Location Contexts of User Check-Ins to Model Urban Geo Life-Style Patterns

Geo-location data from social media offers us information, in new ways, to understand people''s attitudes and interests through their activity choices. In this paper, we explore the idea of inferring individual life-style patterns from activity-location choices revealed in social media. We present a model to understand life-style patterns using the contextual information (e. g. location categories) of user check-ins. Probabilistic topic models are developed to infer individual geo life-style patterns from two perspectives: i) to characterize the patterns of user interests to different types of places and ii) to characterize the patterns of user visits to different neighborhoods. The method is applied to a dataset of Foursquare check-ins of the users from New York City. The co-existence of several location contexts and the corresponding probabilities in a given pattern provide useful information about user interests and choices. It is found that geo life-style patterns have similar items—either nearby neighborhoods or similar location categories. The semantic and geographic proximity of the items in a pattern reflects the hidden regularity in user preferences and location choice behavior.     

How Safe Do Teenagers Behave on Facebook? An Observational Study

The substantial use of social network sites by teenagers has raised concerns about privacy and security. Previous research about behavior on social network sites was mostly based on surveys and interviews. Observational research overcomes problems inherent to this research method, for example social desirability. However, existing observational research mostly focuses on public profiles of young adults. Therefore, the current observation-study includes 1050 public and non-public Facebook-profiles of teenagers (13–18) to investigate (1) what kind of information teenagers post on their profile, (2) to what extent they protect this information using privacy-settings and (3) how much risky information they have on their profile. It was found that young people mostly post pictures, interests and some basic personal information on their profile. Some of them manage their privacy-settings as such that this information is reserved for friends'' eyes only, but a lot of information is accessible on the friends-of-friends'' pages. Although general risk scores are rather low, more detailed analyses show that teenagers nevertheless post a significant amount of risky information. Moreover, older teenagers and girls post more (risky) information while there are no differences in applying privacy settings. We found no differences in the Facebook behavior of teenagers enrolled in different education forms. Implications of these results are discussed.     

Studying User Income through Language,Behaviour and Affect in Social Media

Automatically inferring user demographics from social media posts is useful for both social science research and a range of downstream applications in marketing and politics. We present the first extensive study where user behaviour on Twitter is used to build a predictive model of income. We apply non-linear methods for regression, i.e. Gaussian Processes, achieving strong correlation between predicted and actual user income. This allows us to shed light on the factors that characterise income on Twitter and analyse their interplay with user emotions and sentiment, perceived psycho-demographics and language use expressed through the topics of their posts. Our analysis uncovers correlations between different feature categories and income, some of which reflect common belief e.g. higher perceived education and intelligence indicates higher earnings, known differences e.g. gender and age differences, however, others show novel findings e.g. higher income users express more fear and anger, whereas lower income users express more of the time emotion and opinions.     

基于“岗课赛证”四元融通的“食品微生物检验技术”教学改革与实践

“岗课赛证”四元融通是以课程为中心,将岗位、竞赛和职业证书有机融合于课程的一种教学改革模式。本课程团队以“岗课赛证”融合育人为抓手,通过以岗定课、以赛促课、以证融课的方式,全面实施高等职业院校“食品微生物检验技术”课程教学改革。基于企业岗位能力需求和典型工作任务,开展模块化、项目式教学;以技能竞赛和创新创业大赛为载体,赛教融合,激发学生成长的内生动力,提升学生职业综合素质;基于“1+X”证书制度,课程标准与技能证书标准对接,优化教学资源。通过近三年的教学实践,证实基于“岗课赛证”的“食品微生物检验技术”教学改革能够有效提高学生职业竞争力,满足企业和社会对岗位人才的需求,为职业教育食品专业相关课程改革提供参考。     

Recruitment of doctors to non-standard grades in the NHS: analysis of job advertisements and survey of advertisers

Objectives To estimate the proportion of advertised non-consultant hospital posts that do not conform to nationally recognised terms and conditions of service and to investigate why these posts exist, who fills them, and what the doctors in such jobs do.Design Analysis of job advertisements and a cross sectional survey of advertisers.Setting Job advertisements in one of the leading UK publications listing hospital doctor vacancies (BMJ Careers).Results Nearly a quarter of non-consultant posts advertised in the two study periods (23% and 21%) were for non-standard grade posts. A questionnaire was sent to the medical staffing officer for each post. Of 430 questionnaires sent out 192 (45%) were returned. 98 trusts said they advertised non-standard grades because there was no more funding from the deanery for approved posts and 75 because service needs could not be met by doctors in training grades. In 132 posts (69%) the post holder would be required to do on-call work, and 50 advertisers (26%) required on-call duty for 1 in 5 or more frequently, which would conflict with the European Working Time Directive. 131 advertisers (68%) expected the posts to be filled by doctors from outside the European Economic Area.Conclusions Non-standard grade posts are mostly being created to meet service requirements when there is no more funding for standard training posts and are expected to be filled by doctors from overseas. Doctors in such posts can be more easily exploited and their careers hindered. The Department of Health''s annual census should include non-standard grade doctors.     

The Metabolism and Growth of Web Forums

We view web forums as virtual living organisms feeding on user''s clicks and investigate how they grow at the expense of clickstreams. We find that (the number of page views in a given time period) and (the number of unique visitors in the time period) of the studied forums satisfy the law of the allometric growth, i.e., . We construct clickstream networks and explain the observed temporal dynamics of networks by the interactions between nodes. We describe the transportation of clickstreams using the function , in which is the total amount of clickstreams passing through node and is the amount of the clickstreams dissipated from to the environment. It turns out that , an indicator for the efficiency of network dissipation, not only negatively correlates with , but also sets the bounds for . In particular, when and when . Our findings have practical consequences. For example, can be used as a measure of the “stickiness” of forums, which quantifies the stable ability of forums to remain users “lock-in” on the forum. Meanwhile, the correlation between and provides a method to predict the long-term “stickiness” of forums from the clickstream data in a short time period. Finally, we discuss a random walk model that replicates both of the allometric growth and the dissipation function .     

Identifying Topics in Microblogs Using Wikipedia

Twitter is an extremely high volume platform for user generated contributions regarding any topic. The wealth of content created at real-time in massive quantities calls for automated approaches to identify the topics of the contributions. Such topics can be utilized in numerous ways, such as public opinion mining, marketing, entertainment, and disaster management. Towards this end, approaches to relate single or partial posts to knowledge base items have been proposed. However, in microblogging systems like Twitter, topics emerge from the culmination of a large number of contributions. Therefore, identifying topics based on collections of posts, where individual posts contribute to some aspect of the greater topic is necessary. Models, such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), propose algorithms for relating collections of posts to sets of keywords that represent underlying topics. In these approaches, figuring out what the specific topic(s) the keyword sets represent remains as a separate task. Another issue in topic detection is the scope, which is often limited to specific domain, such as health. This work proposes an approach for identifying domain-independent specific topics related to sets of posts. In this approach, individual posts are processed and then aggregated to identify key tokens, which are then mapped to specific topics. Wikipedia article titles are selected to represent topics, since they are up to date, user-generated, sophisticated articles that span topics of human interest. This paper describes the proposed approach, a prototype implementation, and a case study based on data gathered during the heavily contributed periods corresponding to the four US election debates in 2012. The manually evaluated results (0.96 precision) and other observations from the study are discussed in detail.     

The Centriolar Satellite Protein AZI1 Interacts with BBS4 and Regulates Ciliary Trafficking of the BBSome

Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS) is a well-known ciliopathy with mutations reported in 18 different genes. Most of the protein products of the BBS genes localize at or near the primary cilium and the centrosome. Near the centrosome, BBS proteins interact with centriolar satellite proteins, and the BBSome (a complex of seven BBS proteins) is believed to play a role in transporting ciliary membrane proteins. However, the precise mechanism by which BBSome ciliary trafficking activity is regulated is not fully understood. Here, we show that a centriolar satellite protein, AZI1 (also known as CEP131), interacts with the BBSome and regulates BBSome ciliary trafficking activity. Furthermore, we show that AZI1 interacts with the BBSome through BBS4. AZI1 is not involved in BBSome assembly, but accumulation of the BBSome in cilia is enhanced upon AZI1 depletion. Under conditions in which the BBSome does not normally enter cilia, such as in BBS3 or BBS5 depleted cells, knock down of AZI1 with siRNA restores BBSome trafficking to cilia. Finally, we show that azi1 knockdown in zebrafish embryos results in typical BBS phenotypes including Kupffer''s vesicle abnormalities and melanosome transport delay. These findings associate AZI1 with the BBS pathway. Our findings provide further insight into the regulation of BBSome ciliary trafficking and identify AZI1 as a novel BBS candidate gene.     

A women's health shop: a unique experiment.

A women''s health shop in Edinburgh was open for 16 months to provide information and advice in a non-clinical setting and to allow an interchange between informal and formal care in the community. Staffed by nurses, it was visited by 5664 women and 400 men, an average of 24 people each working day. The most popular topics for discussion were women''s health problems, and 17% of women had a personal discussion with the nurse. The shop provided a useful and popular service and offered a practical method of furthering the concept of health promotion.     

Words,antibodies and their interactions

Jerne’s idiotypic network theory stresses the importance of antibody-to-antibody interactions and provides possible explanations for self-tolerance and increased diversity in the immune repertoire. In this paper, we use an immune network model to build a user profile for adaptive information filtering. Antibody-to-antibody interactions in the profile’s network model correlations between words in text. The user profile has to be able to represent a user’s multiple interests and adapt to changes in them over time. This is a complex and dynamic engineering problem with clear analogies to the immune process of self-assertion. We present a series of experiments investigating the effect of term correlations on the user’s profile performance. The results show that term correlations can encode additional information, which has a positive effect on the profile’s ability to assess the relevance of documents to the user’s interests and to adapt to changes in them.     

Simulating the Dynamics of Scale-Free Networks via Optimization

We deal here with the issue of complex network evolution. The analysis of topological evolution of complex networks plays a crucial role in predicting their future. While an impressive amount of work has been done on the issue, very little attention has been so far devoted to the investigation of how information theory quantifiers can be applied to characterize networks evolution. With the objective of dynamically capture the topological changes of a network''s evolution, we propose a model able to quantify and reproduce several characteristics of a given network, by using the square root of the Jensen-Shannon divergence in combination with the mean degree and the clustering coefficient. To support our hypothesis, we test the model by copying the evolution of well-known models and real systems. The results show that the methodology was able to mimic the test-networks. By using this copycat model, the user is able to analyze the networks behavior over time, and also to conjecture about the main drivers of its evolution, also providing a framework to predict its evolution.     

Trend of Narratives in the Age of Misinformation

Social media enabled a direct path from producer to consumer of contents changing the way users get informed, debate, and shape their worldviews. Such a disintermediation might weaken consensus on social relevant issues in favor of rumors, mistrust, or conspiracy thinking—e.g., chem-trails inducing global warming, the link between vaccines and autism, or the New World Order conspiracy. Previous studies pointed out that consumers of conspiracy-like content are likely to aggregate in homophile clusters—i.e., echo-chambers. Along this path we study, by means of a thorough quantitative analysis, how different topics are consumed inside the conspiracy echo-chamber in the Italian Facebook. Through a semi-automatic topic extraction strategy, we show that the most consumed contents semantically refer to four specific categories: environment, diet, health, and geopolitics. We find similar consumption patterns by comparing users activity (likes and comments) on posts belonging to these different semantic categories. Finally, we model users mobility across the distinct topics finding that the more a user is active, the more he is likely to span on all categories. Once inside a conspiracy narrative users tend to embrace the overall corpus.     

The Meaning of Adherence When Behavioral Risk Patterns Vary: Obscured Use- and Method-Effectiveness in HIV-Prevention Trials

Background

Recently promising trials of innovative biomedical approaches to prevent HIV transmission have been reported. Participants'' non-adherence to the prevention methods complicates the analyses and interpretation of trial results. The influence of variable sexual behaviors within and between participants of trials further obscures matters. Current methodological and statistical approaches in HIV-prevention studies, as well as ongoing debates on contradictory trial results, may fail to accurately address these topics.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Through developing a cumulative probability model of infection within HIV prevention trials, we demonstrate how adherence and sexual behavior patterns impact the overall estimate of effectiveness, the effectiveness of prevention methods as a function of adherence, and conclusions about methods'' true effectiveness. Applying the model to summary-level data from the CAPRISA trial, we observe markedly different values for the true method effectiveness of the microbicide, and show that if the gel would have been tested among women with slightly different sexual behavior patterns, conclusions might well have been that the gel is not effective.

Conclusions/Significance

Relative risk and adherence analyses in HIV prevention trials overlook the complex interplay between adherence and sexual behavior patterns. Consequently, they may not provide accurate estimates of use- and method-effectiveness. Moreover, trial conclusions are contingent upon the predominant sexual behavior pattern of participants and cannot be directly generalized to other contexts. We recommend researchers to (re)examine their data and use the cumulative probability model to estimate the true method effectiveness, which might contribute to resolving current questions about contradictory trial results. Moreover, we suggest taking into account the issues raised in the design of future trials and in population models estimating the impact of large-scale dissemination of prevention methods. Comprehension of the topics described will help readers to better interpret (apparently contradictory) trial outcomes.     

Hope for Haiti?

Haiti, one of the world''s five poorest nations, gets international attention because of the number of refugees who leave by boat in search of a better future. The 80,000 inhabitants of Ile de la Gonave are neglected, even in Haiti--there is no government medical post, and facilities in the health posts run by missions are minimal. Typhoid and cholera epidemics threaten the island. Médecins Sans Frontières plans to send staff and supplies and train local health workers.     

Finite element analysis of a new customized composite post system for endodontically treated teeth

This paper investigated the mechanical behavior of a new customized post system built up with a composite framework presently utilized for crowns, bridges, veneers and inlay/onlay dental restorations. The material has been shaped so to follow perfectly the profile of the root canal in order to take advantage of the better mechanical properties of composites with respect to metallic alloys commonly used for cast posts.

The analysis has been carried out with 3D finite element models previously validated on the basis of experimental work. The new post system has been compared to a variety of restorations using either prefabricated or cast posts. The structural efficiency of the new restoration has been evaluated for an upper incisor under different loading conditions (mastication, bruxism, impact).

Results prove that maximum stress values in restored teeth are rather insensitive to post types and materials. However, the new customized composite restoration allows to reduce significantly the stresses inside the dentinal regions where conservative clinical interventions are not possible.     

Emergence of scale-free leadership structure in social recommender systems

The study of the organization of social networks is important for the understanding of opinion formation, rumor spreading, and the emergence of trends and fashion. This paper reports empirical analysis of networks extracted from four leading sites with social functionality (Delicious, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube) and shows that they all display a scale-free leadership structure. To reproduce this feature, we propose an adaptive network model driven by social recommending. Artificial agent-based simulations of this model highlight a "good get richer" mechanism where users with broad interests and good judgments are likely to become popular leaders for the others. Simulations also indicate that the studied social recommendation mechanism can gradually improve the user experience by adapting to tastes of its users. Finally we outline implications for real online resource-sharing systems.     

Fracture resistance to treated teeth using known endodontics techniques in Indian patients

Teeth with crown structure less than 50% can be restored. Therefore, it is of interest to evaluate an in vitro efficacy of Zirconia post, Glass fiber post, polyethylene-woven fiber posts, and Quartz posts. Forty eight recently extracted mandibular first premolar teeth were randomly grouped in to 4 different groups with 12 samples in each group. After endodontic treatment samples in all groups underwent post preparation followed by restoration with respective posts. The mean fracture resistance (Newton) were 463.5 ± 14.3 (Group I) 425.2± 23.5 (group II), 410.4± 18.6 (Group 3) and 385.2 ± 14.2 (group 4). Data shows that Zirconia post had highest fracture resistance compared to other tested groups.     

消费者视角下用户评论对公众再生水消费意愿的影响机制——来自眼动实验的证据

再生水回用是解决水资源紧缺的有效途径,对缓解区域水资源紧缺和促进环境保护有重要的意义。公众作为再生水的直接使用者,其对再生水的态度是再生水回用项目实施的关键环节。再生水作为一种再生资源产品,价格是消费者使用再生水必须支付的货币成本,用户评论是消费者了解再生水,评估再生水质量的最直接途径。为了更加清晰的辨明价格、用户评论对公众再生水使用意愿的影响机制,以消费者为视角,模拟再生水购买场景,以刺激-机体-反应模型为理论框架,采用3(实验分组：高价格、中价格和低价格)×2(评论分类：质量评论和环境评论)的眼动追踪实验,探究公众再生水购买决策过程中的行为机理,并进一步分析不同价格下公众再生水使用行为的差异。研究结果表明：(1)公众再生水使用意愿在中价格组最高,低价格组次之,高价格组最低。(2)公众决策过程中,不论是再生水质量评价,还是环境评价,均偏向于注视消极评论内容。在低价格组中,公众对评论内容的关注程度最高,高价格组最低,中价格组中,公众更关心再生水对环境的影响。(3)消费过程中,公众对评论内容的关注会影响消费情绪从而影响再生水使用意愿。(4)再生水价格在公众消费决策过程中发挥重要的调节作用...     

The Spread of Sleep Loss Influences Drug Use in Adolescent Social Networks

Troubled sleep is a commonly cited consequence of adolescent drug use, but it has rarely been studied as a cause. Nor have there been any studies of the extent to which sleep behavior can spread in social networks from person to person to person. Here we map the social networks of 8,349 adolescents in order to study how sleep behavior spreads, how drug use behavior spreads, and how a friend''s sleep behavior influences one''s own drug use. We find clusters of poor sleep behavior and drug use that extend up to four degrees of separation (to one''s friends'' friends'' friends'' friends) in the social network. Prospective regression models show that being central in the network negatively influences future sleep outcomes, but not vice versa. Moreover, if a friend sleeps ≤7 hours, it increases the likelihood a person sleeps ≤7 hours by 11%. If a friend uses marijuana, it increases the likelihood of marijuana use by 110%. Finally, the likelihood that an individual uses drugs increases by 19% when a friend sleeps ≤7 hours, and a mediation analysis shows that 20% of this effect results from the spread of sleep behavior from one person to another. This is the first study to suggest that the spread of one behavior in social networks influences the spread of another. The results indicate that interventions should focus on healthy sleep to prevent drug use and targeting specific individuals may improve outcomes across the entire social network.