were randomly divided into three groups with six animals in each group. All the three groups were premedicated with Atropine sulphate @ 0.04 mg/kg body weight and Xylazine Hydrochloride @ 1 mg/kg body weight I.M. and Medazolam @ 0.5 mg/kg body weight I.M. with minimum forcible restraint as preanaesthetic. In group-I, propofol @ 5 mg/kg body weight, in group-II, ketamine @ 5 mg/kg body weight and in group-III, ketofol @ 4 mg/kg body weight was administered intravenously for induction after 15 minutes of pre-anaesthetic administration. Surgical anaesthesia was maintained for 90 minutes in all three groups viz. group-I, group-II and group-III with propofol @ 2.5 mg/kg, ketamine @ 2.5 mg/kg and ketofol @ 2 mg/kg body weight respectively by intermittent bolus injection (IBI) technique. Clinical and cardiopulmonary profiles were evaluated before administration of the anaesthetic agent (0 minutes) then at 15, 30, 60 and 90 minutes during and after administration of anaesthetic agents to evaluate their anaesthetic effect. Result: The study revealed that induction time (IT), duration of analgesia (DOA), duration of recumbency (DOR) and recovery time (RT) interval showed better result in the combination of ketamine and propofol group as compared to propofol and ketamine-induced individual group. The temperature and respiration rate was significantly decreased in all the groups at 30 minutes during TIVA whereas heart rate was significantly increased in all the groups at 15 minutes. The combination of ketamine and propofol group showed a consistent diastolic pressure and systolic pressure during the entire period of anaesthesia. The SPO2 in the ketamineinduced group showed a significant decrease (P<0.01) as compared to the propofol and ketofol group. It was concluded that the anaesthetic drug combinations resulted in smooth and uneventful induction with mild cardiopulmonary depressions and rapid recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractConversational agents are growing in popularity, and as such they must provide a good user experience and meet the needs of the users. Yet, how to measure the user experience in the conversational AI scenario remains an open and urgent question to be solved, which may hinder further empirical studies on human-agent interactions. In fact, there have been very few studies that explore how users perceive interacting with these conversational agents, which is important to ensure their sustainability. Accordingly, in this work, we used a subjective technique by following a measurement approach to develop a standardized measurement instrument/scale called the Conversational Agent Scale for User Experience. In terms of the methodology, we used a mixed-method approach involving an iterative process spanning across six different user studies (three qualitative and three quantitative) at different points of time for the purpose of dimension identification, item generation and subsequent item refinements. As a part of the qualitative studies we conducted a Systematic Literature Review, semi-structured interviews with users of conversational agents, and expert interviews. For the quantitative studies a lab-based experiment was performed for the pre-test, followed by two online surveys as a part of pilot testing and scale development. The qualitative studies initially identified a total of 13 distinct user experience dimensions and 418 measurement items. Finally, the Exploratory Factor Analysis as a part of the main survey resulted in 9 user experience dimensions (practicality perception, proficiency, humanness, sentiment, robustness, etiquette & mannerism, personality, anthropomorphism, and ease of use) and 34 measurement items. This was supplemented by conducting another Confirmatory Factor Analysis for establishing the reliability and validity of the proposed scale, together with checking the model-fit indices. All the 9 dimensions had sufficient validity, and a reasonable level of statistical reliability. Some of the user experience dimensions like humanness, personality, anthropomorphism, and etiquette & mannerism show the uniqueness of the conversational AI scenario from the traditional usage factors used commonly while evaluating graphical user interface-based systems. This work fills the gap of a lack of research on how to classify and measure the conversational experience of users and provides a reference for practitioners and designers in developing these agents and continuously improving the usage experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]