Sample records for user generated content

  1. Facilitating Student-Generated Content Using Web 2.0 Technologies

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, Eunbae

    2011-01-01

    Web 2.0 technologies have created a trend of user-generated content by supporting media production, collaboration, communication, and dissemination. User-generated content is translated into student-generated content (SGC) in education. SGC engages learners in an authentic project that fosters students' autonomy, creativity, and real-world…

  2. User-generated online health content: a survey of Internet users in the United Kingdom.

    PubMed

    O'Neill, Braden; Ziebland, Sue; Valderas, Jose; Lupiáñez-Villanueva, Francisco

    2014-04-30

    The production of health information has begun to shift from commercial organizations to health care users themselves. People increasingly go online to share their own health and illness experiences and to access information others have posted, but this behavior has not been investigated at a population level in the United Kingdom. This study aims to explore access and production of user-generated health content among UK Internet users and to investigate relationships between frequency of use and other variables. We undertook an online survey of 1000 UK Internet users. Descriptive and multivariate statistical analyses were used to interpret the data. Nearly one-quarter of respondents (23.7%, 237/1000) reported accessing and sharing user-generated health content online, whereas more than 20% (22.2%, 222/1000) were unaware that it was possible to do this. Respondents could be divided into 3 groups based on frequency of use: rare users (78.7%, 612/778) who accessed and shared content less than weekly, users (13.9%, 108/778) who did so weekly, and superusers (7.5%, 58/778) who did so on a daily basis. Superusers were more likely to be male (P<.001) and to be employed (P<.001), but there were no differences between the groups with respect to educational level (P=.99) or health status (P=.63). They were more likely to use the Internet for varied purposes such as banking and shopping (P<.001). Although this study found reasonably widespread access of user-generated online health content, only a minority of respondents reported doing so frequently. As this type of content proliferates, superusers are likely to shape the health information that others access. Further research should assess the effect of user-generated online content on health outcomes and use of health services by Internet users.

  3. Personalization of XML Content Browsing Based on User Preferences

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Encelle, Benoit; Baptiste-Jessel, Nadine; Sedes, Florence

    2009-01-01

    Personalization of user interfaces for browsing content is a key concept to ensure content accessibility. In this direction, we introduce concepts that result in the generation of personalized multimodal user interfaces for browsing XML content. User requirements concerning the browsing of a specific content type can be specified by means of…

  4. User-Generated Online Health Content: A Survey of Internet Users in the United Kingdom

    PubMed Central

    Ziebland, Sue; Valderas, Jose; Lupiáñez-Villanueva, Francisco

    2014-01-01

    Background The production of health information has begun to shift from commercial organizations to health care users themselves. People increasingly go online to share their own health and illness experiences and to access information others have posted, but this behavior has not been investigated at a population level in the United Kingdom. Objective This study aims to explore access and production of user-generated health content among UK Internet users and to investigate relationships between frequency of use and other variables. Methods We undertook an online survey of 1000 UK Internet users. Descriptive and multivariate statistical analyses were used to interpret the data. Results Nearly one-quarter of respondents (23.7%, 237/1000) reported accessing and sharing user-generated health content online, whereas more than 20% (22.2%, 222/1000) were unaware that it was possible to do this. Respondents could be divided into 3 groups based on frequency of use: rare users (78.7%, 612/778) who accessed and shared content less than weekly, users (13.9%, 108/778) who did so weekly, and superusers (7.5%, 58/778) who did so on a daily basis. Superusers were more likely to be male (P<.001) and to be employed (P<.001), but there were no differences between the groups with respect to educational level (P=.99) or health status (P=.63). They were more likely to use the Internet for varied purposes such as banking and shopping (P<.001). Conclusions Although this study found reasonably widespread access of user-generated online health content, only a minority of respondents reported doing so frequently. As this type of content proliferates, superusers are likely to shape the health information that others access. Further research should assess the effect of user-generated online content on health outcomes and use of health services by Internet users. PMID:24784798

  5. The Use of Social Media Networks and Mobile Phone Applications for Reporting Suspicious and Criminal Activities to Mass Transit Law Enforcement Agencies

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2013-12-01

    Media (IACP defines Social Media as the following:2  A category of Internet-based resources that integrate user - generated content and user ...Social Media—a category of Internet –based resources that integrate user - generated content and user participations. Includes Facebook, MySpace...reduction in crime is unresolved, warranting future study in this area. vi THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK vii TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION

  6. Mobilizing social media users to become advertisers: Corporate hashtag campaigns as a public health concern.

    PubMed

    Laestadius, Linnea I; Wahl, Megan M

    2017-01-01

    With the growing popularity of social media, corporate marketers are increasingly launching hashtag campaigns to encourage consumers to create branded user-generated content on their behalves. If successful, these campaigns may expand the reach of harmful marketing messages and capitalize on peer-effects among adolescents. To shed light on these novel corporate campaigns, we performed a case study of the user-generated Instagram content created in response to a hashtag campaign promoting the quick-service restaurant Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). We performed a content analysis of one week's worth of user-generated Instagram posts created with the hashtag #HowDoYouKFC between 24 April 2015-1 May 2015. Posts were coded to discern: (a) relevance to KFC as a brand and/or food; (b) themes in the post, (c) the content of images/videos, and (d) overall sentiment toward KFC. Posts that were deleted or made private during the study period were removed. Descriptive statistics were calculated to discern trends in post content. Instagram users created 196 posts with #HowDoYouKFC during the study period. After removing irrelevant and deleted/private posts, analysis of the 128 remaining user-generated posts revealed that 45% of posts were explicitly positive toward KFC and 39% lacked a specific stance or emotion related to KFC. Of the posts, 55% depicted KFC chicken and 65% included depictions of the brand hashtag on food packaging. Findings indicate that corporations are successfully converting individual social media users into positive advertisers for harmful products. Novel efforts are needed to counter corporate user-generated content campaigns.

  7. Social media as a space for support: Young adults' perspectives on producing and consuming user-generated content about diabetes and mental health.

    PubMed

    Fergie, Gillian; Hunt, Kate; Hilton, Shona

    2016-12-01

    Social media offer opportunities to both produce and consume content related to health experiences. However, people's social media practices are likely to be influenced by a range of individual, social and environmental factors. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore how engagement with user-generated content can support people with long-term health conditions, and what limits users' adoption of these technologies in the everyday experience of their health condition. Forty semi-structured interviews were conducted with young adults, aged between 18 and 30 years, with experience of diabetes or a common mental health disorder (CMHD). We found that the online activities of these young adults were diverse; they ranged from regular production and consumption ('prosumption') of health-related user-generated content to no engagement with such content. Our analysis suggested three main types of users: 'prosumers'; 'tacit consumers' and 'non-engagers'. A key determinant of participants' engagement with resources related to diabetes and CMHDs in the online environment was their offline experiences of support. Barriers to young adults' participation in online interaction, and sharing of content related to their health experiences, included concerns about compromising their presentation of identity and adherence to conventions about what content is most appropriate for specific social media spaces. Based on our analysis, we suggest that social media do not provide an unproblematic environment for engagement with health content and the generation of supportive networks. Rather, producing and consuming user-generated content is an activity embedded within individuals' specific health experiences and is impacted by offline contexts, as well as their daily engagement with, and expectations, of different social media platforms. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  8. Mobilizing social media users to become advertisers: Corporate hashtag campaigns as a public health concern

    PubMed Central

    Laestadius, Linnea I; Wahl, Megan M

    2017-01-01

    Objective With the growing popularity of social media, corporate marketers are increasingly launching hashtag campaigns to encourage consumers to create branded user-generated content on their behalves. If successful, these campaigns may expand the reach of harmful marketing messages and capitalize on peer-effects among adolescents. To shed light on these novel corporate campaigns, we performed a case study of the user-generated Instagram content created in response to a hashtag campaign promoting the quick-service restaurant Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). Methods We performed a content analysis of one week’s worth of user-generated Instagram posts created with the hashtag #HowDoYouKFC between 24 April 2015–1 May 2015. Posts were coded to discern: (a) relevance to KFC as a brand and/or food; (b) themes in the post, (c) the content of images/videos, and (d) overall sentiment toward KFC. Posts that were deleted or made private during the study period were removed. Descriptive statistics were calculated to discern trends in post content. Results Instagram users created 196 posts with #HowDoYouKFC during the study period. After removing irrelevant and deleted/private posts, analysis of the 128 remaining user-generated posts revealed that 45% of posts were explicitly positive toward KFC and 39% lacked a specific stance or emotion related to KFC. Of the posts, 55% depicted KFC chicken and 65% included depictions of the brand hashtag on food packaging. Conclusions Findings indicate that corporations are successfully converting individual social media users into positive advertisers for harmful products. Novel efforts are needed to counter corporate user-generated content campaigns. PMID:29942600

  9. Collective Intelligence Generation from User Contributed Content

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Solachidis, Vassilios; Mylonas, Phivos; Geyer-Schulz, Andreas; Hoser, Bettina; Chapman, Sam; Ciravegna, Fabio; Lanfranchi, Vita; Scherp, Ansgar; Staab, Steffen; Contopoulos, Costis; Gkika, Ioanna; Bakaimis, Byron; Smrz, Pavel; Kompatsiaris, Yiannis; Avrithis, Yannis

    In this paper we provide a foundation for a new generation of services and tools. We define new ways of capturing, sharing and reusing information and intelligence provided by single users and communities, as well as organizations by enabling the extraction, generation, interpretation and management of Collective Intelligence from user generated digital multimedia content. Different layers of intelligence are generated, which together constitute the notion of Collective Intelligence. The automatic generation of Collective Intelligence constitutes a departure from traditional methods for information sharing, since information from both the multimedia content and social aspects will be merged, while at the same time the social dynamics will be taken into account. In the context of this work, we present two case studies: an Emergency Response and a Consumers Social Group case study.

  10. Content-Based Personalization Services Integrating Folksonomies

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Musto, Cataldo; Narducci, Fedelucio; Lops, Pasquale; de Gemmis, Marco; Semeraro, Giovanni

    Basic content-based personalization consists in matching up the attributes of a user profile, in which preferences and interests are stored, with the attributes of a content object. The Web 2.0 (r)evolution has changed the game for personalization, from ‘elitary’ Web 1.0, written by few and read by many, to web content generated by everyone (user-generated content - UGC), since the role of people has evolved from passive consumers of information to that of active contributors.

  11. The dynamic evolution of social ties and user-generated content: a case study on a Douban group

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Shan, Siqing; Ren, Jie; Li, Cangyan

    2017-11-01

    As platforms based on user-generated content (UGC), social media platforms emphasise the social ties between users and user participation, which promote the communication and propagation of ideas and help to build and maintain relationships. However, many researchers have studied only predefined social networks, such as academic social networks. We believe that there are certain characteristics associated with the network's UGC worth evaluating. We conducted research in communities in which content attracts discussion and new members and examined the evolution patterns of social and content networks in a topic-oriented Douban group. Datasets of user and content information in communities of interest were collected through web crawler software. Networks based on social and content ties were constructed and analysed. We chose scale, density, centrality, average path length and cluster coefficient as measures for exploring the evolution and correlation of both types of networks. These findings are valuable for social media marketing and helpful in directing and controlling public opinion.

  12. Formal analysis and automatic generation of user interfaces: approach, methodology, and an algorithm.

    PubMed

    Heymann, Michael; Degani, Asaf

    2007-04-01

    We present a formal approach and methodology for the analysis and generation of user interfaces, with special emphasis on human-automation interaction. A conceptual approach for modeling, analyzing, and verifying the information content of user interfaces is discussed. The proposed methodology is based on two criteria: First, the interface must be correct--that is, given the interface indications and all related information (user manuals, training material, etc.), the user must be able to successfully perform the specified tasks. Second, the interface and related information must be succinct--that is, the amount of information (mode indications, mode buttons, parameter settings, etc.) presented to the user must be reduced (abstracted) to the minimum necessary. A step-by-step procedure for generating the information content of the interface that is both correct and succinct is presented and then explained and illustrated via two examples. Every user interface is an abstract description of the underlying system. The correspondence between the abstracted information presented to the user and the underlying behavior of a given machine can be analyzed and addressed formally. The procedure for generating the information content of user interfaces can be automated, and a software tool for its implementation has been developed. Potential application areas include adaptive interface systems and customized/personalized interfaces.

  13. Content Sharing Based on Personal Information in Virtually Secured Space

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sohn, Hosik; Ro, Yong Man; Plataniotis, Kostantinos N.

    User generated contents (UGC) are shared in an open space like social media where users can upload and consume contents freely. Since the access of contents is not restricted, the contents could be delivered to unwanted users or misused sometimes. In this paper, we propose a method for sharing UGCs securely based on the personal information of users. With the proposed method, virtual secure space is created for contents delivery. The virtual secure space allows UGC creator to deliver contents to users who have similar personal information and they can consume the contents without any leakage of personal information. In order to verify the usefulness of the proposed method, the experiment was performed where the content was encrypted with personal information of creator, and users with similar personal information have decrypted and consumed the contents. The results showed that UGCs were securely shared among users who have similar personal information.

  14. Capturing Public Opinion on Public Health Topics: A Comparison of Experiences from a Systematic Review, Focus Group Study, and Analysis of Online, User-Generated Content.

    PubMed

    Giles, Emma Louise; Adams, Jean M

    2015-01-01

    Capturing public opinion toward public health topics is important to ensure that services, policy, and research are aligned with the beliefs and priorities of the general public. A number of approaches can be used to capture public opinion. We are conducting a program of work on the effectiveness and acceptability of health promoting financial incentive interventions. We have captured public opinion on financial incentive interventions using three methods: a systematic review, focus group study, and analysis of online user-generated comments to news media reports. In this short editorial-style piece, we compare and contrast our experiences with these three methods. Each of these methods had their advantages and disadvantages. Advantages include tailoring of the research question for systematic reviews, probing of answers during focus groups, and the ability to aggregate a large data set using online user-generated content. However, disadvantages include needing to update systematic reviews, participants conforming to a dominant perspective in focus groups, and being unable to collect respondent characteristics during analysis of user-generated online content. That said, analysis of user-generated online content offers additional time and resource advantages, and we found it elicited similar findings to those obtained via more traditional methods, such as systematic reviews and focus groups. A number of methods for capturing public opinions on public health topics are available. Public health researchers, policy makers, and practitioners should choose methods appropriate to their aims. Analysis of user-generated online content, especially in the context of news media reports, may be a quicker and cheaper alternative to more traditional methods, without compromising on the breadth of opinions captured.

  15. Would you tell everyone this? Facebook conversations as health promotion interventions.

    PubMed

    Syred, Jonathan; Naidoo, Carla; Woodhall, Sarah C; Baraitser, Paula

    2014-04-11

    Health promotion interventions on social networking sites can communicate individually tailored content to a large audience. User-generated content helps to maximize engagement, but health promotion websites have had variable success in supporting user engagement. The aim of our study was to examine which elements of moderator and participant behavior stimulated and maintained interaction with a sexual health promotion site on Facebook. We examined the pattern and content of posts on a Facebook page. Google analytics was used to describe the number of people using the page and viewing patterns. A qualitative, thematic approach was used to analyze content. During the study period (January 18, 2010, to June 27, 2010), 576 users interacted 888 times with the site through 508 posts and 380 comments with 93% of content generated by users. The user-generated conversation continued while new participants were driven to the site by advertising, but interaction with the site ceased rapidly after the advertising stopped. Conversations covered key issues on chlamydia and chlamydia testing. Users endorsed testing, celebrated their negative results, and modified and questioned key messages. There was variation in user approach to the site from sharing of personal experience and requesting help to joking about sexually transmitted infection. The moderator voice was reactive, unengaged, tolerant, simplistic, and was professional in tone. There was no change in the moderator approach throughout the period studied. Our findings suggest this health promotion site provided a space for single user posts but not a self-sustaining conversation. Possible explanations for this include little new content from the moderator, a definition of content too narrow to hold the interest of participants, and limited responsiveness to user needs. Implications for health promotion practice include the need to consider a life cycle approach to online community development for health promotion and the need for a developing moderator strategy to reflect this. This strategy should reflect two facets of moderation for online health promotion interventions: (1) unengaged and professional oversight to provide a safe space for discussion and to maintain information quality, and (2) a more engaged and interactive presence designed to maintain interest that generates new material for discussion and is responsive to user requests.

  16. Essays on Social Media Fundraising and E-Commerce

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tan, Xue

    2017-01-01

    This dissertation has two components: social media fundraising and e-commerce. The first component of social media fundraising discusses social media users' charitable content generation in essay 1 and charitable giving in essay 2. In essay 1, we examine how reciprocity of followees affects social influence on users' charitable content generation.…

  17. A Procedural Content Generation-Based Framework for Educational Games: Toward a Tailored Data-Driven Game for Developing Early English Reading Skills

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hooshyar, Danial; Yousefi, Moslem; Lim, Heuiseok

    2018-01-01

    Automated content generation for educational games has become an emerging research problem, as manual authoring is often time consuming and costly. In this article, we present a procedural content generation framework that intends to produce educational game content from the viewpoint of both designer and user. This framework generates content by…

  18. Young adults' experiences of seeking online information about diabetes and mental health in the age of social media.

    PubMed

    Fergie, Gillian; Hilton, Shona; Hunt, Kate

    2016-12-01

    The Internet is a primary source of health information for many. Since the widespread adoption of social media, user-generated health-related content has proliferated, particularly around long-term health issues such as diabetes and common mental health disorders (CMHDs). To explore perceptions and experiences of engaging with health information online in a sample of young adults familiar with social media environments and variously engaged in consuming user-generated content. Forty semi-structured interviews were conducted with young adults, aged 18-30, with experience of diabetes or CMHDs. Data were analysed following a thematic networks approach to explore key themes around online information-seeking and content consumption practices. Although participants primarily discussed well-rehearsed approaches to health information-seeking online, particularly reliance on search engines, their accounts also reflected active engagement with health-related content on social media sites. Navigating between professionally produced websites and user-generated content, many of the young adults seemed to appreciate different forms of health knowledge emanating from varied sources. Participants described negotiating health content based on social media practices and features and assessing content heuristically. Some also discussed habitual consumption of content related to their condition as integrated into their everyday social media use. Technologies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube offer opportunities to consume and assess content which users deem relevant and useful. As users and organizations continue to colonize social media platforms, opportunities are increasing for health communication and intervention. However, how such innovations are adopted is dependent on their alignment with users' expectations and consumption practices. ©2015 The Authors. Health Expectations. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  19. Impact of Online User-Generated Content on Retailers and Manufacturers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kwark, Young

    2013-01-01

    Online user-generated content has been ubiquitous. Consumers are eager to not only listen to the other consumers but provide opinion to the public. The former reduces the consumers' uncertainty about products and the latter reduces the firms' uncertainty about consumers. We examine the effect of online product reviews, a most common form of…

  20. Online Community and User-Generated Content: Understanding the Role of Social Networks

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Oh, Jeong Ha

    2010-01-01

    Models of user generated content (UGC) creation such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube are facing robust growth accelerated by the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and standards. These business models offer a fascinating avenue for exploring the role of social influence online. This dissertation is motivated by the success of YouTube, which is…

  1. Would You Tell Everyone This? Facebook Conversations as Health Promotion Interventions

    PubMed Central

    Syred, Jonathan; Naidoo, Carla; Woodhall, Sarah C

    2014-01-01

    Background Health promotion interventions on social networking sites can communicate individually tailored content to a large audience. User-generated content helps to maximize engagement, but health promotion websites have had variable success in supporting user engagement. Objective The aim of our study was to examine which elements of moderator and participant behavior stimulated and maintained interaction with a sexual health promotion site on Facebook. Methods We examined the pattern and content of posts on a Facebook page. Google analytics was used to describe the number of people using the page and viewing patterns. A qualitative, thematic approach was used to analyze content. Results During the study period (January 18, 2010, to June 27, 2010), 576 users interacted 888 times with the site through 508 posts and 380 comments with 93% of content generated by users. The user-generated conversation continued while new participants were driven to the site by advertising, but interaction with the site ceased rapidly after the advertising stopped. Conversations covered key issues on chlamydia and chlamydia testing. Users endorsed testing, celebrated their negative results, and modified and questioned key messages. There was variation in user approach to the site from sharing of personal experience and requesting help to joking about sexually transmitted infection. The moderator voice was reactive, unengaged, tolerant, simplistic, and was professional in tone. There was no change in the moderator approach throughout the period studied. Conclusions Our findings suggest this health promotion site provided a space for single user posts but not a self-sustaining conversation. Possible explanations for this include little new content from the moderator, a definition of content too narrow to hold the interest of participants, and limited responsiveness to user needs. Implications for health promotion practice include the need to consider a life cycle approach to online community development for health promotion and the need for a developing moderator strategy to reflect this. This strategy should reflect two facets of moderation for online health promotion interventions: (1) unengaged and professional oversight to provide a safe space for discussion and to maintain information quality, and (2) a more engaged and interactive presence designed to maintain interest that generates new material for discussion and is responsive to user requests. PMID:24727742

  2. User-Generated Content, YouTube and Participatory Culture on the Web: Music Learning and Teaching in Two Contrasting Online Communities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Waldron, Janice

    2013-01-01

    In this paper, I draw on seminal literature from new media researchers to frame the broader implications that user-generated content (UGC), YouTube, and participatory culture have for music learning and teaching in online communities; to illustrate, I use examples from two contrasting online music communities, the Online Academy of Irish…

  3. Characterizing Social Interaction in Tobacco-Oriented Social Networks: An Empirical Analysis.

    PubMed

    Liang, Yunji; Zheng, Xiaolong; Zeng, Daniel Dajun; Zhou, Xingshe; Leischow, Scott James; Chung, Wingyan

    2015-06-19

    Social media is becoming a new battlefield for tobacco "wars". Evaluating the current situation is very crucial for the advocacy of tobacco control in the age of social media. To reveal the impact of tobacco-related user-generated content, this paper characterizes user interaction and social influence utilizing social network analysis and information theoretic approaches. Our empirical studies demonstrate that the exploding pro-tobacco content has long-lasting effects with more active users and broader influence, and reveal the shortage of social media resources in global tobacco control. It is found that the user interaction in the pro-tobacco group is more active, and user-generated content for tobacco promotion is more successful in obtaining user attention. Furthermore, we construct three tobacco-related social networks and investigate the topological patterns of these tobacco-related social networks. We find that the size of the pro-tobacco network overwhelms the others, which suggests a huge number of users are exposed to the pro-tobacco content. These results indicate that the gap between tobacco promotion and tobacco control is widening and tobacco control may be losing ground to tobacco promotion in social media.

  4. Characterizing Social Interaction in Tobacco-Oriented Social Networks: An Empirical Analysis

    PubMed Central

    Liang, Yunji; Zheng, Xiaolong; Zeng, Daniel Dajun; Zhou, Xingshe; Leischow, Scott James; Chung, Wingyan

    2015-01-01

    Social media is becoming a new battlefield for tobacco “wars”. Evaluating the current situation is very crucial for the advocacy of tobacco control in the age of social media. To reveal the impact of tobacco-related user-generated content, this paper characterizes user interaction and social influence utilizing social network analysis and information theoretic approaches. Our empirical studies demonstrate that the exploding pro-tobacco content has long-lasting effects with more active users and broader influence, and reveal the shortage of social media resources in global tobacco control. It is found that the user interaction in the pro-tobacco group is more active, and user-generated content for tobacco promotion is more successful in obtaining user attention. Furthermore, we construct three tobacco-related social networks and investigate the topological patterns of these tobacco-related social networks. We find that the size of the pro-tobacco network overwhelms the others, which suggests a huge number of users are exposed to the pro-tobacco content. These results indicate that the gap between tobacco promotion and tobacco control is widening and tobacco control may be losing ground to tobacco promotion in social media. PMID:26091553

  5. Recommending personally interested contents by text mining, filtering, and interfaces

    DOEpatents

    Xu, Songhua

    2015-10-27

    A personalized content recommendation system includes a client interface device configured to monitor a user's information data stream. A collaborative filter remote from the client interface device generates automated predictions about the interests of the user. A database server stores personal behavioral profiles and user's preferences based on a plurality of monitored past behaviors and an output of the collaborative user personal interest inference engine. A programmed personal content recommendation server filters items in an incoming information stream with the personal behavioral profile and identifies only those items of the incoming information stream that substantially matches the personal behavioral profile. The identified personally relevant content is then recommended to the user following some priority that may consider the similarity between the personal interest matches, the context of the user information consumption behaviors that may be shown by the user's content consumption mode.

  6. Machine-assisted editing of user-generated content

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Cremer, Markus; Cook, Randall

    2009-02-01

    Over recent years user-generated content has become ubiquitously available and an attractive entertainment source for millions of end-users. Particularly for larger events, where many people use their devices to capture the action, a great number of short video clips are made available through appropriate web services. The objective of this presentation is to describe a way to combine these clips by analyzing them, and automatically reconstruct the time line in which the individual video clips were captured. This will enable people to easily create a compelling multimedia experience by leveraging multiple clips taken by different users from different angles, and across different time spans. The user will be able to shift into the role of a movie director mastering a multi-camera recording of the event. To achieve this goal, the audio portion of the video clips is analyzed, and waveform characteristics are computed with high temporal granularity in order to facilitate precise time alignment and overlap computation of the user-generated clips. Special care has to be given not only to the robustness of the selected audio features against ambient noise and various distortions, but also to the matching algorithm used to align the user-generated clips properly.

  7. A System for the Semantic Multimodal Analysis of News Audio-Visual Content

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mezaris, Vasileios; Gidaros, Spyros; Papadopoulos, GeorgiosTh; Kasper, Walter; Steffen, Jörg; Ordelman, Roeland; Huijbregts, Marijn; de Jong, Franciska; Kompatsiaris, Ioannis; Strintzis, MichaelG

    2010-12-01

    News-related content is nowadays among the most popular types of content for users in everyday applications. Although the generation and distribution of news content has become commonplace, due to the availability of inexpensive media capturing devices and the development of media sharing services targeting both professional and user-generated news content, the automatic analysis and annotation that is required for supporting intelligent search and delivery of this content remains an open issue. In this paper, a complete architecture for knowledge-assisted multimodal analysis of news-related multimedia content is presented, along with its constituent components. The proposed analysis architecture employs state-of-the-art methods for the analysis of each individual modality (visual, audio, text) separately and proposes a novel fusion technique based on the particular characteristics of news-related content for the combination of the individual modality analysis results. Experimental results on news broadcast video illustrate the usefulness of the proposed techniques in the automatic generation of semantic annotations.

  8. Learning to Detect Vandalism in Social Content Systems: A Study on Wikipedia

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Javanmardi, Sara; McDonald, David W.; Caruana, Rich; Forouzan, Sholeh; Lopes, Cristina V.

    A challenge facing user generated content systems is vandalism, i.e. edits that damage content quality. The high visibility and easy access to social networks makes them popular targets for vandals. Detecting and removing vandalism is critical for these user generated content systems. Because vandalism can take many forms, there are many different kinds of features that are potentially useful for detecting it. The complex nature of vandalism, and the large number of potential features, make vandalism detection difficult and time consuming for human editors. Machine learning techniques hold promise for developing accurate, tunable, and maintainable models that can be incorporated into vandalism detection tools. We describe a method for training classifiers for vandalism detection that yields classifiers that are more accurate on the PAN 2010 corpus than others previously developed. Because of the high turnaround in social network systems, it is important for vandalism detection tools to run in real-time. To this aim, we use feature selection to find the minimal set of features consistent with high accuracy. In addition, because some features are more costly to compute than others, we use cost-sensitive feature selection to reduce the total computational cost of executing our models. In addition to the features previously used for spam detection, we introduce new features based on user action histories. The user history features contribute significantly to classifier performance. The approach we use is general and can easily be applied to other user generated content systems.

  9. Semantic Annotation of Video Fragments as Learning Objects: A Case Study with "YouTube" Videos and the Gene Ontology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Garcia-Barriocanal, Elena; Sicilia, Miguel-Angel; Sanchez-Alonso, Salvador; Lytras, Miltiadis

    2011-01-01

    Web 2.0 technologies can be considered a loosely defined set of Web application styles that foster a kind of media consumer more engaged, and usually active in creating and maintaining Internet contents. Thus, Web 2.0 applications have resulted in increased user participation and massive user-generated (or user-published) open multimedia content,…

  10. 2D/3D video content adaptation decision engine based on content classification and user assessment

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fernandes, Rui; Andrade, M. T.

    2017-07-01

    Multimedia adaptation depends on several factors, such as the content itself, the consumption device and its characteristics, the transport and access networks and the user. An adaptation decision engine, in order to provide the best possible Quality of Experience to a user, needs to have information about all variables that may influence its decision. For the aforementioned factors, we implement content classification, define device classes, consider limited bandwidth scenarios and categorize user preferences based on a subjective quality evaluation test. The results of these actions generate vital information to pass to the adaptation decision engine so that its operation may provide the indication of the most suitable adaptation to perform that delivers the best possible outcome for the user under the existing constraints.

  11. Applying user-generated quality criteria to develop an Internet intervention for patients with heart disease.

    PubMed

    Kerr, Cicely; Murray, Elizabeth; Burns, Jo; Turner, Indra; Westwood, Mark A; Macadam, Catherine; Nazareth, Irwin; Patterson, David

    2008-01-01

    Internet interventions can help people to self-manage chronic disease. However, they are only likely to be used if they meet patients' perceived needs. We have developed an Internet intervention in two stages to meet the needs of patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). First, user-generated criteria were applied to an existing US-based intervention called 'CHESS Living with Heart Disease' which provides information, emotional and social support, self-assessment and monitoring tools, and behavioural change support. This identified the development work required. Then we conducted a user evaluation with a panel of five patients with CHD. Overall, users generally made positive comments about the information content. However they were critical of presentation, ease of navigation through the content, understanding what was offered in the different services and finding the information they were after. Applying user-generated quality criteria proved useful in developing an intervention to meet the needs of UK patients with CHD.

  12. Document creation, linking, and maintenance system

    DOEpatents

    Claghorn, Ronald [Pasco, WA

    2011-02-15

    A document creation and citation system designed to maintain a database of reference documents. The content of a selected document may be automatically scanned and indexed by the system. The selected documents may also be manually indexed by a user prior to the upload. The indexed documents may be uploaded and stored within a database for later use. The system allows a user to generate new documents by selecting content within the reference documents stored within the database and inserting the selected content into a new document. The system allows the user to customize and augment the content of the new document. The system also generates citations to the selected content retrieved from the reference documents. The citations may be inserted into the new document in the appropriate location and format, as directed by the user. The new document may be uploaded into the database and included with the other reference documents. The system also maintains the database of reference documents so that when changes are made to a reference document, the author of a document referencing the changed document will be alerted to make appropriate changes to his document. The system also allows visual comparison of documents so that the user may see differences in the text of the documents.

  13. Social Moderation and Dynamic Elements in Crowdsourced Geospatial Data: A Report on Quality Assessment, Dynamic Extensions and Mobile Device Engagement in the George Mason University Geocrowdsourcing Testbed

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2015-11-01

    GMU) Associate Professor Dieter Pfoser describes an explosion of user generated content (UGC) available over the Internet (Pfoser 2011, Crooks et al...Crowdsourced and User - Generated Geospatial Data,” Annual (Fairfax, VA: George Mason University, November 29, 2012), http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2...area include GPS-enabled geosocial and 34 Dieter Pfoser, “On User - Generated

  14. Hierarchical video summarization based on context clustering

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tseng, Belle L.; Smith, John R.

    2003-11-01

    A personalized video summary is dynamically generated in our video personalization and summarization system based on user preference and usage environment. The three-tier personalization system adopts the server-middleware-client architecture in order to maintain, select, adapt, and deliver rich media content to the user. The server stores the content sources along with their corresponding MPEG-7 metadata descriptions. In this paper, the metadata includes visual semantic annotations and automatic speech transcriptions. Our personalization and summarization engine in the middleware selects the optimal set of desired video segments by matching shot annotations and sentence transcripts with user preferences. Besides finding the desired contents, the objective is to present a coherent summary. There are diverse methods for creating summaries, and we focus on the challenges of generating a hierarchical video summary based on context information. In our summarization algorithm, three inputs are used to generate the hierarchical video summary output. These inputs are (1) MPEG-7 metadata descriptions of the contents in the server, (2) user preference and usage environment declarations from the user client, and (3) context information including MPEG-7 controlled term list and classification scheme. In a video sequence, descriptions and relevance scores are assigned to each shot. Based on these shot descriptions, context clustering is performed to collect consecutively similar shots to correspond to hierarchical scene representations. The context clustering is based on the available context information, and may be derived from domain knowledge or rules engines. Finally, the selection of structured video segments to generate the hierarchical summary efficiently balances between scene representation and shot selection.

  15. How the new web generations are changing library and information services.

    PubMed

    Miranda, Giovanna F; Gualtieri, Francesca; Coccia, Paolo

    2010-04-01

    The new Web generations are influencing the minds and changing the habits of software developers and end users. Users, librarians, and information services professionals can interact more efficiently, creating additional information and content and generating knowledge. This new scenario is also changing the behavior of information providers and users in health sciences libraries. This article reviews the new Web environments and tools that give librarians opportunities to tailor their services better, and gives some examples of the advantages and disadvantages for them and their users. Librarians need to adapt to the new mindset of users, linking new technologies, information, and people.

  16. Incentive Mechanism for P2P Content Sharing over Heterogenous Access Networks

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sato, Kenichiro; Hashimoto, Ryo; Yoshino, Makoto; Shinkuma, Ryoichi; Takahashi, Tatsuro

    In peer-to-peer (P2P) content sharing, users can share their content by contributing their own resources to one another. However, since there is no incentive for contributing contents or resources to others, users may attempt to obtain content without any contribution. To motivate users to contribute their resources to the service, incentive-rewarding mechanisms have been proposed. On the other hand, emerging wireless technologies, such as IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks, beyond third generation (B3G) cellular networks and mobile WiMAX, provide high-speed Internet access for wireless users. Using these high-speed wireless access, wireless users can use P2P services and share their content with other wireless users and with fixed users. However, this diversification of access networks makes it difficult to appropriately assign rewards to each user according to their contributions. This is because the cost necessary for contribution is different in different access networks. In this paper, we propose a novel incentive-rewarding mechanism called EMOTIVER that can assign rewards to users appropriately. The proposed mechanism uses an external evaluator and interactive learning agents. We also investigate a way of appropriately controlling rewards based on the system service's quality and managing policy.

  17. Mobile VR in Education: From the Fringe to the Mainstream

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cochrane, Thomas

    2016-01-01

    This paper explores the development of virtual reality (VR) use in education and the emergence of mobile VR based content creation and sharing as a platform for enabling learner-generated content and learner-generated contexts. The author argues that an ecology of resources that maps the user content creation and sharing affordances of mobile…

  18. Content Generation and Social Network Interaction within Academic Library Facebook Pages

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Witte, Ginna Gauntner

    2014-01-01

    The use of Facebook to share resources and engage patrons continues to gain acceptance within academic libraries. While many studies have analyzed the types of content academic libraries share on Facebook, there has not yet been a full examination of how this content is generated. This article examined the posting methods, the user responses, and…

  19. The Case for AFMC Social Media Analysis

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2015-11-01

    communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content ,” is on the rise as a news...2014 as reaching 63% of American adult Internet users . However, its inherent limitation of only hosting video content decreases its immediate utility...Again, the younger generation seems to be ahead of the curve here: 82% of online 18-29-year- olds are on Facebook, 74% of Facebook users aged 18-34

  20. Measurement of tag confidence in user generated contents retrieval

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Sihyoung; Min, Hyun-Seok; Lee, Young Bok; Ro, Yong Man

    2009-01-01

    As online image sharing services are becoming popular, the importance of correctly annotated tags is being emphasized for precise search and retrieval. Tags created by user along with user-generated contents (UGC) are often ambiguous due to the fact that some tags are highly subjective and visually unrelated to the image. They cause unwanted results to users when image search engines rely on tags. In this paper, we propose a method of measuring tag confidence so that one can differentiate confidence tags from noisy tags. The proposed tag confidence is measured from visual semantics of the image. To verify the usefulness of the proposed method, experiments were performed with UGC database from social network sites. Experimental results showed that the image retrieval performance with confidence tags was increased.

  1. Accidental Discovery of Information on the User-Defined Social Web: A Mixed-Method Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lu, Chi-Jung

    2012-01-01

    Frequently interacting with other people or working in an information-rich environment can foster the "accidental discovery of information" (ADI) (Erdelez, 2000; McCay-Peet & Toms, 2010). With the increasing adoption of social web technologies, online user-participation communities and user-generated content have provided users the…

  2. Do Facebook Status Updates Reflect Subjective Well-Being?

    PubMed

    Liu, Pan; Tov, William; Kosinski, Michal; Stillwell, David J; Qiu, Lin

    2015-07-01

    Nowadays, millions of people around the world use social networking sites to express everyday thoughts and feelings. Many researchers have tried to make use of social media to study users' online behaviors and psychological states. However, previous studies show mixed results about whether self-generated contents on Facebook reflect users' subjective well-being (SWB). This study analyzed Facebook status updates to determine the extent to which users' emotional expression predicted their SWB-specifically their self-reported satisfaction with life. It was found that positive emotional expressions on Facebook did not correlate with life satisfaction, whereas negative emotional expressions within the past 9-10 months (but not beyond) were significantly related to life satisfaction. These findings suggest that both the type of emotional expressions and the time frame of status updates determine whether emotional expressions in Facebook status updates can effectively reflect users' SWB. The findings shed light on the characteristics of online social media and improve the understanding of how user-generated contents reflect users' psychological states.

  3. Comics, Crowdsourcing and Up-Votes: EFL on the Front Page of the Internet

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    York, James; Stiller, Scott

    2013-01-01

    The social-media news website "Reddit" boasts a huge readership with over 35 million unique visitors for December 2011 alone. Content is generated by users, who submit links from other websites to the various sub-forums. Users also have the ability to comment on links, providing the means for a community to be developed. Both content and…

  4. Creating User-Generated Content for Location-Based Learning: An Authoring Framework

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    FitzGerald, E.

    2012-01-01

    Two recent emerging trends are that of Web 2.0, where users actively create content and publish it on the Web, and also location awareness, where a digital device utilizes a person's physical location as the context to provide specific services and/or information. This paper examines how these two phenomena can be brought together so that…

  5. Don't Be Afraid to Explore Web 2.0

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Thompson, John

    2008-01-01

    Web 2.0 is a hot topic. The term "Web 2.0" refers to the next generation of Internet applications that allow the average Internet user to collaborate and share information online. Web 2.0 sites allow anyone to contribute content and to participate with other users in editing and even combining or remixing existing content with other material to…

  6. An Authoring Tool for User Generated Mobile Services

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Danado, José; Davies, Marcin; Ricca, Paulo; Fensel, Anna

    Imagine what kind of applications become possible when our mobile devices not only present data but provide valuable information to other users. Users become able to instantaneously create services and to publish content and knowledge on their own mobile device, which can be discovered and accessed remotely by other mobile users in a simple way. To achieve the vision of customizable and context aware user-generated mobile services, we present a mobile authoring tool for end-users to create, customize and deploy mobile services while on-the-go. This tool is designed to allow users with different levels of technical expertise to create mobile services. The paper also gives insight on the performed usability evaluations, namely user interviews and an online survey.

  7. Embedding the Form Generator in a Content Management System

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Delgado, A.; Wicenec, A.; Delmotte, N.; Tejero, A.

    2008-08-01

    Given the tremendous amount of data generated by ESO's telescopes and the rapid evolution of the World Wide Web, the ESO archive web interface needs to offer more flexible services and advanced functionalities to a growing community of users all over the world. To achieve this endeavour, a query form generator is being developed inside a Content Management System. We present here a progress report.

  8. Supervised learning of tools for content-based search of image databases

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Delanoy, Richard L.

    1996-03-01

    A computer environment, called the Toolkit for Image Mining (TIM), is being developed with the goal of enabling users with diverse interests and varied computer skills to create search tools for content-based image retrieval and other pattern matching tasks. Search tools are generated using a simple paradigm of supervised learning that is based on the user pointing at mistakes of classification made by the current search tool. As mistakes are identified, a learning algorithm uses the identified mistakes to build up a model of the user's intentions, construct a new search tool, apply the search tool to a test image, display the match results as feedback to the user, and accept new inputs from the user. Search tools are constructed in the form of functional templates, which are generalized matched filters capable of knowledge- based image processing. The ability of this system to learn the user's intentions from experience contrasts with other existing approaches to content-based image retrieval that base searches on the characteristics of a single input example or on a predefined and semantically- constrained textual query. Currently, TIM is capable of learning spectral and textural patterns, but should be adaptable to the learning of shapes, as well. Possible applications of TIM include not only content-based image retrieval, but also quantitative image analysis, the generation of metadata for annotating images, data prioritization or data reduction in bandwidth-limited situations, and the construction of components for larger, more complex computer vision algorithms.

  9. Challenges in Personalizing and Decentralizing the Web: An Overview of GOSSPLE

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kermarrec, Anne-Marie

    Social networks and collaborative tagging systems have taken off at an unexpected scale and speed (Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Last.fm, Delicious, etc). Web content is now generated by you, me, our friends and millions of others. This represents a revolution in usage and a great opportunity to leverage collaborative knowledge to enhance the user's Internet experience. The GOSSPLE project aims at precisely achieving this: automatically capturing affinities between users that are potentially unknown yet share similar interests, or exhibiting similar behaviors on the Web. This fully personalizes the search process, increasing the ability of a user to find relevant content. This personalization calls for decentralization. (1) Centralized servers might dissuade users from generating new content for they expose their privacy and represent a single point of attack. (2) The amount of information to store grows exponentially with the size of the system and centralized systems cannot sustain storing a growing amount of data at a user granularity. We believe that the salvation can only come from a fully decentralized user centric approach where every participant is entrusted to harvest the Web with information relevant to her own activity. This poses a number of scientific challenges: How to discover similar users, how to define the relevant metrics for such personalization, how to preserve privacy when needed, how to deal with free-riders and misheavior and how to manage efficiently a growing amount of data.

  10. Pro-Anorexia and Anti-Pro-Anorexia Videos on YouTube: Sentiment Analysis of User Responses.

    PubMed

    Oksanen, Atte; Garcia, David; Sirola, Anu; Näsi, Matti; Kaakinen, Markus; Keipi, Teo; Räsänen, Pekka

    2015-11-12

    Pro-anorexia communities exist online and encourage harmful weight loss and weight control practices, often through emotional content that enforces social ties within these communities. User-generated responses to videos that directly oppose pro-anorexia communities have not yet been researched in depth. The aim was to study emotional reactions to pro-anorexia and anti-pro-anorexia online content on YouTube using sentiment analysis. Using the 50 most popular YouTube pro-anorexia and anti-pro-anorexia user channels as a starting point, we gathered data on users, their videos, and their commentators. A total of 395 anorexia videos and 12,161 comments were analyzed using positive and negative sentiments and ratings submitted by the viewers of the videos. The emotional information was automatically extracted with an automatic sentiment detection tool whose reliability was tested with human coders. Ordinary least squares regression models were used to estimate the strength of sentiments. The models controlled for the number of video views and comments, number of months the video had been on YouTube, duration of the video, uploader's activity as a video commentator, and uploader's physical location by country. The 395 videos had more than 6 million views and comments by almost 8000 users. Anti-pro-anorexia video comments expressed more positive sentiments on a scale of 1 to 5 (adjusted prediction [AP] 2.15, 95% CI 2.11-2.19) than did those of pro-anorexia videos (AP 2.02, 95% CI 1.98-2.06). Anti-pro-anorexia videos also received more likes (AP 181.02, 95% CI 155.19-206.85) than pro-anorexia videos (AP 31.22, 95% CI 31.22-37.81). Negative sentiments and video dislikes were equally distributed in responses to both pro-anorexia and anti-pro-anorexia videos. Despite pro-anorexia content being widespread on YouTube, videos promoting help for anorexia and opposing the pro-anorexia community were more popular, gaining more positive feedback and comments than pro-anorexia videos. Thus, the anti-pro-anorexia content provided a user-generated counterforce against pro-anorexia content on YouTube. Professionals working with young people should be aware of the social media dynamics and versatility of user-generated eating disorder content online.

  11. Pro-Anorexia and Anti-Pro-Anorexia Videos on YouTube: Sentiment Analysis of User Responses

    PubMed Central

    Garcia, David; Sirola, Anu; Näsi, Matti; Kaakinen, Markus; Keipi, Teo; Räsänen, Pekka

    2015-01-01

    Background Pro-anorexia communities exist online and encourage harmful weight loss and weight control practices, often through emotional content that enforces social ties within these communities. User-generated responses to videos that directly oppose pro-anorexia communities have not yet been researched in depth. Objective The aim was to study emotional reactions to pro-anorexia and anti-pro-anorexia online content on YouTube using sentiment analysis. Methods Using the 50 most popular YouTube pro-anorexia and anti-pro-anorexia user channels as a starting point, we gathered data on users, their videos, and their commentators. A total of 395 anorexia videos and 12,161 comments were analyzed using positive and negative sentiments and ratings submitted by the viewers of the videos. The emotional information was automatically extracted with an automatic sentiment detection tool whose reliability was tested with human coders. Ordinary least squares regression models were used to estimate the strength of sentiments. The models controlled for the number of video views and comments, number of months the video had been on YouTube, duration of the video, uploader’s activity as a video commentator, and uploader’s physical location by country. Results The 395 videos had more than 6 million views and comments by almost 8000 users. Anti-pro-anorexia video comments expressed more positive sentiments on a scale of 1 to 5 (adjusted prediction [AP] 2.15, 95% CI 2.11-2.19) than did those of pro-anorexia videos (AP 2.02, 95% CI 1.98-2.06). Anti-pro-anorexia videos also received more likes (AP 181.02, 95% CI 155.19-206.85) than pro-anorexia videos (AP 31.22, 95% CI 31.22-37.81). Negative sentiments and video dislikes were equally distributed in responses to both pro-anorexia and anti-pro-anorexia videos. Conclusions Despite pro-anorexia content being widespread on YouTube, videos promoting help for anorexia and opposing the pro-anorexia community were more popular, gaining more positive feedback and comments than pro-anorexia videos. Thus, the anti-pro-anorexia content provided a user-generated counterforce against pro-anorexia content on YouTube. Professionals working with young people should be aware of the social media dynamics and versatility of user-generated eating disorder content online. PMID:26563678

  12. Client-Side Event Processing for Personalized Web Advertisement

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Stühmer, Roland; Anicic, Darko; Sen, Sinan; Ma, Jun; Schmidt, Kay-Uwe; Stojanovic, Nenad

    The market for Web advertisement is continuously growing and correspondingly, the number of approaches that can be used for realizing Web advertisement are increasing. However, current approaches fail to generate very personalized ads for a current Web user that is visiting a particular Web content. They mainly try to develop a profile based on the content of that Web page or on a long-term user's profile, by not taking into account current user's preferences. We argue that by discovering a user's interest from his current Web behavior we can support the process of ad generation, especially the relevance of an ad for the user. In this paper we present the conceptual architecture and implementation of such an approach. The approach is based on the extraction of simple events from the user interaction with a Web page and their combination in order to discover the user's interests. We use semantic technologies in order to build such an interpretation out of many simple events. We present results from preliminary evaluation studies. The main contribution of the paper is a very efficient, semantic-based client-side architecture for generating and combining Web events. The architecture ensures the agility of the whole advertisement system, by complexly processing events on the client. In general, this work contributes to the realization of new, event-driven applications for the (Semantic) Web.

  13. Witnessing images of extreme violence: a psychological study of journalists in the newsroom.

    PubMed

    Feinstein, Anthony; Audet, Blair; Waknine, Elizabeth

    2014-08-01

    User Generated Content - photos and videos submitted to newsrooms by the public - has become a prominent source of information for news organisations. Journalists working with uncensored material can frequently witness disturbing images for prolonged periods. How this might affect their psychological health is not known and it is the focus of this study. Descriptive, exploratory. The newsrooms of three international news organisations. One hundred and sixteen journalists working with User Generated Content material. Psychometric data included the re-experiencing, avoidance and autonomic arousal indices of posttraumatic stress disorder (Impact of Event Scale-revised), depression (Beck Depression Inventory-II; BDI-II), a measure of psychological distress (GHQ-28), the latter comprising four subscales measuring somatisation, anxiety, social dysfunction and depression, and mean weekly alcohol consumption divided according to gender. Regression analyses revealed that frequent (i.e. daily) exposure to violent images independently predicted higher scores on all indices of the Impact of Event Scale-revised, the BDI-II and the somatic and anxiety subscales of the GHQ-28. Exposure per shift only predicted scores on the intrusion subscale of the Impact of Event Scale-revised. The present study, the first of its kind, suggests that frequency rather than duration of exposure to images of graphic violence is more emotionally distressing to journalists working with User Generated Content material. Given that good journalism depends on healthy journalists, news organisations will need to look anew at what can be done to offset the risks inherent in viewing User Generated Content material. Our findings, in need of replication, suggest that reducing the frequency of exposure may be one way to go.

  14. User Generated Spatial Content Sources for Land Use/Land Cover Validation Purposes: Suitability Analysis and Integration Model

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Estima, Jacinto Paulo Simoes

    Traditional geographic information has been produced by mapping agencies and corporations, using high skilled people as well as expensive precision equipment and procedures, in a very costly approach. The production of land use and land cover databases are just one example of such traditional approach. On the other side, The amount of Geographic Information created and shared by citizens through the Web has been increasing exponentially during the last decade, resulting from the emergence and popularization of technologies such as the Web 2.0, cloud computing, GPS, smart phones, among others. Such comprehensive amount of free geographic data might have valuable information to extract and thus opening great possibilities to improve significantly the production of land use and land cover databases. In this thesis we explored the feasibility of using geographic data from different user generated spatial content initiatives in the process of land use and land cover database production. Data from Panoramio, Flickr and OpenStreetMap were explored in terms of their spatial and temporal distribution, and their distribution over the different land use and land cover classes. We then proposed a conceptual model to integrate data from suitable user generated spatial content initiatives based on identified dissimilarities among a comprehensive list of initiatives. Finally we developed a prototype implementing the proposed integration model, which was then validated by using the prototype to solve four identified use cases. We concluded that data from user generated spatial content initiatives has great value but should be integrated to increase their potential. The possibility of integrating data from such initiatives in an integration model was proved. Using the developed prototype, the relevance of the integration model was also demonstrated for different use cases. None None None

  15. Staradmin -- Starlink User Database Maintainer

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fish, Adrian

    The subject of this SSN is a utility called STARADMIN. This utility allows the system administrator to build and maintain a Starlink User Database (UDB). The principal source of information for each user is a text file, named after their username. The content of each file is a list consisting of one keyword followed by the relevant user data per line. These user database files reside in a single directory. The STARADMIN program is used to manipulate these user data files and automatically generate user summary lists.

  16. Open and Crowd-Sourced Data for Treaty Verification

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2014-10-01

    the case of user - generated Internet content , such as Wikipedia, or Amazon reviews. Another example is the Zooniverse citizen science project,6 which...Prescribed by ANSI Std. Z39.18 Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1 1 INTRODUCTION 5 1.1 Charge to the Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2...number of potential observations can in many in- stances make up for relatively crude measurements made by the pub- lic. Users are motivated to

  17. Analysis of Department of Defense Social Media Policy and Its Impact on Operational Security

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2015-06-01

    1976, Generation Y was born between 1977 and 1994, and Generation Z was born after 1995 (Schroer, n.d.). 6 With over 1.3 billion users , Facebook...social media platforms, such as Twitter, Instagram , LinkedIn, and Pinterest, have shown significant user growth over the last six years (Duggan et al... generated content , social software, Web-based email, instant messaging, and discussion forum. Some examples of IbC include YouTube, Facebook, Flickr

  18. Video personalization for usage environment

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tseng, Belle L.; Lin, Ching-Yung; Smith, John R.

    2002-07-01

    A video personalization and summarization system is designed and implemented incorporating usage environment to dynamically generate a personalized video summary. The personalization system adopts the three-tier server-middleware-client architecture in order to select, adapt, and deliver rich media content to the user. The server stores the content sources along with their corresponding MPEG-7 metadata descriptions. Our semantic metadata is provided through the use of the VideoAnnEx MPEG-7 Video Annotation Tool. When the user initiates a request for content, the client communicates the MPEG-21 usage environment description along with the user query to the middleware. The middleware is powered by the personalization engine and the content adaptation engine. Our personalization engine includes the VideoSue Summarization on Usage Environment engine that selects the optimal set of desired contents according to user preferences. Afterwards, the adaptation engine performs the required transformations and compositions of the selected contents for the specific usage environment using our VideoEd Editing and Composition Tool. Finally, two personalization and summarization systems are demonstrated for the IBM Websphere Portal Server and for the pervasive PDA devices.

  19. Post-Web 2.0 Pedagogy: From Student-Generated Content to International Co-Production Enabled by Mobile Social Media

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cochrane, Thomas; Antonczak, Laurent; Wagner, Daniel

    2013-01-01

    The advent of web 2.0 has enabled new forms of collaboration centred upon user-generated content, however, mobile social media is enabling a new wave of social collaboration. Mobile devices have disrupted and reinvented traditional media markets and distribution: iTunes, Google Play and Amazon now dominate music industry distribution channels,…

  20. Investigating the Concept of Consumers as Producers in Virtual Worlds: Looking through Social, Technical, Economic, and Legal Lenses

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kienle, Holger M.; Lober, Andreas; Vasiliu, Crina A.; Müller, Hausi A.

    Virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life enable consumers as producers, that is users can choose to be passive consumers of content, active producers of content, or both. Consumers as producers poses unique challenges and opportunities for both operators and users of virtual worlds. While the degrees of freedom for user-generated content differ depending on the world, instances of consumers as producers can be found in many virtual worlds. In this paper we characterize consumers as producers with the help of four "lenses"—social, technical, economic, and legal—and use the lenses to discuss implications for operators and users. These lenses provide a complementary analysis of consumers as producers from different angels and shows that an understanding of it requires a holistic approach.

  1. New model for distributed multimedia databases and its application to networking of museums

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kuroda, Kazuhide; Komatsu, Naohisa; Komiya, Kazumi; Ikeda, Hiroaki

    1998-02-01

    This paper proposes a new distributed multimedia data base system where the databases storing MPEG-2 videos and/or super high definition images are connected together through the B-ISDN's, and also refers to an example of the networking of museums on the basis of the proposed database system. The proposed database system introduces a new concept of the 'retrieval manager' which functions an intelligent controller so that the user can recognize a set of image databases as one logical database. A user terminal issues a request to retrieve contents to the retrieval manager which is located in the nearest place to the user terminal on the network. Then, the retrieved contents are directly sent through the B-ISDN's to the user terminal from the server which stores the designated contents. In this case, the designated logical data base dynamically generates the best combination of such a retrieving parameter as a data transfer path referring to directly or data on the basis of the environment of the system. The generated retrieving parameter is then executed to select the most suitable data transfer path on the network. Therefore, the best combination of these parameters fits to the distributed multimedia database system.

  2. Personalized professional content recommendation

    DOEpatents

    Xu, Songhua

    2015-10-27

    A personalized content recommendation system includes a client interface configured to automatically monitor a user's information data stream transmitted on the Internet. A hybrid contextual behavioral and collaborative personal interest inference engine resident to a non-transient media generates automatic predictions about the interests of individual users of the system. A database server retains the user's personal interest profile based on a plurality of monitored information. The system also includes a server programmed to filter items in an incoming information stream with the personal interest profile and is further programmed to identify only those items of the incoming information stream that substantially match the personal interest profile.

  3. Do We Really Need to Catch Them All? A New User-Guided Social Media Crawling Method

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Erlandsson, Fredrik; Bródka, Piotr; Boldt, Martin; Johnson, Henric

    2017-12-01

    With the growing use of popular social media services like Facebook and Twitter it is challenging to collect all content from the networks without access to the core infrastructure or paying for it. Thus, if all content cannot be collected one must consider which data are of most importance. In this work we present a novel User-guided Social Media Crawling method (USMC) that is able to collect data from social media, utilizing the wisdom of the crowd to decide the order in which user generated content should be collected to cover as many user interactions as possible. USMC is validated by crawling 160 public Facebook pages, containing content from 368 million users including 1.3 billion interactions, and it is compared with two other crawling methods. The results show that it is possible to cover approximately 75% of the interactions on a Facebook page by sampling just 20% of its posts, and at the same time reduce the crawling time by 53%. In addition, the social network constructed from the 20% sample contains more than 75% of the users and edges compared to the social network created from all posts, and it has similar degree distribution.

  4. Analysis and Visualization of Internet QA Bulletin Boards Represented as Heterogeneous Networks

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Murata, Tsuyoshi; Ikeya, Tomoyuki

    Visualizing and analyzing social interactions of CGM (Consumer Generated Media) are important for understanding overall activities on the internet. Social interactions are often represented as simple networks that are composed of homogeneous nodes and edges between them. However, related entities in real world are often not homogeneous. Such relations are naturally represented as heterogeneous networks composed of more than one kind of nodes and edges connecting them. In the case of CGM, for example, users and their contents constitute nodes of heterogeneous networks. There are related users (user communities) and related contents (contents communities) in the heterogeneous networks. Discovering both communities and finding correspondence among them will clarify the characteristics of the communites. This paper describes an attempt for visualizing and analyzing social interactions of Yahoo! Chiebukuro (Japanese Yahoo! Answers). New criteria for measuring correspondence between user communities and board communites are defined, and characteristics of both communities are analyzed using the criteria.

  5. Online Dating and Conjugal Bereavement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Young, Dannagal Goldthwaite; Caplan, Scott E.

    2010-01-01

    This study examined self-presentation in the online dating profiles of 241 widowed and 280 divorced individuals between 18 and 40 years old. A content analysis of open-ended user-generated profiles assessed the presence or absence of various themes, including the user's marital status, the backstory of their lost relationship, and whether they…

  6. Information Technology and Libraries: Toward the Year 2000.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Martin, Susan K.

    1989-01-01

    Discusses current trends that are predicted to intensify and to change library operations and the way society uses information technology. Trends discussed include focus on user needs; direct user access of electronic information; the obsolescence of first and second generation systems; a contention between optical products and online access; and…

  7. Pins and posters: Paradigms for content publication on situated displays.

    PubMed

    José, Rui; Pinto, Hélder; Silva, Bruno; Melro, Ana

    2013-01-01

    Public-display systems are still far from being a medium for meeting people's diverse communication goals. Moving toward open displays will require publication paradigms that can overcome the challenges of meaningful engagement and enable users to fully understand and control the publication process. The metaphors of pins and posters have inspired two complementary paradigms for public displays. Researchers implemented these paradigms in the Instant Places system, which they deployed on 10 displays in diverse urban locations for six months. They collected user and system data regarding the users' practices. The findings improve the understanding of what might drive user-generated content in networks of urban displays. Such knowledge can inform the design of tools and procedures for situated publication in public displays.

  8. The Use of Social Media to Maximize Energy Performance in the United States Marine Corps

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2014-06-01

    foster user interaction was blogs. 63 The Obama campaign blog allowed the most citizen- generated content compared to other channels. “Four-in... Instagram , Pinterest, and LinkedIn. More users use multiple sites than only one. The frequency which users access social media is also an important and...distinguishing characteristic. Figure 5 displays the number of daily Facebook, Twitter, 8 and Instagram users dwarf the number of less frequent

  9. Phaedra, a protocol-driven system for analysis and validation of high-content imaging and flow cytometry.

    PubMed

    Cornelissen, Frans; Cik, Miroslav; Gustin, Emmanuel

    2012-04-01

    High-content screening has brought new dimensions to cellular assays by generating rich data sets that characterize cell populations in great detail and detect subtle phenotypes. To derive relevant, reliable conclusions from these complex data, it is crucial to have informatics tools supporting quality control, data reduction, and data mining. These tools must reconcile the complexity of advanced analysis methods with the user-friendliness demanded by the user community. After review of existing applications, we realized the possibility of adding innovative new analysis options. Phaedra was developed to support workflows for drug screening and target discovery, interact with several laboratory information management systems, and process data generated by a range of techniques including high-content imaging, multicolor flow cytometry, and traditional high-throughput screening assays. The application is modular and flexible, with an interface that can be tuned to specific user roles. It offers user-friendly data visualization and reduction tools for HCS but also integrates Matlab for custom image analysis and the Konstanz Information Miner (KNIME) framework for data mining. Phaedra features efficient JPEG2000 compression and full drill-down functionality from dose-response curves down to individual cells, with exclusion and annotation options, cell classification, statistical quality controls, and reporting.

  10. A Study Protocol for Testing the Effectiveness of User-Generated Content in Reducing Excessive Consumption

    PubMed Central

    Herziger, Atar; Benzerga, Amel; Berkessel, Jana; Dinartika, Niken L.; Franklin, Matija; Steinnes, Kamilla K.; Sundström, Felicia

    2017-01-01

    Excessive consumption is on the rise, as is apparent in growing financial debt and global greenhouse gas emissions. Voluntary simplicity, a lifestyle choice of reduced consumption and sustainable consumer behavior, provides a potential solution for excessive consumers. However, voluntary simplicity is unpopular, difficult to adopt, and under researched. The outlined research project will test a method of promoting voluntary simplicity via user-generated content, thus mimicking an existing social media trend (Minimalism) in an empirical research design. The project will test (a) whether the Minimalism trend could benefit consumers interested in reducing their consumption, and (b) whether self-transcendence (i.e., biospheric) and self-enhancement (i.e., egoistic and hedonic) values and goals have a similar impact in promoting voluntary simplicity. A one-week intervention program will test the efficacy of watching user-generated voluntary simplicity videos in reducing non-essential consumption. Each of the two intervention conditions will present participants with similar tutorial videos on consumption reduction (e.g., decluttering, donating), while priming the relevant values and goals (self-transcendence or self-enhancement). These interventions will be compared to a control condition, involving no user-generated content. Participants will undergo baseline and post-intervention evaluations of: voluntary simplicity attitudes and behaviors, buying and shopping behaviors, values and goals in reducing consumption, and life satisfaction. Experience sampling will monitor affective state during the intervention. We provide a detailed stepwise procedure, materials, and equipment necessary for executing this intervention. The outlined research design is expected to contribute to the limited literature on voluntary simplicity, online behavioral change interventions, and the use of social marketing principles in consumer interventions. PMID:28649220

  11. A Study Protocol for Testing the Effectiveness of User-Generated Content in Reducing Excessive Consumption.

    PubMed

    Herziger, Atar; Benzerga, Amel; Berkessel, Jana; Dinartika, Niken L; Franklin, Matija; Steinnes, Kamilla K; Sundström, Felicia

    2017-01-01

    Excessive consumption is on the rise, as is apparent in growing financial debt and global greenhouse gas emissions. Voluntary simplicity, a lifestyle choice of reduced consumption and sustainable consumer behavior, provides a potential solution for excessive consumers. However, voluntary simplicity is unpopular, difficult to adopt, and under researched. The outlined research project will test a method of promoting voluntary simplicity via user-generated content, thus mimicking an existing social media trend (Minimalism) in an empirical research design. The project will test (a) whether the Minimalism trend could benefit consumers interested in reducing their consumption, and (b) whether self-transcendence (i.e., biospheric) and self-enhancement (i.e., egoistic and hedonic) values and goals have a similar impact in promoting voluntary simplicity. A one-week intervention program will test the efficacy of watching user-generated voluntary simplicity videos in reducing non-essential consumption. Each of the two intervention conditions will present participants with similar tutorial videos on consumption reduction (e.g., decluttering, donating), while priming the relevant values and goals (self-transcendence or self-enhancement). These interventions will be compared to a control condition, involving no user-generated content. Participants will undergo baseline and post-intervention evaluations of: voluntary simplicity attitudes and behaviors, buying and shopping behaviors, values and goals in reducing consumption, and life satisfaction. Experience sampling will monitor affective state during the intervention. We provide a detailed stepwise procedure, materials, and equipment necessary for executing this intervention. The outlined research design is expected to contribute to the limited literature on voluntary simplicity, online behavioral change interventions, and the use of social marketing principles in consumer interventions.

  12. Event-Based User Classification in Weibo Media

    PubMed Central

    Wang, Wendong; Cheng, Shiduan; Que, Xirong

    2014-01-01

    Weibo media, known as the real-time microblogging services, has attracted massive attention and support from social network users. Weibo platform offers an opportunity for people to access information and changes the way people acquire and disseminate information significantly. Meanwhile, it enables people to respond to the social events in a more convenient way. Much of the information in Weibo media is related to some events. Users who post different contents, and exert different behavior or attitude may lead to different contribution to the specific event. Therefore, classifying the large amount of uncategorized social circles generated in Weibo media automatically from the perspective of events has been a promising task. Under this circumstance, in order to effectively organize and manage the huge amounts of users, thereby further managing their contents, we address the task of user classification in a more granular, event-based approach in this paper. By analyzing real data collected from Sina Weibo, we investigate the Weibo properties and utilize both content information and social network information to classify the numerous users into four primary groups: celebrities, organizations/media accounts, grassroots stars, and ordinary individuals. The experiments results show that our method identifies the user categories accurately. PMID:25133235

  13. Event-based user classification in Weibo media.

    PubMed

    Guo, Liang; Wang, Wendong; Cheng, Shiduan; Que, Xirong

    2014-01-01

    Weibo media, known as the real-time microblogging services, has attracted massive attention and support from social network users. Weibo platform offers an opportunity for people to access information and changes the way people acquire and disseminate information significantly. Meanwhile, it enables people to respond to the social events in a more convenient way. Much of the information in Weibo media is related to some events. Users who post different contents, and exert different behavior or attitude may lead to different contribution to the specific event. Therefore, classifying the large amount of uncategorized social circles generated in Weibo media automatically from the perspective of events has been a promising task. Under this circumstance, in order to effectively organize and manage the huge amounts of users, thereby further managing their contents, we address the task of user classification in a more granular, event-based approach in this paper. By analyzing real data collected from Sina Weibo, we investigate the Weibo properties and utilize both content information and social network information to classify the numerous users into four primary groups: celebrities, organizations/media accounts, grassroots stars, and ordinary individuals. The experiments results show that our method identifies the user categories accurately.

  14. Global Social Media Directory. A Resource Guide

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Noonan, Christine F.; Piatt, Andrew W.

    Social media platforms are internet-based applications focused on broadcasting user-generated content. While primarily web-based, these services are increasingly available on mobile platforms. Communities and individuals share information, photos, music, videos, provide commentary and ratings/reviews, and more. In essence, social media is about sharing information, consuming information, and repurposing content. Social media technologies identified in this report are centered on social networking services, media sharing, blogging and microblogging. The purpose of this Resource Guide is to provide baseline information about use and application of social media platforms around the globe. It is not intended to be comprehensive as social media evolvesmore » on an almost daily basis. The long-term goal of this work is to identify social media information about all geographic regions and nations. The primary objective is that of understanding the evolution and spread of social networking and user-generated content technologies internationally.« less

  15. What young people want from health-related online resources: a focus group study.

    PubMed

    Fergie, Gillian; Hunt, Kate; Hilton, Shona

    2013-08-01

    The growth of the Internet as an information source about health, particularly amongst young people, is well established. The aim of this study was to explore young people's perceptions and experiences of engaging with health-related online content, particularly through social media websites. Between February and July 2011 nine focus groups were facilitated across Scotland with young people aged between 14 and 18 years. Health-related user-generated content seems to be appreciated by young people as a useful, if not always trustworthy, source of accounts of other people's experiences. The reliability and quality of both user-generated content and official factual content about health appear to be concerns for young people, and they employ specialised strategies for negotiating both areas of the online environment. Young people's engagement with health online is a dynamic area for research. Their perceptions and experiences of health-related content seem based on their wider familiarity with the online environment and, as the online environment develops, so too do young people's strategies and conventions for accessing it.

  16. What young people want from health-related online resources: a focus group study

    PubMed Central

    Fergie, Gillian; Hunt, Kate; Hilton, Shona

    2012-01-01

    The growth of the Internet as an information source about health, particularly amongst young people, is well established. The aim of this study was to explore young people's perceptions and experiences of engaging with health-related online content, particularly through social media websites. Between February and July 2011 nine focus groups were facilitated across Scotland with young people aged between 14 and 18 years. Health-related user-generated content seems to be appreciated by young people as a useful, if not always trustworthy, source of accounts of other people's experiences. The reliability and quality of both user-generated content and official factual content about health appear to be concerns for young people, and they employ specialised strategies for negotiating both areas of the online environment. Young people's engagement with health online is a dynamic area for research. Their perceptions and experiences of health-related content seem based on their wider familiarity with the online environment and, as the online environment develops, so too do young people's strategies and conventions for accessing it. PMID:24748849

  17. Generation of Escher Arts with Dual Perception.

    PubMed

    Lin, Shih-Syun; Morace, Charles C; Lin, Chao-Hung; Hsu, Li-Fong; Lee, Tong-Yee

    2018-02-01

    Escher transmutation is a graphic art that smoothly transforms one tile pattern into another tile pattern with dual perception. A classic example is the artwork called Sky and Water, in which a compelling figure-ground arrangement is applied to portray the transmutation of a bird in sky and a fish in water. The shape of a bird is progressively deformed and dissolves into the background while the background gradually reveals the shape of a fish. This paper introduces a system to create a variety of Escher-like transmutations, which includes the algorithms for initializing a tile pattern with dual figure-ground arrangement, for searching for the best matched shape of a user-specified motif from a database, and for transforming the content and shapes of tile patterns using a content-aware warping technique. The proposed system, integrating the graphic techniques of tile initialization, shape matching, and shape warping, allows users to create various Escher-like transmutations with minimal user interaction. Experimental results and conducted user studies demonstrate the feasibility and flexibility of the proposed system in Escher art generation.

  18. Discourse, Health and Well-being of Military Populations through the Social Media Lens

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Pavalanathan, Umashanthi; Datla, Vivek V.; Volkova, Svitlana

    Social media can provide a resource for characterizing communities and small populations through activities and content shared online. For instance, studying the language use in social media within military populations may provide insights into their health and wellbeing. In this paper, we address three research questions: (1) How do military populations use social media? (2) What do military users discuss in social media? And (3) Do military users talk about health and well-being differently than civilians? Military Twitter users were identified through keywords in the profile description of users who posted geo-tagged tweets at military installations. The data was anonymizedmore » for the analysis. User profiles that belong to military population were compared to the nonmilitary population. Our results indicate that military users talk more about events in their military life, whereas nonmilitary users talk more about school, work, and leisure activities. We also found that the online content generated by both populations is significantly different, including health-related language and communication behavior.« less

  19. Patient-centered consumer health social network websites: a pilot study of quality of user-generated health information.

    PubMed

    Tsai, Christopher C; Tsai, Sarai H; Zeng-Treitler, Qing; Liang, Bryan A

    2007-10-11

    The quality of user-generated health information on consumer health social networking websites has not been studied. We collected a set of postings related to Diabetes Mellitus Type I from three such sites and classified them based on accuracy, error type, and clinical significance of error. We found 48% of postings contained medical content, and 54% of these were either incomplete or contained errors. About 85% of the incomplete and erroneous messages were potentially clinically significant.

  20. Providing Focus via a Social Media Exploitation Strategy

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2014-06-01

    networking sites, video/photo sharing websites, forums, message boards, blogs and user -generated content in general as a way to determine the volume...that are constantly being updated by users around the world provide an excellent near-real time sensor. This sensor can be used to alert analysts...using the platform is to mine the profiles provided by the various platforms. At a minimum, users require a username, but there is usually a large

  1. Adaptive interface for personalizing information seeking.

    PubMed

    Narayanan, S; Koppaka, Lavanya; Edala, Narasimha; Loritz, Don; Daley, Raymond

    2004-12-01

    An adaptive interface autonomously adjusts its display and available actions to current goals and abilities of the user by assessing user status, system task, and the context. Knowledge content adaptability is needed for knowledge acquisition and refinement tasks. In the case of knowledge content adaptability, the requirements of interface design focus on the elicitation of information from the user and the refinement of information based on patterns of interaction. In such cases, the emphasis on adaptability is on facilitating information search and knowledge discovery. In this article, we present research on adaptive interfaces that facilitates personalized information seeking from a large data warehouse. The resulting proof-of-concept system, called source recommendation system (SRS), assists users in locating and navigating data sources in the repository. Based on the initial user query and an analysis of the content of the search results, the SRS system generates a profile of the user tailored to the individual's context during information seeking. The user profiles are refined successively and are used in progressively guiding the user to the appropriate set of sources within the knowledge base. The SRS system is implemented as an Internet browser plug-in to provide a seamless and unobtrusive, personalized experience to the users during the information search process. The rationale behind our approach, system design, empirical evaluation, and implications for research on adaptive interfaces are described in this paper.

  2. Realizing Technology Potential through TPACK

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Learning & Leading with Technology, 2008

    2008-01-01

    A participatory culture driven by user-generated content has emerged in the world outside schools. Each day, more than 100,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube alone. According to the Digital Ethnography group at Kansas State University, 80% of the two-minute video clips are created by the users who post them--teenage authors working outside school.…

  3. Baby boomers as future care users--An analysis of expectations in print media.

    PubMed

    Jönson, Håkan; Jönsson, Anders

    2015-08-01

    The aim of the study was to investigate media presentations of baby boomers as future care users. The Swedish baby boomer generation, born in the 1940s, and known as the '40s generation, has been characterized as youthful and powerful, and a question investigated in the study was whether boomers are supposed to display these characteristics as care users. We analyzed 481 articles in Swedish newspapers, published between 1995 and 2012, with a qualitative content analysis. The results showed that the '40s generation was predicted to become a new breed of demanding, self-aware care users. These claims were supported by descriptions of the formative events and typical characteristics of these individuals, which were then projected onto their future behavior as care users. Such projections tended to portray contemporary care users as passive, submissive, and partly responsible for problems associated with elder care. Consequently, approaches that focus on differences between cohorts need to incorporate a constructionist dimension to highlight the problem of generationism. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. Making User-Generated Content Communities Work in Higher Education - The Importance of Setting Incentives

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Vom Brocke, Jan; White, Cynthia; Walker, Ute; Vom Brocke, Christina

    The concept of User-Generated Content (UGC) offers impressive potential for innovative learning and teaching scenarios in higher education. Examples like Wikipedia and Facebook illustrate the enormous effects of multiple users world-wide contributing to a pool of shared resources, such as videos and pictures and also lexicographical descriptions. Apart from single examples, however, the systematic use of these virtual technologies in higher education still needs further exploration. Only few examples display the successful application of UGC Communities at university scenarios. We argue that a major reason for this can be seen in the fact that the organizational dimension of setting up UGC Communities has widely been neglected so far. In particular, we indicate the need for incentive setting to actively involve students and achieve specific pedagogical objectives. We base our study on organizational theories and derive strategies for incentive setting that have been applied in a practical e-Learning scenario involving students from Germany and New Zealand.

  5. Advertising Content, Platform Characteristics and the Appeal of Beer Advertising on a Social Networking Site.

    PubMed

    Noel, Jonathan K; Babor, Thomas F; Grady, James J

    2018-03-15

    The current study was conducted to investigate how changes in the content of a social media ad, user engagement values associated with the ad and user-generated comments (UGCs) associated with the ad can influence the appeal (i.e. source appeal, informational appeal and emotional appeal) of a social media ad. Facebook beer ads that violated the guidelines of a relevant marketing code were rated as more emotionally appealing compared to Facebook beer ads that did not violated the guidelines. Increased emotional appeal in beer advertising increases the probability that the ad will be remembered and influence future drinking occasions. A 2 (ad regulatory compliance: compliant vs. non-compliant) × 2 (user engagement: low vs. high) × 2 (UGC congruence: pro- vs anti-alcohol) mixed factorial experiment was conducted with 120 young adults, 21-24 years old. Each participant viewed four Facebook beer ads that were previously evaluated for thematic content and regulatory compliance. Participants were randomized to view either high or low user engagement values and either pro- or anti-drinking user-generated comments. After each ad exposure, ad appeal was assessed. Statistical analysis was conducted using hierarchical linear modeling. Models were adjusted for demographics, Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) scores and Facebook involvement. Source appeal (P = 0.034) and informational appeal (P < 0.001) were significantly higher among ads that were compliant with existing advertising regulations. Emotional appeal was significantly higher among ads that were non-compliant (P = 0.004). The effect of user engagement and UGCs were non-significant (p's > 0.05). Additionally, AUDIT scores (p's < 0.01) and Facebook involvement scores (p's < 0.01) were positively associated with all forms of ad appeal. The appeal of Facebook beer ads may be primarily determined by ad content. Increased emotional appeal in advertising caused by non-compliant advertising may increase the probability that the ad will be remembered and influence future drinking occasions.

  6. Studying Military Community Health, Well-being, and Discourse through the Social Media Lens

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Pavalanathan, Umashanthi; Datla, Vivek V.; Volkova, Svitlana

    Social media can provide a resource for characterizing communities and targeted populations through activities and content shared online. For instance, studying the armed forces‚Äô use of social media may provide insights into their health and wellbeing. In this paper, we address three broad research questions: (1) How do military populations use social media? (2) What topics do military users discuss in social media? (3) Do military users talk about health and well-being differently than civilians? Military Twitter users were identified through keywords in the profile description of users who posted geotagged tweets at military installations. These military tweets were comparedmore » with the tweets from remaining population. Our analysis indicate that military users talk more about military related responsibilities and events, whereas non-military users talk more about school, work, and leisure activities. A significant difference in online content generated by both populations was identified, involving sentiment, health, language, and social media features.« less

  7. Automatically augmenting lifelog events using pervasively generated content from millions of people.

    PubMed

    Doherty, Aiden R; Smeaton, Alan F

    2010-01-01

    In sensor research we take advantage of additional contextual sensor information to disambiguate potentially erroneous sensor readings or to make better informed decisions on a single sensor's output. This use of additional information reinforces, validates, semantically enriches, and augments sensed data. Lifelog data is challenging to augment, as it tracks one's life with many images including the places they go, making it non-trivial to find associated sources of information. We investigate realising the goal of pervasive user-generated content based on sensors, by augmenting passive visual lifelogs with "Web 2.0" content collected by millions of other individuals.

  8. Amplifying Youth Voices in the Developing World

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fotenos, Saori; Rohatgi, Deepti

    2007-01-01

    In the past few years, an explosion of user-generated content has flooded the Internet. The dramatic drop in the cost of digital video equipment and the increased accessibility of the Internet create a unique opportunity to allow youth to create meaningful content. Today youth around the world can leverage technological tools to give voice to…

  9. Big Data on a Smaller Scale: A Social Media Analytics Assignment

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fischbach, Sarah; Zarzosa, Jennifer

    2018-01-01

    It is truly important for students to understand how to monitor online marketing buzz. This assignment, social media analytics, utilizes the content analysis research method to build student's in-depth understanding on how to evaluate and interpret user-generated content (UGC) to create social media campaigns. The authors adapted Resnik and…

  10. Explicit Content Caching at Mobile Edge Networks with Cross-Layer Sensing

    PubMed Central

    Chen, Lingyu; Su, Youxing; Luo, Wenbin; Hong, Xuemin; Shi, Jianghong

    2018-01-01

    The deployment density and computational power of small base stations (BSs) are expected to increase significantly in the next generation mobile communication networks. These BSs form the mobile edge network, which is a pervasive and distributed infrastructure that can empower a variety of edge/fog computing applications. This paper proposes a novel edge-computing application called explicit caching, which stores selective contents at BSs and exposes such contents to local users for interactive browsing and download. We formulate the explicit caching problem as a joint content recommendation, caching, and delivery problem, which aims to maximize the expected user quality-of-experience (QoE) with varying degrees of cross-layer sensing capability. Optimal and effective heuristic algorithms are presented to solve the problem. The theoretical performance bounds of the explicit caching system are derived in simplified scenarios. The impacts of cache storage space, BS backhaul capacity, cross-layer information, and user mobility on the system performance are simulated and discussed in realistic scenarios. Results suggest that, compared with conventional implicit caching schemes, explicit caching can better exploit the mobile edge network infrastructure for personalized content dissemination. PMID:29565313

  11. Explicit Content Caching at Mobile Edge Networks with Cross-Layer Sensing.

    PubMed

    Chen, Lingyu; Su, Youxing; Luo, Wenbin; Hong, Xuemin; Shi, Jianghong

    2018-03-22

    The deployment density and computational power of small base stations (BSs) are expected to increase significantly in the next generation mobile communication networks. These BSs form the mobile edge network, which is a pervasive and distributed infrastructure that can empower a variety of edge/fog computing applications. This paper proposes a novel edge-computing application called explicit caching, which stores selective contents at BSs and exposes such contents to local users for interactive browsing and download. We formulate the explicit caching problem as a joint content recommendation, caching, and delivery problem, which aims to maximize the expected user quality-of-experience (QoE) with varying degrees of cross-layer sensing capability. Optimal and effective heuristic algorithms are presented to solve the problem. The theoretical performance bounds of the explicit caching system are derived in simplified scenarios. The impacts of cache storage space, BS backhaul capacity, cross-layer information, and user mobility on the system performance are simulated and discussed in realistic scenarios. Results suggest that, compared with conventional implicit caching schemes, explicit caching can better exploit the mobile edge network infrastructure for personalized content dissemination.

  12. Cancer prevention and control interventions using social media: user-generated approaches.

    PubMed

    Cavallo, David N; Chou, Wen-Ying Sylvia; McQueen, Amy; Ramirez, Amelie; Riley, William T

    2014-09-01

    Social media are now used by a majority of American internet users. Social media platforms encourage participants to share information with their online social connections and exchange user-generated content. Significant numbers of people are already using social media to share health-related information. As such, social media provide an opportunity for "user-generated" cancer control and prevention interventions that employ users' behavior, knowledge, and existing social networks for the creation and dissemination of interventions. These interventions also enable novel data collection techniques and research designs that will allow investigators to examine real-time behavioral responses to interventions. Emerging social media-based interventions for modifying cancer-related behaviors have been applied to such domains as tobacco use, diet, physical activity, and sexual practices, and several examples are discussed for illustration purposes. Despite some promising early findings, challenges including inadequate user engagement, privacy concerns, and lack of internet access among some groups need to be addressed in future research. Recommendations for advancing the field include stronger partnerships with commercial technology companies, utilization of rapid and adaptive designs to identify successful strategies for user engagement, rigorous and iterative efficacy testing of these strategies, and inclusive methods for intervention dissemination. ©2014 American Association for Cancer Research.

  13. Understanding Editing Behaviors in Multilingual Wikipedia.

    PubMed

    Kim, Suin; Park, Sungjoon; Hale, Scott A; Kim, Sooyoung; Byun, Jeongmin; Oh, Alice H

    2016-01-01

    Multilingualism is common offline, but we have a more limited understanding of the ways multilingualism is displayed online and the roles that multilinguals play in the spread of content between speakers of different languages. We take a computational approach to studying multilingualism using one of the largest user-generated content platforms, Wikipedia. We study multilingualism by collecting and analyzing a large dataset of the content written by multilingual editors of the English, German, and Spanish editions of Wikipedia. This dataset contains over two million paragraphs edited by over 15,000 multilingual users from July 8 to August 9, 2013. We analyze these multilingual editors in terms of their engagement, interests, and language proficiency in their primary and non-primary (secondary) languages and find that the English edition of Wikipedia displays different dynamics from the Spanish and German editions. Users primarily editing the Spanish and German editions make more complex edits than users who edit these editions as a second language. In contrast, users editing the English edition as a second language make edits that are just as complex as the edits by users who primarily edit the English edition. In this way, English serves a special role bringing together content written by multilinguals from many language editions. Nonetheless, language remains a formidable hurdle to the spread of content: we find evidence for a complexity barrier whereby editors are less likely to edit complex content in a second language. In addition, we find that multilinguals are less engaged and show lower levels of language proficiency in their second languages. We also examine the topical interests of multilingual editors and find that there is no significant difference between primary and non-primary editors in each language.

  14. Understanding Editing Behaviors in Multilingual Wikipedia

    PubMed Central

    Hale, Scott A.; Kim, Sooyoung; Byun, Jeongmin; Oh, Alice H.

    2016-01-01

    Multilingualism is common offline, but we have a more limited understanding of the ways multilingualism is displayed online and the roles that multilinguals play in the spread of content between speakers of different languages. We take a computational approach to studying multilingualism using one of the largest user-generated content platforms, Wikipedia. We study multilingualism by collecting and analyzing a large dataset of the content written by multilingual editors of the English, German, and Spanish editions of Wikipedia. This dataset contains over two million paragraphs edited by over 15,000 multilingual users from July 8 to August 9, 2013. We analyze these multilingual editors in terms of their engagement, interests, and language proficiency in their primary and non-primary (secondary) languages and find that the English edition of Wikipedia displays different dynamics from the Spanish and German editions. Users primarily editing the Spanish and German editions make more complex edits than users who edit these editions as a second language. In contrast, users editing the English edition as a second language make edits that are just as complex as the edits by users who primarily edit the English edition. In this way, English serves a special role bringing together content written by multilinguals from many language editions. Nonetheless, language remains a formidable hurdle to the spread of content: we find evidence for a complexity barrier whereby editors are less likely to edit complex content in a second language. In addition, we find that multilinguals are less engaged and show lower levels of language proficiency in their second languages. We also examine the topical interests of multilingual editors and find that there is no significant difference between primary and non-primary editors in each language. PMID:27171158

  15. Temporal flicker reduction and denoising in video using sparse directional transforms

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kanumuri, Sandeep; Guleryuz, Onur G.; Civanlar, M. Reha; Fujibayashi, Akira; Boon, Choong S.

    2008-08-01

    The bulk of the video content available today over the Internet and over mobile networks suffers from many imperfections caused during acquisition and transmission. In the case of user-generated content, which is typically produced with inexpensive equipment, these imperfections manifest in various ways through noise, temporal flicker and blurring, just to name a few. Imperfections caused by compression noise and temporal flicker are present in both studio-produced and user-generated video content transmitted at low bit-rates. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm designed to reduce temporal flicker and noise in video sequences. The algorithm takes advantage of the sparse nature of video signals in an appropriate transform domain that is chosen adaptively based on local signal statistics. When the signal corresponds to a sparse representation in this transform domain, flicker and noise, which are spread over the entire domain, can be reduced easily by enforcing sparsity. Our results show that the proposed algorithm reduces flicker and noise significantly and enables better presentation of compressed videos.

  16. Advanced Cell Classifier: User-Friendly Machine-Learning-Based Software for Discovering Phenotypes in High-Content Imaging Data.

    PubMed

    Piccinini, Filippo; Balassa, Tamas; Szkalisity, Abel; Molnar, Csaba; Paavolainen, Lassi; Kujala, Kaisa; Buzas, Krisztina; Sarazova, Marie; Pietiainen, Vilja; Kutay, Ulrike; Smith, Kevin; Horvath, Peter

    2017-06-28

    High-content, imaging-based screens now routinely generate data on a scale that precludes manual verification and interrogation. Software applying machine learning has become an essential tool to automate analysis, but these methods require annotated examples to learn from. Efficiently exploring large datasets to find relevant examples remains a challenging bottleneck. Here, we present Advanced Cell Classifier (ACC), a graphical software package for phenotypic analysis that addresses these difficulties. ACC applies machine-learning and image-analysis methods to high-content data generated by large-scale, cell-based experiments. It features methods to mine microscopic image data, discover new phenotypes, and improve recognition performance. We demonstrate that these features substantially expedite the training process, successfully uncover rare phenotypes, and improve the accuracy of the analysis. ACC is extensively documented, designed to be user-friendly for researchers without machine-learning expertise, and distributed as a free open-source tool at www.cellclassifier.org. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. Aircraft noise synthesis system: Version 4 user instructions

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mccurdy, David A.; Sullivan, Brenda M.; Grandle, Robert E.

    1987-01-01

    A modified version of the Aircraft Noise Synthesis System with improved directivity and tonal content modeling has been developed. The synthesis system is used to provide test stimuli for studies of community annoyance to aircraft flyover noise. The computer-based system generates realistic, time-varying audio simulations of aircraft flyover noise at a specified observer location on the ground. The synthesis takes into account the time-varying aircraft position relative to the observer; specified reference spectra consisting of broadband, narrowband, and pure tone components; directivity patterns; Doppler shift; atmospheric effects; and ground effects. These parameters can be specified and controlled in such a way as to generate stimuli in which certain noise characteristics such as duration or tonal content are independently varied while the remaining characteristics such as broadband content are held constant. The modified version of the system provides improved modeling of noise directivity patterns and an increased number of pure tone components. User instructions for the modified version of the synthesis system are provided.

  18. Leveraging Collection Structure in Information Retrieval with Applications to Search in Conversational Social Media

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Elsas, Jonathan L.

    2011-01-01

    Social media collections are becoming increasingly important in the everyday life of Internet users. Recent statistics show that sites hosting social media and community-generated content account for five of the top ten most visited websites in the United States [4] are visited regularly by a broad cross-section of Internet users [61, 67, 115] and…

  19. PE on YouTube--Investigating Participation in Physical Education Practice

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Quennerstedt, Mikael

    2013-01-01

    Background: In this article, students' diverse ways of participating in physical education (PE) practice shown in clips on YouTube were investigated. YouTube is the largest user-generated video-sharing website on the Internet, where different video content is presented. The clips on YouTube, as used in this paper, can be seen as a user-generated…

  20. Open Source, Crowd Source: Harnessing the Power of the People behind Our Libraries

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Trainor, Cindi

    2009-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into the use of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 technologies so that librarians can combine open source software with user-generated content to create a richer discovery experience for their users. Design/methodology/approach: Following a description of the current state of integrated library…

  1. Semantically Enhanced Topic Modeling and Its Applications in Social Media

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Guo, Lifan

    2013-01-01

    As we witness the prosperity of the social media in the past few years, and feel the explosion of "user-generated content" on the Internet, there is little question that we have entered an era of Big Data. Those social media sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora and Twitter have been important sources for a wide spectrum of users.…

  2. Recommender system based on scarce information mining.

    PubMed

    Lu, Wei; Chung, Fu-Lai; Lai, Kunfeng; Zhang, Liang

    2017-09-01

    Guessing what user may like is now a typical interface for video recommendation. Nowadays, the highly popular user generated content sites provide various sources of information such as tags for recommendation tasks. Motivated by a real world online video recommendation problem, this work targets at the long tail phenomena of user behavior and the sparsity of item features. A personalized compound recommendation framework for online video recommendation called Dirichlet mixture probit model for information scarcity (DPIS) is hence proposed. Assuming that each clicking sample is generated from a representation of user preferences, DPIS models the sample level topic proportions as a multinomial item vector, and utilizes topical clustering on the user part for recommendation through a probit classifier. As demonstrated by the real-world application, the proposed DPIS achieves better performance in accuracy, perplexity as well as diversity in coverage than traditional methods. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Analysis of Content Shared in Online Cancer Communities: Systematic Review

    PubMed Central

    van de Poll-Franse, Lonneke V; Krahmer, Emiel; Verberne, Suzan; Mols, Floortje

    2018-01-01

    Background The content that cancer patients and their relatives (ie, posters) share in online cancer communities has been researched in various ways. In the past decade, researchers have used automated analysis methods in addition to manual coding methods. Patients, providers, researchers, and health care professionals can learn from experienced patients, provided that their experience is findable. Objective The aim of this study was to systematically review all relevant literature that analyzes user-generated content shared within online cancer communities. We reviewed the quality of available research and the kind of content that posters share with each other on the internet. Methods A computerized literature search was performed via PubMed (MEDLINE), PsycINFO (5 and 4 stars), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and ScienceDirect. The last search was conducted in July 2017. Papers were selected if they included the following terms: (cancer patient) and (support group or health communities) and (online or internet). We selected 27 papers and then subjected them to a 14-item quality checklist independently scored by 2 investigators. Results The methodological quality of the selected studies varied: 16 were of high quality and 11 were of adequate quality. Of those 27 studies, 15 were manually coded, 7 automated, and 5 used a combination of methods. The best results can be seen in the papers that combined both analytical methods. The number of analyzed posts ranged from 200 to 1,500,000; the number of analyzed posters ranged from 75 to 90,000. The studies analyzing large numbers of posts mainly related to breast cancer, whereas those analyzing small numbers were related to other types of cancers. A total of 12 studies involved some or entirely automatic analysis of the user-generated content. All the authors referred to two main content categories: informational support and emotional support. In all, 15 studies reported only on the content, 6 studies explicitly reported on content and social aspects, and 6 studies focused on emotional changes. Conclusions In the future, increasing amounts of user-generated content will become available on the internet. The results of content analysis, especially of the larger studies, give detailed insights into patients’ concerns and worries, which can then be used to improve cancer care. To make the results of such analyses as usable as possible, automatic content analysis methods will need to be improved through interdisciplinary collaboration. PMID:29615384

  4. A classification of user-generated content into consumer decision journey stages.

    PubMed

    Vázquez, Silvia; Muñoz-García, Óscar; Campanella, Inés; Poch, Marc; Fisas, Beatriz; Bel, Nuria; Andreu, Gloria

    2014-10-01

    In the last decades, the availability of digital user-generated documents from social media has dramatically increased. This massive growth of user-generated content has also affected traditional shopping behaviour. Customers have embraced new communication channels such as microblogs and social networks that enable them not only just to talk with friends and acquaintances about their shopping experience, but also to search for opinions expressed by complete strangers as part of their decision making processes. Uncovering how customers feel about specific products or brands and detecting purchase habits and preferences has traditionally been a costly and highly time-consuming task which involved the use of methods such as focus groups and surveys. However, the new scenario calls for a deep assessment of current market research techniques in order to better interpret and profit from this ever-growing stream of attitudinal data. With this purpose, we present a novel analysis and classification of user-generated content in terms of it belonging to one of the four stages of the Consumer Decision Journey Court et al. (2009) (i.e. the purchase process from the moment when a customer is aware of the existence of the product to the moment when he or she buys, experiences and talks about it). Using a corpus of short texts written in English and Spanish and extracted from different social media, we identify a set of linguistic patterns for each purchase stage that will be then used in a rule-based classifier. Additionally, we use machine learning algorithms to automatically identify business indicators such as the Marketing Mix elements McCarthy and Brogowicz (1981). The classification of the purchase stages achieves an average precision of 74%. The proposed classification of texts depending on the Marketing Mix elements expressed achieved an average precision of 75% for all the elements analysed. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. Student experiences of creating and sharing material in online learning.

    PubMed

    Potts, Henry W W

    2011-01-01

    User-generated content in an online environment has significant implications in both education and health. Instead of a model of knowledge being something transferred from the expert to the student or to the patient, Web 2.0 technologies offer the hope of making learning, and healthcare delivery, a more collaborative and participative process. However, some evidence suggests that this supposed democratisation of production is not entirely democratic and, in an educational context, many students are uncomfortable about sharing material they create with their peers. To understand students' affective and other experiences of generating content to be shared online with peers (e.g. in online discussions). Online interviews, face-to-face focus groups and further methods with two student groups in medical education, one undergraduate and one postgraduate. Students were broadly positive about creating and sharing material online, but were also quite anxious about doing so. Many practical issues, including around course design, student workload and assessment pressures, were barriers to students creating and sharing material. Group size is also important, with self-sustaining activity less likely in small groups. Successfully introducing user-generated content into medical education requires attention to practical details and an awareness of the student anxiety that can arise.

  6. An Ontology-Based Approach to Incorporate User-Generated Geo-Content Into Sdi

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Deng, D.-P.; Lemmens, R.

    2011-08-01

    The Web is changing the way people share and communicate information because of emergence of various Web technologies, which enable people to contribute information on the Web. User-Generated Geo-Content (UGGC) is a potential resource of geographic information. Due to the different production methods, UGGC often cannot fit in geographic information model. There is a semantic gap between UGGC and formal geographic information. To integrate UGGC into geographic information, this study conducts an ontology-based process to bridge this semantic gap. This ontology-based process includes five steps: Collection, Extraction, Formalization, Mapping, and Deployment. In addition, this study implements this process on Twitter messages, which is relevant to Japan Earthquake disaster. By using this process, we extract disaster relief information from Twitter messages, and develop a knowledge base for GeoSPARQL queries in disaster relief information.

  7. End-user satisfaction of a patient education tool manual versus computer-generated tool.

    PubMed

    Tronni, C; Welebob, E

    1996-01-01

    This article reports a nonexperimental comparative study of end-user satisfaction before and after implementation of a vendor supplied computerized system (Micromedex, Inc) for providing up-to-date patient instructions regarding diseases, injuries, procedures, and medications. The purpose of this research was to measure the satisfaction of nurses who directly interact with a specific patient educational software application and to compare user satisfaction with manual versus computer generated materials. A computing satisfaction questionnaire that uses a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being the lowest) was used to measure end-user computing satisfaction in five constructs: content, accuracy, format, ease of use, and timeliness. Summary statistics were used to calculate mean ratings for each of the questionnaire's 12 items and for each of the five constructs. Mean differences between the ratings before and after implementation of the five constructs were significant by paired t test. Total user satisfaction improved with the computerized system, and the computer generated materials were given a higher rating than were the manual materials. Implications of these findings are discussed.

  8. Content-based analysis of news video

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yu, Junqing; Zhou, Dongru; Liu, Huayong; Cai, Bo

    2001-09-01

    In this paper, we present a schema for content-based analysis of broadcast news video. First, we separate commercials from news using audiovisual features. Then, we automatically organize news programs into a content hierarchy at various levels of abstraction via effective integration of video, audio, and text data available from the news programs. Based on these news video structure and content analysis technologies, a TV news video Library is generated, from which users can retrieve definite news story according to their demands.

  9. Research on gender differences in online health communities.

    PubMed

    Liu, Xuan; Sun, Min; Li, Jia

    2018-03-01

    With the growing concern about health issues and the emergence of online communities based on user-generated content (UGC), more and more people are participating in online health communities (OHCs) to exchange opinions and health information. This paper aims to examine whether and how male and female users behave differently in OHCs. Using data from a leading diabetes community in China (Tianmijiayuan), we incorporate three different techniques: topic modeling analysis, sentiment analysis and friendship network analysis to investigate gender differences in chronic online health communities. The results indicated that (1) Male users' posting content was usually more professional and included more medical terms. Comparatively speaking, female users were more inclined to seek emotional support in the health communities. (2) Female users expressed more negative emotions than male users did, especially anxiety and sadness. (3) In addition, male users were more centered and influential in the friendship network than were women. Through these analyses, our research revealed the behavioral characteristics and needs for different gender users in online health communities. Gaining a deeper understanding of gender differences in OHCs can serve as guidance to better meet the information needs, emotional needs and relationship needs of male and female patients. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  10. Science communication on YouTube: Factors that affect channel and video popularity.

    PubMed

    Welbourne, Dustin J; Grant, Will J

    2016-08-01

    YouTube has become one of the largest websites on the Internet. Among its many genres, both professional and amateur science communicators compete for audience attention. This article provides the first overview of science communication on YouTube and examines content factors that affect the popularity of science communication videos on the site. A content analysis of 390 videos from 39 YouTube channels was conducted. Although professionally generated content is superior in number, user-generated content was significantly more popular. Furthermore, videos that had consistent science communicators were more popular than those without a regular communicator. This study represents an important first step to understand content factors, which increases the channel and video popularity of science communication on YouTube. © The Author(s) 2015.

  11. Digital junk: food and beverage marketing on Facebook.

    PubMed

    Freeman, Becky; Kelly, Bridget; Baur, Louise; Chapman, Kathy; Chapman, Simon; Gill, Tim; King, Lesley

    2014-12-01

    We assessed the amount, reach, and nature of energy-dense, nutrient-poor (EDNP) food and beverage marketing on Facebook. We conducted a content analysis of the marketing techniques used by the 27 most popular food and beverage brand Facebook pages in Australia. We coded content across 19 marketing categories; data were collected from the day each page launched (mean = 3.65 years of activity per page). We analyzed 13 international pages and 14 Australian-based brand pages; 4 brands (Subway, Coca-Cola, Slurpee, Maltesers) had both national and international pages. Pages widely used marketing features unique to social media that increase consumer interaction and engagement. Common techniques were competitions based on user-generated content, interactive games, and apps. Four pages included apps that allowed followers to place an order directly through Facebook. Adolescent and young adult Facebook users appeared most receptive to engaging with this content. By using the interactive and social aspects of Facebook to market products, EDNP food brands capitalize on users' social networks and magnify the reach and personal relevance of their marketing messages.

  12. Environmental Visualization and Horizontal Fusion

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2005-10-01

    the section on EVIS Rules. Federated Search – Discovering Content Another method of discovering services and their content has been implemented...in HF through a next-generation knowledge discovery framework called Federated Search . A virtual information space, called Collateral Space was...environmental mission effects products, is presented later in the paper. Federated Search allows users to search through Collateral Space data that is

  13. Automatic Sound Generation for Spherical Objects Hitting Straight Beams Based on Physical Models.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rauterberg, M.; And Others

    Sounds are the result of one or several interactions between one or several objects at a certain place and in a certain environment; the attributes of every interaction influence the generated sound. The following factors influence users in human/computer interaction: the organization of the learning environment, the content of the learning tasks,…

  14. What Can We Learn about Mental Health Needs from Tweets Mentioning Dementia on World Alzheimer’s Day?

    PubMed Central

    Yoon, Sunmoo

    2017-01-01

    Background Twitter can address the mental health challenges of dementia care. The aims of this study is to explore the contents and user interactions of tweets mentioning dementia to gain insights for dementia care. Methods We collected 35,260 tweets mentioning Alzheimer’s or dementia on World Alzheimer’s Day, September 21st in 2015. Topic modeling and social network analysis were applied to uncover content and structure of user communication. Results Global users generated keywords related to mental health and care including #psychology and #mental health. There were similarities and differences between the UK and the US in tweet content. The macro-level analysis uncovered substantial public interest on dementia. The meso-level network analysis revealed that top leaders of communities were spiritual organizations and traditional media. Conclusions The application of topic modeling and multi-level network analysis while incorporating visualization techniques can promote a global level understanding regarding public attention, interests, and insights regarding dementia care and mental health. PMID:27803262

  15. [Web Babel Syndrome and false expectations during own multimedia oncological search].

    PubMed

    Di Cerbo, A; Pezzuto, F; Laurino, C; Palmieri, B

    2014-01-01

    Nowadays Internet has become the new gold standard, for most of web users, when performing a screening on medical updates and/or cares. Although provided with some scientific background most of websites, blogs and videos (which as main source have Youtube) lack some institution that can garantee their contents and quality; thus one generates ambiguities among users giving light to a particular pathology called "Web Babel Syndrome"

  16. On-line content creation for photo products: understanding what the user wants

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fageth, Reiner

    2015-03-01

    This paper describes how videos can be implemented into printed photo books and greeting cards. We will show that - surprisingly or not- pictures from videos are similarly used such as classical images to tell compelling stories. Videos can be taken with nearly every camera, digital point and shoot cameras, DSLRs as well as smartphones and more and more with so-called action cameras mounted on sports devices. The implementation of videos while generating QR codes and relevant pictures out of the video stream via a software implementation was contents in last years' paper. This year we present first data about what contents is displayed and how the users represent their videos in printed products, e.g. CEWE PHOTOBOOKS and greeting cards. We report the share of the different video formats used.

  17. Rule-based interface generation on mobile devices for structured documentation.

    PubMed

    Kock, Ann-Kristin; Andersen, Björn; Handels, Heinz; Ingenerf, Josef

    2014-01-01

    In many software systems to date, interactive graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are represented implicitly in the source code, together with the application logic. Hence, the re-use, development, and modification of these interfaces is often very laborious. Flexible adjustments of GUIs for various platforms and devices as well as individual user preferences are furthermore difficult to realize. These problems motivate a software-based separation of content and GUI models on the one hand, and application logic on the other. In this project, a software solution for structured reporting on mobile devices is developed. Clinical content archetypes developed in a previous project serve as the content model while the Android SDK provides the GUI model. The necessary bindings between the models are specified using the Jess Rule Language.

  18. Proteopedia: Exciting Advances in the 3D Encyclopedia of Biomolecular Structure

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Prilusky, Jaime; Hodis, Eran; Sussman, Joel L.

    Proteopedia is a collaborative, 3D web-encyclopedia of protein, nucleic acid and other structures. Proteopedia ( http://www.proteopedia.org ) presents 3D biomolecule structures in a broadly accessible manner to a diverse scientific audience through easy-to-use molecular visualization tools integrated into a wiki environment that anyone with a user account can edit. We describe recent advances in the web resource in the areas of content and software. In terms of content, we describe a large growth in user-added content as well as improvements in automatically-generated content for all PDB entry pages in the resource. In terms of software, we describe new features ranging from the capability to create pages hidden from public view to the capability to export pages for offline viewing. New software features also include an improved file-handling system and availability of biological assemblies of protein structures alongside their asymmetric units.

  19. [Legal aspects of Web 2.0 in the health field].

    PubMed

    Beslay, Nathalie; Jeunehomme, Marie

    2009-10-01

    Web 2.0 sites are considered to be hosting providers and not publishers of user-generated content. The liability of hosting providers' liability is defined by the law enacted on June 21, 2004, on confidence in the digital economy. Hosting providers must promptly remove the information they host or make its access impossible once they are informed of its illegality. They are required to obtain and retain data to enable identification of any person who has contributed to content hosted by them. The liability of hosting providers has arisen in numerous disputes about user-produced content in various situations (discussion lists, blogs, etc.). The National Board of Physicians has developed specific ethical guidelines for web sites devoted to health issues and specifically for physician-authored content. The National Board of Physicians acknowledges that physicians can present themselves, their office, and their specific practice on their web site, notwithstanding any restrictions otherwise applicable to advertising.

  20. Towards an Enhanced Aspect-based Contradiction Detection Approach for Online Review Content

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nuradilah Azman, Siti; Ishak, Iskandar; Sharef, Nurfadhlina Mohd; Sidi, Fatimah

    2017-09-01

    User generated content as such online reviews plays an important role in customer’s purchase decisions. Many works have focused on identifying satisfaction of the reviewer in social media through the study of sentiment analysis (SA) and opinion mining. The large amount of potential application and the increasing number of opinions expresses on the web results in researchers interest on sentiment analysis and opinion mining. However, due to the reviewer’s idiosyncrasy, reviewer may have different preferences and point of view for a particular subject which in this case hotel reviews. There is still limited research that focuses on this contradiction detection in the perspective of tourism online review especially in numerical contradiction. Therefore, the aim of this paper to investigate the type of contradiction in online review which mainly focusing on hotel online review, to provide useful material on process or methods for identifying contradiction which mainly on the review itself and to determine opportunities for relevant future research for online review contradiction detection. We also proposed a model to detect numerical contradiction in user generated content for tourism industry.

  1. The DREO Elint Browser Utility (DEBU) reference manual

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ford, Barbara; Jones, David

    1992-04-01

    An electronic intelligent database browsing tool called DEBU has been developed that allows databases such as ELP, Kilting, EWIR, and AFEWC to be reviewed and analyzed from a user-friendly environment on a personal computer. DEBU's basic function is to allow users to examine the contents of user-selected subfiles of user-selected emitters of user-selected databases. DEBU augments this functionality with support for selecting (filtering) and combining subsets of emitters by user-selected attributes such as name, parameter type, or parameter value. DEBU provides facilities for examining histograms and x-y plots of selected parameters, for doing ambiguity analysis and mode level analysis, and for generating and printing a variety of reports. A manual is provided for users of DEBU, including descriptions and illustrations of menus and windows.

  2. Analysis of Content Shared in Online Cancer Communities: Systematic Review.

    PubMed

    van Eenbergen, Mies C; van de Poll-Franse, Lonneke V; Krahmer, Emiel; Verberne, Suzan; Mols, Floortje

    2018-04-03

    The content that cancer patients and their relatives (ie, posters) share in online cancer communities has been researched in various ways. In the past decade, researchers have used automated analysis methods in addition to manual coding methods. Patients, providers, researchers, and health care professionals can learn from experienced patients, provided that their experience is findable. The aim of this study was to systematically review all relevant literature that analyzes user-generated content shared within online cancer communities. We reviewed the quality of available research and the kind of content that posters share with each other on the internet. A computerized literature search was performed via PubMed (MEDLINE), PsycINFO (5 and 4 stars), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and ScienceDirect. The last search was conducted in July 2017. Papers were selected if they included the following terms: (cancer patient) and (support group or health communities) and (online or internet). We selected 27 papers and then subjected them to a 14-item quality checklist independently scored by 2 investigators. The methodological quality of the selected studies varied: 16 were of high quality and 11 were of adequate quality. Of those 27 studies, 15 were manually coded, 7 automated, and 5 used a combination of methods. The best results can be seen in the papers that combined both analytical methods. The number of analyzed posts ranged from 200 to 1,500,000; the number of analyzed posters ranged from 75 to 90,000. The studies analyzing large numbers of posts mainly related to breast cancer, whereas those analyzing small numbers were related to other types of cancers. A total of 12 studies involved some or entirely automatic analysis of the user-generated content. All the authors referred to two main content categories: informational support and emotional support. In all, 15 studies reported only on the content, 6 studies explicitly reported on content and social aspects, and 6 studies focused on emotional changes. In the future, increasing amounts of user-generated content will become available on the internet. The results of content analysis, especially of the larger studies, give detailed insights into patients' concerns and worries, which can then be used to improve cancer care. To make the results of such analyses as usable as possible, automatic content analysis methods will need to be improved through interdisciplinary collaboration. ©Mies C van Eenbergen, Lonneke V van de Poll-Franse, Emiel Krahmer, Suzan Verberne, Floortje Mols. Originally published in JMIR Cancer (http://cancer.jmir.org), 03.04.2018.

  3. Mining consumer reviews to generate ratings of different product attributes while producing feature-based review-summary

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kangale, Akshay; Krishna Kumar, S.; Arshad Naeem, Mohd; Williams, Mark; Tiwari, M. K.

    2016-10-01

    With the massive growth of the internet, product reviews increasingly serve as an important source of information for customers to make choices online. Customers depend on these reviews to understand users' experience, and manufacturers rely on this user-generated content to capture user sentiments about their product. Therefore, it is in the best interest of both customers and manufacturers to have a portal where they can read a complete comprehensive summary of these reviews in minimum time. With this in mind, we arrived at our first objective which is to generate a feature-based review-summary. Our second objective is to develop a predictive model to know the next week's product sales based on numerical review ratings and textual features embedded in the reviews. When it comes to product features, every user has different priorities for different features. To capture this aspect of decision-making, we have designed a new mechanism to generate a numerical rating for every feature of the product individually. The data have been collected from a well-known commercial website for two different products. The validation of the model is carried out using a crowd-sourcing technique.

  4. Advancing the Strategic Messages Affecting Robot Trust Effect: The Dynamic of User- and Robot-Generated Content on Human-Robot Trust and Interaction Outcomes.

    PubMed

    Liang, Yuhua Jake; Lee, Seungcheol Austin

    2016-09-01

    Human-robot interaction (HRI) will soon transform and shift the communication landscape such that people exchange messages with robots. However, successful HRI requires people to trust robots, and, in turn, the trust affects the interaction. Although prior research has examined the determinants of human-robot trust (HRT) during HRI, no research has examined the messages that people received before interacting with robots and their effect on HRT. We conceptualize these messages as SMART (Strategic Messages Affecting Robot Trust). Moreover, we posit that SMART can ultimately affect actual HRI outcomes (i.e., robot evaluations, robot credibility, participant mood) by affording the persuasive influences from user-generated content (UGC) on participatory Web sites. In Study 1, participants were assigned to one of two conditions (UGC/control) in an original experiment of HRT. Compared with the control (descriptive information only), results showed that UGC moderated the correlation between HRT and interaction outcomes in a positive direction (average Δr = +0.39) for robots as media and robots as tools. In Study 2, we explored the effect of robot-generated content but did not find similar moderation effects. These findings point to an important empirical potential to employ SMART in future robot deployment.

  5. Adolescents’ Perceptions Regarding Effective Tobacco Use Prevention Strategies for their Younger Counterparts: A Qualitative Study in Malaysia

    PubMed Central

    Zin, Faridah Mohd; Hillaluddin, Azlin Hilma; Mustaffa, Jamaludin

    2016-01-01

    Purpose: The present qualitative study explored adolescents’ perceptions regarding effective strategies to prevent adolescents from using tobacco products (TP). Apart from the commercial TPs, there has been emerging use of alternatives such as vapes, e-cigarettes and shisha. This unfortunate phenomenon continues despite the currently available preventive strategies. Thus, understanding of the perceptions of the current generation would be valuable to provide new insights. Methods: Purposive sampling was utilized to recruit 40 adolescents between the age of 15 and 16 years old attending public daily secondary schools. Eight focus group discussions were conducted among the TP users, ex-users and non-users. Data were analyzed using a thematic content analysis procedure with NVivo. Results: Among barriers with the currently available strategies were having teachers who smoke tobacco, addiction to nicotine and self-perceptions of being healthy. The content of any program should include knowledge on negative outcomes of using tobacco products and awareness of the legislation together with ways to overcome peer and family influence including improving self-efficacy and refusal skills. Strategies were suggested to be delivered using information technology which provides interactive learning and visual effects. Conclusions: Adolescents agreed that the content and delivery of tobacco use prevention strategies need to be revised to suit the current generation to ensure sustainability. PMID:28122443

  6. Placing User-Generated Content on the Map with Confidence

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2014-11-03

    Terms Theory,Algorithms Keywords Geographic information retrieval, Geolocation 1. INTRODUCTION We describe a method that places on the map short text...we collected using twitter4j, a Java library for the Twitter API . After filtering, there were 44,289 documents in the Twitter test set We evaluate how...Baldwin. Text-based twitter user geolocation prediction. J. Artif. Intell. Res.(JAIR), 49:451–500, 2014. [4] C. Hauff, B. Thomee, and M. Trevisiol

  7. Clean, cheap, convenient: promotion of Electronic cigarettes on YouTube.

    PubMed

    Sears, Clara G; Walker, Kandi L; Hart, Joy L; Lee, Alexander S; Siu, Allison; Smith, Courteney

    2017-04-01

    Videos promoting electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) can be easily accessed on YouTube. Marketing claims present in YouTube videos may help shape the public's opinion of e-cigarettes. Thus, it is important to understand the most frequent marketing claims and video sources. The objectives of this study were to 1) identify marketing claims in YouTube videos that are commonly made on e-cigarette retail websites and 2) compare the frequency of marketing claims in user-generated and professional YouTube videos. Through content analysis, this study evaluated six marketing claims and descriptive information about YouTube videos (n = 50) related to "electronic cigarettes" and "vape". Overall, the most frequent marketing claim promoted e-cigarette use as better than traditional tobacco use (52%). Approximately 65% of videos appeared to be user-generated and 35% were professionally-produced. Compared to user-generated videos, significantly more professional videos made claims that e-cigarettes are cleaner (p < 0.001) and cheaper (p = 0.04) than traditional cigarettes. Additionally, more professional videos had claims promoting e-cigarettes as better than traditional cigarettes because of their convenience-the user can smoke anywhere (p < 0.0001) and the products do not produce secondhand smoke (p < 0.001). The most frequent claim in user-generated videos was related to recreation (53%). Videos on YouTube promote e-cigarettes as safer than other tobacco products. Videos appearing to be user-generated contained different marketing claims compared to professional videos. Further research is necessary to assess how the perceived source of the video impacts the ways these marketing claims shape public perception and influence use.

  8. User-Centered Design of the eyeGuide, a Tailored Glaucoma Behavior Change Program

    PubMed Central

    Killeen, Olivia; MacKenzie, Chamisa; Heisler, Michele; Resnicow, Ken; Lee, Paul P.; Newman-Casey, Paula Anne

    2016-01-01

    PURPOSE We employed user-centered design to refine a prototype of the eyeGuide, a novel, tailored behavior change program intended to improve medication adherence among glaucoma patients. PATIENTS Glaucoma patients ≥ age 40 prescribed ≥1 glaucoma medication were included. METHODS The eyeGuide consists of tailored educational content and tailored testimonials in which patients share how they were able to overcome barriers to improve their medication adherence. A hybrid of semi-structured diagnostic and pre-testing interviews were used to refine the content of the eyeGuide. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit a study population representative of the glaucoma patient population. Interviews were conducted until thematic saturation was reached. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Three researchers analyzed the transcripts, generated a codebook and identified key themes using NVivo 10.0 to further refine the eyeGuide. RESULTS Twenty-one glaucoma patients were interviewed; mean age 72 ± 12.4 years, five (24%) African-Americans, nine (43%) with poor self-reported adherence, ten (47.6%) ≥ age 75, ten (47.6%) with poor vision and nine (42.9%) women. Qualitative analysis identified five important themes for improving glaucoma self-management: social support, patient-provider relationship, medication routine, patients’ beliefs about disease and treatment, and eye drop instillation. All participants expressed satisfaction with in-person delivery of the eyeGuide and preferred this to a web-based module. Participant feedback resulted in revised content. CONCLUSIONS User-centered design generated improvements in the eyeGuide that would not have been possible without patient input. Participants expressed satisfaction with the tailored content. PMID:27096721

  9. User-centered Design of the eyeGuide: A Tailored Glaucoma Behavior Change Program.

    PubMed

    Killeen, Olivia J; MacKenzie, Chamisa; Heisler, Michele; Resnicow, Ken; Lee, Paul P; Newman-Casey, Paula Anne

    2016-10-01

    We employed user-centered design to refine a prototype of the eyeGuide, a novel, tailored behavior change program intended to improve medication adherence among glaucoma patients. Glaucoma patients age 40 years and above prescribed ≥1 glaucoma medication were included. The eyeGuide consists of tailored educational content and tailored testimonials in which patients share how they were able to overcome barriers to improve their medication adherence. A hybrid of semistructured diagnostic and pretesting interviews were used to refine the content of the eyeGuide. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit a study population representative of the glaucoma patient population. Interviews were conducted until thematic saturation was reached. Interviews were audiorecorded and transcribed verbatim. Three researchers analyzed the transcripts, generated a codebook, and identified key themes using NVivo 10.0 to further refine the eyeGuide. Twenty-one glaucoma patients were interviewed; mean age 72±12.4 years, 5 (24%) African Americans, 9 (43%) with poor self-reported adherence, 10 (47.6%) age 75 years and above, 10 (47.6%) with poor vision, and 9 (42.9%) women. Qualitative analysis identified 5 important themes for improving glaucoma self-management: social support, patient-provider relationship, medication routine, patients' beliefs about disease and treatment, and eye drop instillation. All participants expressed satisfaction with in-person delivery of the eyeGuide and preferred this to a Web-based module. Participant feedback resulted in revised content. User-centered design generated improvements in the eyeGuide that would not have been possible without patient input. Participants expressed satisfaction with the tailored content.

  10. Classification of Twitter Users Who Tweet About E-Cigarettes

    PubMed Central

    Miano, Thomas; Chew, Robert; Eggers, Matthew; Nonnemaker, James

    2017-01-01

    Background Despite concerns about their health risks, e‑cigarettes have gained popularity in recent years. Concurrent with the recent increase in e‑cigarette use, social media sites such as Twitter have become a common platform for sharing information about e-cigarettes and to promote marketing of e‑cigarettes. Monitoring the trends in e‑cigarette–related social media activity requires timely assessment of the content of posts and the types of users generating the content. However, little is known about the diversity of the types of users responsible for generating e‑cigarette–related content on Twitter. Objective The aim of this study was to demonstrate a novel methodology for automatically classifying Twitter users who tweet about e‑cigarette–related topics into distinct categories. Methods We collected approximately 11.5 million e‑cigarette–related tweets posted between November 2014 and October 2016 and obtained a random sample of Twitter users who tweeted about e‑cigarettes. Trained human coders examined the handles’ profiles and manually categorized each as one of the following user types: individual (n=2168), vaper enthusiast (n=334), informed agency (n=622), marketer (n=752), and spammer (n=1021). Next, the Twitter metadata as well as a sample of tweets for each labeled user were gathered, and features that reflect users’ metadata and tweeting behavior were analyzed. Finally, multiple machine learning algorithms were tested to identify a model with the best performance in classifying user types. Results Using a classification model that included metadata and features associated with tweeting behavior, we were able to predict with relatively high accuracy five different types of Twitter users that tweet about e‑cigarettes (average F1 score=83.3%). Accuracy varied by user type, with F1 scores of individuals, informed agencies, marketers, spammers, and vaper enthusiasts being 91.1%, 84.4%, 81.2%, 79.5%, and 47.1%, respectively. Vaper enthusiasts were the most challenging user type to predict accurately and were commonly misclassified as marketers. The inclusion of additional tweet-derived features that capture tweeting behavior was found to significantly improve the model performance—an overall F1 score gain of 10.6%—beyond metadata features alone. Conclusions This study provides a method for classifying five different types of users who tweet about e‑cigarettes. Our model achieved high levels of classification performance for most groups, and examining the tweeting behavior was critical in improving the model performance. Results can help identify groups engaged in conversations about e‑cigarettes online to help inform public health surveillance, education, and regulatory efforts. PMID:28951381

  11. In-depth statistical analysis of the use of a website providing patients' narratives on lifestyle change when living with chronic back pain or coronary heart disease.

    PubMed

    Schweier, Rebecca; Grande, Gesine; Richter, Cynthia; Riedel-Heller, Steffi G; Romppel, Matthias

    2018-07-01

    To investigate the use of lebensstil-aendern.de ("lifestyle change"), a website providing peer narratives of experiences with successful lifestyle change, and to analyze whether peer model characteristics, clip content, and media type have an influence on the number of visitors, dwell time, and exit rates. An in-depth statistical analysis of website use with multilevel regression analyses. In two years, lebensstil-aendern.de attracted 12,844 visitors. The in-depth statistical analysis of usage rates demonstrated that audio clips were less popular than video or text-only clips, longer clips attracted more visitors, and clips by younger and female interviewees were preferred. User preferences for clip content categories differed between heart and back pain patients. Clips about stress management drew the smallest numbers of visitors in both indication modules. Patients are interested in the experiences of others. Because the quality of information for user-generated content is generally low, healthcare providers should include quality-assured patient narratives in their interventions. User preferences for content, medium, and peer characteristics need to be taken into account. If healthcare providers decide to include patient experiences in their websites, they should plan their intervention according to the different needs and preferences of users. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  12. Smartphone and tablet apps for concussion road warriors (team clinicians): a systematic review for practical users.

    PubMed

    Lee, Hopin; Sullivan, S John; Schneiders, Anthony G; Ahmed, Osman Hassan; Balasundaram, Arun Prasad; Williams, David; Meeuwisse, Willem H; McCrory, Paul

    2015-04-01

    Mobile technologies are steadily replacing traditional assessment approaches for the recognition and assessment of a sports concussion. Their ease of access, while facilitating the early identification of a concussion, also raises issues regarding the content of the applications (apps) and their suitability for different user groups. To locate and review apps that assist in the recognition and assessment of a sports concussion and to assess their content with respect to that of internationally accepted best-practice instruments. A search of international app stores and of the web using key terms such as 'concussion', 'sports concussion' and variants was conducted. For those apps meeting the inclusion criteria, data were extracted on the platform, intended users and price. The content of each app was benchmarked to the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 2 (SCAT2) and Pocket SCAT2 using a custom scoring scheme to generate a percentage compliance statistic. 18 of the 155 apps identified met the inclusion criteria. Almost all (16/18) were available on an iOS platform and only five required a payment to purchase. The apps were marketed for a wide range of intended users from medical professionals to the general public. The content of the apps varied from 0% to 100% compliance with the selected standard, and 'symptom evaluation' components demonstrated the highest level of compliance. The surge in availability of apps in an unregulated market raises concerns as to the appropriateness of their content for different groups of end users. The consolidation of best-practice concussion instruments now provides a framework to inform the development of future apps. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

  13. Comparison of texture synthesis methods for content generation in ultrasound simulation for training

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mattausch, Oliver; Ren, Elizabeth; Bajka, Michael; Vanhoey, Kenneth; Goksel, Orcun

    2017-03-01

    Navigation and interpretation of ultrasound (US) images require substantial expertise, the training of which can be aided by virtual-reality simulators. However, a major challenge in creating plausible simulated US images is the generation of realistic ultrasound speckle. Since typical ultrasound speckle exhibits many properties of Markov Random Fields, it is conceivable to use texture synthesis for generating plausible US appearance. In this work, we investigate popular classes of texture synthesis methods for generating realistic US content. In a user study, we evaluate their performance for reproducing homogeneous tissue regions in B-mode US images from small image samples of similar tissue and report the best-performing synthesis methods. We further show that regression trees can be used on speckle texture features to learn a predictor for US realism.

  14. Social Properties of Mobile Video

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mitchell, April Slayden; O'Hara, Kenton; Vorbau, Alex

    Mobile video is now an everyday possibility with a wide array of commercially available devices, services, and content. These new technologies have created dramatic shifts in the way video-based media can be produced, consumed, and delivered by people beyond the familiar behaviors associated with fixed TV and video technologies. Such technology revolutions change the way users behave and change their expectations in regards to their mobile video experiences. Building upon earlier studies of mobile video, this paper reports on a study using diary techniques and ethnographic interviews to better understand how people are using commercially available mobile video technologies in their everyday lives. Drawing on reported episodes of mobile video behavior, the study identifies the social motivations and values underpinning these behaviors that help characterize mobile video consumption beyond the simplistic notion of viewing video only to kill time. This paper also discusses the significance of user-generated content and the usage of video in social communities through the description of two mobile video technology services that allow users to create and share content. Implications for adoption and design of mobile video technologies and services are discussed as well.

  15. Quantitative Analysis of the Usage of the COSMOS Science Education Portal

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sotiriou, Sofoklis; Bogner, Franz X.; Neofotistos, George

    2011-08-01

    A quantitative method of mapping the web usage of an innovative educational portal is applied to analyze the behaviour of users of the COSMOS Science Education Portal. The COSMOS Portal contains user-generated resources (that are uploaded by its users). It has been designed to support a science teacher's search, retrieval and access to both, scientific and educational resources. It also aims to introduce in and familiarize teachers with an innovative methodology for designing, expressing and representing educational practices in a commonly understandable way through the use of user-friendly authoring tools that are available through the portal. As a new science education portal that includes user-generated content, the COSMOS Portal encounters the well-known "new product/service challenge": to convince the users to use its tools, which facilitate quite fast lesson planning and lesson preparation activities. To respond to this challenge, the COSMOS Portal operators implemented a validation process by analyzing the usage data of the portal in a 10 month time-period. The data analyzed comprised: (a) the temporal evolution of the number of contributors and the amount of content uploaded to the COSMOS Portal; (b) the number of portal visitors (categorized as all-visitors, new-visitors, and returning-visitors) and (c) visitor loyalty parameters (such as page-views; pages/visit; average time on site; depth of visit; length of visit). The data is augmented with data associated with the usage context (e.g. the time of day when most of the activities in the portal take place). The quantitative results indicate that the exponential growth of the contributors to the COSMOS Portal is followed by an exponential growth of the uploaded content. Furthermore, the web usage statistics demonstrate significant changes in users' behaviour during the period under study, with returning visitors using the COSMOS Portal more frequently, mainly for lesson planning and preparation (in the afternoon hours). The findings demonstrate that the new COSMOS users follow the "law of surfing" behaviour, a common pattern of surfing behaviour in portals. However, users return to the COSMOS Portal: returning users comprise more than 50% of all COSMOS visits, stay longer on site and visit more pages. Returning visitors are benchmarked against the "law of surfing" and outperform it substantially. These quantitative results benchmark the web usage of a portal and provide its operators with maps of value-added patterns of the portal's offering to its users in the science education community.

  16. Volunteered Geographic Information in Wikipedia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hardy, Darren

    2010-01-01

    Volunteered geographic information (VGI) refers to the geographic subset of online user-generated content. Through Geobrowsers and online mapping services, which use geovisualization and Web technologies to share and produce VGI, a global digital commons of geographic information has emerged. A notable example is Wikipedia, an online collaborative…

  17. Digital Libraries: The Next Generation in File System Technology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bowman, Mic; Camargo, Bill

    1998-01-01

    Examines file sharing within corporations that use wide-area, distributed file systems. Applications and user interactions strongly suggest that the addition of services typically associated with digital libraries (content-based file location, strongly typed objects, representation of complex relationships between documents, and extrinsic…

  18. Tailored motivational message generation: A model and practical framework for real-time physical activity coaching.

    PubMed

    Op den Akker, Harm; Cabrita, Miriam; Op den Akker, Rieks; Jones, Valerie M; Hermens, Hermie J

    2015-06-01

    This paper presents a comprehensive and practical framework for automatic generation of real-time tailored messages in behavior change applications. Basic aspects of motivational messages are time, intention, content and presentation. Tailoring of messages to the individual user may involve all aspects of communication. A linear modular system is presented for generating such messages. It is explained how properties of user and context are taken into account in each of the modules of the system and how they affect the linguistic presentation of the generated messages. The model of motivational messages presented is based on an analysis of existing literature as well as the analysis of a corpus of motivational messages used in previous studies. The model extends existing 'ontology-based' approaches to message generation for real-time coaching systems found in the literature. Practical examples are given on how simple tailoring rules can be implemented throughout the various stages of the framework. Such examples can guide further research by clarifying what it means to use e.g. user targeting to tailor a message. As primary example we look at the issue of promoting daily physical activity. Future work is pointed out in applying the present model and framework, defining efficient ways of evaluating individual tailoring components, and improving effectiveness through the creation of accurate and complete user- and context models. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  19. The effect of visualizing the flow of multimedia content among and inside devices.

    PubMed

    Lee, Dong-Seok

    2009-05-01

    This study introduces a user interface, referred to as the flow interface, which provides a graphical representation of the movement of content among and inside audio/video devices. The proposed interface provides a different frame of reference with content-oriented visualization of the generation, manipulation, storage, and display of content as well as input and output. The flow interface was applied to a VCR/DVD recorder combo, one of the most complicated consumer products. A between-group experiment was performed to determine whether the flow interface helps users to perform various tasks and to examine the learning effect of the flow interface, particularly in regard to hooking up and recording tasks. The results showed that participants with access to the flow interface performed better in terms of success rate and elapsed time. In addition, the participants indicated that they could easily understand the flow interface. The potential of the flow interface for application to other audio video devices, and design issues requiring further consideration, are discussed.

  20. Embed dynamic content in your poster.

    PubMed

    Hutchins, B Ian

    2013-01-29

    A new technology has emerged that will facilitate the presentation of dynamic or otherwise inaccessible data on posters at scientific meetings. Video, audio, or other digital files hosted on mobile-friendly sites can be linked to through a quick response (QR) code, a two-dimensional barcode that can be scanned by smartphones, which then display the content. This approach is more affordable than acquiring tablet computers for playing dynamic content and can reach many users at large conferences. This resource details how to host videos, generate QR codes, and view the associated files on mobile devices.

  1. Policy-Aware Content Reuse on the Web

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Seneviratne, Oshani; Kagal, Lalana; Berners-Lee, Tim

    The Web allows users to share their work very effectively leading to the rapid re-use and remixing of content on the Web including text, images, and videos. Scientific research data, social networks, blogs, photo sharing sites and other such applications known collectively as the Social Web have lots of increasingly complex information. Such information from several Web pages can be very easily aggregated, mashed up and presented in other Web pages. Content generation of this nature inevitably leads to many copyright and license violations, motivating research into effective methods to detect and prevent such violations.

  2. Topic Time Series Analysis of Microblogs

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2014-10-01

    network, may be closer to a media distribution site, where the media is user produced [14]. Analysis of the text content includes both general models as...is generated by Instagram . Topic 80, Distance: 143.2101 Top words: 1. rawr 2. ˆ0ˆ 3. kill 4. jurassic 5. dinosaur Analysis: This topic is quite...data, lack of reliable event information, hidden temporal trends, and the vastly diverse nature of content . In the present work, we examine spatio

  3. Clean, cheap, convenient: promotion of Electronic cigarettes on YouTube

    PubMed Central

    Sears, Clara G.; Walker, Kandi L.; Hart, Joy L.; Lee, Alexander S.; Siu, Allison; Smith, Courteney

    2017-01-01

    INTRODUCTION Videos promoting electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) can be easily accessed on YouTube. Marketing claims present in YouTube videos may help shape the public’s opinion of e-cigarettes. Thus, it is important to understand the most frequent marketing claims and video sources. METHODS The objectives of this study were to 1) identify marketing claims in YouTube videos that are commonly made on e-cigarette retail websites and 2) compare the frequency of marketing claims in user-generated and professional YouTube videos. Through content analysis, this study evaluated six marketing claims and descriptive information about YouTube videos (n = 50) related to “electronic cigarettes” and “vape”. RESULTS Overall, the most frequent marketing claim promoted e-cigarette use as better than traditional tobacco use (52%). Approximately 65% of videos appeared to be user-generated and 35% were professionally-produced. Compared to user-generated videos, significantly more professional videos made claims that e-cigarettes are cleaner (p < 0.001) and cheaper (p = 0.04) than traditional cigarettes. Additionally, more professional videos had claims promoting e-cigarettes as better than traditional cigarettes because of their convenience—the user can smoke anywhere (p < 0.0001) and the products do not produce secondhand smoke (p < 0.001). The most frequent claim in user-generated videos was related to recreation (53%). CONCLUSIONS Videos on YouTube promote e-cigarettes as safer than other tobacco products. Videos appearing to be user-generated contained different marketing claims compared to professional videos. Further research is necessary to assess how the perceived source of the video impacts the ways these marketing claims shape public perception and influence use. PMID:28725876

  4. New generation of the multimedia search engines

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mijes Cruz, Mario Humberto; Soto Aldaco, Andrea; Maldonado Cano, Luis Alejandro; López Rodríguez, Mario; Rodríguez Vázqueza, Manuel Antonio; Amaya Reyes, Laura Mariel; Cano Martínez, Elizabeth; Pérez Rosas, Osvaldo Gerardo; Rodríguez Espejo, Luis; Flores Secundino, Jesús Abimelek; Rivera Martínez, José Luis; García Vázquez, Mireya Saraí; Zamudio Fuentes, Luis Miguel; Sánchez Valenzuela, Juan Carlos; Montoya Obeso, Abraham; Ramírez Acosta, Alejandro Álvaro

    2016-09-01

    Current search engines are based upon search methods that involve the combination of words (text-based search); which has been efficient until now. However, the Internet's growing demand indicates that there's more diversity on it with each passing day. Text-based searches are becoming limited, as most of the information on the Internet can be found in different types of content denominated multimedia content (images, audio files, video files). Indeed, what needs to be improved in current search engines is: search content, and precision; as well as an accurate display of expected search results by the user. Any search can be more precise if it uses more text parameters, but it doesn't help improve the content or speed of the search itself. One solution is to improve them through the characterization of the content for the search in multimedia files. In this article, an analysis of the new generation multimedia search engines is presented, focusing the needs according to new technologies. Multimedia content has become a central part of the flow of information in our daily life. This reflects the necessity of having multimedia search engines, as well as knowing the real tasks that it must comply. Through this analysis, it is shown that there are not many search engines that can perform content searches. The area of research of multimedia search engines of new generation is a multidisciplinary area that's in constant growth, generating tools that satisfy the different needs of new generation systems.

  5. Social relevance: toward understanding the impact of the individual in an information cascade

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hall, Robert T.; White, Joshua S.; Fields, Jeremy

    2016-05-01

    Information Cascades (IC) through a social network occur due to the decision of users to disseminate content. We define this decision process as User Diffusion (UD). IC models typically describe an information cascade by treating a user as a node within a social graph, where a node's reception of an idea is represented by some activation state. The probability of activation then becomes a function of a node's connectedness to other activated nodes as well as, potentially, the history of activation attempts. We enrich this Coarse-Grained User Diffusion (CGUD) model by applying actor type logics to the nodes of the graph. The resulting Fine-Grained User Diffusion (FGUD) model utilizes prior research in actor typing to generate a predictive model regarding the future influence a user will have on an Information Cascade. Furthermore, we introduce a measure of Information Resonance that is used to aid in predictions regarding user behavior.

  6. How Is Marijuana Vaping Portrayed on YouTube? Content, Features, Popularity and Retransmission of Vaping Marijuana YouTube Videos.

    PubMed

    Yang, Qinghua; Sangalang, Angeline; Rooney, Molly; Maloney, Erin; Emery, Sherry; Cappella, Joseph N

    2018-01-01

    The purpose of the study is to investigate how vaping marijuana, a novel but emerging risky health behavior, is portrayed on YouTube, and how the content and features of these YouTube videos influence their popularity and retransmission. A content analysis of vaping marijuana YouTube videos published between July 2014 to June 2015 (n = 214) was conducted. Video genre, valence, promotional and warning arguments, emotional appeals, message sensation value, presence of misinformation and misleading information, and user-generated statistics, including number of views, comments, shares, likes and dislikes, were coded. The results showed that these videos were predominantly pro-marijuana-vaping, with the most frequent videos being user-sharing. The genre and message features influenced the popularity, evaluations, and retransmission of vaping marijuana YouTube videos. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

  7. Classification of Twitter Users Who Tweet About E-Cigarettes.

    PubMed

    Kim, Annice; Miano, Thomas; Chew, Robert; Eggers, Matthew; Nonnemaker, James

    2017-09-26

    Despite concerns about their health risks, e‑cigarettes have gained popularity in recent years. Concurrent with the recent increase in e‑cigarette use, social media sites such as Twitter have become a common platform for sharing information about e-cigarettes and to promote marketing of e‑cigarettes. Monitoring the trends in e‑cigarette-related social media activity requires timely assessment of the content of posts and the types of users generating the content. However, little is known about the diversity of the types of users responsible for generating e‑cigarette-related content on Twitter. The aim of this study was to demonstrate a novel methodology for automatically classifying Twitter users who tweet about e‑cigarette-related topics into distinct categories. We collected approximately 11.5 million e‑cigarette-related tweets posted between November 2014 and October 2016 and obtained a random sample of Twitter users who tweeted about e‑cigarettes. Trained human coders examined the handles' profiles and manually categorized each as one of the following user types: individual (n=2168), vaper enthusiast (n=334), informed agency (n=622), marketer (n=752), and spammer (n=1021). Next, the Twitter metadata as well as a sample of tweets for each labeled user were gathered, and features that reflect users' metadata and tweeting behavior were analyzed. Finally, multiple machine learning algorithms were tested to identify a model with the best performance in classifying user types. Using a classification model that included metadata and features associated with tweeting behavior, we were able to predict with relatively high accuracy five different types of Twitter users that tweet about e‑cigarettes (average F 1 score=83.3%). Accuracy varied by user type, with F 1 scores of individuals, informed agencies, marketers, spammers, and vaper enthusiasts being 91.1%, 84.4%, 81.2%, 79.5%, and 47.1%, respectively. Vaper enthusiasts were the most challenging user type to predict accurately and were commonly misclassified as marketers. The inclusion of additional tweet-derived features that capture tweeting behavior was found to significantly improve the model performance-an overall F 1 score gain of 10.6%-beyond metadata features alone. This study provides a method for classifying five different types of users who tweet about e‑cigarettes. Our model achieved high levels of classification performance for most groups, and examining the tweeting behavior was critical in improving the model performance. Results can help identify groups engaged in conversations about e‑cigarettes online to help inform public health surveillance, education, and regulatory efforts. ©Annice Kim, Thomas Miano, Robert Chew, Matthew Eggers, James Nonnemaker. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (http://publichealth.jmir.org), 26.09.2017.

  8. Gibraltar v 1.0

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    CURRY, MATTHEW LEON; WARD, H. LEE; & SKJELLUM, ANTHONY

    Gibraltar is a library and associated test suite which performs Reed-Solomon coding and decoding of data buffers using graphics processing units which support NVIDIA's CUDA technology. This library is used to generate redundant data allowing for recovery of lost information. For example, a user can generate m new blocks of data from n original blocks, distributing those pieces over n+m devices. If any m devices fail, the contents of those devices can be recovered from the contents of the other n devices, even if some of the original blocks are lost. This is a generalized description of RAID, a techniquemore » for increasing data storage speed and size.« less

  9. Healthy Harlem: empowering health consumers through social networking, tailoring and web 2.0 technologies.

    PubMed

    Khan, Sharib A; McFarlane, Delano J; Li, Jianhua; Ancker, Jessica S; Hutchinson, Carly; Cohall, Alwyn; Kukafka, Rita

    2007-10-11

    Consumer health informatics has emerged as a strategy to inform and empower patients for self management of their health. The emergence of and explosion in use of user-generated online media (e.g.,blogs) has created new opportunities to inform and educate people about healthy living. Under a prevention research project, we are developing a website that utilizes social content collaboration mediums in conjunction with open-source technologies to create a community-driven resource that provides users with tailored health information.

  10. Online People Tagging: Social (Mobile) Network(ing) Services and Work-Based Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cook, John; Pachler, Norbert

    2012-01-01

    Social and mobile technologies offer users unprecedented opportunities for communicating, interacting, sharing, meaning-making, content and context generation. And, these affordances are in constant flux driven by a powerful interplay between technological innovation and emerging cultural practices. Significantly, also, they are starting to…

  11. A Novel Recommendation System to Match College Events and Groups to Students

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Qazanfari, K.; Youssef, A.; Keane, K.; Nelson, J.

    2017-10-01

    With the recent increase in data online, discovering meaningful opportunities can be time-consuming and complicated for many individuals. To overcome this data overload challenge, we present a novel text-content-based recommender system as a valuable tool to predict user interests. To that end, we develop a specific procedure to create user models and item feature-vectors, where items are described in free text. The user model is generated by soliciting from a user a few keywords and expanding those keywords into a list of weighted near-synonyms. The item feature-vectors are generated from the textual descriptions of the items, using modified tf-idf values of the users’ keywords and their near-synonyms. Once the users are modeled and the items are abstracted into feature vectors, the system returns the maximum-similarity items as recommendations to that user. Our experimental evaluation shows that our method of creating the user models and item feature-vectors resulted in higher precision and accuracy in comparison to well-known feature-vector-generating methods like Glove and Word2Vec. It also shows that stemming and the use of a modified version of tf-idf increase the accuracy and precision by 2% and 3%, respectively, compared to non-stemming and the standard tf-idf definition. Moreover, the evaluation results show that updating the user model from usage histories improves the precision and accuracy of the system. This recommender system has been developed as part of the Agnes application, which runs on iOS and Android platforms and is accessible through the Agnes website.

  12. A new user-assisted segmentation and tracking technique for an object-based video editing system

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yu, Hong Y.; Hong, Sung-Hoon; Lee, Mike M.; Choi, Jae-Gark

    2004-03-01

    This paper presents a semi-automatic segmentation method which can be used to generate video object plane (VOP) for object based coding scheme and multimedia authoring environment. Semi-automatic segmentation can be considered as a user-assisted segmentation technique. A user can initially mark objects of interest around the object boundaries and then the user-guided and selected objects are continuously separated from the unselected areas through time evolution in the image sequences. The proposed segmentation method consists of two processing steps: partially manual intra-frame segmentation and fully automatic inter-frame segmentation. The intra-frame segmentation incorporates user-assistance to define the meaningful complete visual object of interest to be segmentation and decides precise object boundary. The inter-frame segmentation involves boundary and region tracking to obtain temporal coherence of moving object based on the object boundary information of previous frame. The proposed method shows stable efficient results that could be suitable for many digital video applications such as multimedia contents authoring, content based coding and indexing. Based on these results, we have developed objects based video editing system with several convenient editing functions.

  13. Real-time information management environment (RIME)

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    DeCleene, Brian T.; Griffin, Sean; Matchett, Garry; Niejadlik, Richard

    2000-08-01

    Whereas data mining and exploitation improve the quality and quantity of information available to the user, there remains a mission requirement to assist the end-user in managing the access to this information and ensuring that the appropriate information is delivered to the right user in time to make decisions and take action. This paper discusses TASC's federated architecture to next- generation information management, contrasts the approach against emerging technologies, and quantifies the performance gains. This architecture and implementation, known as Real-time Information Management Environment (RIME), is based on two key concepts: information utility and content-based channelization. The introduction of utility allows users to express the importance and delivery requirements of their information needs in the context of their mission. Rather than competing for resources on a first-come/first-served basis, the infrastructure employs these utility functions to dynamically react to unanticipated loading by optimizing the delivered information utility. Furthermore, commander's resource policies shape these functions to ensure that resources are allocated according to military doctrine. Using information about the desired content, channelization identifies opportunities to aggregate users onto shared channels reducing redundant transmissions. Hence, channelization increases the information throughput of the system and balances sender/receiver processing load.

  14. DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Karp, Peter D.

    Pathway Tools is a systems-biology software package written by SRI International (SRI) that produces Pathway/Genome Databases (PGDBs) for organisms with a sequenced genome. Pathway Tools also provides a wide range of capabilities for analyzing predicted metabolic networks and user-generated omics data. More than 5,000 academic, industrial, and government groups have licensed Pathway Tools. This user community includes researchers at all three DOE bioenergy centers, as well as academic and industrial metabolic engineering (ME) groups. An integral part of the Pathway Tools software is MetaCyc, a large, multiorganism database of metabolic pathways and enzymes that SRI and its academic collaborators manuallymore » curate. This project included two main goals: I. Enhance the MetaCyc content of bioenergy-related enzymes and pathways. II. Develop computational tools for engineering metabolic pathways that satisfy specified design goals, in particular for bioenergy-related pathways. In part I, SRI proposed to significantly expand the coverage of bioenergy-related metabolic information in MetaCyc, followed by the generation of organism-specific PGDBs for all energy-relevant organisms sequenced at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI). Part I objectives included: 1: Expand the content of MetaCyc to include bioenergy-related enzymes and pathways. 2: Enhance the Pathway Tools software to enable display of complex polymer degradation processes. 3: Create new PGDBs for the energy-related organisms sequenced by JGI, update existing PGDBs with new MetaCyc content, and make these data available to JBEI via the BioCyc website. In part II, SRI proposed to develop an efficient computational tool for the engineering of metabolic pathways. Part II objectives included: 4: Develop computational tools for generating metabolic pathways that satisfy specified design goals, enabling users to specify parameters such as starting and ending compounds, and preferred or disallowed intermediate compounds. The pathways were to be generated using metabolic reactions from a reference database (DB). 5: Develop computational tools for ranking the pathways generated in objective (4) according to their optimality. The ranking criteria include stoichiometric yield, the number and cost of additional inputs and the cofactor compounds required by the pathway, pathway length, and pathway energetics. 6: Develop tools for visualizing generated pathways to facilitate the evaluation of a large space of generated pathways.« less

  15. RDNAnalyzer: A tool for DNA secondary structure prediction and sequence analysis.

    PubMed

    Afzal, Muhammad; Shahid, Ahmad Ali; Shehzadi, Abida; Nadeem, Shahid; Husnain, Tayyab

    2012-01-01

    RDNAnalyzer is an innovative computer based tool designed for DNA secondary structure prediction and sequence analysis. It can randomly generate the DNA sequence or user can upload the sequences of their own interest in RAW format. It uses and extends the Nussinov dynamic programming algorithm and has various application for the sequence analysis. It predicts the DNA secondary structure and base pairings. It also provides the tools for routinely performed sequence analysis by the biological scientists such as DNA replication, reverse compliment generation, transcription, translation, sequence specific information as total number of nucleotide bases, ATGC base contents along with their respective percentages and sequence cleaner. RDNAnalyzer is a unique tool developed in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 using Microsoft Visual C# and Windows Presentation Foundation and provides user friendly environment for sequence analysis. It is freely available. http://www.cemb.edu.pk/sw.html RDNAnalyzer - Random DNA Analyser, GUI - Graphical user interface, XAML - Extensible Application Markup Language.

  16. Immersive viewing engine

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Schonlau, William J.

    2006-05-01

    An immersive viewing engine providing basic telepresence functionality for a variety of application types is presented. Augmented reality, teleoperation and virtual reality applications all benefit from the use of head mounted display devices that present imagery appropriate to the user's head orientation at full frame rates. Our primary application is the viewing of remote environments, as with a camera equipped teleoperated vehicle. The conventional approach where imagery from a narrow field camera onboard the vehicle is presented to the user on a small rectangular screen is contrasted with an immersive viewing system where a cylindrical or spherical format image is received from a panoramic camera on the vehicle, resampled in response to sensed user head orientation and presented via wide field eyewear display, approaching 180 degrees of horizontal field. Of primary interest is the user's enhanced ability to perceive and understand image content, even when image resolution parameters are poor, due to the innate visual integration and 3-D model generation capabilities of the human visual system. A mathematical model for tracking user head position and resampling the panoramic image to attain distortion free viewing of the region appropriate to the user's current head pose is presented and consideration is given to providing the user with stereo viewing generated from depth map information derived using stereo from motion algorithms.

  17. Public Libraries, Digital Literacy and Participatory Culture

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McShane, Ian

    2011-01-01

    In recent years public libraries have experimented with user-generated or community-contributed content through the interactive tools of Web 2.0. For some commentators this not just establishes a new relationship between libraries and their publics, but signals the end of information hegemony and an "expert paradigm". Such claims need to…

  18. The Five Central Psychological Challenges Facing Effective Mobile Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Terras, Melody M.; Ramsay, Judith

    2012-01-01

    Web 2.0 technology not only offers the opportunity of massively parallel interconnected networks that support the provision of information and communication anytime and anywhere but also offers immense opportunities for collaboration and sharing of user-generated content. This information-rich environment may support both formal and informal…

  19. The Geospatial Web and Local Geographical Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Harris, Trevor M.; Rouse, L. Jesse; Bergeron, Susan J.

    2010-01-01

    Recent innovations in the Geospatial Web represent a paradigm shift in Web mapping by enabling educators to explore geography in the classroom by dynamically using a rapidly growing suite of impressive online geospatial tools. Coupled with access to spatial data repositories and User-Generated Content, the Geospatial Web provides a powerful…

  20. Rationalities of Collaboration for Language Learning in a Wiki

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bradley, Linda; Lindstrom, Berner; Rystedt, Hans

    2010-01-01

    For language learning, online environments allowing for user generated content are becoming increasingly important since they offer possibilities for learners to elaborate on assignments and projects. This study investigates what wikis can do as a means to enhance group interaction, when students are encouraged to participate in constructing text…

  1. Wikipedia in Promoting Science Literary Skills in Primary Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Menon, Sunitha; Alias, Norlidah; DeWitt, Dorothy

    2014-01-01

    In learning Science, online environments allowing for user generated content are becoming increasingly important since they offer possibilities for learners to elaborate on assignments and projects. This study investigates how Wikipedia can serve as a means for enhancing science literary skills when students are encouraged to participate in…

  2. Detecting Runtime Anomalies in AJAX Applications through Trace Analysis

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2011-08-10

    statements by adding the instrumentation to the GWT UI classes, leaving the user code untouched. Some content management frameworks such as Drupal [12...Google web toolkit.” http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/. [12] “Form generation – drupal api.” http://api.drupal.org/api/group/form_api/6. 9

  3. Direct measurement of toxicants inhaled by water pipe users in the natural environment using a real-time in situ sampling technique.

    PubMed

    Katurji, M; Daher, N; Sheheitli, H; Saleh, R; Shihadeh, A

    2010-11-01

    While narghile water pipe smoking has become a global phenomenon, knowledge regarding its toxicant content and delivery, addictive properties, and health consequences is sorely lagging. One challenge in measuring toxicant content of the smoke in the laboratory is the large number of simplifying assumptions that must be made to model a "typical" smoking session using a smoking machine, resulting in uncertainty over the obtained toxicant yields. In this study, we develop an alternative approach in which smoke generated by a human water pipe user is sampled directly during the smoking session. The method, dubbed real-time in situ sampling (RINS), required developing a self-powered portable instrument capable of automatically sampling a fixed fraction of the smoke generated by the user. Instrument performance was validated in the laboratory, and the instrument was deployed in a field study involving 43 ad libitum water pipe use sessions in Beirut area cafés in which we measured inhaled nicotine, carbon monoxide (CO), and water pipe ma'ssel-derived "tar." We found that users drew a mean of 119 L of smoke containing 150 mg of CO, 4 mg of nicotine, and 602 mg of ma'ssel-derived "tar" during a single use session (mean duration = 61 min). These first direct measurements of toxicant delivery demonstrate that ordinary water pipe use involves inhaling large quantities of CO, nicotine, and dry particulate matter. Results are compared with those obtained using the Beirut method smoking machine protocol.

  4. Call Me Guru: User Categories and Large-Scale Behavior in YouTube

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Biel, Joan-Isaac; Gatica-Perez, Daniel

    While existing studies on YouTube's massive user-generated video content have mostly focused on the analysis of videos, their characteristics, and network properties, little attention has been paid to the analysis of users' long-term behavior as it relates to the roles they self-define and (explicitly or not) play in the site. In this chapter, we present a statistical analysis of aggregated user behavior in YouTube from the perspective of user categories, a feature that allows people to ascribe to popular roles and to potentially reach certain communities. Using a sample of 270,000 users, we found that a high level of interaction and participation is concentrated on a relatively small, yet significant, group of users, following recognizable patterns of personal and social involvement. Based on our analysis, we also show that by using simple behavioral features from user profiles, people can be automatically classified according to their category with accuracy rates of up to 73%.

  5. Secure image retrieval with multiple keys

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liang, Haihua; Zhang, Xinpeng; Wei, Qiuhan; Cheng, Hang

    2018-03-01

    This article proposes a secure image retrieval scheme under a multiuser scenario. In this scheme, the owner first encrypts and uploads images and their corresponding features to the cloud; then, the user submits the encrypted feature of the query image to the cloud; next, the cloud compares the encrypted features and returns encrypted images with similar content to the user. To find the nearest neighbor in the encrypted features, an encryption with multiple keys is proposed, in which the query feature of each user is encrypted by his/her own key. To improve the key security and space utilization, global optimization and Gaussian distribution are, respectively, employed to generate multiple keys. The experiments show that the proposed encryption can provide effective and secure image retrieval for each user and ensure confidentiality of the query feature of each user.

  6. How people react to Zika virus outbreaks on Twitter? A computational content analysis.

    PubMed

    Fu, King-Wa; Liang, Hai; Saroha, Nitin; Tse, Zion Tsz Ho; Ip, Patrick; Fung, Isaac Chun-Hai

    2016-12-01

    Zika-related Twitter incidence peaked after the World Health Organization declared an emergency. Five themes were identified from Zika-related Twitter content: (1) societal impact of the outbreak; (2) government, public and private sector, and general public responses to the outbreak; (3) pregnancy and microcephaly: negative health consequences related to pregnant women and babies; (4) transmission routes; and (5) case reports. User-generated contents sites were preferred direct information channels rather than those of the government authorities. Copyright © 2016 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. Knowledge Provenance in Semantic Wikis

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ding, L.; Bao, J.; McGuinness, D. L.

    2008-12-01

    Collaborative online environments with a technical Wiki infrastructure are becoming more widespread. One of the strengths of a Wiki environment is that it is relatively easy for numerous users to contribute original content and modify existing content (potentially originally generated by others). As more users begin to depend on informational content that is evolving by Wiki communities, it becomes more important to track the provenance of the information. Semantic Wikis expand upon traditional Wiki environments by adding some computationally understandable encodings of some of the terms and relationships in Wikis. We have developed a semantic Wiki environment that expands a semantic Wiki with provenance markup. Provenance of original contributions as well as modifications is encoded using the provenance markup component of the Proof Markup Language. The Wiki environment provides the provenance markup automatically, thus users are not required to make specific encodings of author, contribution date, and modification trail. Further, our Wiki environment includes a search component that understands the provenance primitives and thus can be used to provide a provenance-aware search facility. We will describe the knowledge provenance infrastructure of our Semantic Wiki and show how it is being used as the foundation of our group web site as well as a number of project web sites.

  8. Analyzing user-generated online content for drug discovery: development and use of MedCrawler.

    PubMed

    Helfenstein, Andreas; Tammela, Päivi

    2017-04-15

    Ethnopharmacology, or the scientific validation of traditional medicine, is a respected starting point in drug discovery. Home remedies and traditional use of plants are still widespread, also in Western societies. Instead of perusing ancient pharmacopeias, we developed MedCrawler, which we used to analyze blog posts for mentions of home remedies and their applications. This method is free and accessible from the office computer. We developed MedCrawler, a data mining tool for analyzing user-generated blog posts aiming to find modern 'traditional' medicine or home remedies. It searches user-generated blog posts and analyzes them for correlations between medically relevant terms. We also present examples and show that this method is capable of delivering both scientifically validated uses as well as not so well documented applications, which might serve as a starting point for follow-up research. Source code is available on GitHub at {{ https://github.com/a-hel/medcrawler }}. paivi.tammela@helsinki.fi. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

  9. Physiological approach to optimal stereographic game programming: a technical guide

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Martens, William L.; McRuer, Robert; Childs, C. Timothy; Viirree, Erik

    1996-04-01

    With the advent of mass distribution of consumer VR games comes an imperative to set health and safety standards for the hardware and software used to deliver stereographic content. This is particularly important for game developers who intend to present this stereographic content via head-mounted display (HMD). The visual discomfort that is commonly reported by the user of HMD-based VR games presumably could be kept to a minimum if game developers were provided with standards for the display of stereographic imagery. In this paper, we draw upon both results of research in binocular vision and practical methods from clinical optometry to develop some technical guidelines for programming stereographic games that have the end user's comfort and safety in mind. This paper will provide generate strategies for user- centered implementation of 3D virtual worlds, as well as pictorial examples demonstrating a natural means for rendering stereographic imagery more comfortable to view in games employing first-person perspective.

  10. Facilitating Navigation Through Large Archives

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Shelton, Robert O.; Smith, Stephanie L.; Troung, Dat; Hodgson, Terry R.

    2005-01-01

    Automated Visual Access (AVA) is a computer program that effectively makes a large collection of information visible in a manner that enables a user to quickly and efficiently locate information resources, with minimal need for conventional keyword searches and perusal of complex hierarchical directory systems. AVA includes three key components: (1) a taxonomy that comprises a collection of words and phrases, clustered according to meaning, that are used to classify information resources; (2) a statistical indexing and scoring engine; and (3) a component that generates a graphical user interface that uses the scoring data to generate a visual map of resources and topics. The top level of an AVA display is a pictorial representation of an information archive. The user enters the depicted archive by either clicking on a depiction of subject area cluster, selecting a topic from a list, or entering a query into a text box. The resulting display enables the user to view candidate information entities at various levels of detail. Resources are grouped spatially by topic with greatest generality at the top layer and increasing detail with depth. The user can zoom in or out of specific sites or into greater or lesser content detail.

  11. Bridging Media with the Help of Players

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nitsche, Michael; Drake, Matthew; Murray, Janet

    We suggest harvesting the power of multiplayer design to bridge content across different media platforms and develop player-driven cross-media experiences. This paper first argues to partially replace complex AI systems with multiplayer design strategies to provide the necessary level of flexibility in the content generation for cross-media applications. The second part describes one example project - the Next Generation Play (NGP) project - that illustrates one practical approach of such a player-driven cross-media content generation. NGP allows players to collect virtual items while watching a TV show. These items are re-used in a multiplayer casual game that automatically generates new game worlds based on the various collections of active players joining a game session. While the TV experience is designed for the single big screen, the game executes on multiple mobile phones. Design and technical implementation of the prototype are explained in more detail to clarify how players carry elements of television narratives into a non-linear handheld gaming experience. The system describes a practical way to create casual game adaptations based on players' personal preferences in a multi-user environment.

  12. 78 FR 62016 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Announcement of Board Approval Under Delegated...

    Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

    2013-10-11

    .... Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) users may contact (202) 263-4869, Board of Governors of the Federal...- generated survey. First, under the guidance of Board economists, the Federal Reserve Banks survey business... use online survey tools to collect responses to the survey. The frequency and content of the questions...

  13. 2 CFR Appendix C to Part 225 - State/Local-Wide Central Service Cost Allocation Plans

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... Contents A. General B. Definitions 1. Billed central services 2. Allocated central services 3. Agency or...; a description of the procedures (methodology) used to charge the costs of each service to users... revenues (including imputed revenues) generated by the service to the allowable costs of the service, as...

  14. Towards Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace: Social Media Analytics on Hacker Communities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Li, Weifeng

    2017-01-01

    Social media analytics is a critical research area spawned by the increasing availability of rich and abundant online user-generated content. So far, social media analytics has had a profound impact on organizational decision making in many aspects, including product and service design, market segmentation, customer relationship management, and…

  15. LingoBee--Crowd-Sourced Mobile Language Learning in the Cloud

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Petersen, Sobah Abbas; Procter-Legg, Emma; Cacchione, Annamaria

    2013-01-01

    This paper describes three case studies, where language learners were invited to use "LingoBee" as a means of supporting their language learning. LingoBee is a mobile app that provides user-generated language content in a cloud-based shared repository. Assuming that today's students are mobile savvy and "Digital Natives" able…

  16. LingoBee: Engaging Mobile Language Learners through Crowd-Sourcing

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Petersen, Sobah Abbas; Procter-Legg, Emma; Cacchione, Annamaria

    2014-01-01

    This paper describes three case studies, where language learners were invited to use "LingoBee" as a means of supporting their language learning. LingoBee is a mobile app that provides user-generated language content in a cloud-based shared repository. Assuming that today's students are mobile savvy and "Digital Natives" able…

  17. Planning the Next Generation of Regional Atlases: Input from Educators.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Keller, C. Peter; And Others

    1995-01-01

    Maintains that regional atlases are an important educational tool that must be updated to remain current and valuable. Reports on a user survey among 123 Canadian geography teachers about content and design of atlases. Finds that teachers value simplicity and up-to-date information and not CD-ROM atlases. (CFR)

  18. mLearning and Creative Practices: A Public Challenge?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Antonczak, Laurent; Keegan, Helen; Cochrane, Thomas

    2016-01-01

    The ethos of open sharing of experiences and user generated content enabled by Mobile social media can be problematic in some cases (politics, gender, minorities), and it is not fully understood within the creative and academic sector. Creative people, students, and lecturers can misconceive the value and issues around open and public access to…

  19. "Friending Facebook?" A Minicourse on the Use of Social Media by Health Professionals

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    George, Daniel R.

    2011-01-01

    Introduction: Health professionals are working in an era of social technologies that empower users to generate content in real time. This article describes a 3-part continuing education minicourse called "Friending Facebook?" undertaken at Penn State Hershey Medical Center that aimed to model the functionality of current technologies in…

  20. Australian Education Index Data Base (AUSINET). Users Manual.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Findlay, Margaret A., Comp.

    This manual describes the contents, purpose, and use of the Australian Education Index Database (AEII), which is produced by the Library and Information Services Unit of the Australian Council for Educational Research to provide access to Australian generated information both in published and unpublished forms. An overview of AEII is followed by…

  1. Essays on Participative Web and Social Media for Information Goods

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, Young Jin

    2010-01-01

    Tremendous growth in online consumer participation has facilitated new business models by firms trying to leverage User-Generated Content (UGC). As a type of the outcomes of UGC, social media is one of the fastest-growing media forms and may significantly affect firm's economic actions or performances. My dissertation investigates several…

  2. AKDNR - DNR Business Reporting System (DBRS)

    Science.gov Websites

    Skip to content State of Alaska myAlaska My Government Resident Business in Alaska Visiting Alaska Resources > IRM GPU > Main Menu DNR Business Reporting System (DBRS) The DNR Business Reporting System (DBRS) allows users to generate reports from the DNR Business databases and maps. The reports offered

  3. Navigating Social Networking and Social Media in School Psychology: Ethical and Professional Considerations in Training Programs

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pham, Andy V.

    2014-01-01

    Social networking and social media have undoubtedly proliferated within the past decade, allowing widespread communication and dissemination of user-generated content and information. Some psychology graduate programs, including school psychology, have started to embrace social networking and media for instructional and training purposes; however,…

  4. Digital Junk: Food and Beverage Marketing on Facebook

    PubMed Central

    Freeman, Becky; Kelly, Bridget; Baur, Louise; Chapman, Kathy; Chapman, Simon; Gill, Tim; King, Lesley

    2014-01-01

    Objectives. We assessed the amount, reach, and nature of energy-dense, nutrient-poor (EDNP) food and beverage marketing on Facebook. Methods. We conducted a content analysis of the marketing techniques used by the 27 most popular food and beverage brand Facebook pages in Australia. We coded content across 19 marketing categories; data were collected from the day each page launched (mean = 3.65 years of activity per page). Results. We analyzed 13 international pages and 14 Australian-based brand pages; 4 brands (Subway, Coca-Cola, Slurpee, Maltesers) had both national and international pages. Pages widely used marketing features unique to social media that increase consumer interaction and engagement. Common techniques were competitions based on user-generated content, interactive games, and apps. Four pages included apps that allowed followers to place an order directly through Facebook. Adolescent and young adult Facebook users appeared most receptive to engaging with this content. Conclusions. By using the interactive and social aspects of Facebook to market products, EDNP food brands capitalize on users’ social networks and magnify the reach and personal relevance of their marketing messages. PMID:25322294

  5. Application of new type of distributed multimedia databases to networked electronic museum

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kuroda, Kazuhide; Komatsu, Naohisa; Komiya, Kazumi; Ikeda, Hiroaki

    1999-01-01

    Recently, various kinds of multimedia application systems have actively been developed based on the achievement of advanced high sped communication networks, computer processing technologies, and digital contents-handling technologies. Under this background, this paper proposed a new distributed multimedia database system which can effectively perform a new function of cooperative retrieval among distributed databases. The proposed system introduces a new concept of 'Retrieval manager' which functions as an intelligent controller so that the user can recognize a set of distributed databases as one logical database. The logical database dynamically generates and performs a preferred combination of retrieving parameters on the basis of both directory data and the system environment. Moreover, a concept of 'domain' is defined in the system as a managing unit of retrieval. The retrieval can effectively be performed by cooperation of processing among multiple domains. Communication language and protocols are also defined in the system. These are used in every action for communications in the system. A language interpreter in each machine translates a communication language into an internal language used in each machine. Using the language interpreter, internal processing, such internal modules as DBMS and user interface modules can freely be selected. A concept of 'content-set' is also introduced. A content-set is defined as a package of contents. Contents in the content-set are related to each other. The system handles a content-set as one object. The user terminal can effectively control the displaying of retrieved contents, referring to data indicating the relation of the contents in the content- set. In order to verify the function of the proposed system, a networked electronic museum was experimentally built. The results of this experiment indicate that the proposed system can effectively retrieve the objective contents under the control to a number of distributed domains. The result also indicate that the system can effectively work even if the system becomes large.

  6. YouTube as a source of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patient education: a social media content analysis.

    PubMed

    Stellefson, Michael; Chaney, Beth; Ochipa, Kathleen; Chaney, Don; Haider, Zeerak; Hanik, Bruce; Chavarria, Enmanuel; Bernhardt, Jay M

    2014-05-01

    The aim of the present study is to conduct a social media content analysis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patient education videos on YouTube. A systematic search protocol was used to locate 223 videos. Two independent coders evaluated each video to determine topics covered, media source(s) of posted videos, information quality as measured by HONcode guidelines for posting trustworthy health information on the Internet, and viewer exposure/engagement metrics. Over half the videos (n = 113, 50.7%) included information on medication management, with far fewer videos on smoking cessation (n = 40, 17.9%). Most videos were posted by a health agency or organization (n = 128, 57.4%), and the majority of videos were rated as high quality (n = 154, 69.1%). HONcode adherence differed by media source (Fisher's exact test = 20.52, p = 0.01), however with user-generated content receiving the lowest quality scores. Overall level of user engagement as measured by number of "likes," "favorites," "dislikes," and user comments was low (median range = 0-3, interquartile range = 0-16) across all sources of media. Study findings suggest that COPD education via YouTube has the potential to reach and inform patients; however, existing video content and quality varies significantly. Future interventions should help direct individuals with COPD to engage with high-quality patient education videos on YouTube that are posted by reputable health organizations and qualified medical professionals. Patients should be educated to avoid and/or critically view low-quality videos posted by individual YouTube users who are not health professionals.

  7. #Vapelife: An Exploratory Study of Electronic Cigarette Use and Promotion on Instagram.

    PubMed

    Laestadius, Linnea I; Wahl, Megan M; Cho, Young I

    2016-10-14

    The growth of social networking services has enabled the sharing of electronic cigarette opinions and experiences via user-generated content. This exploratory study analyzed electronic cigarette content found on the visual social networking service, Instagram, in order to highlight public health challenges created by this content and support understanding of electronic cigarette promotion and usage. A qualitative content analysis was performed on Instagram posts made with the hashtags #ecig or #vape in October 2014. Images, text, and hashtags from 85 posts (43 #ecig, 42 #vape) were analyzed. In addition, the total number of posts made with eight key electronic cigarette hashtags was recorded at four points between March 2014 and October 2015. The total number of #vape posts on Instagram grew by 4,163,274 during the study period, while #ecig posts increased by 741,916. Of the posts examined in-depth, corporate users made up over half of posts. No posts were critical of electronic cigarettes. Few mentioned electronic cigarettes in the context of health benefits. No posts included major brands, and mod style electronic cigarettes were mentioned or depicted in over half of posts. A majority of posts included hashtags expressing vaping identity and community. In addition, users mentioned novel practices such as sub-ohming. Conclusions/Importance: Instagram users in our sample characterized electronic cigarettes primarily as novel devices rather than equivalents to cigarettes. Further, hashtag communities and identities appear to be forming around vaping. Future research should consider the public health implications of these hashtags, as well as novel electronic cigarette practices.

  8. YouTube as a source of COPD patient education: A social media content analysis

    PubMed Central

    Stellefson, Michael; Chaney, Beth; Ochipa, Kathleen; Chaney, Don; Haider, Zeerak; Hanik, Bruce; Chavarria, Enmanuel; Bernhardt, Jay M.

    2014-01-01

    Objective Conduct a social media content analysis of COPD patient education videos on YouTube. Methods A systematic search protocol was used to locate 223 videos. Two independent coders evaluated each video to determine topics covered, media source(s) of posted videos, information quality as measured by HONcode guidelines for posting trustworthy health information on the Internet, and viewer exposure/engagement metrics. Results Over half the videos (n=113, 50.7%) included information on medication management, with far fewer videos on smoking cessation (n=40, 17.9%). Most videos were posted by a health agency or organization (n=128, 57.4%), and the majority of videos were rated as high quality (n=154, 69.1%). HONcode adherence differed by media source (Fisher’s Exact Test=20.52, p=.01), with user-generated content (UGC) receiving the lowest quality scores. Overall level of user engagement as measured by number of “likes,” “favorites,” “dislikes,” and user comments was low (mdn range = 0–3, interquartile (IQR) range = 0–16) across all sources of media. Conclusion Study findings suggest that COPD education via YouTube has the potential to reach and inform patients, however, existing video content and quality varies significantly. Future interventions should help direct individuals with COPD to increase their engagement with high-quality patient education videos on YouTube that are posted by reputable health organizations and qualified medical professionals. Patients should be educated to avoid and/or critically view low-quality videos posted by individual YouTube users who are not health professionals. PMID:24659212

  9. Did online publishers "get it right"? Using a naturalistic search strategy to review cognitive health promotion content on internet webpages.

    PubMed

    Hunter, P V; Delbaere, M; O'Connell, M E; Cammer, A; Seaton, J X; Friedrich, T; Fick, F

    2017-06-15

    One of the most common uses of the Internet is to search for health-related information. Although scientific evidence pertaining to cognitive health promotion has expanded rapidly in recent years, it is unclear how much of this information has been made available to Internet users. Thus, the purpose of our study was to assess the reliability and quality of information about cognitive health promotion encountered by typical Internet users. To generate a list of relevant search terms employed by Internet users, we entered seed search terms in Google Trends and recorded any terms consistently used in the prior 2 years. To further approximate the behaviour of typical Internet users, we entered each term in Google and sampled the first two relevant results. This search, completed in October 2014, resulted in a sample of 86 webpages, 48 of which had content related to cognitive health promotion. An interdisciplinary team rated the information reliability and quality of these webpages using a standardized measure. We found that information reliability and quality were moderate, on average. Just one retrieved page mentioned best practice, national recommendations, or consensus guidelines by name. Commercial content (i.e., product promotion, advertising content, or non-commercial) was associated with differences in reliability and quality, with product promoter webpages having the lowest mean reliability and quality ratings. As efforts to communicate the association between lifestyle and cognitive health continue to expand, we offer these results as a baseline assessment of the reliability and quality of cognitive health promotion on the Internet.

  10. The spreading of misinformation online.

    PubMed

    Del Vicario, Michela; Bessi, Alessandro; Zollo, Fabiana; Petroni, Fabio; Scala, Antonio; Caldarelli, Guido; Stanley, H Eugene; Quattrociocchi, Walter

    2016-01-19

    The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the World Wide Web (WWW) also allows for the rapid dissemination of unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories that often elicit rapid, large, but naive social responses such as the recent case of Jade Helm 15--where a simple military exercise turned out to be perceived as the beginning of a new civil war in the United States. In this work, we address the determinants governing misinformation spreading through a thorough quantitative analysis. In particular, we focus on how Facebook users consume information related to two distinct narratives: scientific and conspiracy news. We find that, although consumers of scientific and conspiracy stories present similar consumption patterns with respect to content, cascade dynamics differ. Selective exposure to content is the primary driver of content diffusion and generates the formation of homogeneous clusters, i.e., "echo chambers." Indeed, homogeneity appears to be the primary driver for the diffusion of contents and each echo chamber has its own cascade dynamics. Finally, we introduce a data-driven percolation model mimicking rumor spreading and we show that homogeneity and polarization are the main determinants for predicting cascades' size.

  11. A case for user-generated sensor metadata

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nüst, Daniel

    2015-04-01

    Cheap and easy to use sensing technology and new developments in ICT towards a global network of sensors and actuators promise previously unthought of changes for our understanding of the environment. Large professional as well as amateur sensor networks exist, and they are used for specific yet diverse applications across domains such as hydrology, meteorology or early warning systems. However the impact this "abundance of sensors" had so far is somewhat disappointing. There is a gap between (community-driven) sensor networks that could provide very useful data and the users of the data. In our presentation, we argue this is due to a lack of metadata which allows determining the fitness of use of a dataset. Syntactic or semantic interoperability for sensor webs have made great progress and continue to be an active field of research, yet they often are quite complex, which is of course due to the complexity of the problem at hand. But still, we see the most generic information to determine fitness for use is a dataset's provenance, because it allows users to make up their own minds independently from existing classification schemes for data quality. In this work we will make the case how curated user-contributed metadata has the potential to improve this situation. This especially applies for scenarios in which an observed property is applicable in different domains, and for set-ups where the understanding about metadata concepts and (meta-)data quality differs between data provider and user. On the one hand a citizen does not understand the ISO provenance metadata. On the other hand a researcher might find issues in publicly accessible time series published by citizens, which the latter might not be aware of or care about. Because users will have to determine fitness for use for each application on their own anyway, we suggest an online collaboration platform for user-generated metadata based on an extremely simplified data model. In the most basic fashion, metadata generated by users can be boiled down to a basic property of the world wide web: many information items, such as news or blog posts, allow users to create comments and rate the content. Therefore we argue to focus a core data model on one text field for a textual comment, one optional numerical field for a rating, and a resolvable identifier for the dataset that is commented on. We present a conceptual framework that integrates user comments in existing standards and relevant applications of online sensor networks and discuss possible approaches, such as linked data, brokering, or standalone metadata portals. We relate this framework to existing work in user generated content, such as proprietary rating systems on commercial websites, microformats, the GeoViQua User Quality Model, the CHARMe annotations, or W3C Open Annotation. These systems are also explored for commonalities and based on their very useful concepts and ideas; we present an outline for future extensions of the minimal model. Building on this framework we present a concept how a simplistic comment-rating-system can be extended to capture provenance information for spatio-temporal observations in the sensor web, and how this framework can be evaluated.

  12. FlexibleSUSY-A spectrum generator generator for supersymmetric models

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Athron, Peter; Park, Jae-hyeon; Stöckinger, Dominik; Voigt, Alexander

    2015-05-01

    We introduce FlexibleSUSY, a Mathematica and C++ package, which generates a fast, precise C++ spectrum generator for any SUSY model specified by the user. The generated code is designed with both speed and modularity in mind, making it easy to adapt and extend with new features. The model is specified by supplying the superpotential, gauge structure and particle content in a SARAH model file; specific boundary conditions e.g. at the GUT, weak or intermediate scales are defined in a separate FlexibleSUSY model file. From these model files, FlexibleSUSY generates C++ code for self-energies, tadpole corrections, renormalization group equations (RGEs) and electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) conditions and combines them with numerical routines for solving the RGEs and EWSB conditions simultaneously. The resulting spectrum generator is then able to solve for the spectrum of the model, including loop-corrected pole masses, consistent with user specified boundary conditions. The modular structure of the generated code allows for individual components to be replaced with an alternative if available. FlexibleSUSY has been carefully designed to grow as alternative solvers and calculators are added. Predefined models include the MSSM, NMSSM, E6SSM, USSM, R-symmetric models and models with right-handed neutrinos.

  13. I Sought It, I Reddit: Examining Health Information Engagement Behaviors among Reddit Users.

    PubMed

    Record, Rachael A; Silberman, Will R; Santiago, Joshua E; Ham, Taewook

    2018-01-01

    Given the wide use of social media, these platforms have become important channels for understanding health-related information engagement processes. Reddit is a social media platform dedicated to user-generated content and discourse around the world. However, little research exists regarding use of the platform. Guided by the diffusion of innovation theory, the purpose of this study was to analyze Reddit users' behaviors on the platform related to perceptions of information credibility, health information seeking, and behavioral enactment of information found. Data were collected via survey from Reddit users around the world (n = 389). Data suggest that although Reddit use and perceived information credibility are unrelated to acting on the information found on Reddit, users who are specifically seeking health-related information are more likely to enact the information in their lives. Implications from the findings suggest important considerations for communication scholars, media advocates, and health promotion practitioners.

  14. On Abstractions and Simplifications in the Design of Human-Automation Interfaces

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Heymann, Michael; Degani, Asaf; Shafto, Michael; Meyer, George; Clancy, Daniel (Technical Monitor)

    2001-01-01

    This report addresses the design of human-automation interaction from a formal perspective that focuses on the information content of the interface, rather than the design of the graphical user interface. It also addresses the, issue of the information provided to the user (e.g., user-manuals, training material, and all other resources). In this report, we propose a formal procedure for generating interfaces and user-manuals. The procedure is guided by two criteria: First, the interface must be correct, i.e., that with the given interface the user will be able to perform the specified tasks correctly. Second, the interface should be as succinct as possible. The report discusses the underlying concepts and the formal methods for this approach. Several examples are used to illustrate the procedure. The algorithm for constructing interfaces can be automated, and a preliminary software system for its implementation has been developed.

  15. On Abstractions and Simplifications in the Design of Human-Automation Interfaces

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Heymann, Michael; Degani, Asaf; Clancy, Daniel (Technical Monitor)

    2002-01-01

    This report addresses the design of human-automation interaction from a formal perspective that focuses on the information content of the interface, rather than the design of the graphical user interface. It also addresses the issue of the information provided to the user (e.g., user-manuals, training material, and all other resources). In this report, we propose a formal procedure for generating interfaces and user-manuals. The procedure is guided by two criteria: First, the interface must be correct, that is, with the given interface the user will be able to perform the specified tasks correctly. Second, the interface should be succinct. The report discusses the underlying concepts and the formal methods for this approach. Two examples are used to illustrate the procedure. The algorithm for constructing interfaces can be automated, and a preliminary software system for its implementation has been developed.

  16. Aircraft noise synthesis system

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mccurdy, David A.; Grandle, Robert E.

    1987-01-01

    A second-generation Aircraft Noise Synthesis System has been developed to provide test stimuli for studies of community annoyance to aircraft flyover noise. The computer-based system generates realistic, time-varying, audio simulations of aircraft flyover noise at a specified observer location on the ground. The synthesis takes into account the time-varying aircraft position relative to the observer; specified reference spectra consisting of broadband, narrowband, and pure-tone components; directivity patterns; Doppler shift; atmospheric effects; and ground effects. These parameters can be specified and controlled in such a way as to generate stimuli in which certain noise characteristics, such as duration or tonal content, are independently varied, while the remaining characteristics, such as broadband content, are held constant. The system can also generate simulations of the predicted noise characteristics of future aircraft. A description of the synthesis system and a discussion of the algorithms and methods used to generate the simulations are provided. An appendix describing the input data and providing user instructions is also included.

  17. Online Discussion on #KidneyStones: A Longitudinal Assessment of Activity, Users and Content.

    PubMed

    Salem, Johannes; Borgmann, Hendrik; Bultitude, Matthew; Fritsche, Hans-Martin; Haferkamp, Axel; Heidenreich, Axel; Miernik, Arkadiusz; Neisius, Andreas; Knoll, Thomas; Thomas, Christian; Tsaur, Igor

    2016-01-01

    Twitter is a popular microblogging platform for the rapid dissemination of information and reciprocal exchange in the urological field. We aimed to assess the activity, users and content of the online discussion, #KidneyStones, on Twitter. We investigated the Symplur Signals analytics tool for Twitter data distributed via the #KidneyStones hashtag over a one year period. Activity analysis reflected overall activity and tweet enhancements. We assessed users' geolocations and performed an influencer analysis. Content analysis included the most frequently used words, tweet sentiment and shares for top tweets. 3,426 users generated over 10,333 tweets, which were frequently accompanied by links (49%), mentions (30%) and photos (13%). Users came from 106 countries across the globe and were most frequently from North America (63%) and Europe (16%). Individual and organisational healthcare professionals made up 56% of the influencers of the Twitter discussion on #KidneyStones. Besides the words 'kidney' (used 4,045 times) and 'stones' (3,335), 'pain' (1,233), 'urine' (1,158), and 'risk' (1,023) were the most frequently used words. 56% of tweets had a positive sentiment. The median (range) number of shares was 85 (62-587) for the top 10 links, 45.5 (17-94) for the top 10 photos, and 44 (22-95) for the top 10 retweets. The rapidly growing Twitter discussion on #KidneyStones engaged multiple stakeholders in the healthcare sector on a global scale and reached both professionals and laypeople. When used effectively and responsibly, the Twitter platform could improve prevention and medical care of kidney stone patients.

  18. Addressing Earth Science Data Access Challenges through User Experience Research

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hemmings, S. N.; Banks, B.; Kendall, J.; Lee, C. M.; Irwin, D.; Toll, D. L.; Searby, N. D.

    2013-12-01

    The NASA Capacity Building Program (Earth Science Division, Applied Sciences Program) works to enhance end-user capabilities to employ Earth observation and Earth science (EO/ES) data in decision-making. Open data access and user-tailored data delivery strategies are critical elements towards this end. User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) research methods can offer important contributions towards addressing data access challenges, particularly at the interface of science application/product development and product transition to end-users. This presentation focuses on developing nation contexts and describes methods, results, and lessons learned from two recent UX/UI efforts conducted in collaboration with NASA: the SERVIRglobal.net redesign project and the U.S. Water Partnership (USWP) Portal development effort. SERVIR, a collaborative venture among NASA, USAID, and global partners, seeks to improve environmental management and climate change response by helping governments and other stakeholders integrate EO and geospatial technologies into decision-making. The USWP, a collaboration among U.S. public and private sectors, harnesses U.S.-based resources and expertise to address water challenges in developing nations. SERVIR's study, conducted from 2010-2012, assessed and tested user needs, preferences, and online experiences to generate a more user-friendly online data portal at SERVIRglobal.net. The portal provides a central access interface to data and products from SERVIR's network of hubs in East Africa, the Hindu Kush Himalayas, and Mesoamerica. The second study, conducted by the USWP Secretariat and funded by the U.S. Department of State, seeks to match U.S.-based water information resources with developing nation stakeholder needs. The USWP study utilizes a multi-pronged approach to identify key design requirements and to understand the existing water data portal landscape. Adopting UX methods allows data distributors to design customized UIs that help users find, interpret, and obtain appropriate content quickly. The data access challenge for both SERVIR and USWP consisted of organizing a wide range of content for their respective user bases, which are diverse, international, and in some cases loosely characterized. The UX/UI design approach generated profiles of prototypical users and corresponding task flows and organizational schemes for their preferred types of content. Wireframe acceptance testing by SERVIR helped elicit and optimize how users interact with the information online. These approaches produced customized UIs and knowledge management strategies to address the data access challenges faced by each user type. Both studies revealed critical considerations for user experiences in developing nations (e.g., low-bandwidth internet connections, rolling power outages at data storage or network centers). For SERVIR, these findings influenced not only the portal infrastructure; they also informed the transition of the platform to a Cloud-based model, as well as the development of custom data delivery tools such as SMS and other mobile solutions. While SERVIR's data access solutions are customized for the network's community of users, they are also standardized and interoperable according to GEO and ISO standards, providing a model for other initiatives such as the ongoing USWP Portal development effort.

  19. Ubiquitous picture-rich content representation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, Wiley; Dean, Jennifer; Muzzolini, Russ

    2010-02-01

    The amount of digital images taken by the average consumer is consistently increasing. People enjoy the convenience of storing and sharing their pictures through online (digital) and offline (traditional) media. A set of pictures can be uploaded to: online photo services, web blogs and social network websites. Alternatively, these images can be used to generate: prints, cards, photo books or other photo products. Through uploading and sharing, images are easily transferred from one format to another. And often, a different set of associated content (text, tags) is created across formats. For example, on his web blog, a user may journal his experiences of his recent travel; on his social network website, his friends tag and comment on the pictures; in his online photo album, some pictures are titled and keyword-tagged. When the user wants to tell a complete story, perhaps in a photo book, he must collect, across all formats: the pictures, writings and comments, etc. and organize them in a book format. The user has to arrange the content of his trip in each format. The arrangement, the associations between the images, tags, keywords and text, cannot be shared with other formats. In this paper, we propose a system that allows the content to be easily created and shared across various digital media formats. We define a uniformed data association structure to connect: images, documents, comments, tags, keywords and other data. This content structure allows the user to switch representation formats without reediting. The framework under each format can emphasize (display or hide) content elements based on preference. For example, a slide show view will emphasize the display of pictures with limited text; a blog view will display highlighted images and journal text; and the photo book will try to fit in all images and text content. In this paper, we will discuss the strategy to associate pictures with text content, so that it can naturally tell a story. We will also list sample solutions on different formats such as: picture view, blog view and photo book view.

  20. Seeking support on facebook: a content analysis of breast cancer groups.

    PubMed

    Bender, Jacqueline L; Jimenez-Marroquin, Maria-Carolina; Jadad, Alejandro R

    2011-02-04

    Social network sites have been growing in popularity across broad segments of Internet users, and are a convenient means to exchange information and support. Research on their use for health-related purposes is limited. This study aimed to characterize the purpose, use, and creators of Facebook groups related to breast cancer. We searched Facebook (www.Facebook.com) using the term breast cancer. We restricted our analysis to groups that were related to breast cancer, operated in English, and were publicly available. Two of us independently extracted information on the administrator and purpose of the group, as well as the number of user-generated contributions. We developed a coding scheme to guide content analysis. We found 620 breast cancer groups on Facebook containing a total of 1,090,397 members. The groups were created for fundraising (277/620, 44.7%), awareness (236, 38.1%), product or service promotion related to fundraising or awareness (61, 9%), or patient/caregiver support (46, 7%). The awareness groups as a whole contained by far the most members (n = 957,289). The majority of groups (532, 85.8%) had 25 wall posts or fewer. The support oriented groups, 47% (27/57) of which were established by high school or college students, were associated with the greatest number of user-generated contributions. Facebook groups have become a popular tool for awareness-raising, fundraising, and support-seeking related to breast cancer attracting over one million users. Given their popularity and reach, further research is warranted to explore the implications of social network sites as a health resource across various health conditions, cultures, ages, and socioeconomic groups.

  1. A Network and Visual Quality Aware N-Screen Content Recommender System Using Joint Matrix Factorization

    PubMed Central

    Ullah, Farman; Sarwar, Ghulam; Lee, Sungchang

    2014-01-01

    We propose a network and visual quality aware N-Screen content recommender system. N-Screen provides more ways than ever before to access multimedia content through multiple devices and heterogeneous access networks. The heterogeneity of devices and access networks present new questions of QoS (quality of service) in the realm of user experience with content. We propose, a recommender system that ensures a better visual quality on user's N-screen devices and the efficient utilization of available access network bandwidth with user preferences. The proposed system estimates the available bandwidth and visual quality on users N-Screen devices and integrates it with users preferences and contents genre information to personalize his N-Screen content. The objective is to recommend content that the user's N-Screen device and access network are capable of displaying and streaming with the user preferences that have not been supported in existing systems. Furthermore, we suggest a joint matrix factorization approach to jointly factorize the users rating matrix with the users N-Screen device similarity and program genres similarity. Finally, the experimental results show that we also enhance the prediction and recommendation accuracy, sparsity, and cold start issues. PMID:24982999

  2. RDNAnalyzer: A tool for DNA secondary structure prediction and sequence analysis

    PubMed Central

    Afzal, Muhammad; Shahid, Ahmad Ali; Shehzadi, Abida; Nadeem, Shahid; Husnain, Tayyab

    2012-01-01

    RDNAnalyzer is an innovative computer based tool designed for DNA secondary structure prediction and sequence analysis. It can randomly generate the DNA sequence or user can upload the sequences of their own interest in RAW format. It uses and extends the Nussinov dynamic programming algorithm and has various application for the sequence analysis. It predicts the DNA secondary structure and base pairings. It also provides the tools for routinely performed sequence analysis by the biological scientists such as DNA replication, reverse compliment generation, transcription, translation, sequence specific information as total number of nucleotide bases, ATGC base contents along with their respective percentages and sequence cleaner. RDNAnalyzer is a unique tool developed in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 using Microsoft Visual C# and Windows Presentation Foundation and provides user friendly environment for sequence analysis. It is freely available. Availability http://www.cemb.edu.pk/sw.html Abbreviations RDNAnalyzer - Random DNA Analyser, GUI - Graphical user interface, XAML - Extensible Application Markup Language. PMID:23055611

  3. Image Segmentation for Improvised Explosive Devices

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2012-12-01

    us to generate color models for IEDs without user input that labels parts of the IED. v THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK vi Table of Contents 1...has to be generated. All graph cut algorithms we analyze define the undirected network G( V ,E) as a set of nodes V , edges E, and capacities C: E → R. 3...algorithms we study, this objective function is the sum of the two functions U and V , where the function U is a region property which evaluates the

  4. Rotorcraft Flight Simulation Computer Program C81 with DATAMAP interface. Volume I. User’s Manual

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1981-10-01

    any one of the RWAS tables to simulate the defined effect of that input, care must be exercised to assure that the table used is based on the correct... IMPROVED MANEUVER AUTOPILOT HAVE BEEN INSTALLED IN AGAPBO. A NEW LISTING OF THE CONTENTS OF THE ANALYTICAL DATA BASE WILL BE GENERATED DURING THE WEEK...of the program (Reference 1) has been improved by providing the cap- ability to generate Postprocessing Data Blocks containing selected variables

  5. Social Networking Sites as Communication, Interaction, and Learning Environments: Perceptions and Preferences of Distance Education Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bozkurt, Aras; Karadeniz, Abdulkadir; Kocdar, Serpil

    2017-01-01

    The advent of Web 2.0 technologies transformed online networks into interactive spaces in which user-generated content has become the core material. With the possibilities that emerged from Web 2.0, social networking sites became very popular. The capability of social networking sites promises opportunities for communication and interaction,…

  6. From Geo-Social to Geo-Local: The Flows and Biases of Volunteered Geographic Information

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stephens, Monica

    2012-01-01

    This dissertation analyzes the geography of information in the 21st century where BigData, social networks, user generated production of content and geography combine to create new and complex patterns of space, context and sociability. Both online and offline, social networks are creating a space that simultaneously unifies individuals and…

  7. Remixing to Design Learning: Social Media and Peer-to-Peer Interaction

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Casey, Gail; Wells, Muriel

    2015-01-01

    Social and participatory media offer opportunities to interact and share user-generated content. After some investigation and research, the authors are in their initial stages of using such media to provide a pathway for thinking about learning design in higher education. Using the concept of remixing, the authors aim to creatively blend and…

  8. An Exercise for Teaching the Employment Law Implications of Employee Blogging

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, Konrad S.; Thue, Matthew I.; Oldham, Jared; Stephenson, Tara N.

    2009-01-01

    This article provides a tool to help instructors introduce students to the intersection of blogging and employment law. Section II provides source materials on the subject. Specifically, it presents a summary overview of: (1) the development of blogging and other forms of online user generated content; (2) the legality of terminating an at-will…

  9. Rating the YouTube Indian: Viewer Ratings of Native American Portrayals on a Viral Video Site

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kopacz, Maria A.; Lawton, Bessie Lee

    2011-01-01

    Online outlets for user-generated content (UGC) like YouTube have created environments for alternative depictions of marginalized groups, as UGC can be contributed by anyone with basic technology access. Preliminary findings on UGC relating to Native Americans confirm some favorable departures from the distortions prevalent in the old media. The…

  10. Moroccan University Students' Online Reputation Management

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mansouri, Zoulal; Mrabet, Youssef

    2013-01-01

    Online reputation management (ORM), a component of e-marketing, has grown so fast over the past few years and has become increasingly significant to internet users. The permanence of the content generated on the net, mainly on social networks, has become a huge issue to consider. Because they live in this digital age, digital natives have a major…

  11. Diversifying Assessment through Multimedia Creation in a Non-Technical Module: Reflections on the MAIK Project

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cox, Andrew M.; Vasconcelos, Ana Cristina; Holdridge, Peter

    2010-01-01

    Creation of multimedia (MM) could be a valuable diversification of assessment methods within non-technical modules. The apparent popularity of sites based on user-generated video content such as YouTube and also of podcasting suggests that relevant skills and interest are becoming more mainstream. Translating book learned knowledge into visual…

  12. News Writing Using Wiki: Impacts on Learning Experience of Student Journalists

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ma, Will W. K.; Yuen, Allan H. K.

    2008-01-01

    Wiki empowers users in generating, revising, and organizing their own content. In this study, we review literature to gain theoretical support for wikis that impact learning. In a context of student journalists learning news writing, we design a two-phase field study: (1) Phase I--to examine learners' reflections on learning news writing in wiki…

  13. Social Media and the New Academic Environment: Pedagogical Challenges

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Patrut, Bogdan; Patrut, Monica; Cmeciu, Camelia

    2013-01-01

    As web applications play a vital role in our society, social media has emerged as an important tool in the creation and exchange of user-generated content and social interaction. The benefits of these services have entered in the educational areas to become new means by which scholars communicate, collaborate and teach. Social Media and the New…

  14. Talk the Talk: Learner-Generated Podcasts as Catalysts for Knowledge Creation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, Mark J. W.; McLoughlin, Catherine; Chan, Anthony

    2008-01-01

    Podcasting allows audio content from one or more user-selected feeds or channels to be automatically downloaded to one's computer as it becomes available, then later transferred to a portable player for consumption at a convenient time and place. It is enjoying phenomenal growth in mainstream society, alongside other Web 2.0 technologies that…

  15. 76 FR 38148 - Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to OMB for Review and Approval; Comment...

    Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

    2011-06-29

    ... view public comments, access the index listing of the contents of the docket, and to access those... at the facility. Although the owner or operator is the primary data user, EPA also uses the data in..., effort, or financial resources expended by persons to generate, maintain, retain, or disclose or provide...

  16. Developing a Web 2.0-Based System with User-Authored Content for Community Use and Teacher Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cifuentes, Lauren; Sharp, Amy; Bulu, Sanser; Benz, Mike; Stough, Laura M.

    2010-01-01

    We report on an investigation into the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of an informational and instructional Website in order to generate guidelines for instructional designers of read/write Web environments. We describe the process of design and development research, the problem addressed, the theory-based solution, and the…

  17. GhostWriter-2.0: Product Reviews with Case-Based Support

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bridge, Derek; Healy, Paul

    A lot of user-generated content on the Web takes the form of records of personal experiences. Case-Based Reasoning offers a way of helping one user to reuse another's experiences from the Web. In this paper, we present GhostWriter-2.0, a Case-Based Reasoning system that supports a user who is writing a product review. GhostWriter-2.0 makes suggestions to the user, in the form of short phrases that are mined from other reviews. The purpose of the suggestions is to prompt the user to write a more comprehensive and helpful review than she might otherwise have done. We explain how GhostWriter-2.0's case base is populated with relevant and helpful reviews from Amazon. We show how it extracts and scores phrases in these reviews to decide which to suggest to the user.We report a trial with real users, in which users made greater use of GhostWriter-2.0's suggested phrases than they did of phrases suggested by a system that used a more random form of selection.

  18. Data Portal for the Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures (LINCS) program: integrated access to diverse large-scale cellular perturbation response data

    PubMed Central

    Koleti, Amar; Terryn, Raymond; Stathias, Vasileios; Chung, Caty; Cooper, Daniel J; Turner, John P; Vidović, Dušica; Forlin, Michele; Kelley, Tanya T; D’Urso, Alessandro; Allen, Bryce K; Torre, Denis; Jagodnik, Kathleen M; Wang, Lily; Jenkins, Sherry L; Mader, Christopher; Niu, Wen; Fazel, Mehdi; Mahi, Naim; Pilarczyk, Marcin; Clark, Nicholas; Shamsaei, Behrouz; Meller, Jarek; Vasiliauskas, Juozas; Reichard, John; Medvedovic, Mario; Ma’ayan, Avi; Pillai, Ajay

    2018-01-01

    Abstract The Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures (LINCS) program is a national consortium funded by the NIH to generate a diverse and extensive reference library of cell-based perturbation-response signatures, along with novel data analytics tools to improve our understanding of human diseases at the systems level. In contrast to other large-scale data generation efforts, LINCS Data and Signature Generation Centers (DSGCs) employ a wide range of assay technologies cataloging diverse cellular responses. Integration of, and unified access to LINCS data has therefore been particularly challenging. The Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) LINCS Data Coordination and Integration Center (DCIC) has developed data standards specifications, data processing pipelines, and a suite of end-user software tools to integrate and annotate LINCS-generated data, to make LINCS signatures searchable and usable for different types of users. Here, we describe the LINCS Data Portal (LDP) (http://lincsportal.ccs.miami.edu/), a unified web interface to access datasets generated by the LINCS DSGCs, and its underlying database, LINCS Data Registry (LDR). LINCS data served on the LDP contains extensive metadata and curated annotations. We highlight the features of the LDP user interface that is designed to enable search, browsing, exploration, download and analysis of LINCS data and related curated content. PMID:29140462

  19. WebVR: an interactive web browser for virtual environments

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Barsoum, Emad; Kuester, Falko

    2005-03-01

    The pervasive nature of web-based content has lead to the development of applications and user interfaces that port between a broad range of operating systems and databases, while providing intuitive access to static and time-varying information. However, the integration of this vast resource into virtual environments has remained elusive. In this paper we present an implementation of a 3D Web Browser (WebVR) that enables the user to search the internet for arbitrary information and to seamlessly augment this information into virtual environments. WebVR provides access to the standard data input and query mechanisms offered by conventional web browsers, with the difference that it generates active texture-skins of the web contents that can be mapped onto arbitrary surfaces within the environment. Once mapped, the corresponding texture functions as a fully integrated web-browser that will respond to traditional events such as the selection of links or text input. As a result, any surface within the environment can be turned into a web-enabled resource that provides access to user-definable data. In order to leverage from the continuous advancement of browser technology and to support both static as well as streamed content, WebVR uses ActiveX controls to extract the desired texture skin from industry strength browsers, providing a unique mechanism for data fusion and extensibility.

  20. [Information needs of the health and diseases in users of healthcare services in Primary Care at Salamanca, Spain].

    PubMed

    Bernad Vallés, Mercedes; Maderuelo Fernández, José Ángel; Moreno González, Pilar

    2016-01-01

    To learn, interpret and understand the information needs of health and disease in users of the healthcare services of the urban Primary Care of Salamanca. Qualitative research corresponding an exploratory qualitative/structural perspective. Primary Care. Urban area, Salamanca in 2007. Ten discussion groups, 2 composed of members of health-related associations and 8 primary care users, involved a total of 83 people. The structural variables considered are: gender, age, educational level and membership or not associations. Generate information to achieve information saturation in the discussion groups. Upon obtaining their informed consent, all subjects in the study participated in videotaped conversations, which were transcribed verbatim. Four researchers categorized the content, intentionality of discourse and developed the concept map. After categorization, triangulation and coding, content obtained was analysed with the NudistQ6 program. Informative content suggest four information needs: health and prevention, early diagnosis, first aid and disease. Different intentions (information needs, watching, claim and improvement) and needs profiles are detected as structural variables. Major information needs are relate to diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic options. There is agreement between the groups that the information transmitted to the patient must be intelligible, updated and coordinated among the different professionals and care levels. Participants require information of a clinical nature to exercise their right to autonomy translating tendency to empower users as part of the social change. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

  1. Evaluating Health Advice in a Web 2.0 Environment: The Impact of Multiple User-Generated Factors on HIV Advice Perceptions.

    PubMed

    Walther, Joseph B; Jang, Jeong-Woo; Hanna Edwards, Ashley A

    2018-01-01

    Unlike traditional media, social media systems often present information of different types from different kinds of contributors within a single message pane, a juxtaposition of potential influences that challenges traditional health communication processing. One type of social media system, question-and-answer advice systems, provides peers' answers to health-related questions, which yet other peers read and rate. Responses may appear good or bad, responders may claim expertise, and others' aggregated evaluations of an answer's usefulness may affect readers' judgments. An experiment explored how answer feasibility, expertise claims, and user-generated ratings affected readers' assessments of advice about anonymous HIV testing. Results extend the heuristic-systematic model of persuasion (Chaiken, 1980) and warranting theory (Walther & Parks, 2002). Information that is generally associated with both systematic and heuristic processes influenced readers' evaluations. Moreover, content-level cues affected judgments about message sources unexpectedly. When conflicting cues were present, cues with greater warranting value (consensus user-generated ratings) had greater influence on outcomes than less warranted cues (self-promoted expertise). Findings present a challenge to health professionals' concerns about the reliability of online health information systems.

  2. Audiovisual Speech Web-Lab: an Internet teaching and research laboratory.

    PubMed

    Gordon, M S; Rosenblum, L D

    2001-05-01

    Internet resources now enable laboratories to make full-length experiments available on line. A handful of existing web sites offer users the ability to participate in experiments and generate usable data. We have integrated this technology into a web site that also provides full discussion of the theoretical and methodological aspects of the experiments using text and simple interactive demonstrations. The content of the web site (http://www.psych.ucr.edu/avspeech/lab) concerns audiovisual speech perception and its relation to face perception. The site is designed to be useful for users of multiple interests and levels of expertise.

  3. Enrichment and Ranking of the YouTube Tag Space and Integration with the Linked Data Cloud

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Choudhury, Smitashree; Breslin, John G.; Passant, Alexandre

    The increase of personal digital cameras with video functionality and video-enabled camera phones has increased the amount of user-generated videos on the Web. People are spending more and more time viewing online videos as a major source of entertainment and "infotainment". Social websites allow users to assign shared free-form tags to user-generated multimedia resources, thus generating annotations for objects with a minimum amount of effort. Tagging allows communities to organise their multimedia items into browseable sets, but these tags may be poorly chosen and related tags may be omitted. Current techniques to retrieve, integrate and present this media to users are deficient and could do with improvement. In this paper, we describe a framework for semantic enrichment, ranking and integration of web video tags using Semantic Web technologies. Semantic enrichment of folksonomies can bridge the gap between the uncontrolled and flat structures typically found in user-generated content and structures provided by the Semantic Web. The enhancement of tag spaces with semantics has been accomplished through two major tasks: (1) a tag space expansion and ranking step; and (2) through concept matching and integration with the Linked Data cloud. We have explored social, temporal and spatial contexts to enrich and extend the existing tag space. The resulting semantic tag space is modelled via a local graph based on co-occurrence distances for ranking. A ranked tag list is mapped and integrated with the Linked Data cloud through the DBpedia resource repository. Multi-dimensional context filtering for tag expansion means that tag ranking is much easier and it provides less ambiguous tag to concept matching.

  4. Social media and health information sharing among Australian Indigenous people.

    PubMed

    Hefler, Marita; Kerrigan, Vicki; Henryks, Joanna; Freeman, Becky; Thomas, David P

    2018-04-17

    Despite the enormous potential of social media for health promotion, there is an inadequate evidence base for how they can be used effectively to influence behaviour. In Australia, research suggests social media use is higher among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people than the general Australian population; however, health promoters need a better understanding of who uses technologies, how and why. This qualitative study investigates what types of health content are being shared among Aboriginal and Torres Strait people through social media networks, as well as how people engage with, and are influenced by, health-related information in their offline life. We present six social media user typologies together with an overview of health content that generated significant interaction. Content ranged from typical health-related issues such as mental health, diet, alcohol, smoking and exercise, through to a range of broader social determinants of health. Social media-based health promotion approaches that build on the social capital generated by supportive online environments may be more likely to generate greater traction than confronting and emotion-inducing approaches used in mass media campaigns for some health topics.

  5. Distributed media server for the support of multimedia teaching

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liepert, Michael; Griwodz, Carsten; On, Giwon; Zink, Michael; Steinmetz, Ralf

    1999-11-01

    One major problem of using multimedia material in lecturing is the trade-off between actuality of the content and quality of the presentations. A frequent need for content refreshment exists, but high quality presentations can not be authored by the individual teacher alone at the required rate. Several past and current projects have had the goal of developing so-called learning archives, a variation of digital libraries. On demand, these deliver material with limited structure to students. For lecturing, these systems provide just as insufficient service as the unreliable WWW. Based on our system HyNoDe [HYN97] we address these issues in our distributed media server built of 'medianodes.' We add content management that addresses teachers' needs and provide guaranteed service for connected as well as disconnected operation of their presentation systems. Medianode aims at a scenario for non-real-time, shared creation and modification of presentations and presentation elements. It provides user authentication, administrative roles and authorization mechanisms. It requires an understanding of consistency, versioning and alternative content tailored to lecturing. To allow for predictable presentation quality, medianode provides application level QoS supporting alternative media and alternative presentations. Viable presentation tracks are dynamically generated based on user requests, user profiles and hardware profiles. For machines that are removed from the system according to a schedule, the systems guarantees availability of consistent, complete tracks of selected presentations at disconnect time. In this paper we present the scope of the medianode project and afterwards its architecture, following the realization steps.

  6. The spreading of misinformation online

    PubMed Central

    Del Vicario, Michela; Bessi, Alessandro; Zollo, Fabiana; Petroni, Fabio; Caldarelli, Guido; Stanley, H. Eugene; Quattrociocchi, Walter

    2016-01-01

    The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the World Wide Web (WWW) also allows for the rapid dissemination of unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories that often elicit rapid, large, but naive social responses such as the recent case of Jade Helm 15––where a simple military exercise turned out to be perceived as the beginning of a new civil war in the United States. In this work, we address the determinants governing misinformation spreading through a thorough quantitative analysis. In particular, we focus on how Facebook users consume information related to two distinct narratives: scientific and conspiracy news. We find that, although consumers of scientific and conspiracy stories present similar consumption patterns with respect to content, cascade dynamics differ. Selective exposure to content is the primary driver of content diffusion and generates the formation of homogeneous clusters, i.e., “echo chambers.” Indeed, homogeneity appears to be the primary driver for the diffusion of contents and each echo chamber has its own cascade dynamics. Finally, we introduce a data-driven percolation model mimicking rumor spreading and we show that homogeneity and polarization are the main determinants for predicting cascades’ size. PMID:26729863

  7. Scratchpads: a data-publishing framework to build, share and manage information on the diversity of life

    PubMed Central

    Smith, Vincent S; Rycroft, Simon D; Harman, Kehan T; Scott, Ben; Roberts, David

    2009-01-01

    Background Natural History science is characterised by a single immense goal (to document, describe and synthesise all facets pertaining to the diversity of life) that can only be addressed through a seemingly infinite series of smaller studies. The discipline's failure to meaningfully connect these small studies with natural history's goal has made it hard to demonstrate the value of natural history to a wider scientific community. Digital technologies provide the means to bridge this gap. Results We describe the system architecture and template design of "Scratchpads", a data-publishing framework for groups of people to create their own social networks supporting natural history science. Scratchpads cater to the particular needs of individual research communities through a common database and system architecture. This is flexible and scalable enough to support multiple networks, each with its own choice of features, visual design, and constituent data. Our data model supports web services on standardised data elements that might be used by related initiatives such as GBIF and the Encyclopedia of Life. A Scratchpad allows users to organise data around user-defined or imported ontologies, including biological classifications. Automated semantic annotation and indexing is applied to all content, allowing users to navigate intuitively and curate diverse biological data, including content drawn from third party resources. A system of archiving citable pages allows stable referencing with unique identifiers and provides credit to contributors through normal citation processes. Conclusion Our framework currently serves more than 1,100 registered users across 100 sites, spanning academic, amateur and citizen-science audiences. These users have generated more than 130,000 nodes of content in the first two years of use. The template of our architecture may serve as a model to other research communities developing data publishing frameworks outside biodiversity research. PMID:19900302

  8. Frameworks for Understanding the Nature of Interactions, Networking, and Community in a Social Networking Site for Academic Practice

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Conole, Grainne; Galley, Rebecca; Culver, Juliette

    2011-01-01

    This paper describes a new social networking site, Cloudworks, which has been developed to enable discussion and sharing of learning and teaching ideas/designs and to promote reflective academic practice. The site aims to foster new forms of social and participatory practices (peer critiquing, sharing, user-generated content, aggregation, and…

  9. Peer Influence, Information Quality and Predictive Power of Stock Microblogs

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Oh, Chong Keat

    2013-01-01

    Due to the popularity of Web 2.0 and Social Media in the last decade, the percolation of user generated content (UGC) has rapidly increased. In the financial realm, this results in the emergence of virtual investing communities (VIC) to the investing public. There is an on-going debate among scholars and practitioners on whether such UGC contain…

  10. Flexible Learning as New Learning Design in Classroom Process to Promote Quality Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Joan, D. R. Robert

    2013-01-01

    Educators in the 21st century realize that students entering the classroom today are much different from those who have come before. Today's students are demanding a change in the classroom because of their ability to gather information faster than any other generation. It gives users on-demand access to the content, tools, training, information,…

  11. Inferring Smoking Status from User Generated Content in an Online Cessation Community.

    PubMed

    Amato, Michael S; Papandonatos, George D; Cha, Sarah; Wang, Xi; Zhao, Kang; Cohn, Amy M; Pearson, Jennifer L; Graham, Amanda L

    2018-01-22

    User generated content (UGC) is a valuable but underutilized source of information about individuals who participate in online cessation interventions. This study represents a first effort to passively detect smoking status among members of an online cessation program using UGC. Secondary data analysis was performed on data from 826 participants in a web-based smoking cessation randomized trial that included an online community. Domain experts from the online community reviewed each post and comment written by participants and attempted to infer the author's smoking status at the time it was written. Inferences from UGC were validated by comparison with self-reported 30-day point prevalence abstinence (PPA). Following validation, the impact of this method was evaluated across all individuals and timepoints in the study period. Of the 826 participants in the analytic sample, 719 had written at least one post from which content inference was possible. Among participants for whom unambiguous smoking status was inferred during the 30 days preceding their 3-month follow-up survey, concordance with self-report was almost perfect (kappa = 0.94). Posts indicating abstinence tended to be written shortly after enrollment (median = 14 days). Passive inference of smoking status from UGC in online cessation communities is possible and highly reliable for smokers who actively produce content. These results lay the groundwork for further development of observational research tools and intervention innovations. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  12. Seeking Support on Facebook: A Content Analysis of Breast Cancer Groups

    PubMed Central

    Jimenez-Marroquin, Maria-Carolina; Jadad, Alejandro R

    2011-01-01

    Background Social network sites have been growing in popularity across broad segments of Internet users, and are a convenient means to exchange information and support. Research on their use for health-related purposes is limited. Objective This study aimed to characterize the purpose, use, and creators of Facebook groups related to breast cancer. Methods We searched Facebook (www.Facebook.com) using the term breast cancer. We restricted our analysis to groups that were related to breast cancer, operated in English, and were publicly available. Two of us independently extracted information on the administrator and purpose of the group, as well as the number of user-generated contributions. We developed a coding scheme to guide content analysis. Results We found 620 breast cancer groups on Facebook containing a total of 1,090,397 members. The groups were created for fundraising (277/620, 44.7%), awareness (236, 38.1%), product or service promotion related to fundraising or awareness (61, 9%), or patient/caregiver support (46, 7%). The awareness groups as a whole contained by far the most members (n = 957,289). The majority of groups (532, 85.8%) had 25 wall posts or fewer. The support oriented groups, 47% (27/57) of which were established by high school or college students, were associated with the greatest number of user-generated contributions. Conclusions Facebook groups have become a popular tool for awareness-raising, fundraising, and support-seeking related to breast cancer attracting over one million users. Given their popularity and reach, further research is warranted to explore the implications of social network sites as a health resource across various health conditions, cultures, ages, and socioeconomic groups. PMID:21371990

  13. Organ donation on Web 2.0: content and audience analysis of organ donation videos on YouTube.

    PubMed

    Tian, Yan

    2010-04-01

    This study examines the content of and audience response to organ donation videos on YouTube, a Web 2.0 platform, with framing theory. Positive frames were identified in both video content and audience comments. Analysis revealed a reciprocity relationship between media frames and audience frames. Videos covered content categories such as kidney, liver, organ donation registration process, and youth. Videos were favorably rated. No significant differences were found between videos produced by organizations and individuals in the United States and those produced in other countries. The findings provide insight into how new communication technologies are shaping health communication in ways that differ from traditional media. The implications of Web 2.0, characterized by user-generated content and interactivity, for health communication and health campaign practice are discussed.

  14. On the Creative Edge: Exploring Motivations for Creating Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Content Online.

    PubMed

    Seko, Yukari; Kidd, Sean A; Wiljer, David; McKenzie, Kwame J

    2015-10-01

    The last decade has witnessed an exponential growth in user-generated online content featuring Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI), including photography, digital video, poems, blogging, and drawings. Although the increasing visibility of NSSI content has evoked public concern over potential health risks, little research has investigated why people are drawn to create and publish such content. This article reports the findings from a qualitative analysis of online interviews with 17 individuals who produce NSSI content. A thematic analysis of participants' narratives identified two prominent motives: self-oriented motivation (to express self and creativity, to reflect on NSSI experience, to mitigate self-destructive urges) and social motivation (to support similar others, to seek out peers, to raise social awareness). Participants also reported a double-edged impact of NSSI content both as a trigger and a deterrent to NSSI. © The Author(s) 2015.

  15. The impact of mobile phone screen size on user comprehension of health information.

    PubMed

    Alghamdi, Ebtisam; Yunus, Faisel; Househ, Mowafa

    2013-01-01

    Within the field of mobile health, there is little research conducted on the impacts of mobile health technologies and applications on user comprehension of health content. In this study, we examine the difference between small, medium and large screen mobile phone that affect the user comprehension of health content. We designed an experimental study where 33 users read the contents of a health application on different mobile phone screen sizes. Each participant was timed, tracked for correctness, and gave ratings for both readability and satisfaction on each task. In addition, they were asked some questions about the contents. Results show that there was no significant impact of the screen size on user comprehension of the contents. However, it was found that participants with small screen size took longer to read the health contents.

  16. Modular design, application architecture, and usage of a self-service model for enterprise data delivery: The Duke Enterprise Data Unified Content Explorer (DEDUCE)

    PubMed Central

    Horvath, Monica M.; Rusincovitch, Shelley A.; Brinson, Stephanie; Shang, Howard C.; Evans, Steve; Ferranti, Jeffrey M.

    2015-01-01

    Purpose Data generated in the care of patients are widely used to support clinical research and quality improvement, which has hastened the development of self-service query tools. User interface design for such tools, execution of query activity, and underlying application architecture have not been widely reported, and existing tools reflect a wide heterogeneity of methods and technical frameworks. We describe the design, application architecture, and use of a self-service model for enterprise data delivery within Duke Medicine. Methods Our query platform, the Duke Enterprise Data Unified Content Explorer (DEDUCE), supports enhanced data exploration, cohort identification, and data extraction from our enterprise data warehouse (EDW) using a series of modular environments that interact with a central keystone module, Cohort Manager (CM). A data-driven application architecture is implemented through three components: an application data dictionary, the concept of “smart dimensions”, and dynamically-generated user interfaces. Results DEDUCE CM allows flexible hierarchies of EDW queries within a grid-like workspace. A cohort “join” functionality allows switching between filters based on criteria occurring within or across patient encounters. To date, 674 users have been trained and activated in DEDUCE, and logon activity shows a steady increase, with variability between months. A comparison of filter conditions and export criteria shows that these activities have different patterns of usage across subject areas. Conclusions Organizations with sophisticated EDWs may find that users benefit from development of advanced query functionality, complimentary to the user interfaces and infrastructure used in other well-published models. Driven by its EDW context, the DEDUCE application architecture was also designed to be responsive to source data and to allow modification through alterations in metadata rather than programming, allowing an agile response to source system changes. PMID:25051403

  17. Modular design, application architecture, and usage of a self-service model for enterprise data delivery: the Duke Enterprise Data Unified Content Explorer (DEDUCE).

    PubMed

    Horvath, Monica M; Rusincovitch, Shelley A; Brinson, Stephanie; Shang, Howard C; Evans, Steve; Ferranti, Jeffrey M

    2014-12-01

    Data generated in the care of patients are widely used to support clinical research and quality improvement, which has hastened the development of self-service query tools. User interface design for such tools, execution of query activity, and underlying application architecture have not been widely reported, and existing tools reflect a wide heterogeneity of methods and technical frameworks. We describe the design, application architecture, and use of a self-service model for enterprise data delivery within Duke Medicine. Our query platform, the Duke Enterprise Data Unified Content Explorer (DEDUCE), supports enhanced data exploration, cohort identification, and data extraction from our enterprise data warehouse (EDW) using a series of modular environments that interact with a central keystone module, Cohort Manager (CM). A data-driven application architecture is implemented through three components: an application data dictionary, the concept of "smart dimensions", and dynamically-generated user interfaces. DEDUCE CM allows flexible hierarchies of EDW queries within a grid-like workspace. A cohort "join" functionality allows switching between filters based on criteria occurring within or across patient encounters. To date, 674 users have been trained and activated in DEDUCE, and logon activity shows a steady increase, with variability between months. A comparison of filter conditions and export criteria shows that these activities have different patterns of usage across subject areas. Organizations with sophisticated EDWs may find that users benefit from development of advanced query functionality, complimentary to the user interfaces and infrastructure used in other well-published models. Driven by its EDW context, the DEDUCE application architecture was also designed to be responsive to source data and to allow modification through alterations in metadata rather than programming, allowing an agile response to source system changes. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. Enabling User to User Interactions in Web Lectures with History-Aware User Awareness

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ketterl, Markus; Mertens, Robert; Wiesen, Christoph; Vornberger, Oliver

    2011-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a user interface for web lectures for engaging with other users while working with video based learning content. The application allows its users to ask questions about the content and to get answers from those users that currently online are more familiar with it. The filtering is based on the…

  19. ModelArchiver—A program for facilitating the creation of groundwater model archives

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Winston, Richard B.

    2018-03-01

    ModelArchiver is a program designed to facilitate the creation of groundwater model archives that meet the requirements of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) policy (Office of Groundwater Technical Memorandum 2016.02, https://water.usgs.gov/admin/memo/GW/gw2016.02.pdf, https://water.usgs.gov/ogw/policy/gw-model/). ModelArchiver version 1.0 leads the user step-by-step through the process of creating a USGS groundwater model archive. The user specifies the contents of each of the subdirectories within the archive and provides descriptions of the archive contents. Descriptions of some files can be specified automatically using file extensions. Descriptions also can be specified individually. Those descriptions are added to a readme.txt file provided by the user. ModelArchiver moves the content of the archive to the archive folder and compresses some folders into .zip files.As part of the archive, the modeler must create a metadata file describing the archive. The program has a built-in metadata editor and provides links to websites that can aid in creation of the metadata. The built-in metadata editor is also available as a stand-alone program named FgdcMetaEditor version 1.0, which also is described in this report. ModelArchiver updates the metadata file provided by the user with descriptions of the files in the archive. An optional archive list file generated automatically by ModelMuse can streamline the creation of archives by identifying input files, output files, model programs, and ancillary files for inclusion in the archive.

  20. Using Induction to Refine Information Retrieval Strategies

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Baudin, Catherine; Pell, Barney; Kedar, Smadar

    1994-01-01

    Conceptual information retrieval systems use structured document indices, domain knowledge and a set of heuristic retrieval strategies to match user queries with a set of indices describing the document's content. Such retrieval strategies increase the set of relevant documents retrieved (increase recall), but at the expense of returning additional irrelevant documents (decrease precision). Usually in conceptual information retrieval systems this tradeoff is managed by hand and with difficulty. This paper discusses ways of managing this tradeoff by the application of standard induction algorithms to refine the retrieval strategies in an engineering design domain. We gathered examples of query/retrieval pairs during the system's operation using feedback from a user on the retrieved information. We then fed these examples to the induction algorithm and generated decision trees that refine the existing set of retrieval strategies. We found that (1) induction improved the precision on a set of queries generated by another user, without a significant loss in recall, and (2) in an interactive mode, the decision trees pointed out flaws in the retrieval and indexing knowledge and suggested ways to refine the retrieval strategies.

  1. Content-based image exploitation for situational awareness

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gains, David

    2008-04-01

    Image exploitation is of increasing importance to the enterprise of building situational awareness from multi-source data. It involves image acquisition, identification of objects of interest in imagery, storage, search and retrieval of imagery, and the distribution of imagery over possibly bandwidth limited networks. This paper describes an image exploitation application that uses image content alone to detect objects of interest, and that automatically establishes and preserves spatial and temporal relationships between images, cameras and objects. The application features an intuitive user interface that exposes all images and information generated by the system to an operator thus facilitating the formation of situational awareness.

  2. A content-based news video retrieval system: NVRS

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Huayong; He, Tingting

    2009-10-01

    This paper focus on TV news programs and design a content-based news video browsing and retrieval system, NVRS, which is convenient for users to fast browsing and retrieving news video by different categories such as political, finance, amusement, etc. Combining audiovisual features and caption text information, the system automatically segments a complete news program into separate news stories. NVRS supports keyword-based news story retrieval, category-based news story browsing and generates key-frame-based video abstract for each story. Experiments show that the method of story segmentation is effective and the retrieval is also efficient.

  3. Based on user interest level of modeling scenarios and browse content

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhao, Yang

    2017-08-01

    User interest modeling is the core of personalized service, taking into account the impact of situational information on user preferences, the user behavior days of financial information. This paper proposes a method of user interest modeling based on scenario information, which is obtained by calculating the similarity of the situation. The user's current scene of the approximate scenario set; on the "user - interest items - scenarios" three-dimensional model using the situation pre-filtering method of dimension reduction processing. View the content of the user interested in the theme, the analysis of the page content to get each topic of interest keywords, based on the level of vector space model user interest. The experimental results show that the user interest model based on the scenario information is within 9% of the user's interest prediction, which is effective.

  4. When and why do people post questions about health and illness on Web 2.0-based Q&A sites in Japan.

    PubMed

    Nakayama, Kazuhiro; Nishio, Arisa; Yokoyama, Yukari; Setoyama, Yoko; Togari, Taisuke; Yonekura, Yuki

    2009-01-01

    Web2.0-based Q&A sites such as Yahoo! Answers and OKWave are the fastest-growing sites in Japan. Such sites exploit user-generated content and information-sharing methods and have established point systems and user ratings to reward participation. We analyzed the questions and answers concerning health and illness posted on these sites. We found that the people who posted questions desired to obtain information related to their health problems from various sources, and to seek validation of this information not only by experts but also by people who have undergone similar experiences.

  5. NASA's Radioisotope Power Systems Program Overview - A Focus on RPS Users

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Hamley, John A.; McCallum, Peter W.; Sandifer, Carl E., II; Sutliff, Thomas J.; Zakrajsek, June F.

    2016-01-01

    The goal of NASA's Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS) Program is to make RPS ready and available to support the exploration of the solar system in environments where the use of conventional solar or chemical power generation is impractical or impossible to meet potential future mission needs. To meet this goal, the RPS Program manages investments in RPS technologies and RPS system development, working closely with the Department of Energy. This paper provides an overview of the RPS Program content and status, its collaborations with potential RPS users, and the approach employed to maintain the readiness of RPS to support future NASA mission concepts.

  6. The Educational and Political Significance of the New Social Media: A Dialogue with Linda Herrera and Michael A. Peters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Herrera, Linda; Peters, Michael A.

    2011-01-01

    The year 2010 was named the Year of Social Media, a technology of communication and for creating and exchanging "User Generated Content". The year 2010 also marked the start of the Arab revolts where, in Tunisia and Egypt, social media served as a critical platform for expressing dissent, organizing, and providing citizen media accounts…

  7. Setting the Scene--Introduction to Quality in Peer Production of eLearning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Auvinen, Ari-Matti

    2008-01-01

    The "Setting the scene" deliverable of the QMPP project (www.qmpp.net) has been authored by Mr. Ari-Matti Auvinen (HCI Productions Oy) and many QMPP project partners. In addition to the definition of the scope of the project, it includes also a good list of references to the literature of user-generated content as well as good web links…

  8. Blog, Chat, Edit, Text, or Tweet? Using Online Tools to Advance Adult Civic Engagement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Black, Laura W.

    2012-01-01

    The rapid growth of the Internet over the past 20 years has brought with it a vast amount of communication about public issues of concern to citizens. Over time, the Internet has become increasingly social and interactive. This move from "Web 1.0" to "Web 2.0" involves a great deal of user-generated content and interaction. This transition has…

  9. Social Media: Strategic Asset or Operational Vulnerability?

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2012-05-04

    Marine Corps message indicated that social networking sites “are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content, and...Immediate Ban of Internet Social Networking Sites on Marine Corps Enterprise Network NIPRNET,” U.S. Marine Corps, accessed April 3, 2012, http... networking sites via the DoD’s unclassified computer network. The memorandum provided guidance on official use of social networking sites as well

  10. Quality Scalability Aware Watermarking for Visual Content.

    PubMed

    Bhowmik, Deepayan; Abhayaratne, Charith

    2016-11-01

    Scalable coding-based content adaptation poses serious challenges to traditional watermarking algorithms, which do not consider the scalable coding structure and hence cannot guarantee correct watermark extraction in media consumption chain. In this paper, we propose a novel concept of scalable blind watermarking that ensures more robust watermark extraction at various compression ratios while not effecting the visual quality of host media. The proposed algorithm generates scalable and robust watermarked image code-stream that allows the user to constrain embedding distortion for target content adaptations. The watermarked image code-stream consists of hierarchically nested joint distortion-robustness coding atoms. The code-stream is generated by proposing a new wavelet domain blind watermarking algorithm guided by a quantization based binary tree. The code-stream can be truncated at any distortion-robustness atom to generate the watermarked image with the desired distortion-robustness requirements. A blind extractor is capable of extracting watermark data from the watermarked images. The algorithm is further extended to incorporate a bit-plane discarding-based quantization model used in scalable coding-based content adaptation, e.g., JPEG2000. This improves the robustness against quality scalability of JPEG2000 compression. The simulation results verify the feasibility of the proposed concept, its applications, and its improved robustness against quality scalable content adaptation. Our proposed algorithm also outperforms existing methods showing 35% improvement. In terms of robustness to quality scalable video content adaptation using Motion JPEG2000 and wavelet-based scalable video coding, the proposed method shows major improvement for video watermarking.

  11. Indexing and retrieval of multimedia objects at different levels of granularity

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Faudemay, Pascal; Durand, Gwenael; Seyrat, Claude; Tondre, Nicolas

    1998-10-01

    Intelligent access to multimedia databases for `naive user' should probably be based on queries formulation by `intelligent agents'. These agents should `understand' the semantics of the contents, learn user preferences and deliver to the user a subset of the source contents, for further navigation. The goal of such systems should be to enable `zero-command' access to the contents, while keeping the freedom of choice of the user. Such systems should interpret multimedia contents in terms of multiple audiovisual objects (from video to visual or audio object), and on actions and scenarios.

  12. Defense Horizons. Number 77, October 2014

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2014-10-01

    companies do not proactively monitor user content and instead ask users to report instances of abuse or offensive matter. Any account closure...days. Its networks are so well connected and content interdependent that users do not have to work hard to discover new accounts. Trying to close ev...Again_DOS) that responds directly to users who tweet pro- jihadist content . Those behind the Think Again program respond with realistic information

  13. Multi-Topic Tracking Model for dynamic social network

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Li, Yuhua; Liu, Changzheng; Zhao, Ming; Li, Ruixuan; Xiao, Hailing; Wang, Kai; Zhang, Jun

    2016-07-01

    The topic tracking problem has attracted much attention in the last decades. However, existing approaches rarely consider network structures and textual topics together. In this paper, we propose a novel statistical model based on dynamic bayesian network, namely Multi-Topic Tracking Model for Dynamic Social Network (MTTD). It takes influence phenomenon, selection phenomenon, document generative process and the evolution of textual topics into account. Specifically, in our MTTD model, Gibbs Random Field is defined to model the influence of historical status of users in the network and the interdependency between them in order to consider the influence phenomenon. To address the selection phenomenon, a stochastic block model is used to model the link generation process based on the users' interests to topics. Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA) is used to describe the document generative process according to the users' interests. Finally, the dependence on the historical topic status is also considered to ensure the continuity of the topic itself in topic evolution model. Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm is utilized to estimate parameters in the proposed MTTD model. Empirical experiments on real datasets show that the MTTD model performs better than Popular Event Tracking (PET) and Dynamic Topic Model (DTM) in generalization performance, topic interpretability performance, topic content evolution and topic popularity evolution performance.

  14. Sensing landscape history with an interactive location based service.

    PubMed

    van Lammeren, Ron; Goossen, Martin; Roncken, Paul

    2009-01-01

    This paper introduces the STEAD approach for interpreting data acquired by a "human sensor", who uses an informal interactive location-based service (iLBS) to sense cultural-historic facts and anecdotes of, and in the landscape. This user-generated data is collected outdoors and in situ. The approach consists of four related facets (who, what, where, when). Three of the four facets are discussed and illustrated by user generated data collected during a Dutch survey in 2008. These data represent the personal cultural-historic knowledge and anecdotes of 150 people using a customized iLBS for experiencing the cultural history of a landscape. The "who" facet shows three dominant mentality groups (cosmopolitans, modern materialists and post modern hedonists) that generated user content. The "what" facet focuses on three subject types of pictures and four picture framing classes. Pictures of the place type showed to be dominant and foreground framing class was slightly favourite. The "where" facet is explored via density, distribution, and distance of the pictures made. The illustrations of the facets indirectly show the role of the "human sensor" with respect to the domain of interest. The STEAD approach needs further development of the when-facet and of the relations between the four facets. Finally the results of the approach may support data archives of iLBS applications.

  15. CG2Real: Improving the Realism of Computer Generated Images Using a Large Collection of Photographs.

    PubMed

    Johnson, Micah K; Dale, Kevin; Avidan, Shai; Pfister, Hanspeter; Freeman, William T; Matusik, Wojciech

    2011-09-01

    Computer-generated (CG) images have achieved high levels of realism. This realism, however, comes at the cost of long and expensive manual modeling, and often humans can still distinguish between CG and real images. We introduce a new data-driven approach for rendering realistic imagery that uses a large collection of photographs gathered from online repositories. Given a CG image, we retrieve a small number of real images with similar global structure. We identify corresponding regions between the CG and real images using a mean-shift cosegmentation algorithm. The user can then automatically transfer color, tone, and texture from matching regions to the CG image. Our system only uses image processing operations and does not require a 3D model of the scene, making it fast and easy to integrate into digital content creation workflows. Results of a user study show that our hybrid images appear more realistic than the originals.

  16. Behaviors and Motivations observed in the Zooniverse

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gay, P. L.; Brown, S.; Huang, A. D.; Lehan, C.; Moon Zoo Team

    2010-12-01

    Today, the total number of astronomers and geophysicists working in academia is dwarfed by the legions of citizen scientists who are flocking to citizen science programs like Moon Zoo, StarDust@Home, Solar Storm Watch, and Be a Martian. Through the Zooniverse collection of projects (including Moon Zoo and Solar Storm Watch), more than 2-dozen peer-reviewed science papers have been generated. These everyday people are, in their spare time, accomplishing necessary tasks and proving themselves to be a vital part of the research pipeline. While it is now understood they can make meaningful contributions to research, the questions of why they are contributing, and how they interact with the projects are still being investigated. In this presentation, preliminary results of a two-part study of Zooniverse user motivations and behaviors are presented. Motivations: We present the results of two sets of studies: detailed research into the motivations of Galaxy Zoo users during the Galaxy Zoo 1 and 2 projects and preliminary results into the investigations of Moon Zoo users. From Galaxy Zoo, we know that the largest primary motivation for people participating in Galaxy Zoo is the desire to contribute to science. At the time of this writing, interviews are being prepared to see if Moon Zoo users have similar motivations to Galaxy Zoo users, and to understand the personal context in which they make their contributions. Behaviors: As users explore the Zooniverse, they have the opportunity to participate in multiple science projects, to consume educational content, to take advantage of tutorials, and to be part of a community on the forums. Preliminary results examining how users moved between different science projects during the duration of Galaxy Zoo 2, and how they are moving between content and classifications in Galaxy Zoo Hubble and Moon Zoo are presented.

  17. Efficient stereoscopic contents file format on the basis of ISO base media file format

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kim, Kyuheon; Lee, Jangwon; Suh, Doug Young; Park, Gwang Hoon

    2009-02-01

    A lot of 3D contents haven been widely used for multimedia services, however, real 3D video contents have been adopted for a limited applications such as a specially designed 3D cinema. This is because of the difficulty of capturing real 3D video contents and the limitation of display devices available in a market. However, diverse types of display devices for stereoscopic video contents for real 3D video contents have been recently released in a market. Especially, a mobile phone with a stereoscopic camera has been released in a market, which provides a user as a consumer to have more realistic experiences without glasses, and also, as a content creator to take stereoscopic images or record the stereoscopic video contents. However, a user can only store and display these acquired stereoscopic contents with his/her own devices due to the non-existence of a common file format for these contents. This limitation causes a user not share his/her contents with any other users, which makes it difficult the relevant market to stereoscopic contents is getting expanded. Therefore, this paper proposes the common file format on the basis of ISO base media file format for stereoscopic contents, which enables users to store and exchange pure stereoscopic contents. This technology is also currently under development for an international standard of MPEG as being called as a stereoscopic video application format.

  18. Web accessibility support for visually impaired users using link content analysis.

    PubMed

    Iwata, Hajime; Kobayashi, Naofumi; Tachibana, Kenji; Shirogane, Junko; Fukazawa, Yoshiaki

    2013-12-01

    Web pages are used for a variety of purposes. End users must understand dynamically changing content and sequentially follow page links to find desired material, requiring significant time and effort. However, for visually impaired users using screen readers, it can be difficult to find links to web pages when link text and alternative text descriptions are inappropriate. Our method supports the discovery of content by analyzing 8 categories of link types, and allows visually impaired users to be aware of the content represented by links in advance. This facilitates end users access to necessary information on web pages. Our method of classifying web page links is therefore effective as a means of evaluating accessibility.

  19. Users Polarization on Facebook and Youtube.

    PubMed

    Bessi, Alessandro; Zollo, Fabiana; Del Vicario, Michela; Puliga, Michelangelo; Scala, Antonio; Caldarelli, Guido; Uzzi, Brian; Quattrociocchi, Walter

    2016-01-01

    Users online tend to select information that support and adhere their beliefs, and to form polarized groups sharing the same view-e.g. echo chambers. Algorithms for content promotion may favour this phenomenon, by accounting for users preferences and thus limiting the exposure to unsolicited contents. To shade light on this question, we perform a comparative study on how same contents (videos) are consumed on different online social media-i.e. Facebook and YouTube-over a sample of 12M of users. Our findings show that content drives the emergence of echo chambers on both platforms. Moreover, we show that the users' commenting patterns are accurate predictors for the formation of echo-chambers.

  20. User-Adapted Recommendation of Content on Mobile Devices Using Bayesian Networks

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Iwasaki, Hirotoshi; Mizuno, Nobuhiro; Hara, Kousuke; Motomura, Yoichi

    Mobile devices, such as cellular phones and car navigation systems, are essential to daily life. People acquire necessary information and preferred content over communication networks anywhere, anytime. However, usability issues arise from the simplicity of user interfaces themselves. Thus, a recommendation of content that is adapted to a user's preference and situation will help the user select content. In this paper, we describe a method to realize such a system using Bayesian networks. This user-adapted mobile system is based on a user model that provides recommendation of content (i.e., restaurants, shops, and music that are suitable to the user and situation) and that learns incrementally based on accumulated usage history data. However, sufficient samples are not always guaranteed, since a user model would require combined dependency among users, situations, and contents. Therefore, we propose the LK method for modeling, which complements incomplete and insufficient samples using knowledge data, and CPT incremental learning for adaptation based on a small number of samples. In order to evaluate the methods proposed, we applied them to restaurant recommendations made on car navigation systems. The evaluation results confirmed that our model based on the LK method can be expected to provide better generalization performance than that of the conventional method. Furthermore, our system would require much less operation than current car navigation systems from the beginning of use. Our evaluation results also indicate that learning a user's individual preference through CPT incremental learning would be beneficial to many users, even with only a few samples. As a result, we have developed the technology of a system that becomes more adapted to a user the more it is used.

  1. Impact of packet losses in scalable 3D holoscopic video coding

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Conti, Caroline; Nunes, Paulo; Ducla Soares, Luís.

    2014-05-01

    Holoscopic imaging became a prospective glassless 3D technology to provide more natural 3D viewing experiences to the end user. Additionally, holoscopic systems also allow new post-production degrees of freedom, such as controlling the plane of focus or the viewing angle presented to the user. However, to successfully introduce this technology into the consumer market, a display scalable coding approach is essential to achieve backward compatibility with legacy 2D and 3D displays. Moreover, to effectively transmit 3D holoscopic content over error-prone networks, e.g., wireless networks or the Internet, error resilience techniques are required to mitigate the impact of data impairments in the user quality perception. Therefore, it is essential to deeply understand the impact of packet losses in terms of decoding video quality for the specific case of 3D holoscopic content, notably when a scalable approach is used. In this context, this paper studies the impact of packet losses when using a three-layer display scalable 3D holoscopic video coding architecture previously proposed, where each layer represents a different level of display scalability (i.e., L0 - 2D, L1 - stereo or multiview, and L2 - full 3D holoscopic). For this, a simple error concealment algorithm is used, which makes use of inter-layer redundancy between multiview and 3D holoscopic content and the inherent correlation of the 3D holoscopic content to estimate lost data. Furthermore, a study of the influence of 2D views generation parameters used in lower layers on the performance of the used error concealment algorithm is also presented.

  2. Development of a multimedia educational programme for first-time hearing aid users: a participatory design.

    PubMed

    Ferguson, Melanie; Leighton, Paul; Brandreth, Marian; Wharrad, Heather

    2018-05-02

    To develop content for a series of interactive video tutorials (or reusable learning objects, RLOs) for first-time adult hearing aid users, to enhance knowledge of hearing aids and communication. RLO content was based on an electronically-delivered Delphi review, workshops, and iterative peer-review and feedback using a mixed-methods participatory approach. An expert panel of 33 hearing healthcare professionals, and workshops involving 32 hearing aid users and 11 audiologists. This ensured that social, emotional and practical experiences of the end-user alongside clinical validity were captured. Content for evidence-based, self-contained RLOs based on pedagogical principles was developed for delivery via DVD for television, PC or internet. Content was developed based on Delphi review statements about essential information that reached consensus (≥90%), visual representations of relevant concepts relating to hearing aids and communication, and iterative peer-review and feedback of content. This participatory approach recognises and involves key stakeholders in the design process to create content for a user-friendly multimedia educational intervention, to supplement the clinical management of first-time hearing aid users. We propose participatory methodologies are used in the development of content for e-learning interventions in hearing-related research and clinical practice.

  3. Terror: Social Media and Extremism

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2014-05-01

    rely on user reporting to police content , the Chinese government proactively monitors and removes content from websites it finds inappropriate. As...interpretation of the law left users unsure as to what constituted content that could harm the society. Unabridged laws intent on controlling social media can...what is going on in social media. The internet, especially with the advent of Web 2.0 and user driven content , has become a goldmine for open source

  4. Examining ISIS Support and Opposition Networks on Twitter

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2016-01-01

    interactive communities of Twitter users , lexical analysis that can identify key themes and content for large data sets, and social network analysis...Twitter data, we lexically analyzed the content and key themes of users who mostly employ Daesh versus those who mostly use Islamic State in their tweets...As predicted, we found that frequent users of Daesh had content that was highly critical of ISIS, with users using such terms as Terrorist Daesh

  5. The narrative approach to personalisation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Conlan, Owen; Staikopoulos, Athanasios; Hampson, Cormac; Lawless, Séamus; O'keeffe, Ian

    2013-06-01

    This article describes the narrative approach to personalisation. This novel approach to the generation of personalised adaptive hypermedia experiences employs runtime reconciliation between a personalisation strategy and a number of contextual models (e.g. user and domain). The approach also advocates the late binding of suitable content and services to the generated personalised pathway resulting in an interactive composition that comprises services as well as content. This article provides a detailed definition of the narrative approach to personalisation and showcases the approach through the examination of two use-cases: the personalised digital educational games developed by the ELEKTRA and 80Days projects; and the personalised learning activities realised as part of the AMAS project. These use-cases highlight the general applicability of the narrative approach and how it has been applied to create a diverse range of real-world systems.

  6. Consumer language, patient language, and thesauri: a review of the literature

    PubMed Central

    Smith, Catherine A

    2011-01-01

    Objective: Online social networking sites are web services in which users create public or semipublic profiles and connect to build online communities, finding likeminded people through self-labeled personal attributes including ethnicity, leisure interests, political beliefs, and, increasingly, health status. Thirty-nine percent of patients in the United States identified themselves as users of social networks in a recent survey. “Tags,” user-generated descriptors functioning as labels for user-generated content, are increasingly important to social networking, and the language used by patients is thus becoming important for knowledge representation in these systems. However, patient language poses considerable challenges for health communication and networking. How have information systems traditionally incorporated these languages in their controlled vocabularies and thesauri? How do system builders know what consumers and patients say? Methods: This comprehensive review of the literature of health care (PubMed MEDLINE, CINAHL), library science, and information science (Library and Information Science and Technology Abstracts, Library and Information Science Abstracts, and Library Literature) examines the research domains in which consumer and patient language has been explored. Results: Consumer contributions to controlled vocabulary appear to be seriously under-researched inside and outside of health care. Conclusion: The author reflects on the implications of these findings for online social networks devoted to patients and the patient experience. PMID:21464851

  7. Consumer language, patient language, and thesauri: a review of the literature.

    PubMed

    Smith, Catherine A

    2011-04-01

    Online social networking sites are web services in which users create public or semipublic profiles and connect to build online communities, finding like-minded people through self-labeled personal attributes including ethnicity, leisure interests, political beliefs, and, increasingly, health status. Thirty-nine percent of patients in the United States identified themselves as users of social networks in a recent survey. "Tags," user-generated descriptors functioning as labels for user-generated content, are increasingly important to social networking, and the language used by patients is thus becoming important for knowledge representation in these systems. However, patient language poses considerable challenges for health communication and networking. How have information systems traditionally incorporated these languages in their controlled vocabularies and thesauri? How do system builders know what consumers and patients say? This comprehensive review of the literature of health care (PubMed MEDLINE, CINAHL), library science, and information science (Library and Information Science and Technology Abstracts, Library and Information Science Abstracts, and Library Literature) examines the research domains in which consumer and patient language has been explored. Consumer contributions to controlled vocabulary appear to be seriously under-researched inside and outside of health care. The author reflects on the implications of these findings for online social networks devoted to patients and the patient experience.

  8. Effective Replays and Summarization of Virtual Experiences

    PubMed Central

    Ponto, Kevin; Kohlmann, Joe; Gleicher, Michael

    2012-01-01

    Direct replays of the experience of a user in a virtual environment are difficult for others to watch due to unnatural camera motions. We present methods for replaying and summarizing these egocentric experiences that effectively communicate the users observations while reducing unwanted camera movements. Our approach summarizes the viewpoint path as a concise sequence of viewpoints that cover the same parts of the scene. The core of our approach is a novel content dependent metric that can be used to identify similarities between viewpoints. This enables viewpoints to be grouped by similar contextual view information and provides a means to generate novel viewpoints that can encapsulate a series of views. These resulting encapsulated viewpoints are used to synthesize new camera paths that convey the content of the original viewers experience. Projecting the initial movement of the user back on the scene can be used to convey the details of their observations, and the extracted viewpoints can serve as bookmarks for control or analysis. Finally we present performance analysis along with two forms of validation to test whether the extracted viewpoints are representative of the viewers original observations and to test for the overall effectiveness of the presented replay methods. PMID:22402688

  9. The Effects of Twitter Users' Gender and Weight on Viral Behavioral Intentions Toward Obesity-Related News.

    PubMed

    Almutairi, Nasser; Alhabash, Saleem; Hellmueller, Lea; Willis, Erin

    2018-01-01

    In this study, male and female participants were exposed to identical news stories covering obesity topics paired with tweets from Twitter users. Our study aimed at understanding how obesity-related news combined with user-generated social media posts (i.e., tweets) affect consumers' evaluations of online content and viral behavioral intentions (the intentions to like, share, and comment). An experiment (N = 316) explored how gender and weight of a Twitter user (tweeter) affect participants' evaluations and viral behavioral intentions toward news stories. Participants differed in their evaluations of and viral behavioral intentions for news stories as a function of Twitter users' gender and weight, as well as participants' gender. While participants expressed more favorable attitudes toward news stories paired with tweets by overweight than healthy females (with the opposite true for tweets by male users), participants expressed greater viral behavioral intentions for news stories paired with tweets by healthy weight than overweight user. These effects were more pronounced among male than female participants. Findings are discussed within the context of social media posts and their persuasive effects in relation to attitude and behavior changes.

  10. Can YouTube enhance student nurse learning?

    PubMed

    Clifton, Andrew; Mann, Claire

    2011-05-01

    The delivery of nurse education has changed radically in the past two decades. Increasingly, nurse educators are using new technology in the classroom to enhance their teaching and learning. One recent technological development to emerge is the user-generated content website YouTube. Originally YouTube was used as a repository for sharing home-made videos, more recently online content is being generated by political parties, businesses and educationalists. We recently delivered a module to undergraduate student nurses in which the teaching and learning were highly populated with YouTube resources. We found that the use of YouTube videos increased student engagement, critical awareness and facilitated deep learning. Furthermore, these videos could be accessed at any time of the day and from a place to suit the student. We acknowledge that there are some constraints to using YouTube for teaching and learning particularly around the issue of unregulated content which is often misleading, inaccurate or biased. However, we strongly urge nurse educators to consider using YouTube for teaching and learning, in and outside the classroom, to a generation of students who are native of a rapidly changing digital world. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  11. Omnify: Investigating the Visibility and Effectiveness of Copyright Monitors

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Potharaju, Rahul; Seibert, Jeff; Fahmy, Sonia; Nita-Rotaru, Cristina

    The arms race between copyright agencies and P2P users is an ongoing and evolving struggle. On the one hand, content providers are using several techniques to stealthily find unauthorized distribution of copyrighted work in order to deal with the problem of Internet piracy. On the other hand, P2P users are relying increasingly on blacklists and anonymization methods in order to avoid detection. In this work, we propose a number of techniques to reveal copyright monitors' current approaches and evaluate their effectiveness. We apply these techniques on data we collected from more than 2.75 million BitTorrent swarms containing 71 million IP addresses. We provide strong evidence that certain nodes are indeed copyright monitors, show that monitoring is a world-wide phenomenon, and devise a methodology for generating blacklists for paranoid and conservative P2P users.

  12. The Reviews Are in: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Consumer Perspectives on Apps for Bipolar Disorder

    PubMed Central

    Fogarty, Andrea S; Boydell, Katherine; Christensen, Helen

    2017-01-01

    Background The delivery of mobile health (mHealth) services is acceptable to mental health consumers. However, despite the benefits of accessibility, cost-effectiveness, anonymity, and ability to tailor content to individual needs, consumer engagement remains a hurdle for uptake and continued use. This may be unsurprising as few studies have examined app content from the consumer perspective or assessed consumer preferences for the content of apps for mental health management. An opportunity to examine consumer perspectives exists in using naturally generated data that is publically available in the Google Play and Apple app stores. Whereas commercial developers routinely use this data, to date there has been no in-depth evaluation within scientific research. Objective The aim of our study was to explore what consumers consider useful content for mental health management apps, identify unmet needs, and understand user expectations of mental health apps within the context of apps for bipolar disorder. Methods Publically available English language consumer reviews of 48 apps for bipolar disorder were used as data, providing a total of 2173 reviews. Review text was coded and analyzed using a team approach to qualitative content analysis. Results were presented in 2 forms: (1) a quantitative summary of the 9 major and minor themes and (2) a qualitative synthesis of key thematic findings. Results The majority of reviews were for symptom monitoring apps (87.94%, 1911/2173). The qualitative content analysis revealed 5 main themes: (1) laudatory talk, comments regarding the app’s benefits including helpfulness and successful design features (74.00% of reviews, 1608/2173); (2) unfavorable feedback, negative reviews largely concerning unmet needs, privacy and technical issues, and potential dangers of app use (25.54%, 555/2173); (3) conceptions of community, referring to both communities of users with mental ill-health accessed via the app and a community created among app users and developers (24.25%, 527/2173); (4) wishlist features, app features requested by users (17.53%, 381/2173); and (5) apps and therapy, app use within clinical care (10.58%, 230/2173). Four minor themes were also identified: (1) app cost, (2) privacy and data security, (3) comparisons with traditional monitoring, and (4) evidence-based mHealth. Conclusions Although mostly positive, the proportion of reviews containing wishlist requests indicates consumer needs are not adequately addressed by currently available disorder management apps. Consumers value content that is helpful, supportive, and easy to use, and they are integrating apps into their health management and clinical care without necessarily considering the evidence-base or clinical effectiveness of the tool. User expectations regarding developer responsiveness to their needs has implications for community-based participatory research and integrated knowledge translation. However, this expectation is incompatible with current mHealth funding structures. PMID:28389420

  13. The Chandra X-ray Observatory PSF Library

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Karovska, M.; Beikman, S. J.; Elvis, M. S.; Flanagan, J. M.; Gaetz, T.; Glotfelty, K. J.; Jerius, D.; McDowell, J. C.; Rots, A. H.

    Pre-flight and on-orbit calibration of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory provided a unique base for developing detailed models of the optics and detectors. Using these models we have produced a set of simulations of the Chandra point spread function (PSF) which is available to the users via PSF library files. We describe here how the PSF models are generated and the design and content of the Chandra PSF library files.

  14. Automatic Keyframe Summarization of User-Generated Video

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2014-06-01

    using the framework presented in this paper. 12 Scenery Technology has been developed that classifies the genre of a video. Here, video genres are...types of videos that shares similarities in content and structure. Many genres of video footage exist. Some examples include news, sports, movies...cartoons, and commercials. Rasheed et al. [42] classify video genres (comedy, action, drama, and horror) with low-level video statistics, such as average

  15. Automated method for relating regional pulmonary structure and function: integration of dynamic multislice CT and thin-slice high-resolution CT

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tajik, Jehangir K.; Kugelmass, Steven D.; Hoffman, Eric A.

    1993-07-01

    We have developed a method utilizing x-ray CT for relating pulmonary perfusion to global and regional anatomy, allowing for detailed study of structure to function relationships. A thick slice, high temporal resolution mode is used to follow a bolus contrast agent for blood flow evaluation and is fused with a high spatial resolution, thin slice mode to obtain structure- function detail. To aid analysis of blood flow, we have developed a software module, for our image analysis package (VIDA), to produce the combined structure-function image. Color coded images representing blood flow, mean transit time, regional tissue content, regional blood volume, regional air content, etc. are generated and imbedded in the high resolution volume image. A text file containing these values along with a voxel's 3-D coordinates is also generated. User input can be minimized to identifying the location of the pulmonary artery from which the input function to a blood flow model is derived. Any flow model utilizing one input and one output function can be easily added to a user selectable list. We present examples from our physiologic based research findings to demonstrate the strengths of combining dynamic CT and HRCT relative to other scanning modalities to uniquely characterize pulmonary normal and pathophysiology.

  16. Leveraging search and content exploration by exploiting context in folksonomy systems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Abel, Fabian; Baldoni, Matteo; Baroglio, Cristina; Henze, Nicola; Kawase, Ricardo; Krause, Daniel; Patti, Viviana

    2010-04-01

    With the advent of Web 2.0 tagging became a popular feature in social media systems. People tag diverse kinds of content, e.g. products at Amazon, music at Last.fm, images at Flickr, etc. In the last years several researchers analyzed the impact of tags on information retrieval. Most works focused on tags only and ignored context information. In this article we present context-aware approaches for learning semantics and improve personalized information retrieval in tagging systems. We investigate how explorative search, initialized by clicking on tags, can be enhanced with automatically produced context information so that search results better fit to the actual information needs of the users. We introduce the SocialHITS algorithm and present an experiment where we compare different algorithms for ranking users, tags, and resources in a contextualized way. We showcase our approaches in the domain of images and present the TagMe! system that enables users to explore and tag Flickr pictures. In TagMe! we further demonstrate how advanced context information can easily be generated: TagMe! allows users to attach tag assignments to a specific area within an image and to categorize tag assignments. In our corresponding evaluation we show that those additional facets of tag assignments gain valuable semantics, which can be applied to improve existing search and ranking algorithms significantly.

  17. Using Content Distribution Networks for Astronomy Outreach

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Jäger, M.; Christiansen, L. L.; André, M.

    2015-09-01

    Thousands of people from all over the world search the internet on a daily basis for the newest discoveries in astronomy: be it in the form of press releases, high resolution images, videos or even planetarium fulldome content. The growing amount of data available, combined with the increasing number of media files and users distributed across the globe, leads to a significant decrease in speed for those users located furthest from the server delivering the content. One solution for bringing astronomical content to users faster is to use a content delivery network.

  18. NASA RPS Program Overview: A Focus on RPS Users

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Hamley, John A.; Sutliff, Thomas J.; Sandifer, Carl E., II; Zakrajsek, June F.

    2016-01-01

    The goal of NASA's Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS) Program is to make RPS ready and available to support the exploration of the solar system in environments where the use of conventional solar or chemical power generation is impractical or impossible to meet the needs of the missions. To meet this goal, the RPS Program, working closely with the Department of Energy, performs mission and system studies (such as the recently released Nuclear Power Assessment Study), assesses the readiness of promising technologies to infuse in future generators, assesses the sustainment of key RPS capabilities and knowledge, forecasts and tracks the Programs budgetary needs, and disseminates current information about RPS to the community of potential users. This process has been refined and used to determine the current content of the RPS Programs portfolio. This portfolio currently includes an effort to mature advanced thermoelectric technology for possible integration into an enhanced Multi-Mission Radioisotope Generator (eMMRTG), sustainment and production of the currently deployed MMRTG, and technology investments that could lead to a future Stirling Radioisotope Generator (SRG). This paper describes the program planning processes that have been used, the currently available MMRTG, and one of the potential future systems, the eMMRTG.

  19. A study on real-time low-quality content detection on Twitter from the users' perspective.

    PubMed

    Chen, Weiling; Yeo, Chai Kiat; Lau, Chiew Tong; Lee, Bu Sung

    2017-01-01

    Detection techniques of malicious content such as spam and phishing on Online Social Networks (OSN) are common with little attention paid to other types of low-quality content which actually impacts users' content browsing experience most. The aim of our work is to detect low-quality content from the users' perspective in real time. To define low-quality content comprehensibly, Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm is first used to coarsely classify low-quality tweets into four categories. Based on this preliminary study, a survey is carefully designed to gather users' opinions on different categories of low-quality content. Both direct and indirect features including newly proposed features are identified to characterize all types of low-quality content. We then further combine word level analysis with the identified features and build a keyword blacklist dictionary to improve the detection performance. We manually label an extensive Twitter dataset of 100,000 tweets and perform low-quality content detection in real time based on the characterized significant features and word level analysis. The results of our research show that our method has a high accuracy of 0.9711 and a good F1 of 0.8379 based on a random forest classifier with real time performance in the detection of low-quality content in tweets. Our work therefore achieves a positive impact in improving user experience in browsing social media content.

  20. Twitter as a Potential Data Source for Cardiovascular Disease Research.

    PubMed

    Sinnenberg, Lauren; DiSilvestro, Christie L; Mancheno, Christina; Dailey, Karl; Tufts, Christopher; Buttenheim, Alison M; Barg, Fran; Ungar, Lyle; Schwartz, H; Brown, Dana; Asch, David A; Merchant, Raina M

    2016-12-01

    As society is increasingly becoming more networked, researchers are beginning to explore how social media can be used to study person-to-person communication about health and health care use. Twitter is an online messaging platform used by more than 300 million people who have generated several billion Tweets, yet little work has focused on the potential applications of these data for studying public attitudes and behaviors associated with cardiovascular health. To describe the volume and content of Tweets associated with cardiovascular disease as well as the characteristics of Twitter users. We used Twitter to access a random sample of approximately 10 billion English-language Tweets originating from US counties from July 23, 2009, to February 5, 2015, associated with cardiovascular disease. We characterized each Tweet relative to estimated user demographics. A random subset of 2500 Tweets was hand-coded for content and modifiers. The volume of Tweets about cardiovascular disease and the content of these Tweets. Of 550 338 Tweets associated with cardiovascular disease, the terms diabetes (n = 239 989) and myocardial infarction (n = 269 907) were used more frequently than heart failure (n = 9414). Users who Tweeted about cardiovascular disease were more likely to be older than the general population of Twitter users (mean age, 28.7 vs 25.4 years; P < .01) and less likely to be male (59 082 of 124 896 [47.3%] vs 8433 of 17 270 [48.8%]; P < .01). Most Tweets (2338 of 2500 [93.5%]) were associated with a health topic; common themes of Tweets included risk factors (1048 of 2500 [41.9%]), awareness (585 of 2500 [23.4%]), and management (541 of 2500 [21.6%]) of cardiovascular disease. Twitter offers promise for studying public communication about cardiovascular disease.

  1. Online Discussion on #KidneyStones: A Longitudinal Assessment of Activity, Users and Content

    PubMed Central

    Bultitude, Matthew; Fritsche, Hans-Martin; Haferkamp, Axel; Heidenreich, Axel; Miernik, Arkadiusz; Neisius, Andreas; Knoll, Thomas; Thomas, Christian; Tsaur, Igor

    2016-01-01

    Introduction Twitter is a popular microblogging platform for the rapid dissemination of information and reciprocal exchange in the urological field. We aimed to assess the activity, users and content of the online discussion, #KidneyStones, on Twitter. Methods We investigated the Symplur Signals analytics tool for Twitter data distributed via the #KidneyStones hashtag over a one year period. Activity analysis reflected overall activity and tweet enhancements. We assessed users’ geolocations and performed an influencer analysis. Content analysis included the most frequently used words, tweet sentiment and shares for top tweets. Results 3,426 users generated over 10,333 tweets, which were frequently accompanied by links (49%), mentions (30%) and photos (13%). Users came from 106 countries across the globe and were most frequently from North America (63%) and Europe (16%). Individual and organisational healthcare professionals made up 56% of the influencers of the Twitter discussion on #KidneyStones. Besides the words ‘kidney’ (used 4,045 times) and ‘stones’ (3,335), ‘pain’ (1,233), ‘urine’ (1,158), and ‘risk’ (1,023) were the most frequently used words. 56% of tweets had a positive sentiment. The median (range) number of shares was 85 (62–587) for the top 10 links, 45.5 (17–94) for the top 10 photos, and 44 (22–95) for the top 10 retweets. Conclusion The rapidly growing Twitter discussion on #KidneyStones engaged multiple stakeholders in the healthcare sector on a global scale and reached both professionals and laypeople. When used effectively and responsibly, the Twitter platform could improve prevention and medical care of kidney stone patients. PMID:27537406

  2. Integrating user profile in medical CBIR systems to answer perceptual similarity queries

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bugatti, Pedro H.; Kaster, Daniel S.; Ponciano-Silva, Marcelo; Traina, Agma J. M.; Traina, Caetano, Jr.

    2011-03-01

    Techniques for Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) have been intensively explored due to the increase in the amount of captured images and the need of fast retrieval of them. The medical field is a specific example that generates a large flow of information, especially digital images employed for diagnosing. One issue that still remains unsolved deals with how to reach the perceptual similarity. That is, to achieve an effective retrieval, one must characterize and quantify the perceptual similarity regarding the specialist in the field. Therefore, the present paper was conceived to fill in this gap creating a consistent support to perform similarity queries over medical images, maintaining the semantics of a given query desired by the user. CBIR systems relying in relevance feedback techniques usually request the users to label relevant images. In this paper, we present a simple but highly effective strategy to survey user profiles, taking advantage of such labeling to implicitly gather the user perceptual similarity. The user profiles maintain the settings desired for each user, allowing tuning the similarity assessment, which encompasses dynamically changing the distance function employed through an interactive process. Experiments using computed tomography lung images show that the proposed approach is effective in capturing the users' perception.

  3. WormBase 2014: new views of curated biology

    PubMed Central

    Harris, Todd W.; Baran, Joachim; Bieri, Tamberlyn; Cabunoc, Abigail; Chan, Juancarlos; Chen, Wen J.; Davis, Paul; Done, James; Grove, Christian; Howe, Kevin; Kishore, Ranjana; Lee, Raymond; Li, Yuling; Muller, Hans-Michael; Nakamura, Cecilia; Ozersky, Philip; Paulini, Michael; Raciti, Daniela; Schindelman, Gary; Tuli, Mary Ann; Auken, Kimberly Van; Wang, Daniel; Wang, Xiaodong; Williams, Gary; Wong, J. D.; Yook, Karen; Schedl, Tim; Hodgkin, Jonathan; Berriman, Matthew; Kersey, Paul; Spieth, John; Stein, Lincoln; Sternberg, Paul W.

    2014-01-01

    WormBase (http://www.wormbase.org/) is a highly curated resource dedicated to supporting research using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. With an electronic history predating the World Wide Web, WormBase contains information ranging from the sequence and phenotype of individual alleles to genome-wide studies generated using next-generation sequencing technologies. In recent years, we have expanded the contents to include data on additional nematodes of agricultural and medical significance, bringing the knowledge of C. elegans to bear on these systems and providing support for underserved research communities. Manual curation of the primary literature remains a central focus of the WormBase project, providing users with reliable, up-to-date and highly cross-linked information. In this update, we describe efforts to organize the original atomized and highly contextualized curated data into integrated syntheses of discrete biological topics. Next, we discuss our experiences coping with the vast increase in available genome sequences made possible through next-generation sequencing platforms. Finally, we describe some of the features and tools of the new WormBase Web site that help users better find and explore data of interest. PMID:24194605

  4. Body Talk: Body Image Commentary on Queerty.com.

    PubMed

    Schwartz, Joseph; Grimm, Josh

    2016-08-01

    In this study, we conducted a content analysis of 243 photographic images of men published on the gay male-oriented blog Queerty.com. We also analyzed 435 user-generated comments from a randomly selected 1-year sample. Focusing on images' body types, we found that the range of body types featured on the blog was quite narrow-the vast majority of images had very low levels of body fat and very high levels of muscularity. Users' body image-related comments typically endorsed and celebrated images; critiques of images were comparatively rare. Perspectives from objectification theory and social comparison theory suggest that the images and commentary found on the blog likely reinforce unhealthy body image in gay male communities.

  5. The EcoCyc database: reflecting new knowledge about Escherichia coli K-12.

    PubMed

    Keseler, Ingrid M; Mackie, Amanda; Santos-Zavaleta, Alberto; Billington, Richard; Bonavides-Martínez, César; Caspi, Ron; Fulcher, Carol; Gama-Castro, Socorro; Kothari, Anamika; Krummenacker, Markus; Latendresse, Mario; Muñiz-Rascado, Luis; Ong, Quang; Paley, Suzanne; Peralta-Gil, Martin; Subhraveti, Pallavi; Velázquez-Ramírez, David A; Weaver, Daniel; Collado-Vides, Julio; Paulsen, Ian; Karp, Peter D

    2017-01-04

    EcoCyc (EcoCyc.org) is a freely accessible, comprehensive database that collects and summarizes experimental data for Escherichia coli K-12, the best-studied bacterial model organism. New experimental discoveries about gene products, their function and regulation, new metabolic pathways, enzymes and cofactors are regularly added to EcoCyc. New SmartTable tools allow users to browse collections of related EcoCyc content. SmartTables can also serve as repositories for user- or curator-generated lists. EcoCyc now supports running and modifying E. coli metabolic models directly on the EcoCyc website. © The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

  6. Design of virtual simulation experiment based on key events

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhong, Zheng; Zhou, Dongbo; Song, Lingxiu

    2018-06-01

    Considering complex content and lacking of guidance in virtual simulation experiments, the key event technology in VR narrative theory was introduced for virtual simulation experiment to enhance fidelity and vividness process. Based on the VR narrative technology, an event transition structure was designed to meet the need of experimental operation process, and an interactive event processing model was used to generate key events in interactive scene. The experiment of" margin value of bees foraging" based on Biologic morphology was taken as an example, many objects, behaviors and other contents were reorganized. The result shows that this method can enhance the user's experience and ensure experimental process complete and effectively.

  7. A Key Establishment Protocol for RFID User in IPTV Environment

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Jeong, Yoon-Su; Kim, Yong-Tae; Sohn, Jae-Min; Park, Gil-Cheol; Lee, Sang-Ho

    In recent years, the usage of IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) has been increased. The reason is a technological convergence of broadcasting and telecommunication delivering interactive applications and multimedia content through high speed Internet connections. The main critical point of IPTV security requirements is subscriber authentication. That is, IPTV service should have the capability to identify the subscribers to prohibit illegal access. Currently, IPTV service does not provide a sound authentication mechanism to verify the identity of its wireless users (or devices). This paper focuses on a lightweight authentication and key establishment protocol based on the use of hash functions. The proposed approach provides effective authentication for a mobile user with a RFID tag whose authentication information is communicated back and forth with the IPTV authentication server via IPTV set-top box (STB). That is, the proposed protocol generates user's authentication information that is a bundle of two public keys derived from hashing user's private keys and RFID tag's session identifier, and adds 1bit to this bundled information for subscriber's information confidentiality before passing it to the authentication server.

  8. An Investigation into Web Content Accessibility Guideline Conformance for an Aging Population

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Curran, Kevin; Robinson, David

    2007-01-01

    Poor web site design can cause difficulties for specific groups of users. By applying the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to a web site, the amount of possible users who can successfully view the content of that site will increase, especially for those who are in the disabled and older adult categories of online users. Older adults are coming…

  9. MPEG-7 based video annotation and browsing

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hoeynck, Michael; Auweiler, Thorsten; Wellhausen, Jens

    2003-11-01

    The huge amount of multimedia data produced worldwide requires annotation in order to enable universal content access and to provide content-based search-and-retrieval functionalities. Since manual video annotation can be time consuming, automatic annotation systems are required. We review recent approaches to content-based indexing and annotation of videos for different kind of sports and describe our approach to automatic annotation of equestrian sports videos. We especially concentrate on MPEG-7 based feature extraction and content description, where we apply different visual descriptors for cut detection. Further, we extract the temporal positions of single obstacles on the course by analyzing MPEG-7 edge information. Having determined single shot positions as well as the visual highlights, the information is jointly stored with meta-textual information in an MPEG-7 description scheme. Based on this information, we generate content summaries which can be utilized in a user-interface in order to provide content-based access to the video stream, but further for media browsing on a streaming server.

  10. What are health-related users tweeting? A qualitative content analysis of health-related users and their messages on twitter.

    PubMed

    Lee, Joy L; DeCamp, Matthew; Dredze, Mark; Chisolm, Margaret S; Berger, Zackary D

    2014-10-15

    Twitter is home to many health professionals who send messages about a variety of health-related topics. Amid concerns about physicians posting inappropriate content online, more in-depth knowledge about these messages is needed to understand health professionals' behavior on Twitter. Our goal was to characterize the content of Twitter messages, specifically focusing on health professionals and their tweets relating to health. We performed an in-depth content analysis of 700 tweets. Qualitative content analysis was conducted on tweets by health users on Twitter. The primary objective was to describe the general type of content (ie, health-related versus non-health related) on Twitter authored by health professionals and further to describe health-related tweets on the basis of the type of statement made. Specific attention was given to whether a tweet was personal (as opposed to professional) or made a claim that users would expect to be supported by some level of medical evidence (ie, a "testable" claim). A secondary objective was to compare content types among different users, including patients, physicians, nurses, health care organizations, and others. Health-related users are posting a wide range of content on Twitter. Among health-related tweets, 53.2% (184/346) contained a testable claim. Of health-related tweets by providers, 17.6% (61/346) were personal in nature; 61% (59/96) made testable statements. While organizations and businesses use Twitter to promote their services and products, patient advocates are using this tool to share their personal experiences with health. Twitter users in health-related fields tweet about both testable claims and personal experiences. Future work should assess the relationship between testable tweets and the actual level of evidence supporting them, including how Twitter users-especially patients-interpret the content of tweets posted by health providers.

  11. Teaching People and Machines to Enhance Images

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Berthouzoz, Floraine Sara Martianne

    Procedural tasks such as following a recipe or editing an image are very common. They require a person to execute a sequence of operations (e.g. chop onions, or sharpen the image) in order to achieve the goal of the task. People commonly use step-by-step tutorials to learn these tasks. We focus on software tutorials, more specifically photo manipulation tutorials, and present a set of tools and techniques to help people learn, compare and automate photo manipulation procedures. We describe three different systems that are each designed to help with a different stage in acquiring procedural knowledge. Today, people primarily rely on hand-crafted tutorials in books and on websites to learn photo manipulation procedures. However, putting together a high quality step-by-step tutorial is a time-consuming process. As a consequence, many online tutorials are poorly designed which can lead to confusion and slow down the learning process. We present a demonstration-based system for automatically generating succinct step-by-step visual tutorials of photo manipulations. An author first demonstrates the manipulation using an instrumented version of GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) that records all changes in interface and application state. From the example recording, our system automatically generates tutorials that illustrate the manipulation using images, text, and annotations. It leverages automated image labeling (recognition of facial features and outdoor scene structures in our implementation) to generate more precise text descriptions of many of the steps in the tutorials. A user study finds that our tutorials are effective for learning the steps of a procedure; users are 20-44% faster and make 60-95% fewer errors when using our tutorials than when using screencapture video tutorials or hand-designed tutorials. We also demonstrate a new interface that allows learners to navigate, explore and compare large collections (i.e. thousands) of photo manipulation tutorials based on their command-level structure. Sites such as tutorialized.com or good-tutorials.com collect tens of thousands of photo manipulation tutorials. These collections typically contain many different tutorials for the same task. For example, there are many different tutorials that describe how to recolor the hair of a person in an image. Learners often want to compare these tutorials to understand the different ways a task can be done. They may also want to identify common strategies that are used across tutorials for a variety of tasks. However, the large number of tutorials in these collections and their inconsistent formats can make it difficult for users to systematically explore and compare them. Current tutorial collections do not exploit the underlying command-level structure of tutorials, and to explore the collection users have to either page through long lists of tutorial titles or perform keyword searches on the natural language tutorial text. We present a new browsing interface to help learners navigate, explore and compare collections of photo manipulation tutorials based on their command-level structure. Our browser indexes tutorials by their commands, identifies common strategies within the tutorial collection, and highlights the similarities and differences between sets of tutorials that execute the same task. User feedback suggests that our interface is easy to understand and use, and that users find command-level browsing to be useful for exploring large tutorial collections. They strongly preferred to explore tutorial collections with our browser over keyword search. Finally, we present a framework for generating content-adaptive macros (programs) that can transfer complex photo manipulation procedures to new target images. After learners master a photo manipulation procedure, they often repeatedly apply it to multiple images. For example, they might routinely apply the same vignetting effect to all their photographs. This process can be very tedious especially for procedures that involve many steps. While image manipulation programs provide basic macro authoring tools that allow users to record and then replay a sequence of operations, these macros are very brittle and cannot adapt to new images. We present a more comprehensive approach for generating content-adaptive macros that can automatically transfer operations to new target images. To create these macro, we make use of multiple training demonstrations. Specifically, we use automated image labeling and machine learning techniques to to adapt the parameters of each operation to the new image content. We show that our framework is able to learn a large class of the most commonly-used manipulations using as few as 20 training demonstrations. Our content-adaptive macros allow users to transfer photo manipulation procedures with a single button click and thereby significantly simplify repetitive procedures.

  12. Tweeting the meeting: A comparative analysis of an Australian emergency medicine conference over four years.

    PubMed

    Udovicich, Cristian; Barberi, Anthony; Perera, Kalpa

    2016-01-01

    Social media allows user-generated content and dialog between users and has also entered into the domain of healthcare. The purpose of this study was to compare the use of Twitter at the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine Annual Scientific Meeting (ACEM ASM) from 2011 to 2014 and analyze its ability to spread emergency medicine education. Retrospectively, TweetReach was utilized to analyze relevant tweets. Each Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) had an associated Twitter account/s from, which data were collected. Duplicate tweets were excluded from the analysis. Information on the number of total tweets (regular tweets, retweets, and replies) and contributors was gathered. The potential audience, the reach, was calculated. From 2011 to 2014 the number of tweets rose from 460 to 4694, a 920% increase. Only 54 Twitter users contributed to the 2011 ASM. This rose to 252 (2012), 291 (2013) and 572 (2014). The average number of tweets per contributor ranged from 8.2 to 10.9. The reach, the potential number of Twitter users exposed to posts, rose >30 times from 2011 (15,502 users) to 2014 (471,166). The use of Twitter at the ACEM ASM rose significantly from 2011 to 2014. It is a highly useful tool for the dissemination of emergency medicine education. Twitter has been harnessed by the ASM to enhance the conference experience by further generating interaction between delegates as well as those worldwide.

  13. Understanding user intents in online health forums.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Thomas; Cho, Jason H D; Zhai, Chengxiang

    2015-07-01

    Online health forums provide a convenient way for patients to obtain medical information and connect with physicians and peers outside of clinical settings. However, large quantities of unstructured and diversified content generated on these forums make it difficult for users to digest and extract useful information. Understanding user intents would enable forums to find and recommend relevant information to users by filtering out threads that do not match particular intents. In this paper, we derive a taxonomy of intents to capture user information needs in online health forums and propose novel pattern-based features for use with a multiclass support vector machine (SVM) classifier to classify original thread posts according to their underlying intents. Since no dataset existed for this task, we employ three annotators to manually label a dataset of 1192 HealthBoards posts spanning four forum topics. Experimental results show that a SVM using pattern-based features is highly capable of identifying user intents in forum posts, reaching a maximum precision of 75%, and that a SVM-based hierarchical classifier using both pattern and word features outperforms its SVM counterpart that uses only word features. Furthermore, comparable classification performance can be achieved by training and testing on posts from different forum topics.

  14. Harvesting Intelligence in Multimedia Social Tagging Systems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Giannakidou, Eirini; Kaklidou, Foteini; Chatzilari, Elisavet; Kompatsiaris, Ioannis; Vakali, Athena

    As more people adopt tagging practices, social tagging systems tend to form rich knowledge repositories that enable the extraction of patterns reflecting the way content semantics is perceived by the web users. This is of particular importance, especially in the case of multimedia content, since the availability of such content in the web is very high and its efficient retrieval using textual annotations or content-based automatically extracted metadata still remains a challenge. It is argued that complementing multimedia analysis techniques with knowledge drawn from web social annotations may facilitate multimedia content management. This chapter focuses on analyzing tagging patterns and combining them with content feature extraction methods, generating, thus, intelligence from multimedia social tagging systems. Emphasis is placed on using all available "tracks" of knowledge, that is tag co-occurrence together with semantic relations among tags and low-level features of the content. Towards this direction, a survey on the theoretical background and the adopted practices for analysis of multimedia social content are presented. A case study from Flickr illustrates the efficiency of the proposed approach.

  15. A Descriptive Study of the Prevalence and Typology of Alcohol-Related Posts in an Online Social Network for Smoking Cessation.

    PubMed

    Cohn, Amy M; Zhao, Kang; Cha, Sarah; Wang, Xi; Amato, Michael S; Pearson, Jennifer L; Papandonatos, George D; Graham, Amanda L

    2017-09-01

    Alcohol use and problem drinking are associated with smoking relapse and poor smoking-cessation success. User-generated content in online social networks for smoking cessation provides an opportunity to understand the challenges and treatment needs of smokers. This study used machine-learning text classification to identify the prevalence, sentiment, and social network correlates of alcohol-related content in the social network of a large online smoking-cessation program, BecomeAnEX.org. Data were analyzed from 814,258 posts (January 2012 to May 2015). Posts containing alcohol keywords were coded via supervised machine-learning text classification for information about the user's personal experience with drinking, whether the user self-identified as a problem drinker or indicated problem drinking, and negative sentiment about drinking in the context of a quit attempt (i.e., alcohol should be avoided during a quit attempt). Less than 1% of posts were related to alcohol, contributed by 13% of users. Roughly a third of alcohol posts described a personal experience with drinking; very few (3%) indicated "problem drinking." The majority (70%) of alcohol posts did not express negative sentiment about drinking alcohol during a quit attempt. Users who did express negative sentiment about drinking were more centrally located within the network compared with those who did not. Discussion of alcohol was rare, and most posts did not signal the need to quit or abstain from drinking during a quit attempt. Featuring expert information or highlighting discussions that are consistent with treatment guidelines may be important steps to ensure smokers are educated about drinking risks.

  16. Who is watching user-generated alcohol posts on social media?

    PubMed

    Erevik, Eilin K; Pallesen, Ståle; Andreassen, Cecilie S; Vedaa, Øystein; Torsheim, Torbjørn

    2018-03-01

    To examine students' exposure to user-generated alcohol content on social media, and identify characteristics (i.e. demographics, personality traits, alcohol use, alcohol-related cognitions, and social media factors) associated with monthly or more frequent exposure. College/university students (N=11,236) in Bergen, Norway, completed a web-survey measuring exposure to alcohol on social media - both frequency and interpretations of alcohol content. The survey included questions regarding demographics, personality, alcohol-related cognitions, and general use of social media and alcohol. Binary logistic regressions were run to identify characteristics associated with monthly or more frequent exposure to alcohol-related posts on social media. A total of 96.7% had been exposed to alcohol-related posts, exposure to posts with a positive valence of alcohol were more frequently reported than exposure to content with a negative valence of alcohol. Reports of monthly or more frequent exposure to alcohol on social media were associated with a range of characteristics, among these younger age, being native Norwegian, lower extroversion and higher agreeableness and self-monitoring scores, higher alcohol use, stronger descriptive norms for alcohol use among online-friends, and more frequent logins to social media. Students' potential inflated alcohol norms (originating from social media) should be addressed. The results suggest that exposure may be determined by high alcohol use and membership in demographical groups associated with high alcohol use, an increased attentiveness towards others' behavior, and excessive social media use. Future studies investigating the relationship between alcohol exposure on social media and later alcohol use should control for such factors. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. An Ambient Intelligence Framework for the Provision of Geographically Distributed Multimedia Content to Mobility Impaired Users

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kehagias, Dionysios D.; Giakoumis, Dimitris; Tzovaras, Dimitrios; Bekiaris, Evangelos; Wiethoff, Marion

    This chapter presents an ambient intelligence framework whose goal is to facilitate the information needs of mobility impaired users on the move. This framework couples users with geographically distributed services and the corresponding multimedia content, enabling access to context-sensitive information based on user geographic location and the use case under consideration. It provides a multi-modal facility that is realized through a set of mobile devices and user interfaces that address the needs of ten different types of user impairments. The overall ambient intelligence framework enables users who are equipped with mobile devices to access multimedia content in order to undertake activities relevant to one or more of the following domains: transportation, tourism and leisure, personal support services, work, business, education, social relations and community building. User experience is being explored against those activities through a specific usage scenario.

  18. Style grammars for interactive visualization of architecture.

    PubMed

    Aliaga, Daniel G; Rosen, Paul A; Bekins, Daniel R

    2007-01-01

    Interactive visualization of architecture provides a way to quickly visualize existing or novel buildings and structures. Such applications require both fast rendering and an effortless input regimen for creating and changing architecture using high-level editing operations that automatically fill in the necessary details. Procedural modeling and synthesis is a powerful paradigm that yields high data amplification and can be coupled with fast-rendering techniques to quickly generate plausible details of a scene without much or any user interaction. Previously, forward generating procedural methods have been proposed where a procedure is explicitly created to generate particular content. In this paper, we present our work in inverse procedural modeling of buildings and describe how to use an extracted repertoire of building grammars to facilitate the visualization and quick modification of architectural structures and buildings. We demonstrate an interactive application where the user draws simple building blocks and, using our system, can automatically complete the building "in the style of" other buildings using view-dependent texture mapping or nonphotorealistic rendering techniques. Our system supports an arbitrary number of building grammars created from user subdivided building models and captured photographs. Using only edit, copy, and paste metaphors, the entire building styles can be altered and transferred from one building to another in a few operations, enhancing the ability to modify an existing architectural structure or to visualize a novel building in the style of the others.

  19. Sensing Landscape History with an Interactive Location Based Service

    PubMed Central

    van Lammeren, Ron; Goossen, Martin; Roncken, Paul

    2009-01-01

    This paper introduces the STEAD approach for interpreting data acquired by a “human sensor”, who uses an informal interactive location-based service (iLBS) to sense cultural-historic facts and anecdotes of, and in the landscape. This user-generated data is collected outdoors and in situ. The approach consists of four related facets (who, what, where, when). Three of the four facets are discussed and illustrated by user generated data collected during a Dutch survey in 2008. These data represent the personal cultural-historic knowledge and anecdotes of 150 people using a customized iLBS for experiencing the cultural history of a landscape. The “who” facet shows three dominant mentality groups (cosmopolitans, modern materialists and post modern hedonists) that generated user content. The “what” facet focuses on three subject types of pictures and four picture framing classes. Pictures of the place type showed to be dominant and foreground framing class was slightly favourite. The “where” facet is explored via density, distribution, and distance of the pictures made. The illustrations of the facets indirectly show the role of the “human sensor” with respect to the domain of interest. The STEAD approach needs further development of the when-facet and of the relations between the four facets. Finally the results of the approach may support data archives of iLBS applications. PMID:22399994

  20. Scalable Faceted Ranking in Tagging Systems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Orlicki, José I.; Alvarez-Hamelin, J. Ignacio; Fierens, Pablo I.

    Nowadays, web collaborative tagging systems which allow users to upload, comment on and recommend contents, are growing. Such systems can be represented as graphs where nodes correspond to users and tagged-links to recommendations. In this paper we analyze the problem of computing a ranking of users with respect to a facet described as a set of tags. A straightforward solution is to compute a PageRank-like algorithm on a facet-related graph, but it is not feasible for online computation. We propose an alternative: (i) a ranking for each tag is computed offline on the basis of tag-related subgraphs; (ii) a faceted order is generated online by merging rankings corresponding to all the tags in the facet. Based on the graph analysis of YouTube and Flickr, we show that step (i) is scalable. We also present efficient algorithms for step (ii), which are evaluated by comparing their results with two gold standards.

  1. Who Are the Most Influential Emergency Physicians on Twitter?

    PubMed Central

    Riddell, Jeff; Brown, Alisha; Kovic, Ivor; Jauregui, Joshua

    2017-01-01

    Introduction Twitter has recently gained popularity in emergency medicine (EM). Opinion leaders on Twitter have significant influence on the conversation and content, yet little is known about these opinion leaders. We aimed to describe a methodology to identify the most influential emergency physicians (EP) on Twitter and present a current list. Methods We analyzed 2,234 English-language EPs on Twitter from a previously published list of Twitter accounts generated by a snowball sampling technique. Using NodeXL software, we performed a network analysis of these EPs and ranked them on three measures of influence: in-degree centrality, eigenvector centrality, and betweenness centrality. We analyzed the top 100 users in each of these three measures of influence and compiled a list of users found in the top 100 in all three measures. Results Of the 300 total users identified by one of the measures of influence, there were 142 unique users. Of the 142 unique users, 61 users were in the top 100 on all three measures of influence. We identify these 61 users as the most influential EM Twitter users. Conclusion We both describe a method for identifying the most influential users and provide a list of the 61 most influential EPs on Twitter as of January 1, 2016. This application of network science to the EM Twitter community can guide future research to better understand the networked global community of EM. PMID:28210365

  2. Who Are the Most Influential Emergency Physicians on Twitter?

    PubMed

    Riddell, Jeff; Brown, Alisha; Kovic, Ivor; Jauregui, Joshua

    2017-02-01

    Twitter has recently gained popularity in emergency medicine (EM). Opinion leaders on Twitter have significant influence on the conversation and content, yet little is known about these opinion leaders. We aimed to describe a methodology to identify the most influential emergency physicians (EP) on Twitter and present a current list. We analyzed 2,234 English-language EPs on Twitter from a previously published list of Twitter accounts generated by a snowball sampling technique. Using NodeXL software, we performed a network analysis of these EPs and ranked them on three measures of influence: in-degree centrality, eigenvector centrality, and betweenness centrality. We analyzed the top 100 users in each of these three measures of influence and compiled a list of users found in the top 100 in all three measures. Of the 300 total users identified by one of the measures of influence, there were 142 unique users. Of the 142 unique users, 61 users were in the top 100 on all three measures of influence. We identify these 61 users as the most influential EM Twitter users. We both describe a method for identifying the most influential users and provide a list of the 61 most influential EPs on Twitter as of January 1, 2016. This application of network science to the EM Twitter community can guide future research to better understand the networked global community of EM.

  3. Users Polarization on Facebook and Youtube

    PubMed Central

    Bessi, Alessandro; Zollo, Fabiana; Del Vicario, Michela; Puliga, Michelangelo; Scala, Antonio; Caldarelli, Guido; Uzzi, Brian; Quattrociocchi, Walter

    2016-01-01

    Users online tend to select information that support and adhere their beliefs, and to form polarized groups sharing the same view—e.g. echo chambers. Algorithms for content promotion may favour this phenomenon, by accounting for users preferences and thus limiting the exposure to unsolicited contents. To shade light on this question, we perform a comparative study on how same contents (videos) are consumed on different online social media—i.e. Facebook and YouTube—over a sample of 12M of users. Our findings show that content drives the emergence of echo chambers on both platforms. Moreover, we show that the users’ commenting patterns are accurate predictors for the formation of echo-chambers. PMID:27551783

  4. Secure content objects

    DOEpatents

    Evans, William D [Cupertino, CA

    2009-02-24

    A secure content object protects electronic documents from unauthorized use. The secure content object includes an encrypted electronic document, a multi-key encryption table having at least one multi-key component, an encrypted header and a user interface device. The encrypted document is encrypted using a document encryption key associated with a multi-key encryption method. The encrypted header includes an encryption marker formed by a random number followed by a derivable variation of the same random number. The user interface device enables a user to input a user authorization. The user authorization is combined with each of the multi-key components in the multi-key encryption key table and used to try to decrypt the encrypted header. If the encryption marker is successfully decrypted, the electronic document may be decrypted. Multiple electronic documents or a document and annotations may be protected by the secure content object.

  5. NullSeq: A Tool for Generating Random Coding Sequences with Desired Amino Acid and GC Contents.

    PubMed

    Liu, Sophia S; Hockenberry, Adam J; Lancichinetti, Andrea; Jewett, Michael C; Amaral, Luís A N

    2016-11-01

    The existence of over- and under-represented sequence motifs in genomes provides evidence of selective evolutionary pressures on biological mechanisms such as transcription, translation, ligand-substrate binding, and host immunity. In order to accurately identify motifs and other genome-scale patterns of interest, it is essential to be able to generate accurate null models that are appropriate for the sequences under study. While many tools have been developed to create random nucleotide sequences, protein coding sequences are subject to a unique set of constraints that complicates the process of generating appropriate null models. There are currently no tools available that allow users to create random coding sequences with specified amino acid composition and GC content for the purpose of hypothesis testing. Using the principle of maximum entropy, we developed a method that generates unbiased random sequences with pre-specified amino acid and GC content, which we have developed into a python package. Our method is the simplest way to obtain maximally unbiased random sequences that are subject to GC usage and primary amino acid sequence constraints. Furthermore, this approach can easily be expanded to create unbiased random sequences that incorporate more complicated constraints such as individual nucleotide usage or even di-nucleotide frequencies. The ability to generate correctly specified null models will allow researchers to accurately identify sequence motifs which will lead to a better understanding of biological processes as well as more effective engineering of biological systems.

  6. HC StratoMineR: A Web-Based Tool for the Rapid Analysis of High-Content Datasets.

    PubMed

    Omta, Wienand A; van Heesbeen, Roy G; Pagliero, Romina J; van der Velden, Lieke M; Lelieveld, Daphne; Nellen, Mehdi; Kramer, Maik; Yeong, Marley; Saeidi, Amir M; Medema, Rene H; Spruit, Marco; Brinkkemper, Sjaak; Klumperman, Judith; Egan, David A

    2016-10-01

    High-content screening (HCS) can generate large multidimensional datasets and when aligned with the appropriate data mining tools, it can yield valuable insights into the mechanism of action of bioactive molecules. However, easy-to-use data mining tools are not widely available, with the result that these datasets are frequently underutilized. Here, we present HC StratoMineR, a web-based tool for high-content data analysis. It is a decision-supportive platform that guides even non-expert users through a high-content data analysis workflow. HC StratoMineR is built by using My Structured Query Language for storage and querying, PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor as the main programming language, and jQuery for additional user interface functionality. R is used for statistical calculations, logic and data visualizations. Furthermore, C++ and graphical processor unit power is diffusely embedded in R by using the rcpp and rpud libraries for operations that are computationally highly intensive. We show that we can use HC StratoMineR for the analysis of multivariate data from a high-content siRNA knock-down screen and a small-molecule screen. It can be used to rapidly filter out undesirable data; to select relevant data; and to perform quality control, data reduction, data exploration, morphological hit picking, and data clustering. Our results demonstrate that HC StratoMineR can be used to functionally categorize HCS hits and, thus, provide valuable information for hit prioritization.

  7. Test-retest reliability and cross validation of the functioning everyday with a wheelchair instrument.

    PubMed

    Mills, Tamara L; Holm, Margo B; Schmeler, Mark

    2007-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to establish the test-retest reliability and content validity of an outcomes tool designed to measure the effectiveness of seating-mobility interventions on the functional performance of individuals who use wheelchairs or scooters as their primary seating-mobility device. The instrument, Functioning Everyday With a Wheelchair (FEW), is a questionnaire designed to measure perceived user function related to wheelchair/scooter use. Using consumer-generated items, FEW Beta Version 1.0 was developed and test-retest reliability was established. Cross-validation of FEW Beta Version 1.0 was then carried out with five samples of seating-mobility users to establish content validity. Based on the content validity study, FEW Version 2.0 was developed and administered to seating-mobility consumers to examine its test-retest reliability. FEW Beta Version 1.0 yielded an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) Model (3,k) of .92, p < .001, and the content validity results revealed that FEW Beta Version 1.0 captured 55% of seating-mobility goals reported by consumers across five samples. FEW Version 2.0 yielded ICC(3,k) = .86, p < .001, and captured 98.5% of consumers' seating-mobility goals. The cross-validation study identified new categories of seating-mobility goals for inclusion in FEW Version 2.0, and the content validity of FEW Version 2.0 was confirmed. FEW Beta Version 1.0 and FEW Version 2.0 were highly stable in their measurement of participants' seating-mobility goals over a 1-week interval.

  8. Shilling attack detection for recommender systems based on credibility of group users and rating time series.

    PubMed

    Zhou, Wei; Wen, Junhao; Qu, Qiang; Zeng, Jun; Cheng, Tian

    2018-01-01

    Recommender systems are vulnerable to shilling attacks. Forged user-generated content data, such as user ratings and reviews, are used by attackers to manipulate recommendation rankings. Shilling attack detection in recommender systems is of great significance to maintain the fairness and sustainability of recommender systems. The current studies have problems in terms of the poor universality of algorithms, difficulty in selection of user profile attributes, and lack of an optimization mechanism. In this paper, a shilling behaviour detection structure based on abnormal group user findings and rating time series analysis is proposed. This paper adds to the current understanding in the field by studying the credibility evaluation model in-depth based on the rating prediction model to derive proximity-based predictions. A method for detecting suspicious ratings based on suspicious time windows and target item analysis is proposed. Suspicious rating time segments are determined by constructing a time series, and data streams of the rating items are examined and suspicious rating segments are checked. To analyse features of shilling attacks by a group user's credibility, an abnormal group user discovery method based on time series and time window is proposed. Standard testing datasets are used to verify the effect of the proposed method.

  9. Image/text automatic indexing and retrieval system using context vector approach

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Qing, Kent P.; Caid, William R.; Ren, Clara Z.; McCabe, Patrick

    1995-11-01

    Thousands of documents and images are generated daily both on and off line on the information superhighway and other media. Storage technology has improved rapidly to handle these data but indexing this information is becoming very costly. HNC Software Inc. has developed a technology for automatic indexing and retrieval of free text and images. This technique is demonstrated and is based on the concept of `context vectors' which encode a succinct representation of the associated text and features of sub-image. In this paper, we will describe the Automated Librarian System which was designed for free text indexing and the Image Content Addressable Retrieval System (ICARS) which extends the technique from the text domain into the image domain. Both systems have the ability to automatically assign indices for a new document and/or image based on the content similarities in the database. ICARS also has the capability to retrieve images based on similarity of content using index terms, text description, and user-generated images as a query without performing segmentation or object recognition.

  10. Content standards for medical image metadata

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    d'Ornellas, Marcos C.; da Rocha, Rafael P.

    2003-12-01

    Medical images are at the heart of the healthcare diagnostic procedures. They have provided not only a noninvasive mean to view anatomical cross-sections of internal organs but also a mean for physicians to evaluate the patient"s diagnosis and monitor the effects of the treatment. For a Medical Center, the emphasis may shift from the generation of image to post processing and data management since the medical staff may generate even more processed images and other data from the original image after various analyses and post processing. A medical image data repository for health care information system is becoming a critical need. This data repository would contain comprehensive patient records, including information such as clinical data and related diagnostic images, and post-processed images. Due to the large volume and complexity of the data as well as the diversified user access requirements, the implementation of the medical image archive system will be a complex and challenging task. This paper discusses content standards for medical image metadata. In addition it also focuses on the image metadata content evaluation and metadata quality management.

  11. A metadata reporting framework for standardization and synthesis of ecohydrological field observations

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Christianson, D. S.; Varadharajan, C.; Detto, M.; Faybishenko, B.; Gimenez, B.; Jardine, K.; Negron Juarez, R. I.; Pastorello, G.; Powell, T.; Warren, J.; Wolfe, B.; McDowell, N. G.; Kueppers, L. M.; Chambers, J.; Agarwal, D.

    2016-12-01

    The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment (NGEE) Tropics project aims to develop a process-rich tropical forest ecosystem model that is parameterized and benchmarked by field observations. Thus, data synthesis, quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC), and data product generation of a diverse and complex set of ecohydrological observations, including sapflux, leaf surface temperature, soil water content, and leaf gas exchange from sites across the Tropics, are required to support model simulations. We have developed a metadata reporting framework, implemented in conjunction with the NGEE Tropics Data Archive tool, to enable cross-site and cross-method comparison, data interpretability, and QA/QC. We employed a modified User-Centered Design approach, which involved short development cycles based on user-identified needs, and iterative testing with data providers and users. The metadata reporting framework currently has been implemented for sensor-based observations and leverages several existing metadata protocols. The framework consists of templates that define a multi-scale measurement position hierarchy, descriptions of measurement settings, and details about data collection and data file organization. The framework also enables data providers to define data-access permission settings, provenance, and referencing to enable appropriate data usage, citation, and attribution. In addition to describing the metadata reporting framework, we discuss tradeoffs and impressions from both data providers and users during the development process, focusing on the scalability, usability, and efficiency of the framework.

  12. Hearing aid user guides: suitability for older adults.

    PubMed

    Caposecco, Andrea; Hickson, Louise; Meyer, Carly

    2014-02-01

    The aim of this study was to analyse the content, design, and readability of printed hearing aid user guides to determine their suitability for older adults, who are the main users of hearing aids. Hearing aid user guides were assessed using four readability formulae and a standardized tool to assess content and design (SAM - Suitability Assessment of Materials). A sample of 36 hearing aid user guides (four user guides from nine different hearing aid manufacturers) were analysed. Sixty nine percent of user guides were rated 'not suitable' and 31% were rated 'adequate' for their suitability. Many scored poorly for scope, vocabulary, aspects of layout and typography, and learning stimulation and motivation. The mean reading grade level for all user guides was grade 9.6 which is too high for older adults. The content, design, and readability of hearing aid user guides are not optimal for older adults and thus may serve as a barrier to successful hearing aid outcomes for this population.

  13. Web-Based Media Contents Editor for UCC Websites

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kim, Seoksoo

    The purpose of this research is to "design web-based media contents editor for establishing UCC(User Created Contents)-based websites." The web-based editor features user-oriented interfaces and increased convenience, significantly different from previous off-line editors. It allows users to edit media contents online and can be effectively used for online promotion activities of enterprises and organizations. In addition to development of the editor, the research aims to support the entry of enterprises and public agencies to the online market by combining the technology with various UCC items.

  14. 'Ecstasy' as a social drug: MDMA preferentially affects responses to emotional stimuli with social content.

    PubMed

    Wardle, Margaret C; Kirkpatrick, Matthew G; de Wit, Harriet

    2014-08-01

    3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, 'ecstasy') is used recreationally to improve mood and sociability, and has generated clinical interest as a possible adjunct to psychotherapy. One way that MDMA may produce positive 'prosocial' effects is by changing responses to emotional stimuli, especially stimuli with social content. Here, we examined for the first time how MDMA affects subjective responses to positive, negative and neutral emotional pictures with and without social content. We hypothesized that MDMA would dose-dependently increase reactivity to positive emotional stimuli and dampen reactivity to negative stimuli, and that these effects would be most pronounced for pictures with people in them. The data were obtained from two studies using similar designs with healthy occasional MDMA users (total N = 101). During each session, participants received MDMA (0, 0.75 and 1.5 mg/kg oral), and then rated their positive and negative responses to standardized positive, negative and neutral pictures with and without social content. MDMA increased positive ratings of positive social pictures, but reduced positive ratings of non-social positive pictures. We speculate this 'socially selective' effect contributes to the prosocial effects of MDMA by increasing the comparative value of social contact and closeness with others. This effect may also contribute to its attractiveness to recreational users. © The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  15. Light-Weighted Automatic Import of Standardized Ontologies into the Content Management System Drupal.

    PubMed

    Beger, Christoph; Uciteli, Alexandr; Herre, Heinrich

    2017-01-01

    The amount of ontologies, which are utilizable for widespread domains, is growing steadily. BioPortal alone, embraces over 500 published ontologies with nearly 8 million classes. In contrast, the vast informative content of these ontologies is only directly intelligible by experts. To overcome this deficiency it could be possible to represent ontologies as web portals, which does not require knowledge about ontologies and their semantics, but still carries as much information as possible to the end-user. Furthermore, the conception of a complex web portal is a sophisticated process. Many entities must be analyzed and linked to existing terminologies. Ontologies are a decent solution for gathering and storing this complex data and dependencies. Hence, automated imports of ontologies into web portals could support both mentioned scenarios. The Content Management System (CMS) Drupal 8 is one of many solutions to develop web presentations with less required knowledge about programming languages and it is suitable to represent ontological entities. We developed the Drupal Upper Ontology (DUO), which models concepts of Drupal's architecture, such as nodes, vocabularies and links. DUO can be imported into ontologies to map their entities to Drupal's concepts. Because of Drupal's lack of import capabilities, we implemented the Simple Ontology Loader in Drupal (SOLID), a Drupal 8 module, which allows Drupal administrators to import ontologies based on DUO. Our module generates content in Drupal from existing ontologies and makes it accessible by the general public. Moreover Drupal offers a tagging system which may be amplified with multiple standardized and established terminologies by importing them with SOLID. Our Drupal module shows that ontologies can be used to model content of a CMS and vice versa CMS are suitable to represent ontologies in a user-friendly way. Ontological entities are presented to the user as discrete pages with all appropriate properties, links and tags.

  16. Development of a smartphone app for adolescents with lupus: a collaborative meeting-based methodology inclusive of a wide range of stakeholders.

    PubMed

    Herschman, Jessica; Kasenberg, Todd; Levy, Deborah; Ruth, Natasha; Taberner, Christy; Kaufman, Miriam; Regina, Andrea

    2014-01-01

    Traditional challenges of creating a medical app include hearing the voices of various stakeholders as a collective rather than in a consultative process that is sequential. This report describes the development of a mobile (smartphone) app for adolescents with lupus as well as the process that was used to overcome the challenge described above. The development of the smartphone app addressed optimal ways to incorporate information about 1) lupus, including the effects of both the disease and the medications used to treat it; 2) how life choices can affect lupus patients' condition; and 3) ways to increase self-management and communication. The collaborative concept-generating and requirements-gathering methodology was used during a two-day workshop with a range of stakeholders (ages 16 - 59 years) that focused on leveraging user-centered design methods to generate guidance to mobile app developers. The app development process conducted during the workshop included the following steps: 1) recruiting a goal-focused collaborative group, 2) defining app objectives, 3) evaluating potential needs of users, 4) brainstorming app features and use-case modeling, 5) reviewing existing app features and prototypes, 6) refining functionalities, 7) writing user narratives, 8) visualizing navigation and feature design, and 9) identifying content. The use of creative devices such as drawing interfaces fostered fun, engagement, and sustained energy, and the use of a brainstorming technique leveraged methods that ensured an inclusive process so that even participants who were shy, quiet, or easily intimidated by "professionals" felt confident to contribute. In addition to a name change for the app, project outcomes included the selection of the following app features: symptom tracking; appointment and medication reminders; a social media component; a medical summary; easy navigation; informational content; gamification; and personalization (options for customization).

  17. The Reviews Are in: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Consumer Perspectives on Apps for Bipolar Disorder.

    PubMed

    Nicholas, Jennifer; Fogarty, Andrea S; Boydell, Katherine; Christensen, Helen

    2017-04-07

    The delivery of mobile health (mHealth) services is acceptable to mental health consumers. However, despite the benefits of accessibility, cost-effectiveness, anonymity, and ability to tailor content to individual needs, consumer engagement remains a hurdle for uptake and continued use. This may be unsurprising as few studies have examined app content from the consumer perspective or assessed consumer preferences for the content of apps for mental health management. An opportunity to examine consumer perspectives exists in using naturally generated data that is publically available in the Google Play and Apple app stores. Whereas commercial developers routinely use this data, to date there has been no in-depth evaluation within scientific research. The aim of our study was to explore what consumers consider useful content for mental health management apps, identify unmet needs, and understand user expectations of mental health apps within the context of apps for bipolar disorder. Publically available English language consumer reviews of 48 apps for bipolar disorder were used as data, providing a total of 2173 reviews. Review text was coded and analyzed using a team approach to qualitative content analysis. Results were presented in 2 forms: (1) a quantitative summary of the 9 major and minor themes and (2) a qualitative synthesis of key thematic findings. The majority of reviews were for symptom monitoring apps (87.94%, 1911/2173). The qualitative content analysis revealed 5 main themes: (1) laudatory talk, comments regarding the app's benefits including helpfulness and successful design features (74.00% of reviews, 1608/2173); (2) unfavorable feedback, negative reviews largely concerning unmet needs, privacy and technical issues, and potential dangers of app use (25.54%, 555/2173); (3) conceptions of community, referring to both communities of users with mental ill-health accessed via the app and a community created among app users and developers (24.25%, 527/2173); (4) wishlist features, app features requested by users (17.53%, 381/2173); and (5) apps and therapy, app use within clinical care (10.58%, 230/2173). Four minor themes were also identified: (1) app cost, (2) privacy and data security, (3) comparisons with traditional monitoring, and (4) evidence-based mHealth. Although mostly positive, the proportion of reviews containing wishlist requests indicates consumer needs are not adequately addressed by currently available disorder management apps. Consumers value content that is helpful, supportive, and easy to use, and they are integrating apps into their health management and clinical care without necessarily considering the evidence-base or clinical effectiveness of the tool. User expectations regarding developer responsiveness to their needs has implications for community-based participatory research and integrated knowledge translation. However, this expectation is incompatible with current mHealth funding structures. ©Jennifer Nicholas, Andrea S Fogarty, Katherine Boydell, Helen Christensen. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 07.04.2017.

  18. TeCo3D: a 3D telecooperation application based on VRML and Java

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mauve, Martin

    1998-12-01

    In this paper we present a method for sharing collaboration- unaware VRML content, e.g. 3D models which were not specifically developed for use in a distributed environment. This functionality is an essential requirement for the inclusion of arbitrary VRML content, as generated by standard CAD or animation software, into teleconferencing sessions. We have developed a 3D TeleCooperation (TeCo3D) prototype to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach. The basic services provided by the prototype are the distribution of cooperation unaware VRML content, the sharing of user interactions, and the joint viewing of the content. In order to achieve maximum portability, the prototype was developed completely in Java. This paper presents general aspects of sharing VRML content as well as the concepts, the architecture and the services of the TeCo3D prototype. Our approach relies on existing VRML browsers as the VRML presentation and execution engines while reliable multicast is used as the means of communication to provide for scalability.

  19. Can existing mobile apps support healthier food purchasing behaviour? Content analysis of nutrition content, behaviour change theory and user quality integration.

    PubMed

    Flaherty, Sarah-Jane; McCarthy, Mary; Collins, Alan; McAuliffe, Fionnuala

    2018-02-01

    To assess the quality of nutrition content and the integration of user quality components and behaviour change theory relevant to food purchasing behaviour in a sample of existing mobile apps. Descriptive comparative analysis of eleven mobile apps comprising an assessment of their alignment with existing evidence on nutrition, behaviour change and user quality, and their potential ability to support healthier food purchasing behaviour. Mobile apps freely available for public use in GoogePlay were assessed and scored according to agreed criteria to assess nutrition content quality and integration of behaviour change theory and user quality components. A sample of eleven mobile apps that met predefined inclusion criteria to ensure relevance and good quality. The quality of the nutrition content varied. Improvements to the accuracy and appropriateness of nutrition content are needed to ensure mobile apps support a healthy behaviour change process and are accessible to a wider population. There appears to be a narrow focus towards behaviour change with an overemphasis on behavioural outcomes and a small number of behaviour change techniques, which may limit effectiveness. A significant effort from the user was required to use the mobile apps appropriately which may negatively influence user acceptability and subsequent utilisation. Existing mobile apps may offer a potentially effective approach to supporting healthier food purchasing behaviour but improvements in mobile app design are required to maximise their potential effectiveness. Engagement of mobile app users and nutrition professionals is recommended to support effective design.

  20. Few Things About Idioms: Understanding Idioms and Its Users in the Twitter Online Social Network

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2015-05-22

    popular, but active users who mostly use Twitter as a conversa- tional platform – as opposed to other users who primarily discuss topical contents ...and content -based) algorithms for community detection on the Twitter social network, and show that idiom oriented users get clustered better in one...they are mostly general and active Twitter users , as opposed to being popular experts / celebrities who usually drive topics such as politics and

  1. What Are Health-Related Users Tweeting? A Qualitative Content Analysis of Health-Related Users and Their Messages on Twitter

    PubMed Central

    DeCamp, Matthew; Dredze, Mark; Chisolm, Margaret S; Berger, Zackary D

    2014-01-01

    Background Twitter is home to many health professionals who send messages about a variety of health-related topics. Amid concerns about physicians posting inappropriate content online, more in-depth knowledge about these messages is needed to understand health professionals’ behavior on Twitter. Objective Our goal was to characterize the content of Twitter messages, specifically focusing on health professionals and their tweets relating to health. Methods We performed an in-depth content analysis of 700 tweets. Qualitative content analysis was conducted on tweets by health users on Twitter. The primary objective was to describe the general type of content (ie, health-related versus non-health related) on Twitter authored by health professionals and further to describe health-related tweets on the basis of the type of statement made. Specific attention was given to whether a tweet was personal (as opposed to professional) or made a claim that users would expect to be supported by some level of medical evidence (ie, a “testable” claim). A secondary objective was to compare content types among different users, including patients, physicians, nurses, health care organizations, and others. Results Health-related users are posting a wide range of content on Twitter. Among health-related tweets, 53.2% (184/346) contained a testable claim. Of health-related tweets by providers, 17.6% (61/346) were personal in nature; 61% (59/96) made testable statements. While organizations and businesses use Twitter to promote their services and products, patient advocates are using this tool to share their personal experiences with health. Conclusions Twitter users in health-related fields tweet about both testable claims and personal experiences. Future work should assess the relationship between testable tweets and the actual level of evidence supporting them, including how Twitter users—especially patients—interpret the content of tweets posted by health providers. PMID:25591063

  2. Semantic transcoding of video based on regions of interest

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lim, Jeongyeon; Kim, Munchurl; Kim, Jong-Nam; Kim, Kyeongsoo

    2003-06-01

    Traditional transcoding on multimedia has been performed from the perspectives of user terminal capabilities such as display sizes and decoding processing power, and network resources such as available network bandwidth and quality of services (QoS) etc. The adaptation (or transcoding) of multimedia contents to given such constraints has been made by frame dropping and resizing of audiovisual, as well as reduction of SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) values by saving the resulting bitrates. Not only such traditional transcoding is performed from the perspective of user"s environment, but also we incorporate a method of semantic transcoding of audiovisual based on region of interest (ROI) from user"s perspective. Users can designate their interested parts in images or video so that the corresponding video contents can be adapted focused on the user"s ROI. We incorporate the MPEG-21 DIA (Digital Item Adaptation) framework in which such semantic information of the user"s ROI is represented and delivered to the content provider side as XDI (context digital item). Representation schema of our semantic information of the user"s ROI has been adopted in MPEG-21 DIA Adaptation Model. In this paper, we present the usage of semantic information of user"s ROI for transcoding and show our system implementation with experimental results.

  3. A user-centred evaluation framework for the Sealife semantic web browsers

    PubMed Central

    Oliver, Helen; Diallo, Gayo; de Quincey, Ed; Alexopoulou, Dimitra; Habermann, Bianca; Kostkova, Patty; Schroeder, Michael; Jupp, Simon; Khelif, Khaled; Stevens, Robert; Jawaheer, Gawesh; Madle, Gemma

    2009-01-01

    Background Semantically-enriched browsing has enhanced the browsing experience by providing contextualised dynamically generated Web content, and quicker access to searched-for information. However, adoption of Semantic Web technologies is limited and user perception from the non-IT domain sceptical. Furthermore, little attention has been given to evaluating semantic browsers with real users to demonstrate the enhancements and obtain valuable feedback. The Sealife project investigates semantic browsing and its application to the life science domain. Sealife's main objective is to develop the notion of context-based information integration by extending three existing Semantic Web browsers (SWBs) to link the existing Web to the eScience infrastructure. Methods This paper describes a user-centred evaluation framework that was developed to evaluate the Sealife SWBs that elicited feedback on users' perceptions on ease of use and information findability. Three sources of data: i) web server logs; ii) user questionnaires; and iii) semi-structured interviews were analysed and comparisons made between each browser and a control system. Results It was found that the evaluation framework used successfully elicited users' perceptions of the three distinct SWBs. The results indicate that the browser with the most mature and polished interface was rated higher for usability, and semantic links were used by the users of all three browsers. Conclusion Confirmation or contradiction of our original hypotheses with relation to SWBs is detailed along with observations of implementation issues. PMID:19796398

  4. On Predicting Sociodemographic Traits and Emotions from Communications in Social Networks and Their Implications to Online Self-Disclosure.

    PubMed

    Volkova, Svitlana; Bachrach, Yoram

    2015-12-01

    Social media services such as Twitter and Facebook are virtual environments where people express their thoughts, emotions, and opinions and where they reveal themselves to their peers. We analyze a sample of 123,000 Twitter users and 25 million of their tweets to investigate the relation between the opinions and emotions that users express and their predicted psychodemographic traits. We show that the emotions that we express on online social networks reveal deep insights about ourselves. Our methodology is based on building machine learning models for inferring coarse-grained emotions and psychodemographic profiles from user-generated content. We examine several user attributes, including gender, income, political views, age, education, optimism, and life satisfaction. We correlate these predicted demographics with the emotional profiles emanating from user tweets, as captured by Ekman's emotion classification. We find that some users tend to express significantly more joy and significantly less sadness in their tweets, such as those predicted to be in a relationship, with children, or with a higher than average annual income or educational level. Users predicted to be women tend to be more opinionated, whereas those predicted to be men tend to be more neutral. Finally, users predicted to be younger and liberal tend to project more negative opinions and emotions. We discuss the implications of our findings to online privacy concerns and self-disclosure behavior.

  5. A user-centred evaluation framework for the Sealife semantic web browsers.

    PubMed

    Oliver, Helen; Diallo, Gayo; de Quincey, Ed; Alexopoulou, Dimitra; Habermann, Bianca; Kostkova, Patty; Schroeder, Michael; Jupp, Simon; Khelif, Khaled; Stevens, Robert; Jawaheer, Gawesh; Madle, Gemma

    2009-10-01

    Semantically-enriched browsing has enhanced the browsing experience by providing contextualized dynamically generated Web content, and quicker access to searched-for information. However, adoption of Semantic Web technologies is limited and user perception from the non-IT domain sceptical. Furthermore, little attention has been given to evaluating semantic browsers with real users to demonstrate the enhancements and obtain valuable feedback. The Sealife project investigates semantic browsing and its application to the life science domain. Sealife's main objective is to develop the notion of context-based information integration by extending three existing Semantic Web browsers (SWBs) to link the existing Web to the eScience infrastructure. This paper describes a user-centred evaluation framework that was developed to evaluate the Sealife SWBs that elicited feedback on users' perceptions on ease of use and information findability. Three sources of data: i) web server logs; ii) user questionnaires; and iii) semi-structured interviews were analysed and comparisons made between each browser and a control system. It was found that the evaluation framework used successfully elicited users' perceptions of the three distinct SWBs. The results indicate that the browser with the most mature and polished interface was rated higher for usability, and semantic links were used by the users of all three browsers. Confirmation or contradiction of our original hypotheses with relation to SWBs is detailed along with observations of implementation issues.

  6. High-speed holographic correlation system for video identification on the internet

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Watanabe, Eriko; Ikeda, Kanami; Kodate, Kashiko

    2013-12-01

    Automatic video identification is important for indexing, search purposes, and removing illegal material on the Internet. By combining a high-speed correlation engine and web-scanning technology, we developed the Fast Recognition Correlation system (FReCs), a video identification system for the Internet. FReCs is an application thatsearches through a number of websites with user-generated content (UGC) and detects video content that violates copyright law. In this paper, we describe the FReCs configuration and an approach to investigating UGC websites using FReCs. The paper also illustrates the combination of FReCs with an optical correlation system, which is capable of easily replacing a digital authorization sever in FReCs with optical correlation.

  7. A multiplexed method for kinetic measurements of apoptosis and proliferation using live-content imaging.

    PubMed

    Artymovich, Katherine; Appledorn, Daniel M

    2015-01-01

    In vitro cell proliferation and apoptosis assays are widely used to study cancer cell biology. Commonly used methodologies are however performed at a single, user-defined endpoint. We describe a kinetic multiplex assay incorporating the CellPlayer(TM) NucLight Red reagent to measure proliferation and the CellPlayer(TM) Caspase-3/7 reagent to measure apoptosis using the two-color, live-content imaging platform, IncuCyte(TM) ZOOM. High-definition phase-contrast images provide an additional qualitative validation of cell death based on morphological characteristics. The kinetic data generated using this strategy can be used to derive informed pharmacology measurements to screen potential cancer therapeutics.

  8. Science on TeacherTube: A Mixed Methods Analysis of Teacher Produced Video

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Chmiel, Margaret (Marjee)

    Increased bandwidth, inexpensive video cameras and easy-to-use video editing software have made social media sites featuring user generated video (UGV) an increasingly popular vehicle for online communication. As such, UGV have come to play a role in education, both formal and informal, but there has been little research on this topic in scholarly literature. In this mixed-methods study, a content and discourse analysis are used to describe the most successful UGV in the science channel of an education-focused site called TeacherTube. The analysis finds that state achievement tests, and their focus on vocabulary and recall-level knowledge, drive much of the content found on TeacherTube.

  9. A Hybrid Approach using Collaborative filtering and Content based Filtering for Recommender System

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Geetha, G.; Safa, M.; Fancy, C.; Saranya, D.

    2018-04-01

    In today’s digital world, it has become an irksome task to find the content of one's liking in an endless variety of content that are being consumed like books, videos, articles, movies, etc. On the other hand there has been an emerging growth among the digital content providers who want to engage as many users on their service as possible for the maximum time. This gave birth to the recommender system comes wherein the content providers recommend users the content according to the users’ taste and liking. In this paper we have proposed a movie recommendation system. A movie recommendation is important in our social life due to its features such as suggesting a set of movies to users based on their interest, or the popularities of the movies. In this paper we are proposing a movie recommendation system that has the ability to recommend movies to a new user as well as the other existing users. It mines movie databases to collect all the important information, such as, popularity and attractiveness, which are required for recommendation. We use content-based and collaborative filtering and also hybrid filtering, which is a combination of the results of these two techniques, to construct a system that provides more precise recommendations concerning movies.

  10. UTILIZING SOCIAL MEDIA AND PROTECTING MILITARY MEMBERS AND THEIR FAMILIES

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2016-02-01

    is the property of the United States Government. iii Table of Contents Disclaimer...ii Table of Contents ...According to Facebook, it had 12 million active users in 2006, 500 million active users in 2010, and 1.65 billion active users in 2014.7 The DoD

  11. A Practical Guide for Building a Digital Library: User-Focused Collection

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zhu, Qin; Guevara, Sophia

    2009-01-01

    With changing user expectations, many libraries are moving toward digital content. Accessible from anywhere at any time, digital content provides users with efficient, on-demand information experiences. Accordingly, librarians are presented with challenges and opportunities to build, manage, and implement outreach strategies that promote their…

  12. Marathon Group Counseling with Illicit Drug Users: Analysis of Content.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Page, Richard C.; Wills, Judy

    1983-01-01

    Summarized a 16-hour marathon group for illicit drug users (N=12) in residential treatment. Content analysis showed the group spent more time on interpersonal relationships and relatively little time on group process. Drug users were able to successfully participate in therapeutic group discussions involving self-investment. (JAC)

  13. Content analysis of cancer blog posts.

    PubMed

    Kim, Sujin

    2009-10-01

    The efficacy of user-defined subject tagging and software-generated subject tagging for describing and organizing cancer blog contents was explored. The Technorati search engine was used to search the blogosphere for cancer blog postings generated during a two-month period. Postings were mined for relevant subject concepts, and blogger-defined tags and Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) software-defined tags were generated for each message. Descriptive data were collected, and the blogger-defined tags were compared with software-generated tags. Three standard vocabularies (Opinion Templates, Basic Resource, and Medical Subject Headings [MeSH] Resource) were used to assign subject terms to the blogs, with results compared for efficacy in information retrieval. Descriptive data showed that most of the studied cancer blogs (80%) contained fewer than 500 words each. The numbers of blogger-defined tags per posting (M = 4.49 per posting) were significantly smaller than the TAPoR keywords (M = 23.55 per posting). Both blogger-defined subject tags and software-generated subject tags were often overly broad or overly narrow in focus, producing less than effective search results for those seeking to extract information from cancer blogs. Additional exploration into methods for systematically organizing cancer blog postings is necessary if blogs are to become stable and efficacious information resources for cancer patients, friends, families, or providers.

  14. Tag Content Access Control with Identity-based Key Exchange

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yan, Liang; Rong, Chunming

    2010-09-01

    Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology that used to identify objects and users has been applied to many applications such retail and supply chain recently. How to prevent tag content from unauthorized readout is a core problem of RFID privacy issues. Hash-lock access control protocol can make tag to release its content only to reader who knows the secret key shared between them. However, in order to get this shared secret key required by this protocol, reader needs to communicate with a back end database. In this paper, we propose to use identity-based secret key exchange approach to generate the secret key required for hash-lock access control protocol. With this approach, not only back end database connection is not needed anymore, but also tag cloning problem can be eliminated at the same time.

  15. Gaze-Aware Streaming Solutions for the Next Generation of Mobile VR Experiences.

    PubMed

    Lungaro, Pietro; Sjoberg, Rickard; Valero, Alfredo Jose Fanghella; Mittal, Ashutosh; Tollmar, Konrad

    2018-04-01

    This paper presents a novel approach to content delivery for video streaming services. It exploits information from connected eye-trackers embedded in the next generation of VR Head Mounted Displays (HMDs). The proposed solution aims to deliver high visual quality, in real time, around the users' fixations points while lowering the quality everywhere else. The goal of the proposed approach is to substantially reduce the overall bandwidth requirements for supporting VR video experiences while delivering high levels of user perceived quality. The prerequisites to achieve these results are: (1) mechanisms that can cope with different degrees of latency in the system and (2) solutions that support fast adaptation of video quality in different parts of a frame, without requiring a large increase in bitrate. A novel codec configuration, capable of supporting near-instantaneous video quality adaptation in specific portions of a video frame, is presented. The proposed method exploits in-built properties of HEVC encoders and while it introduces a moderate amount of error, these errors are indetectable by users. Fast adaptation is the key to enable gaze-aware streaming and its reduction in bandwidth. A testbed implementing gaze-aware streaming, together with a prototype HMD with in-built eye tracker, is presented and was used for testing with real users. The studies quantified the bandwidth savings achievable by the proposed approach and characterize the relationships between Quality of Experience (QoE) and network latency. The results showed that up to 83% less bandwidth is required to deliver high QoE levels to the users, as compared to conventional solutions.

  16. What's all the talk about? Topic modelling in a mental health Internet support group.

    PubMed

    Carron-Arthur, Bradley; Reynolds, Julia; Bennett, Kylie; Bennett, Anthony; Griffiths, Kathleen M

    2016-10-28

    The majority of content in an Internet Support Group (ISG) is contributed by 1 % of the users ('super users'). Computational methods, such as topic modelling, can provide a large-scale quantitative objective description of this content. Such methods may provide a new perspective on the nature of engagement on ISGs including the role of super users and their possible effect on other users. A topic model was computed for all posts (N = 131,004) in the ISG BlueBoard using Latent Dirichlet Allocation. A model containing 25 topics was selected on the basis of intelligibility as determined by diagnostic metrics and qualitative investigation. This model yielded 21 substantive topics for further analysis. Two chi-square tests were conducted separately for each topic to ascertain: (i) if the odds of super users' and other users' posting differed for each topic; and (ii) if for super users the odds of posting differed depending on whether the response was to a super user or to another user. The 21 substantive topics covered a range of issues related to mental health and peer-support. There were significantly higher odds that super users wrote content on 13 topics, with the greatest effects being for Parenting Role (OR [95%CI] = 7.97 [7.85-8.10]), Co-created Fiction (4.22 [4.17-4.27]), Mental Illness (3.13 [3.11-3.16]) and Positive Change (2.82 [2.79-2.84]). There were significantly lower odds for super users on 7 topics, with the greatest effects being for the topics Depression (OR = 0.27 [0.27-0.28]), Medication (0.36 [0.36-0.37]), Therapy (0.55 [0.54-0.55]) and Anxiety (0.55 [0.55-0.55]). However, super users were significantly more likely to write content on 5 out of these 7 topics when responding to other users than when responding to fellow super users. The findings suggest that super users serve the role of emotionally supportive companions with a focus on topics broadly resembling the consumer/carer model of recovery. Other users engage in topics with a greater focus on experiential knowledge, disclosure and informational support, a pattern resembling the clinical symptom-focussed approach to recovery. However, super users modify their content in response to other users in a manner consistent with being 'active help providers'.

  17. Engagement as a Driver of Growth of Online Health Forums: Observational Study.

    PubMed

    Gopalsamy, Rahul; Semenov, Alexander; Pasiliao, Eduardo; McIntosh, Scott; Nikolaev, Alexander

    2017-08-29

    The emerging research on nurturing the growth of online communities posits that it is in part attributed to network effects, wherein every increase in the volume of user-generated content increases the value of the community in the eyes of its potential new members. The recently introduced metric engagement capacity offers a means of quantitatively assessing the ability of online platform users to engage each other into generating content; meanwhile, the quantity engagement value is useful for quantifying communication-based platform use. If the claim that higher engagement leads to accelerated growth holds true for online health forums (OHFs), then engagement tracking should become an important tool in the arsenal of OHF managers. Indeed, it might allow for quantifying the ability of an OHF to exploit network effects, thus predicting the OHF's future success. This study aimed to empirically analyze the relationship between internal OHF use (quantified using engagement measurement), and external growth. We collected data from 7 OHFs posted between the years 1999 and 2016. Longitudinal analyses were conducted by evaluating engagement in the OHFs over time. We analyzed 2-way causality effects between the engagement value and metrics evaluating OHF growth using Granger causality tests. User activity metrics per week were correlated with engagement metrics, followed by linear regression analyses. Observational data showed a 1-way causal relationship between the OHF engagement value and reach (P=.02). We detected a 2-way causal relationship between the engagement value and delurking, with further analysis indicating that the engagement value was more likely to cause delurking (P<.001 with lag 2; for the reverse hypothesis, P=.01 with lag 2). Users who engaged each other more were more likely (up to 14 times, depending on how much one user engaged another) to develop personal connections. Finally, we found that the more engaging an OHF user was in a given week, the more likely (up to 2 times, depending on their ability to engage others) they were to remain active in the OHF in the following week. This study supports the claim that network effects play an important role in accelerating OHF growth, opening the door to exploiting these effects in calculated ways. In such efforts, engagement metrics can be used to monitor the "health" of an OHF and to identify the users most important to its success. ©Rahul Gopalsamy, Alexander Semenov, Eduardo Pasiliao, Scott McIntosh, Alexander Nikolaev. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 29.08.2017.

  18. Engagement as a Driver of Growth of Online Health Forums: Observational Study

    PubMed Central

    Gopalsamy, Rahul; Semenov, Alexander; Pasiliao, Eduardo; McIntosh, Scott

    2017-01-01

    Background The emerging research on nurturing the growth of online communities posits that it is in part attributed to network effects, wherein every increase in the volume of user-generated content increases the value of the community in the eyes of its potential new members. The recently introduced metric engagement capacity offers a means of quantitatively assessing the ability of online platform users to engage each other into generating content; meanwhile, the quantity engagement value is useful for quantifying communication-based platform use. If the claim that higher engagement leads to accelerated growth holds true for online health forums (OHFs), then engagement tracking should become an important tool in the arsenal of OHF managers. Indeed, it might allow for quantifying the ability of an OHF to exploit network effects, thus predicting the OHF’s future success. Objective This study aimed to empirically analyze the relationship between internal OHF use (quantified using engagement measurement), and external growth. Methods We collected data from 7 OHFs posted between the years 1999 and 2016. Longitudinal analyses were conducted by evaluating engagement in the OHFs over time. We analyzed 2-way causality effects between the engagement value and metrics evaluating OHF growth using Granger causality tests. User activity metrics per week were correlated with engagement metrics, followed by linear regression analyses. Results Observational data showed a 1-way causal relationship between the OHF engagement value and reach (P=.02). We detected a 2-way causal relationship between the engagement value and delurking, with further analysis indicating that the engagement value was more likely to cause delurking (P<.001 with lag 2; for the reverse hypothesis, P=.01 with lag 2). Users who engaged each other more were more likely (up to 14 times, depending on how much one user engaged another) to develop personal connections. Finally, we found that the more engaging an OHF user was in a given week, the more likely (up to 2 times, depending on their ability to engage others) they were to remain active in the OHF in the following week. Conclusions This study supports the claim that network effects play an important role in accelerating OHF growth, opening the door to exploiting these effects in calculated ways. In such efforts, engagement metrics can be used to monitor the “health” of an OHF and to identify the users most important to its success. PMID:28851677

  19. Exposure of children and adolescents to alcohol marketing on social media websites.

    PubMed

    Winpenny, Eleanor M; Marteau, Theresa M; Nolte, Ellen

    2014-01-01

    In 2011, online marketing became the largest marketing channel in the UK, overtaking television for the first time. This study aimed to describe the exposure of children and young adults to alcohol marketing on social media websites in the UK. We used commercially available data on the three most used social media websites among young people in the UK, from December 2010 to May 2011. We analysed by age (6-14 years; 15-24 years) and gender the reach (proportion of internet users who used the site in each month) and impressions (number of individual pages viewed on the site in each month) for Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. We further analysed case studies of five alcohol brands to assess the marketer-generated brand content available on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter in February and March 2012. Facebook was the social media site with the highest reach, with an average monthly reach of 89% of males and 91% of females aged 15-24. YouTube had a similar average monthly reach while Twitter had a considerably lower usage in the age groups studied. All five of the alcohol brands studied maintained a Facebook page, Twitter page and YouTube channel, with varying levels of user engagement. Facebook pages could not be accessed by an under-18 user, but in most cases YouTube content and Twitter content could be accessed by those of all ages. The rise in online marketing of alcohol and the high use of social media websites by young people suggests that this is an area requiring further monitoring and regulation.

  20. Application of Bayesian Classification to Content-Based Data Management

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Lynnes, Christopher; Berrick, S.; Gopalan, A.; Hua, X.; Shen, S.; Smith, P.; Yang, K-Y.; Wheeler, K.; Curry, C.

    2004-01-01

    The high volume of Earth Observing System data has proven to be challenging to manage for data centers and users alike. At the Goddard Earth Sciences Distributed Active Archive Center (GES DAAC), about 1 TB of new data are archived each day. Distribution to users is also about 1 TB/day. A substantial portion of this distribution is MODIS calibrated radiance data, which has a wide variety of uses. However, much of the data is not useful for a particular user's needs: for example, ocean color users typically need oceanic pixels that are free of cloud and sun-glint. The GES DAAC is using a simple Bayesian classification scheme to rapidly classify each pixel in the scene in order to support several experimental content-based data services for near-real-time MODIS calibrated radiance products (from Direct Readout stations). Content-based subsetting would allow distribution of, say, only clear pixels to the user if desired. Content-based subscriptions would distribute data to users only when they fit the user's usability criteria in their area of interest within the scene. Content-based cache management would retain more useful data on disk for easy online access. The classification may even be exploited in an automated quality assessment of the geolocation product. Though initially to be demonstrated at the GES DAAC, these techniques have applicability in other resource-limited environments, such as spaceborne data systems.

  1. Does content affect whether users remember that Web pages were hyperlinked?

    PubMed

    Jones, Keith S; Ballew, Timothy V; Probst, C Adam

    2008-10-01

    We determined whether memory for hyperlinks improved when they represented relations between the contents of the Web pages. J. S. Farris (2003) found that memory for hyperlinks improved when they represented relations between the contents of the Web pages. However, Farris's (2003) participants could have used their knowledge of site content to answer questions about relations that were instantiated via the site's content and its hyperlinks. In Experiment 1, users navigated a Web site and then answered questions about relations that were instantiated only via content, only via hyperlinks, and via content and hyperlinks. Unlike Farris (2003), we split the latter into two sets. One asked whether certain content elements were related, and the other asked whether certain Web pages were hyperlinked. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 with one modification: The questions that were asked about relations instantiated via content and hyperlinks were changed so that each question's wrong answer was also related to the question's target. Memory for hyperlinks improved when they represented relations instantiated within the content of the Web pages. This was true when (a) questions about content and hyperlinks were separated (Experiment 1) and (b) each question's wrong answer was also related to the question's target (Experiment 2). The accuracy of users' mental representations of local architecture depended on whether hyperlinks were related to the site's content. Designers who want users to remember hyperlinks should associate those hyperlinks with content that reflects the relation between the contents on the Web pages.

  2. Genes2WordCloud: a quick way to identify biological themes from gene lists and free text.

    PubMed

    Baroukh, Caroline; Jenkins, Sherry L; Dannenfelser, Ruth; Ma'ayan, Avi

    2011-10-13

    Word-clouds recently emerged on the web as a solution for quickly summarizing text by maximizing the display of most relevant terms about a specific topic in the minimum amount of space. As biologists are faced with the daunting amount of new research data commonly presented in textual formats, word-clouds can be used to summarize and represent biological and/or biomedical content for various applications. Genes2WordCloud is a web application that enables users to quickly identify biological themes from gene lists and research relevant text by constructing and displaying word-clouds. It provides users with several different options and ideas for the sources that can be used to generate a word-cloud. Different options for rendering and coloring the word-clouds give users the flexibility to quickly generate customized word-clouds of their choice. Genes2WordCloud is a word-cloud generator and a word-cloud viewer that is based on WordCram implemented using Java, Processing, AJAX, mySQL, and PHP. Text is fetched from several sources and then processed to extract the most relevant terms with their computed weights based on word frequencies. Genes2WordCloud is freely available for use online; it is open source software and is available for installation on any web-site along with supporting documentation at http://www.maayanlab.net/G2W. Genes2WordCloud provides a useful way to summarize and visualize large amounts of textual biological data or to find biological themes from several different sources. The open source availability of the software enables users to implement customized word-clouds on their own web-sites and desktop applications.

  3. Genes2WordCloud: a quick way to identify biological themes from gene lists and free text

    PubMed Central

    2011-01-01

    Background Word-clouds recently emerged on the web as a solution for quickly summarizing text by maximizing the display of most relevant terms about a specific topic in the minimum amount of space. As biologists are faced with the daunting amount of new research data commonly presented in textual formats, word-clouds can be used to summarize and represent biological and/or biomedical content for various applications. Results Genes2WordCloud is a web application that enables users to quickly identify biological themes from gene lists and research relevant text by constructing and displaying word-clouds. It provides users with several different options and ideas for the sources that can be used to generate a word-cloud. Different options for rendering and coloring the word-clouds give users the flexibility to quickly generate customized word-clouds of their choice. Methods Genes2WordCloud is a word-cloud generator and a word-cloud viewer that is based on WordCram implemented using Java, Processing, AJAX, mySQL, and PHP. Text is fetched from several sources and then processed to extract the most relevant terms with their computed weights based on word frequencies. Genes2WordCloud is freely available for use online; it is open source software and is available for installation on any web-site along with supporting documentation at http://www.maayanlab.net/G2W. Conclusions Genes2WordCloud provides a useful way to summarize and visualize large amounts of textual biological data or to find biological themes from several different sources. The open source availability of the software enables users to implement customized word-clouds on their own web-sites and desktop applications. PMID:21995939

  4. Data Access Based on a Guide Map of the Underwater Wireless Sensor Network

    PubMed Central

    Wei, Zhengxian; Song, Min; Yin, Guisheng; Wang, Hongbin; Cheng, Albert M. K.

    2017-01-01

    Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) represent an area of increasing research interest, as data storage, discovery, and query of UWSNs are always challenging issues. In this paper, a data access based on a guide map (DAGM) method is proposed for UWSNs. In DAGM, the metadata describes the abstracts of data content and the storage location. The center ring is composed of nodes according to the shortest average data query path in the network in order to store the metadata, and the data guide map organizes, diffuses and synchronizes the metadata in the center ring, providing the most time-saving and energy-efficient data query service for the user. For this method, firstly the data is stored in the UWSN. The storage node is determined, the data is transmitted from the sensor node (data generation source) to the storage node, and the metadata is generated for it. Then, the metadata is sent to the center ring node that is the nearest to the storage node and the data guide map organizes the metadata, diffusing and synchronizing it to the other center ring nodes. Finally, when there is query data in any user node, the data guide map will select a center ring node nearest to the user to process the query sentence, and based on the shortest transmission delay and lowest energy consumption, data transmission routing is generated according to the storage location abstract in the metadata. Hence, specific application data transmission from the storage node to the user is completed. The simulation results demonstrate that DAGM has advantages with respect to data access time and network energy consumption. PMID:29039757

  5. Data Access Based on a Guide Map of the Underwater Wireless Sensor Network.

    PubMed

    Wei, Zhengxian; Song, Min; Yin, Guisheng; Song, Houbing; Wang, Hongbin; Ma, Xuefei; Cheng, Albert M K

    2017-10-17

    Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) represent an area of increasing research interest, as data storage, discovery, and query of UWSNs are always challenging issues. In this paper, a data access based on a guide map (DAGM) method is proposed for UWSNs. In DAGM, the metadata describes the abstracts of data content and the storage location. The center ring is composed of nodes according to the shortest average data query path in the network in order to store the metadata, and the data guide map organizes, diffuses and synchronizes the metadata in the center ring, providing the most time-saving and energy-efficient data query service for the user. For this method, firstly the data is stored in the UWSN. The storage node is determined, the data is transmitted from the sensor node (data generation source) to the storage node, and the metadata is generated for it. Then, the metadata is sent to the center ring node that is the nearest to the storage node and the data guide map organizes the metadata, diffusing and synchronizing it to the other center ring nodes. Finally, when there is query data in any user node, the data guide map will select a center ring node nearest to the user to process the query sentence, and based on the shortest transmission delay and lowest energy consumption, data transmission routing is generated according to the storage location abstract in the metadata. Hence, specific application data transmission from the storage node to the user is completed. The simulation results demonstrate that DAGM has advantages with respect to data access time and network energy consumption.

  6. Vaccine Hesitancy and Online Information: The Influence of Digital Networks.

    PubMed

    Getman, Rebekah; Helmi, Mohammad; Roberts, Hal; Yansane, Alfa; Cutler, David; Seymour, Brittany

    2017-12-01

    This article analyzes the digital childhood vaccination information network for vaccine-hesitant parents. The goal of this study was to explore the structure and influence of vaccine-hesitant content online by generating a database and network analysis of vaccine-relevant content. We used Media Cloud, a searchable big-data platform of over 550 million stories from 50,000 media sources, for quantitative and qualitative study of an online media sample based on keyword selection. We generated a hyperlink network map and measured indegree centrality of the sources and vaccine sentiment for a random sample of 450 stories. 28,122 publications from 4,817 sources met inclusion criteria. Clustered communities formed based on shared hyperlinks; communities tended to link within, not among, each other. The plurality of information was provaccine (46.44%, 95% confidence interval [39.86%, 53.20%]). The most influential sources were in the health community (National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) or mainstream media ( New York Times); some user-generated sources also had strong influence and were provaccine (Wikipedia). The vaccine-hesitant community rarely interacted with provaccine content and simultaneously used primary provaccine content within vaccine-hesitant narratives. The sentiment of the overall conversation was consistent with scientific evidence. These findings demonstrate an online environment where scientific evidence online drives vaccine information outside of the vaccine-hesitant community but is also prominently used and misused within the robust vaccine-hesitant community. Future communication efforts should take current context into account; more information may not prevent vaccine hesitancy.

  7. Social Image Tag Ranking by Two-View Learning

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhuang, Jinfeng; Hoi, Steven C. H.

    Tags play a central role in text-based social image retrieval and browsing. However, the tags annotated by web users could be noisy, irrelevant, and often incomplete for describing the image contents, which may severely deteriorate the performance of text-based image retrieval models. In order to solve this problem, researchers have proposed techniques to rank the annotated tags of a social image according to their relevance to the visual content of the image. In this paper, we aim to overcome the challenge of social image tag ranking for a corpus of social images with rich user-generated tags by proposing a novel two-view learning approach. It can effectively exploit both textual and visual contents of social images to discover the complicated relationship between tags and images. Unlike the conventional learning approaches that usually assumes some parametric models, our method is completely data-driven and makes no assumption about the underlying models, making the proposed solution practically more effective. We formulate our method as an optimization task and present an efficient algorithm to solve it. To evaluate the efficacy of our method, we conducted an extensive set of experiments by applying our technique to both text-based social image retrieval and automatic image annotation tasks. Our empirical results showed that the proposed method can be more effective than the conventional approaches.

  8. The Effects of Viewing and Preferences for Online Cancer Information Among Patients' Loved Ones.

    PubMed

    Lauckner, Carolyn

    2016-01-01

    Emotional and psychological distress is common among loved ones of cancer patients, who sometimes report more severe mental health issues than the patients themselves. In addition, many loved ones feel as though their information needs are not being met, which can lead them to seek out additional information online. This survey research examined the experiences of cancer patients' loved ones in viewing online content about the disease and the emotional outcomes of such browsing sessions. Participants (N = 191) were recruited from cancer- and caregiver-related nonprofits and online discussion boards. Results indicated that patients' loved ones were active users of online cancer Web sites. They primarily viewed and expressed a desire for information-based, rather than support-based, content. Many individuals desired in-depth treatment information, and those who viewed it had significantly more hope. Interestingly, multiple regression analysis revealed that viewing user-generated content was associated only with negative emotions, illustrating the potential dangers of social media spaces. Overall, this study shows the need for supporting patients' loved ones during their almost inevitable viewings of online cancer information. More research is needed in order to determine the best methods of mitigating potential negative effects of cancer Web sites and developing a useful online resource for this population.

  9. Future View: Web Navigation based on Learning User's Browsing Strategy

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nagino, Norikatsu; Yamada, Seiji

    In this paper, we propose a Future View system that assists user's usual Web browsing. The Future View will prefetch Web pages based on user's browsing strategies and present them to a user in order to assist Web browsing. To learn user's browsing strategy, the Future View uses two types of learning classifier systems: a content-based classifier system for contents change patterns and an action-based classifier system for user's action patterns. The results of learning is applied to crawling by Web robots, and the gathered Web pages are presented to a user through a Web browser interface. We experimentally show effectiveness of navigation using the Future View.

  10. Personalization Versus Customization: The Importance of Agency, Privacy, and Power Usage

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sundar, S. Shyam; Marathe, Sampada S.

    2010-01-01

    What makes customization so appealing? Is it because the content is tailored or because the user feels greater agency? Study 1 tested these propositions with a news-aggregator Website that was either personalized (system-tailored), customized (user-tailored), or neither. Power users rated content quality higher when it had a customizable…

  11. Public participation in GIS via mobile applications

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Brovelli, Maria Antonia; Minghini, Marco; Zamboni, Giorgio

    2016-04-01

    Driven by the recent trends in the GIS domain including Volunteered Geographic Information, geo-crowdsourcing and citizen science, and fostered by the constant technological advances, collection and dissemination of geospatial information by ordinary people has become commonplace. However, applications involving user-generated geospatial content show dramatically diversified patterns in terms of incentive, type and level of participation, purpose of the activity, data/metadata provided and data quality. This study contributes to this heterogeneous context by investigating public participation in GIS within the field of mobile-based applications. Results not only show examples of how to technically build GIS applications enabling user collection and interaction with geospatial data, but they also draw conclusions about the methods and needs of public participation. We describe three projects with different scales and purposes in the context of urban monitoring and planning, and tourism valorisation. In each case, an open source architecture is used, allowing users to exploit their mobile devices to collect georeferenced information. This data is then made publicly available on specific Web viewers. Analysis of user involvement in these projects provides insights related to participation patterns which suggests some generalized conclusions.

  12. Sharing feelings online: studying emotional well-being via automated text analysis of Facebook posts.

    PubMed

    Settanni, Michele; Marengo, Davide

    2015-01-01

    Digital traces of activity on social network sites represent a vast source of ecological data with potential connections with individual behavioral and psychological characteristics. The present study investigates the relationship between user-generated textual content shared on Facebook and emotional well-being. Self-report measures of depression, anxiety, and stress were collected from 201 adult Facebook users from North Italy. Emotion-related textual indicators, including emoticon use, were extracted form users' Facebook posts via automated text analysis. Correlation analyses revealed that individuals with higher levels of depression, anxiety expressed negative emotions on Facebook more frequently. In addition, use of emoticons expressing positive emotions correlated negatively with stress level. When comparing age groups, younger users reported higher frequency of both emotion-related words and emoticon use in their posts. Also, the relationship between online emotional expression and self-report emotional well-being was generally stronger in the younger group. Overall, findings support the feasibility and validity of studying individual emotional well-being by means of examination of Facebook profiles. Implications for online screening purposes and future research directions are discussed.

  13. Shilling attack detection for recommender systems based on credibility of group users and rating time series

    PubMed Central

    Wen, Junhao; Qu, Qiang; Zeng, Jun; Cheng, Tian

    2018-01-01

    Recommender systems are vulnerable to shilling attacks. Forged user-generated content data, such as user ratings and reviews, are used by attackers to manipulate recommendation rankings. Shilling attack detection in recommender systems is of great significance to maintain the fairness and sustainability of recommender systems. The current studies have problems in terms of the poor universality of algorithms, difficulty in selection of user profile attributes, and lack of an optimization mechanism. In this paper, a shilling behaviour detection structure based on abnormal group user findings and rating time series analysis is proposed. This paper adds to the current understanding in the field by studying the credibility evaluation model in-depth based on the rating prediction model to derive proximity-based predictions. A method for detecting suspicious ratings based on suspicious time windows and target item analysis is proposed. Suspicious rating time segments are determined by constructing a time series, and data streams of the rating items are examined and suspicious rating segments are checked. To analyse features of shilling attacks by a group user’s credibility, an abnormal group user discovery method based on time series and time window is proposed. Standard testing datasets are used to verify the effect of the proposed method. PMID:29742134

  14. Applying Semantic Web technologies to improve the retrieval, credibility and use of health-related web resources.

    PubMed

    Mayer, Miguel A; Karampiperis, Pythagoras; Kukurikos, Antonis; Karkaletsis, Vangelis; Stamatakis, Kostas; Villarroel, Dagmar; Leis, Angela

    2011-06-01

    The number of health-related websites is increasing day-by-day; however, their quality is variable and difficult to assess. Various "trust marks" and filtering portals have been created in order to assist consumers in retrieving quality medical information. Consumers are using search engines as the main tool to get health information; however, the major problem is that the meaning of the web content is not machine-readable in the sense that computers cannot understand words and sentences as humans can. In addition, trust marks are invisible to search engines, thus limiting their usefulness in practice. During the last five years there have been different attempts to use Semantic Web tools to label health-related web resources to help internet users identify trustworthy resources. This paper discusses how Semantic Web technologies can be applied in practice to generate machine-readable labels and display their content, as well as to empower end-users by providing them with the infrastructure for expressing and sharing their opinions on the quality of health-related web resources.

  15. Visual analytics for semantic queries of TerraSAR-X image content

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Espinoza-Molina, Daniela; Alonso, Kevin; Datcu, Mihai

    2015-10-01

    With the continuous image product acquisition of satellite missions, the size of the image archives is considerably increasing every day as well as the variety and complexity of their content, surpassing the end-user capacity to analyse and exploit them. Advances in the image retrieval field have contributed to the development of tools for interactive exploration and extraction of the images from huge archives using different parameters like metadata, key-words, and basic image descriptors. Even though we count on more powerful tools for automated image retrieval and data analysis, we still face the problem of understanding and analyzing the results. Thus, a systematic computational analysis of these results is required in order to provide to the end-user a summary of the archive content in comprehensible terms. In this context, visual analytics combines automated analysis with interactive visualizations analysis techniques for an effective understanding, reasoning and decision making on the basis of very large and complex datasets. Moreover, currently several researches are focused on associating the content of the images with semantic definitions for describing the data in a format to be easily understood by the end-user. In this paper, we present our approach for computing visual analytics and semantically querying the TerraSAR-X archive. Our approach is mainly composed of four steps: 1) the generation of a data model that explains the information contained in a TerraSAR-X product. The model is formed by primitive descriptors and metadata entries, 2) the storage of this model in a database system, 3) the semantic definition of the image content based on machine learning algorithms and relevance feedback, and 4) querying the image archive using semantic descriptors as query parameters and computing the statistical analysis of the query results. The experimental results shows that with the help of visual analytics and semantic definitions we are able to explain the image content using semantic terms and the relations between them answering questions such as what is the percentage of urban area in a region? or what is the distribution of water bodies in a city?

  16. GRASP/Ada 95: Reverse Engineering Tools for Ada

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Cross, James H., II

    1996-01-01

    The GRASP/Ada project (Graphical Representations of Algorithms, Structures, and Processes for Ada) has successfully created and prototyped an algorithmic level graphical representation for Ada software, the Control Structure Diagram (CSD), and a new visualization for a fine-grained complexity metric called the Complexity Profile Graph (CPG). By synchronizing the CSD and the CPG, the CSD view of control structure, nesting, and source code is directly linked to the corresponding visualization of statement level complexity in the CPG. GRASP has been integrated with GNAT, the GNU Ada 95 Translator to provide a comprehensive graphical user interface and development environment for Ada 95. The user may view, edit, print, and compile source code as a CSD with no discernible addition to storage or computational overhead. The primary impetus for creation of the CSD was to improve the comprehension efficiency of Ada software and, as a result, improve reliability and reduce costs. The emphasis has been on the automatic generation of the CSD from Ada 95 source code to support reverse engineering and maintenance. The CSD has the potential to replace traditional prettyprinted Ada source code. The current update has focused on the design and implementation of a new Motif compliant user interface, and a new CSD generator consisting of a tagger and renderer. The Complexity Profile Graph (CPG) is based on a set of functions that describes the context, content, and the scaling for complexity on a statement by statement basis. When combined graphicafly, the result is a composite profile of complexity for the program unit. Ongoing research includes the development and refinement of the associated functions, and the development of the CPG generator prototype. The current Version 5.0 prototype provides the capability for the user to generate CSDs and CPGs from Ada 95 source code in a reverse engineering as well as forward engineering mode with a level of flexibility suitable for practical application. This report provides an overview of the GRASP/Ada project with an emphasis on the current update.

  17. Transforming user needs into functional requirements for an antibiotic clinical decision support system: explicating content analysis for system design.

    PubMed

    Bright, T J

    2013-01-01

    Many informatics studies use content analysis to generate functional requirements for system development. Explication of this translational process from qualitative data to functional requirements can strengthen the understanding and scientific rigor when applying content analysis in informatics studies. To describe a user-centered approach transforming emergent themes derived from focus group data into functional requirements for informatics solutions and to illustrate these methods to the development of an antibiotic clinical decision support system (CDS). THE APPROACH CONSISTED OF FIVE STEPS: 1) identify unmet therapeutic planning information needs via Focus Group Study-I, 2) develop a coding framework of therapeutic planning themes to refine the domain scope to antibiotic therapeutic planning, 3) identify functional requirements of an antibiotic CDS system via Focus Group Study-II, 4) discover informatics solutions and functional requirements from coded data, and 5) determine the types of information needed to support the antibiotic CDS system and link with the identified informatics solutions and functional requirements. The coding framework for Focus Group Study-I revealed unmet therapeutic planning needs. Twelve subthemes emerged and were clustered into four themes; analysis indicated a need for an antibiotic CDS intervention. Focus Group Study-II included five types of information needs. Comments from the Barrier/Challenge to information access and Function/Feature themes produced three informatics solutions and 13 functional requirements of an antibiotic CDS system. Comments from the Patient, Institution, and Domain themes generated required data elements for each informatics solution. This study presents one example explicating content analysis of focus group data and the analysis process to functional requirements from narrative data. Illustration of this 5-step method was used to develop an antibiotic CDS system, resolving unmet antibiotic prescribing needs. As a reusable approach, these techniques can be refined and applied to resolve unmet information needs with informatics interventions in additional domains.

  18. Development of a Multi-Behavioral mHealth App for Women Smokers.

    PubMed

    Armin, Julie; Johnson, Thienne; Hingle, Melanie; Giacobbi, Peter; Gordon, Judith S

    2017-02-01

    This article describes the development of the See Me Smoke-Free™ (SMSF) mobile health application, which uses guided imagery to support women in smoking cessation, eating a healthy diet, and increasing physical activity. Focus group discussions, with member checks, were conducted to refine the intervention content and app user interface. Data related to the context of app deployment were collected via user testing sessions and internal quality control testing, which identified and addressed functionality issues, content problems, and bugs. Interactive app features include playback of guided imagery audio files, notification pop-ups, award-sharing on social media, a tracking calendar, content resources, and direct call to the local tobacco quitline. Focus groups helped design the user interface and identified several themes for incorporation into app content, including positivity, the rewards of smoking cessation, and the integrated benefits of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. User testing improved app functionality and usability on many Android phone models. Changes to the app content and function were made iteratively by the development team as a result of focus group and user testing. Despite extensive internal and user testing, unanticipated data collection and reporting issues emerged during deployment due not only to the variety of Android software and hardware but also to individual phone settings and use.

  19. Application of MPEG-7 descriptors for content-based indexing of sports videos

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hoeynck, Michael; Auweiler, Thorsten; Ohm, Jens-Rainer

    2003-06-01

    The amount of multimedia data available worldwide is increasing every day. There is a vital need to annotate multimedia data in order to allow universal content access and to provide content-based search-and-retrieval functionalities. Since supervised video annotation can be time consuming, an automatic solution is appreciated. We review recent approaches to content-based indexing and annotation of videos for different kind of sports, and present our application for the automatic annotation of equestrian sports videos. Thereby, we especially concentrate on MPEG-7 based feature extraction and content description. We apply different visual descriptors for cut detection. Further, we extract the temporal positions of single obstacles on the course by analyzing MPEG-7 edge information and taking specific domain knowledge into account. Having determined single shot positions as well as the visual highlights, the information is jointly stored together with additional textual information in an MPEG-7 description scheme. Using this information, we generate content summaries which can be utilized in a user front-end in order to provide content-based access to the video stream, but further content-based queries and navigation on a video-on-demand streaming server.

  20. Tweeting PP: an analysis of the 2015–2016 Planned Parenthood controversy on Twitter

    PubMed Central

    Han, Leo; Han, Lisa; Darney, Blair; Rodriguez, Maria I.

    2018-01-01

    Objectives We analyzed Twitter tweets and Twitter-provided user data to give geographical, temporal and content insight into the use of social media in the Planned Parenthood video controversy. Methodology We randomly sampled the full Twitter repository (also known as the Firehose) (n=30,000) for tweets containing the phrase “planned parenthood” as well as group-defining hashtags “#defundpp” and “#standwithpp.” We used demographic content provided by the user and word analysis to generate charts, maps and timeline visualizations. Chi-square and t tests were used to compare differences in content, statistical references and dissemination strategies. Results From July 14, 2015, to January 30, 2016, 1,364,131 and 795,791 tweets contained “#defundpp” and “#standwithpp,” respectively. Geographically, #defundpp and #standwithpp were disproportionally distributed to the US South and West, respectively. Word analysis found that early tweets predominantly used “sensational” words and that the proportion of “political” and “call to action” words increased over time. Scatterplots revealed that #standwithpp tweets were clustered and episodic compared to #defundpp. #standwithpp users were more likely to be female [odds ratio (OR) 2.2, confidence interval (CI) 2.0–2.4] and have fewer followers (median 544 vs. 1578, p<.0001). #standwithpp and #defundpp did not differ significantly in their usage of data in tweets. #defundpp users were more likely to link to websites (OR 1.8, CI 1.7–1.9) and to other online dialogs (mean 3.3 vs. 2.0 p<.0001). Conclusion Social media analysis can be used to characterize and understand the content, tempo and location of abortion-related messages in today’s public spheres. Further research may inform proabortion efforts in terms of how information can be more effectively conveyed to the public. Implications This study has implications for how the medical community interfaces with the public with regards to abortion. It highlights how social media are actively exploited instruments for information and message dissemination. Researchers, providers and advocates should be monitoring social media and addressing the public through these modern channels. PMID:28867441

  1. Tweeting PP: an analysis of the 2015-2016 Planned Parenthood controversy on Twitter.

    PubMed

    Han, Leo; Han, Lisa; Darney, Blair; Rodriguez, Maria I

    2017-12-01

    We analyzed Twitter tweets and Twitter-provided user data to give geographical, temporal and content insight into the use of social media in the Planned Parenthood video controversy. We randomly sampled the full Twitter repository (also known as the Firehose) (n=30,000) for tweets containing the phrase "planned parenthood" as well as group-defining hashtags "#defundpp" and "#standwithpp." We used demographic content provided by the user and word analysis to generate charts, maps and timeline visualizations. Chi-square and t tests were used to compare differences in content, statistical references and dissemination strategies. From July 14, 2015, to January 30, 2016, 1,364,131 and 795,791 tweets contained "#defundpp" and "#standwithpp," respectively. Geographically, #defundpp and #standwithpp were disproportionally distributed to the US South and West, respectively. Word analysis found that early tweets predominantly used "sensational" words and that the proportion of "political" and "call to action" words increased over time. Scatterplots revealed that #standwithpp tweets were clustered and episodic compared to #defundpp. #standwithpp users were more likely to be female [odds ratio (OR) 2.2, confidence interval (CI) 2.0-2.4] and have fewer followers (median 544 vs. 1578, p<.0001). #standwithpp and #defundpp did not differ significantly in their usage of data in tweets. #defundpp users were more likely to link to websites (OR 1.8, CI 1.7-1.9) and to other online dialogs (mean 3.3 vs. 2.0 p<.0001). Social media analysis can be used to characterize and understand the content, tempo and location of abortion-related messages in today's public spheres. Further research may inform proabortion efforts in terms of how information can be more effectively conveyed to the public. This study has implications for how the medical community interfaces with the public with regards to abortion. It highlights how social media are actively exploited instruments for information and message dissemination. Researchers, providers and advocates should be monitoring social media and addressing the public through these modern channels. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  2. Updates to the QBIC system

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Niblack, Carlton W.; Zhu, Xiaoming; Hafner, James L.; Breuel, Tom; Ponceleon, Dulce B.; Petkovic, Dragutin; Flickner, Myron D.; Upfal, Eli; Nin, Sigfredo I.; Sull, Sanghoon; Dom, Byron E.; Yeo, Boon-Lock; Srinivasan, Savitha; Zivkovic, Dan; Penner, Mike

    1997-12-01

    QBICTM (Query By Image Content) is a set of technologies and associated software that allows a user to search, browse, and retrieve image, graphic, and video data from large on-line collections. This paper discusses current research directions of the QBIC project such as indexing for high-dimensional multimedia data, retrieval of gray level images, and storyboard generation suitable for video. It describes aspects of QBIC software including scripting tools, application interfaces, and available GUIs, and gives examples of applications and demonstration systems using it.

  3. Leveraging Social Networking Technologies: An Analysis of the Knowledge Flows Facilitated by Social Media and the Potential Improvements in Situational Awareness, Readiness, and Productivity

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2010-09-01

    articulating perception, interpretation and actionable prediction in an operational environment . BCKS’ success with digital storytelling has far...podcasts; wikis and other collaborative spaces; social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn; other user generated content; virtual social environments ...study of Xerox’s knowledge management systems noting that 80% of its IT was focused on adapting to the social dynamics of its workplace environment

  4. An Attention-Information-Based Spatial Adaptation Framework for Browsing Videos via Mobile Devices

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Li, Houqiang; Wang, Yi; Chen, Chang Wen

    2007-12-01

    With the growing popularity of personal digital assistant devices and smart phones, more and more consumers are becoming quite enthusiastic to appreciate videos via mobile devices. However, limited display size of the mobile devices has been imposing significant barriers for users to enjoy browsing high-resolution videos. In this paper, we present an attention-information-based spatial adaptation framework to address this problem. The whole framework includes two major parts: video content generation and video adaptation system. During video compression, the attention information in video sequences will be detected using an attention model and embedded into bitstreams with proposed supplement-enhanced information (SEI) structure. Furthermore, we also develop an innovative scheme to adaptively adjust quantization parameters in order to simultaneously improve the quality of overall encoding and the quality of transcoding the attention areas. When the high-resolution bitstream is transmitted to mobile users, a fast transcoding algorithm we developed earlier will be applied to generate a new bitstream for attention areas in frames. The new low-resolution bitstream containing mostly attention information, instead of the high-resolution one, will be sent to users for display on the mobile devices. Experimental results show that the proposed spatial adaptation scheme is able to improve both subjective and objective video qualities.

  5. Using the internet for suicide-related purposes: Contrasting findings from young people in the community and self-harm patients admitted to hospital.

    PubMed

    Biddle, Lucy; Derges, Jane; Goldsmith, Carlie; Donovan, Jenny L; Gunnell, David

    2018-01-01

    Despite accelerating interest in the impact of the internet on suicidal behaviour, empirical work has not captured detailed narratives from those who engaged in suicide-related internet use. This study explored the suicide-related online behaviour of two contrasting samples of distressed users, focusing on their purpose, methods and the main content viewed. In-depth interviews were conducted in the UK between 2014-2016 with i) young people in the community; and ii) self-harm patients presenting to hospital emergency departments. Data were analysed using methods of constant comparison. Suicide-related internet use varied according to the severity of suicidal feelings. In the young people sample, where severity was lower, use was characterised by disorganised browsing without clear purpose. A range of content was 'stumbled upon' including information about suicide methods. They also pursued opportunities to interact with others and explore online help. Self-harm patients were a higher severity group with a history of suicidal behaviour. Their use was purposeful and strategic, focused around 'researching' suicide methods to maximise effectiveness. They made specific choices about content viewed; many consulting factual content in preference to user generated accounts, while help content and communication was avoided. Findings indicate further action is necessary to improve online safety. Also, novel online help approaches are needed to engage individuals experiencing suicidal crisis. Awareness of the nature of suicide-related internet use and how this may reflect the status of an individual's suicidal thinking could be beneficial to clinicians to promote safety and indicate risk.

  6. Effective Usage of Social Media for Dark Skies Awareness

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hennig, A. J.; Heenatigala, T.; Walker, C. E.

    2012-12-01

    Social media has become a daily tool in our culture. Networks such as Facebook with 900 million active users and Twitter with 140 million active users make an ideal platform to create awareness. It helps to generate and share new content and enables multi-communication channels. This presentation will address how effectively social media can be used as an education tool to create awareness of light pollution. As a "green" focus becomes more important in our world the topic of light pollution is also rising as an important issue. Light Pollution affects many aspects of our world ranging from flora and fauna to the economic well-being of many industrialized countries. Mixed among the many important pollutants in our world light pollution can fall by the way-side, forgotten, but it is imperative to bring out awareness of this problem, especially since studies are beginning to show how by fighting light pollution we will also be fighting other pollution such as air pollutants. GLOBE at Night has combined social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter with its educational awareness campaign on light pollution to reach out to social media community. Currently our Facebook reaches citizens of twenty separate countries ranging from the Czech Republic and Peru to the United States and the United Kingdom. On Facebook our reach is estimated at over 800,000 friends of our fans. These networks help us to directly answer users' immediate questions and encourage participation in the GLOBE at Night campaigns. Important news on light pollution appearing in cyberspace is monitored regularly using Google Alerts and Twitter hash tags filters which gets posted regularly on our networks. Social media networking has become a tool for users not only for information about GLOBE at Night but also for information about the overall topic of light pollution itself. Many individuals and organizations struggle with the mass content shared in social networks. It is important to know where to look for the right content and what to share with whom. This presentation will highlight on; the importance of engaging in social media to gain and share new content, how to filter the right content, and best uses of social media to create an awareness of light pollution. We will discuss the proper ways to get the most use out of social media networking.

  7. Understanding human quality judgment in assessing online forum contents for thread retrieval purpose

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ismail, Zuriati; Salim, Naomie; Huspi, Sharin Hazlin

    2017-10-01

    Compared to traditional materials or journals, user-generated contents are not peer-reviewed. Lack of quality control and the explosive growth of web contents make the task of finding quality information on the web especially critical. The existence of new facilities for producing web contents such as forum makes this issue more significant. This study focuses on online forums threads or discussion, where the forums contain valuable human-generated information in a form of discussions. Due to the unique structure of the online forum pages, special techniques are required to organize and search for information in these forums. Quality biased retrieval is a retrieval approach that search for relevant document and prioritized higher quality documents. Despite major concern of quality content and recent development of quality biased retrieval, there is an urgent need to understand how quality content is being judged, for retrieval and performance evaluation purposes. Furthermore, even though there are various studies on the quality of information, there is no standard framework that has been established. The primary aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of human quality judgment in assessing online forum contents. The foundation of this study is to compare and evaluate different frameworks (for quality biased retrieval and information quality). This led to the finding that many quality dimensions are redundant and some dimensions are understood differently between different studies. We conducted a survey on crowdsourcing community to measure the importance of each quality dimensions found in various frameworks. Accuracy and ease of understanding are among top important dimensions while threads popularity and contents manipulability are among least important dimensions. This finding is beneficial in evaluating contents of online forum.

  8. An Intelligent Crawler for a Virtual World

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Eno, Joshua

    2010-01-01

    Virtual worlds, which allow users to create and interact with content in a 3D, multi-user environment, growing and becoming more integrated with the traditional flat web. However, little is empirically known about the content users create in virtual world and how it can be indexed and searched effectively. In order to gain a better understanding…

  9. Analysis of 4999 online physician ratings indicates that most patients give physicians a favorable rating.

    PubMed

    Kadry, Bassam; Chu, Larry F; Kadry, Bayan; Gammas, Danya; Macario, Alex

    2011-11-16

    Many online physician-rating sites provide patients with information about physicians and allow patients to rate physicians. Understanding what information is available is important given that patients may use this information to choose a physician. The goals of this study were to (1) determine the most frequently visited physician-rating websites with user-generated content, (2) evaluate the available information on these websites, and (3) analyze 4999 individual online ratings of physicians. On October 1, 2010, using Google Trends we identified the 10 most frequently visited online physician-rating sites with user-generated content. We then studied each site to evaluate the available information (eg, board certification, years in practice), the types of rating scales (eg, 1-5, 1-4, 1-100), and dimensions of care (eg, recommend to a friend, waiting room time) used to rate physicians. We analyzed data from 4999 selected physician ratings without identifiers to assess how physicians are rated online. The 10 most commonly visited websites with user-generated content were HealthGrades.com, Vitals.com, Yelp.com, YP.com, RevolutionHealth.com, RateMD.com, Angieslist.com, Checkbook.org, Kudzu.com, and ZocDoc.com. A total of 35 different dimensions of care were rated by patients in the websites, with a median of 4.5 (mean 4.9, SD 2.8, range 1-9) questions per site. Depending on the scale used for each physician-rating website, the average rating was 77 out of 100 for sites using a 100-point scale (SD 11, median 76, range 33-100), 3.84 out of 5 (77%) for sites using a 5-point scale (SD 0.98, median 4, range 1-5), and 3.1 out of 4 (78%) for sites using a 4-point scale (SD 0.72, median 3, range 1-4). The percentage of reviews rated ≥75 on a 100-point scale was 61.5% (246/400), ≥4 on a 5-point scale was 57.74% (2078/3599), and ≥3 on a 4-point scale was 74.0% (740/1000). The patient's single overall rating of the physician correlated with the other dimensions of care that were rated by patients for the same physician (Pearson correlation, r = .73, P < .001). Most patients give physicians a favorable rating on online physician-rating sites. A single overall rating to evaluate physicians may be sufficient to assess a patient's opinion of the physician. The optimal content and rating method that is useful to patients when visiting online physician-rating sites deserves further study. Conducting a qualitative analysis to compare the quantitative ratings would help validate the rating instruments used to evaluate physicians.

  10. Analysis of 4999 Online Physician Ratings Indicates That Most Patients Give Physicians a Favorable Rating

    PubMed Central

    Chu, Larry F; Kadry, Bayan; Gammas, Danya; Macario, Alex

    2011-01-01

    Background Many online physician-rating sites provide patients with information about physicians and allow patients to rate physicians. Understanding what information is available is important given that patients may use this information to choose a physician. Objectives The goals of this study were to (1) determine the most frequently visited physician-rating websites with user-generated content, (2) evaluate the available information on these websites, and (3) analyze 4999 individual online ratings of physicians. Methods On October 1, 2010, using Google Trends we identified the 10 most frequently visited online physician-rating sites with user-generated content. We then studied each site to evaluate the available information (eg, board certification, years in practice), the types of rating scales (eg, 1–5, 1–4, 1–100), and dimensions of care (eg, recommend to a friend, waiting room time) used to rate physicians. We analyzed data from 4999 selected physician ratings without identifiers to assess how physicians are rated online. Results The 10 most commonly visited websites with user-generated content were HealthGrades.com, Vitals.com, Yelp.com, YP.com, RevolutionHealth.com, RateMD.com, Angieslist.com, Checkbook.org, Kudzu.com, and ZocDoc.com. A total of 35 different dimensions of care were rated by patients in the websites, with a median of 4.5 (mean 4.9, SD 2.8, range 1–9) questions per site. Depending on the scale used for each physician-rating website, the average rating was 77 out of 100 for sites using a 100-point scale (SD 11, median 76, range 33–100), 3.84 out of 5 (77%) for sites using a 5-point scale (SD 0.98, median 4, range 1–5), and 3.1 out of 4 (78%) for sites using a 4-point scale (SD 0.72, median 3, range 1–4). The percentage of reviews rated ≥75 on a 100-point scale was 61.5% (246/400), ≥4 on a 5-point scale was 57.74% (2078/3599), and ≥3 on a 4-point scale was 74.0% (740/1000). The patient’s single overall rating of the physician correlated with the other dimensions of care that were rated by patients for the same physician (Pearson correlation, r = .73, P < .001). Conclusions Most patients give physicians a favorable rating on online physician-rating sites. A single overall rating to evaluate physicians may be sufficient to assess a patient’s opinion of the physician. The optimal content and rating method that is useful to patients when visiting online physician-rating sites deserves further study. Conducting a qualitative analysis to compare the quantitative ratings would help validate the rating instruments used to evaluate physicians. PMID:22088924

  11. A SCORM Compliant Courseware Authoring Tool for Supporting Pervasive Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wang, Te-Hua; Chang, Flora Chia-I

    2007-01-01

    The sharable content object reference model (SCORM) includes a representation of distance learning contents and a behavior definition of how users should interact with the contents. Generally, SCORMcompliant systems were based on multimedia and Web technologies on PCs. We further build a pervasive learning environment, which allows users to read…

  12. The Readability of Information Literacy Content on Academic Library Web Sites

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lim, Adriene

    2010-01-01

    This article reports on a study addressing the readability of content on academic libraries' Web sites, specifically content intended to improve users' information literacy skills. Results call for recognition of readability as an evaluative component of text in order to better meet the needs of diverse user populations. (Contains 8 tables.)

  13. Development of a multi-behavioral mHealth app for women smokers

    PubMed Central

    Armin, Julie; Johnson, Thienne; Hingle, Melanie; Giacobbi, Peter; Gordon, Judith S.

    2017-01-01

    Objective This paper describes the development of the See Me Smoke-Free™ (SMSF) mobile health application, which uses guided imagery to support women in smoking cessation, eating a healthy diet, and increasing physical activity. Materials and Methods Focus group discussions, with member checks, were conducted to refine the intervention content and app user interface. Data related to the context of app deployment were collected via user testing sessions and internal quality control testing, which identified and addressed functionality issues, content problems, and bugs. Results Interactive app features include playback of guided imagery audio files, notification pop-ups, award-sharing on social media, a tracking calendar, content resources, and direct call to the local tobacco quitline. Focus groups helped design the user interface, and identified several themes for incorporation into app content, including positivity, the rewards of smoking cessation, and the integrated benefits maintaining a healthy lifestyle. User testing improved app functionality and usability on many Android phone models. Discussion Changes to the app content and function were made iteratively by the development team as a result of focus group and user testing. Despite extensive internal and user testing, unanticipated data collection and reporting issues emerged during deployment due to the variety of Android software and hardware, but also due to individual phone settings and use. Conclusion Focus group interviews helped thematically frame the intervention and maximize user engagement. Testing caught many bugs and usability concerns, but missed some of the data transmission problems encountered during deployment. PMID:28121240

  14. Enabling Open Research Data Discovery through a Recommender System

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Devaraju, Anusuriya; Jayasinghe, Gaya; Klump, Jens; Hogan, Dominic

    2017-04-01

    Government agencies, universities, research and nonprofit organizations are increasingly publishing their datasets to promote transparency, induce new research and generate economic value through the development of new products or services. The datasets may be downloaded from various data portals (data repositories) which are general or domain-specific. The Registry of Research Data Repository (re3data.org) lists more than 2500 such data repositories from around the globe. Data portals allow keyword search and faceted navigation to facilitate discovery of research datasets. However, the volume and variety of datasets have made finding relevant datasets more difficult. Common dataset search mechanisms may be time consuming, may produce irrelevant results and are primarily suitable for users who are familiar with the general structure and contents of the respective database. Therefore, we need new approaches to support research data discovery. Recommender systems offer new possibilities for users to find datasets that are relevant to their research interests. This study presents a recommender system developed for the CSIRO Data Access Portal (DAP, http://data.csiro.au). The datasets hosted on the portal are diverse, published by researchers from 13 business units in the organisation. The goal of the study is not to replace the current search mechanisms on the data portal, but rather to extend the data discovery through an exploratory search, in this case by building a recommender system. We adopted a hybrid recommendation approach, comprising content-based filtering and item-item collaborative filtering. The content-based filtering computes similarities between datasets based on metadata such as title, keywords, descriptions, fields of research, location, contributors, etc. The collaborative filtering utilizes user search behaviour and download patterns derived from the server logs to determine similar datasets. Similarities above are then combined with different degrees of importance (weights) to determine the overall data similarity. We determined the similarity weights based on a survey involving 150 users of the portal. The recommender results for a given dataset are accessible programmatically via a RESTful web service. An offline evaluation involving data users demonstrates the ability of the recommender system to discover relevant and 'novel' datasets.

  15. Secret Society 123: Understanding the Language of Self-Harm on Instagram.

    PubMed

    Moreno, Megan A; Ton, Adrienne; Selkie, Ellen; Evans, Yolanda

    2016-01-01

    Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) content is present on social media and may influence adolescents. Instagram is a popular site among adolescents in which NSSI-related terms are user-generated as hashtags (words preceded by a #). These hashtags may be ambiguous and thus challenging for those outside the NSSI community to understand. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the meaning, popularity, and content advisory warnings related to ambiguous NSSI hashtags on Instagram. This study used the search term "#selfharmmm" to identify public Instagram posts. Hashtag terms co-listed with #selfharmmm on each post were evaluated for inclusion criteria; selected hashtags were then assessed using a structured evaluation for meaning and consistency. We also investigated the total number of Instagram search hits for each hashtag at two time points and determined whether the hashtag prompted a Content Advisory warning. Our sample of 201 Instagram posts led to identification of 10 ambiguous NSSI hashtags. NSSI terms included #blithe, #cat, and #selfinjuryy. We discovered a popular image that described the broader community of NSSI and mental illness, called "#MySecretFamily." The term #MySecretFamily had approximately 900,000 search results at Time 1 and >1.5 million at Time 2. Only one-third of the relevant hashtags generated Content Advisory warnings. NSSI content is popular on Instagram and often veiled by ambiguous hashtags. Content Advisory warnings were not reliable; thus, parents and providers remain the cornerstone of prompting discussions about NSSI content on social media and providing resources for teens. Copyright © 2016 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  16. Secret Society 123: Understanding the Language of Self-Harm on Instagram

    PubMed Central

    Moreno, Megan A.; Ton, Adrienne; Selkie, Ellen; Evans, Yolanda

    2017-01-01

    Purpose Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) content is present on social media and may influence adolescents. Instagram is a popular site among adolescents in which NSSI-related terms are user-generated as hashtags (words preceded by a #). These hashtags may be ambiguous and thus challenging for those outside the NSSI community to understand. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the meaning, popularity, and content advisory warnings related to ambiguous NSSI hashtags on Instagram. Methods This study used the search term “#selfharmmm” to identify public Instagram posts. Hashtag terms co-listed with #selfharmmm on each post were evaluated for inclusion criteria; selected hashtags were then assessed using a structured evaluation for meaning and consistency. We also investigated the total number of Instagram search hits for each hashtag at two time points and determined whether the hashtag prompted a Content Advisory warning. Results Our sample of 201 Instagram posts led to identification of 10 ambiguous NSSI hashtags. NSSI terms included #blithe, #cat, and #selfinjuryy. We discovered a popular image that described the broader community of NSSI and mental illness, called “#MySecretFamily.” The term #MySe-cretFamily had approximately 900,000 search results at Time 1 and >1.5 million at Time 2. Only one-third of the relevant hashtags generated Content Advisory warnings. Conclusions NSSI content is popular on Instagram and often veiled by ambiguous hashtags. Content Advisory warnings were not reliable; thus, parents and providers remain the cornerstone of prompting discussions about NSSI content on social media and providing resources for teens. PMID:26707231

  17. Use of an engineering data management system in the analysis of space shuttle orbiter tiles

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Giles, G. L.; Vallas, M.

    1981-01-01

    The use of an engineering data management system to facilitate the extensive stress analyses of the space shuttle orbiter thermal protection system is demonstrated. The methods used to gather, organize, and store the data; to query data interactively; to generate graphic displays of the data; and to access, transform, and prepare the data for input to a stress analysis program are described. Information related to many separate tiles can be accessed individually from the data base which has a natural organization from an engineering viewpoint. The flexible user features of the system facilitate changes in data content and organization which occur during the development and refinement of the tile analysis procedure. Additionally, the query language supports retrieval of data to satisfy a variety of user-specified conditions.

  18. US GeoData

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    ,

    1992-01-01

    US GeoData tapes are computer tapes which contain cartographic data in digital form. The 1:2,000,000-scale data are available in two forms. The graphic form can be used to generate computer-plotted maps. The content and scale of the maps can be varied to meet your needs. The topologically-structured form of US GeoData is suitable for input to geographic information systems for use in spatial analysis and geographic studies. Both forms must be used in conjunction with appropriate software. US GeoData tapes offer convenience, accuracy, flexibility, and cost effectiveness to many map users. Business, industry, and government users who are involved in network planning and analysis, transportation, demography, land use, or any activity where data can be related to, or plotted on a map will find US GeoData a valuable resource.

  19. Enriching Spatial Data Infrastructure (sdi) by User Generated Contents for Transportation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Shakeri, M.; Alimohammadi, A.; Sadeghi-Niaraki, A.; Alesheikh, A. A.

    2013-09-01

    Spatial data is one of the most critical elements underpinning decision making for many disciplines. Accessing and sharing spatial data have always been a great struggle for researchers. Spatial data infrastructure (SDI) plays a key role in spatial data sharing by building a suitable platform for collaboration and cooperation among the different data producer organizations. In recent years, SDI vision has been moved toward a user-centric platform which has led to development of a new and enriched generation of SDI (third generation). This vision is to provide an environment where users can cooperate to handle spatial data in an effective and satisfactory way. User-centric SDI concentrates on users, their requirements and preferences while in the past, SDI initiatives were mainly concentrated on technological issues such as the data harmonization, standardized metadata models, standardized web services for data discovery, visualization and download. On the other hand, new technologies such as the GPS-equipped smart phones, navigation devices and Web 2.0 technologies have enabled citizens to actively participate in production and sharing of the spatial information. This has led to emergence of the new phenomenon called the Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). VGI describes any type of content that has a geographic element which has been voluntarily collected. However, its distinctive element is the geographic information that can be collected and produced by citizens with different formal expertise and knowledge of the spatial or geographical concepts. Therefore, ordinary citizens can cooperate in providing massive sources of information that cannot be ignored. These can be considered as the valuable spatial information sources in SDI. These sources can be used for completing, improving and updating of the existing databases. Spatial information and technologies are an important part of the transportation systems. Planning, design and operation of the transportation systems requires the exchange of large volumes of spatial data and often close cooperation among the various organizations. However, there is no technical and organizational process to get a suitable data infrastructure to address diverse needs of the transportation. Hence, development of a common standards and a simple data exchange mechanism is strongly needed in the field of transportation for decision support. Since one of the main purposes of transportation projects is to improve the quality of services provided to users, it is necessary to involve the users themselves in the decision making processes. This should be done through a public participation and involvement in all stages of the transportation projects. In other words, using public knowledge and information as another source of information is very important to make better and more efficient decisions. Public participation in transportation projects can also help organizations to enhance their public supports; because the lack of public support can lead to failure of technically valid projects. However, due to complexity of the transportation tasks, lack of appropriate environment and methods for facilitation of the public participation, collection and analysis of the public information and opinions, public participation in this field has not been well considered so far. This paper reviews the previous researches based on the enriched SDI development and its movement toward the VGI by focusing on the public participation in transportation projects. To this end, methods and models that have been used in previous researches are studied and classified initially. Then, methods of the previous researchers on VGI and transportation are conceptualized in SDI. Finally, the suggested method for transportation projects is presented. Results indicate success of the new generation of SDI in integration with public participation for transportation projects.

  20. Personalized summarization using user preference for m-learning

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Sihyoung; Yang, Seungji; Ro, Yong Man; Kim, Hyoung Joong

    2008-02-01

    As the Internet and multimedia technology is becoming advanced, the number of digital multimedia contents is also becoming abundant in learning area. In order to facilitate the access of digital knowledge and to meet the need of a lifelong learning, e-learning could be the helpful alternative way to the conventional learning paradigms. E-learning is known as a unifying term to express online, web-based and technology-delivered learning. Mobile-learning (m-learning) is defined as e-learning through mobile devices using wireless transmission. In a survey, more than half of the people remarked that the re-consumption was one of the convenient features in e-learning. However, it is not easy to find user's preferred segmentation from a full version of lengthy e-learning content. Especially in m-learning, a content-summarization method is strongly required because mobile devices are limited to low processing power and battery capacity. In this paper, we propose a new user preference model for re-consumption to construct personalized summarization for re-consumption. The user preference for re-consumption is modeled based on user actions with statistical model. Based on the user preference model for re-consumption with personalized user actions, our method discriminates preferred parts over the entire content. Experimental results demonstrated successful personalized summarization.

  1. EarthCube Data Discovery Hub: Enhancing, Curating and Finding Data across Multiple Geoscience Data Sources.

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zaslavsky, I.; Valentine, D.; Richard, S. M.; Gupta, A.; Meier, O.; Peucker-Ehrenbrink, B.; Hudman, G.; Stocks, K. I.; Hsu, L.; Whitenack, T.; Grethe, J. S.; Ozyurt, I. B.

    2017-12-01

    EarthCube Data Discovery Hub (DDH) is an EarthCube Building Block project using technologies developed in CINERGI (Community Inventory of EarthCube Resources for Geoscience Interoperability) to enable geoscience users to explore a growing portfolio of EarthCube-created and other geoscience-related resources. Over 1 million metadata records are available for discovery through the project portal (cinergi.sdsc.edu). These records are retrieved from data facilities, including federal, state and academic sources, or contributed by geoscientists through workshops, surveys, or other channels. CINERGI metadata augmentation pipeline components 1) provide semantic enhancement based on a large ontology of geoscience terms, using text analytics to generate keywords with references to ontology classes, 2) add spatial extents based on place names found in the metadata record, and 3) add organization identifiers to the metadata. The records are indexed and can be searched via a web portal and standard search APIs. The added metadata content improves discoverability and interoperability of the registered resources. Specifically, the addition of ontology-anchored keywords enables faceted browsing and lets users navigate to datasets related by variables measured, equipment used, science domain, processes described, geospatial features studied, and other dataset characteristics that are generated by the pipeline. DDH also lets data curators access and edit the automatically generated metadata records using the CINERGI metadata editor, accept or reject the enhanced metadata content, and consider it in updating their metadata descriptions. We consider several complex data discovery workflows, in environmental seismology (quantifying sediment and water fluxes using seismic data), marine biology (determining available temperature, location, weather and bleaching characteristics of coral reefs related to measurements in a given coral reef survey), and river geochemistry (discovering observations relevant to geochemical measurements outside the tidal zone, given specific discharge conditions).

  2. Representing videos in tangible products

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fageth, Reiner; Weiting, Ralf

    2014-03-01

    Videos can be taken with nearly every camera, digital point and shoot cameras, DSLRs as well as smartphones and more and more with so-called action cameras mounted on sports devices. The implementation of videos while generating QR codes and relevant pictures out of the video stream via a software implementation was contents in last years' paper. This year we present first data about what contents is displayed and how the users represent their videos in printed products, e.g. CEWE PHOTOBOOKS and greeting cards. We report the share of the different video formats used, the number of images extracted out of the video in order to represent the video, the positions in the book and different design strategies compared to regular books.

  3. Development of dialog system powered by textual educational content

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bisikalo, Oleg V.; Dovgalets, Sergei M.; Pijarski, Paweł; Lisovenko, Anna I.

    2016-09-01

    The advances in computer technology require an interconnection between a man and computer, more specifically, between complex information systems. The paper is therefore dedicated to creation of dialog systems, able to respond to users depending on the implemented textual educational content. To support the dialog there had been suggested the knowledge base model on the basis of the unit and a fuzzy sense relation. Lexical meanings is taken out from the text by processing the syntactic links between the allologs of all the sentences and the answer shall be generated as the composition of a fuzzy ratios upon the formal criterion. The information support technology had been put to an evaluation sample test, which demonstrates the combination of information from some sentences in the final response.

  4. On the Information Content of Program Traces

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Frumkin, Michael; Hood, Robert; Yan, Jerry; Saini, Subhash (Technical Monitor)

    1998-01-01

    Program traces are used for analysis of program performance, memory utilization, and communications as well as for program debugging. The trace contains records of execution events generated by monitoring units inserted into the program. The trace size limits the resolution of execution events and restricts the user's ability to analyze the program execution. We present a study of the information content of program traces and develop a coding scheme which reduces the trace size to the limit given by the trace entropy. We apply the coding to the traces of AIMS instrumented programs executed on the IBM SPA and the SCSI Power Challenge and compare it with other coding methods. Our technique shows size of the trace can be reduced by more than a factor of 5.

  5. Mobile object retrieval in server-based image databases

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Manger, D.; Pagel, F.; Widak, H.

    2013-05-01

    The increasing number of mobile phones equipped with powerful cameras leads to huge collections of user-generated images. To utilize the information of the images on site, image retrieval systems are becoming more and more popular to search for similar objects in an own image database. As the computational performance and the memory capacity of mobile devices are constantly increasing, this search can often be performed on the device itself. This is feasible, for example, if the images are represented with global image features or if the search is done using EXIF or textual metadata. However, for larger image databases, if multiple users are meant to contribute to a growing image database or if powerful content-based image retrieval methods with local features are required, a server-based image retrieval backend is needed. In this work, we present a content-based image retrieval system with a client server architecture working with local features. On the server side, the scalability to large image databases is addressed with the popular bag-of-word model with state-of-the-art extensions. The client end of the system focuses on a lightweight user interface presenting the most similar images of the database highlighting the visual information which is common with the query image. Additionally, new images can be added to the database making it a powerful and interactive tool for mobile contentbased image retrieval.

  6. LDEF materials data bases

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Funk, Joan G.; Strickland, John W.; Davis, John M.

    1993-01-01

    The Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) and the accompanying experiments were composed of and contained a wide variety of materials representing the largest collection of materials flown in low Earth orbit (LEO) and retrieved for ground based analysis to date. The results and implications of the mechanical, thermal, optical, and electrical data from these materials are the foundation on which future LEO space missions will be built. The LDEF Materials Special Investigation Group (MSIG) has been charged with establishing and developing data bases to document these materials and their performance to assure not only that the data are archived for future generations but also that the data are available to the spacecraft user community in an easily accessed, user-friendly form. This paper discusses the format and content of the three data bases developed or being developed to accomplish this task. The hardware and software requirements for each of these three data bases are discussed along with current availability of the data bases. This paper also serves as a user's guide to the MAPTIS LDEF Materials Data Base.

  7. Content validity--establishing and reporting the evidence in newly developed patient-reported outcomes (PRO) instruments for medical product evaluation: ISPOR PRO good research practices task force report: part 1--eliciting concepts for a new PRO instrument.

    PubMed

    Patrick, Donald L; Burke, Laurie B; Gwaltney, Chad J; Leidy, Nancy Kline; Martin, Mona L; Molsen, Elizabeth; Ring, Lena

    2011-12-01

    The importance of content validity in developing patient reported outcomes (PRO) instruments is stressed by both the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency. Content validity is the extent to which an instrument measures the important aspects of concepts that developers or users purport it to assess. A PRO instrument measures the concepts most significant and relevant to a patient's condition and its treatment. For PRO instruments, items and domains as reflected in the scores of an instrument should be important to the target population and comprehensive with respect to patient concerns. Documentation of target population input in item generation, as well as evaluation of patient understanding through cognitive interviewing, can provide the evidence for content validity. Developing content for, and assessing respondent understanding of, newly developed PRO instruments for medical product evaluation will be discussed in this two-part ISPOR PRO Good Research Practices Task Force Report. Topics include the methods for generating items, documenting item development, coding of qualitative data from item generation, cognitive interviewing, and tracking item development through the various stages of research and preparing this tracking for submission to regulatory agencies. Part 1 covers elicitation of key concepts using qualitative focus groups and/or interviews to inform content and structure of a new PRO instrument. Part 2 covers the instrument development process, the assessment of patient understanding of the draft instrument using cognitive interviews and steps for instrument revision. The two parts are meant to be read together. They are intended to offer suggestions for good practices in planning, executing, and documenting qualitative studies that are used to support the content validity of PRO instruments to be used in medical product evaluation. Copyright © 2011 International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  8. Do Online Comments Influence the Public's Attitudes Toward an Organization? Effects of Online Comments Based on Individuals' Prior Attitudes.

    PubMed

    Sung, Kang Hoon; Lee, Moon J

    2015-01-01

    The authors investigated the effects of reading different types of online comments about a company on people's attitude change based on individual's prior attitude toward the company. Based on Social Judgment Theory, several hypotheses were tested. The results showed that the effects of online comments interact with individuals' prior attitudes toward a corporation. People with a strong negative attitude toward a corporation were less influenced by other's online comments than people with a neutral attitude in general. However, people with a prior negative attitude were more affected by refutational two-sided comments than one-sided comments. The results suggest that the effects of user generated content should be studied in a holistic manner, not only by investigating the effects of online content itself, but also by examining how others' responses to the content shape or change individuals' attitudes based on their prior attitudes.

  9. Impact of heterogeneity and socioeconomic factors on individual behavior in decentralized sharing ecosystems.

    PubMed

    Gavaldà-Miralles, Arnau; Choffnes, David R; Otto, John S; Sánchez, Mario A; Bustamante, Fabián E; Amaral, Luís A N; Duch, Jordi; Guimerà, Roger

    2014-10-28

    Tens of millions of individuals around the world use decentralized content distribution systems, a fact of growing social, economic, and technological importance. These sharing systems are poorly understood because, unlike in other technosocial systems, it is difficult to gather large-scale data about user behavior. Here, we investigate user activity patterns and the socioeconomic factors that could explain the behavior. Our analysis reveals that (i) the ecosystem is heterogeneous at several levels: content types are heterogeneous, users specialize in a few content types, and countries are heterogeneous in user profiles; and (ii) there is a strong correlation between socioeconomic indicators of a country and users behavior. Our findings open a research area on the dynamics of decentralized sharing ecosystems and the socioeconomic factors affecting them, and may have implications for the design of algorithms and for policymaking.

  10. Smart learning services based on smart cloud computing.

    PubMed

    Kim, Svetlana; Song, Su-Mi; Yoon, Yong-Ik

    2011-01-01

    Context-aware technologies can make e-learning services smarter and more efficient since context-aware services are based on the user's behavior. To add those technologies into existing e-learning services, a service architecture model is needed to transform the existing e-learning environment, which is situation-aware, into the environment that understands context as well. The context-awareness in e-learning may include the awareness of user profile and terminal context. In this paper, we propose a new notion of service that provides context-awareness to smart learning content in a cloud computing environment. We suggest the elastic four smarts (E4S)--smart pull, smart prospect, smart content, and smart push--concept to the cloud services so smart learning services are possible. The E4S focuses on meeting the users' needs by collecting and analyzing users' behavior, prospecting future services, building corresponding contents, and delivering the contents through cloud computing environment. Users' behavior can be collected through mobile devices such as smart phones that have built-in sensors. As results, the proposed smart e-learning model in cloud computing environment provides personalized and customized learning services to its users.

  11. An Ontology-Based Tourism Recommender System Based on Spreading Activation Model

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bahramian, Z.; Abbaspour, R. Ali

    2015-12-01

    A tourist has time and budget limitations; hence, he needs to select points of interest (POIs) optimally. Since the available information about POIs is overloading, it is difficult for a tourist to select the most appreciate ones considering preferences. In this paper, a new travel recommender system is proposed to overcome information overload problem. A recommender system (RS) evaluates the overwhelming number of POIs and provides personalized recommendations to users based on their preferences. A content-based recommendation system is proposed, which uses the information about the user's preferences and POIs and calculates a degree of similarity between them. It selects POIs, which have highest similarity with the user's preferences. The proposed content-based recommender system is enhanced using the ontological information about tourism domain to represent both the user profile and the recommendable POIs. The proposed ontology-based recommendation process is performed in three steps including: ontology-based content analyzer, ontology-based profile learner, and ontology-based filtering component. User's feedback adapts the user's preferences using Spreading Activation (SA) strategy. It shows the proposed recommender system is effective and improves the overall performance of the traditional content-based recommender systems.

  12. Vgi Based Urban Public Transport

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Teymurian, F.; Alesheikh, A. A.; Alimohammadi, A.; Sadeghi-Niaraki, A.

    2013-09-01

    Recent advances in information technology have made geographic information system (GIS) a powerful and affordable tool for planning and decision making in various fields such as the public transportation. These technologies such as the social network (e.g. face-book, twitter), new technologies such as ubiquitous, mobile, Web 2.0, geo tagging and RFID can help to create better shapes and forms of the communication and geo-collaboration for public. By using these, user-generated content and spatial information can be easily and quickly produced and shared in a dynamic, interactive, multimedia and distributed environment. The concept of volunteered geographic information (VGI) has been introduced by the transaction from consultation to content interaction. VGI describes any type of content that has a geographic element and has been voluntarily collected. In other words, ordinary users; without a professional training, can participate in generating and using the spatial information. As a result, the gaps between the producers and users of GIS and spatial information, has been considerably reduced. Public transportation is one of the most important elements of the transportation system. Rapid growth of the cities has resulted in high increase of demand for the public transportation which created new challenges. Improvement of the desirability of public transportation can increase its efficiency, reduction of the environmental pollution (such as air and noise pollution), traffic problems, and fuel consumption. Hence, development of an urban public transportation system which is responsive to citizen's need and motivates them to use public transportation system is one of the most important objectives and issues that urban planners and designers are concerned about. One solution to achieve this, goal is to develop public transportation system by assistance from the system users. According to approach, users are considered as the valuable resources, because people who are in constant contact with the system can have detailed and updated information about the problems, solutions and they are affected by the related implemented policies. Thus user involvement is an essential part in public transport decision making process. Although GIS in transportation (GIS-T) has been used for data collection, spatial analysis, and spatial modeling, due to recent promotions, GIS-T is moving towards the use of capabilities of VGI to user-centric services. The main goals of this paper are two as follows: First is to survey and review the key concepts of the geo-collaboration, to introduce and present fields to utilizing the VGI in the public transportation system to improve the performance of that system. The Second goal is to propose a VGI-based public transport conceptual framework. in this paper in the first part capabilities of VGI is explored, and areas of public transport that can utilize the public involvement is assessed and classified. Then, by surveying the related works in this context, a classification based on the models of participation is provided. Finally, a VGI-based conceptual framework for organizing a public participation for performance measurement of urban public transport for Tehran city is proposed. Results of this paper show that utilizing VGI presents an efficient solution for public transport problems.

  13. Do Online Voting Patterns Reflect Evolved Features of Human Cognition? An Exploratory Empirical Investigation.

    PubMed

    Priestley, Maria; Mesoudi, Alex

    2015-01-01

    Online votes or ratings can assist internet users in evaluating the credibility and appeal of the information which they encounter. For example, aggregator websites such as Reddit allow users to up-vote submitted content to make it more prominent, and down-vote content to make it less prominent. Here we argue that decisions over what to up- or down-vote may be guided by evolved features of human cognition. We predict that internet users should be more likely to up-vote content that others have also up-voted (social influence), content that has been submitted by particularly liked or respected users (model-based bias), content that constitutes evolutionarily salient or relevant information (content bias), and content that follows group norms and, in particular, prosocial norms. 489 respondents from the online social voting community Reddit rated the extent to which they felt different traits influenced their voting. Statistical analyses confirmed that norm-following and prosociality, as well as various content biases such as emotional content and originality, were rated as important motivators of voting. Social influence had a smaller effect than expected, while attitudes towards the submitter had little effect. This exploratory empirical investigation suggests that online voting communities can provide an important test-bed for evolutionary theories of human social information use, and that evolved features of human cognition may guide online behaviour just as it guides behaviour in the offline world.

  14. Social media addiction: What is the role of content in YouTube?

    PubMed Central

    Balakrishnan, Janarthanan; Griffiths, Mark D.

    2017-01-01

    Background YouTube, the online video creation and sharing site, supports both video content viewing and content creation activities. For a minority of people, the time spent engaging with YouTube can be excessive and potentially problematic. Method This study analyzed the relationship between content viewing, content creation, and YouTube addiction in a survey of 410 Indian-student YouTube users. It also examined the influence of content, social, technology, and process gratifications on user inclination toward YouTube content viewing and content creation. Results The results demonstrated that content creation in YouTube had a closer relationship with YouTube addiction than content viewing. Furthermore, social gratification was found to have a significant influence on both types of YouTube activities, whereas technology gratification did not significantly influence them. Among all perceived gratifications, content gratification had the highest relationship coefficient value with YouTube content creation inclination. The model fit and variance extracted by the endogenous constructs were good, which further validated the results of the analysis. Conclusion The study facilitates new ways to explore user gratification in using YouTube and how the channel responds to it. PMID:28914072

  15. Social media addiction: What is the role of content in YouTube?

    PubMed

    Balakrishnan, Janarthanan; Griffiths, Mark D

    2017-09-01

    Background YouTube, the online video creation and sharing site, supports both video content viewing and content creation activities. For a minority of people, the time spent engaging with YouTube can be excessive and potentially problematic. Method This study analyzed the relationship between content viewing, content creation, and YouTube addiction in a survey of 410 Indian-student YouTube users. It also examined the influence of content, social, technology, and process gratifications on user inclination toward YouTube content viewing and content creation. Results The results demonstrated that content creation in YouTube had a closer relationship with YouTube addiction than content viewing. Furthermore, social gratification was found to have a significant influence on both types of YouTube activities, whereas technology gratification did not significantly influence them. Among all perceived gratifications, content gratification had the highest relationship coefficient value with YouTube content creation inclination. The model fit and variance extracted by the endogenous constructs were good, which further validated the results of the analysis. Conclusion The study facilitates new ways to explore user gratification in using YouTube and how the channel responds to it.

  16. Directing the public to evidence-based online content

    PubMed Central

    Cooper, Crystale Purvis; Gelb, Cynthia A; Vaughn, Alexandra N; Smuland, Jenny; Hughes, Alexandra G; Hawkins, Nikki A

    2015-01-01

    To direct online users searching for gynecologic cancer information to accurate content, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) ‘Inside Knowledge: Get the Facts About Gynecologic Cancer’ campaign sponsored search engine advertisements in English and Spanish. From June 2012 to August 2013, advertisements appeared when US Google users entered search terms related to gynecologic cancer. Users who clicked on the advertisements were directed to relevant content on the CDC website. Compared with the 3 months before the initiative (March–May 2012), visits to the CDC web pages linked to the advertisements were 26 times higher after the initiative began (June–August 2012) (p<0.01), and 65 times higher when the search engine advertisements were supplemented with promotion on television and additional websites (September 2012–August 2013) (p<0.01). Search engine advertisements can direct users to evidence-based content at a highly teachable moment—when they are seeking relevant information. PMID:25053580

  17. A user-friendly, dynamic web environment for remote data browsing and analysis of multiparametric geophysical data within the MULTIMO project

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Carniel, Roberto; Di Cecca, Mauro; Jaquet, Olivier

    2006-05-01

    In the framework of the EU-funded project "Multi-disciplinary monitoring, modelling and forecasting of volcanic hazard" (MULTIMO), multiparametric data have been recorded at the MULTIMO station in Montserrat. Moreover, several other long time series, recorded at Montserrat and at other volcanoes, have been acquired in order to test stochastic and deterministic methodologies under development. Creating a general framework to handle data efficiently is a considerable task even for homogeneous data. In the case of heterogeneous data, this becomes a major issue. A need for a consistent way of browsing such a heterogeneous dataset in a user-friendly way therefore arose. Additionally, a framework for applying the calculation of the developed dynamical parameters on the data series was also needed in order to easily keep these parameters under control, e.g. for monitoring, research or forecasting purposes. The solution which we present is completely based on Open Source software, including Linux operating system, MySql database management system, Apache web server, Zope application server, Scilab math engine, Plone content management framework, Unified Modelling Language. From the user point of view the main advantage is the possibility of browsing through datasets recorded on different volcanoes, with different instruments, with different sampling frequencies, stored in different formats, all via a consistent, user- friendly interface that transparently runs queries to the database, gets the data from the main storage units, generates the graphs and produces dynamically generated web pages to interact with the user. The involvement of third parties for continuing the development in the Open Source philosophy and/or extending the application fields is now sought.

  18. HierarchicalTopics: visually exploring large text collections using topic hierarchies.

    PubMed

    Dou, Wenwen; Yu, Li; Wang, Xiaoyu; Ma, Zhiqiang; Ribarsky, William

    2013-12-01

    Analyzing large textual collections has become increasingly challenging given the size of the data available and the rate that more data is being generated. Topic-based text summarization methods coupled with interactive visualizations have presented promising approaches to address the challenge of analyzing large text corpora. As the text corpora and vocabulary grow larger, more topics need to be generated in order to capture the meaningful latent themes and nuances in the corpora. However, it is difficult for most of current topic-based visualizations to represent large number of topics without being cluttered or illegible. To facilitate the representation and navigation of a large number of topics, we propose a visual analytics system--HierarchicalTopic (HT). HT integrates a computational algorithm, Topic Rose Tree, with an interactive visual interface. The Topic Rose Tree constructs a topic hierarchy based on a list of topics. The interactive visual interface is designed to present the topic content as well as temporal evolution of topics in a hierarchical fashion. User interactions are provided for users to make changes to the topic hierarchy based on their mental model of the topic space. To qualitatively evaluate HT, we present a case study that showcases how HierarchicalTopics aid expert users in making sense of a large number of topics and discovering interesting patterns of topic groups. We have also conducted a user study to quantitatively evaluate the effect of hierarchical topic structure. The study results reveal that the HT leads to faster identification of large number of relevant topics. We have also solicited user feedback during the experiments and incorporated some suggestions into the current version of HierarchicalTopics.

  19. Early warning and response system (EWARS) for dengue outbreaks: Recent advancements towards widespread applications in critical settings.

    PubMed

    Hussain-Alkhateeb, Laith; Kroeger, Axel; Olliaro, Piero; Rocklöv, Joacim; Sewe, Maquins Odhiambo; Tejeda, Gustavo; Benitez, David; Gill, Balvinder; Hakim, S Lokman; Gomes Carvalho, Roberta; Bowman, Leigh; Petzold, Max

    2018-01-01

    Dengue outbreaks are increasing in frequency over space and time, affecting people's health and burdening resource-constrained health systems. The ability to detect early emerging outbreaks is key to mounting an effective response. The early warning and response system (EWARS) is a toolkit that provides countries with early-warning systems for efficient and cost-effective local responses. EWARS uses outbreak and alarm indicators to derive prediction models that can be used prospectively to predict a forthcoming dengue outbreak at district level. We report on the development of the EWARS tool, based on users' recommendations into a convenient, user-friendly and reliable software aided by a user's workbook and its field testing in 30 health districts in Brazil, Malaysia and Mexico. 34 Health officers from the 30 study districts who had used the original EWARS for 7 to 10 months responded to a questionnaire with mainly open-ended questions. Qualitative content analysis showed that participants were generally satisfied with the tool but preferred open-access vs. commercial software. EWARS users also stated that the geographical unit should be the district, while access to meteorological information should be improved. These recommendations were incorporated into the second-generation EWARS-R, using the free R software, combined with recent surveillance data and resulted in higher sensitivities and positive predictive values of alarm signals compared to the first-generation EWARS. Currently the use of satellite data for meteorological information is being tested and a dashboard is being developed to increase user-friendliness of the tool. The inclusion of other Aedes borne viral diseases is under discussion. EWARS is a pragmatic and useful tool for detecting imminent dengue outbreaks to trigger early response activities.

  20. Space Place Prime

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Fitzpatrick, Austin J.; Novati, Alexander; Fisher, Diane K.; Leon, Nancy J.; Netting, Ruth

    2013-01-01

    Space Place Prime is public engagement and education software for use on iPad. It targets a multi-generational audience with news, images, videos, and educational articles from the Space Place Web site and other NASA sources. New content is downloaded daily (or whenever the user accesses the app) via the wireless connection. In addition to the Space Place Web site, several NASA RSS feeds are tapped to provide new content. Content is retained for the previous several days, or some number of editions of each feed. All content is controlled on the server side, so features about the latest news, or changes to any content, can be made without updating the app in the Apple Store. It gathers many popular NASA features into one app. The interface is a boundless, slidable- in-any-direction grid of images, unique for each feature, and iconized as image, video, or article. A tap opens the feature. An alternate list mode presents menus of images, videos, and articles separately. Favorites can be tagged for permanent archive. Face - book, Twitter, and e-mail connections make any feature shareable.

  1. Web Content Management Systems: An Analysis of Forensic Investigatory Challenges.

    PubMed

    Horsman, Graeme

    2018-02-26

    With an increase in the creation and maintenance of personal websites, web content management systems are now frequently utilized. Such systems offer a low cost and simple solution for those seeking to develop an online presence, and subsequently, a platform from which reported defamatory content, abuse, and copyright infringement has been witnessed. This article provides an introductory forensic analysis of the three current most popular web content management systems available, WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla! Test platforms have been created, and their site structures have been examined to provide guidance for forensic practitioners facing investigations of this type. Result's document available metadata for establishing site ownership, user interactions, and stored content following analysis of artifacts including Wordpress's wp_users, and wp_comments tables, Drupal's "watchdog" records, and Joomla!'s _users, and _content tables. Finally, investigatory limitations documenting the difficulties of investigating WCMS usage are noted, and analysis recommendations are offered. © 2018 American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

  2. Sagace: A web-based search engine for biomedical databases in Japan

    PubMed Central

    2012-01-01

    Background In the big data era, biomedical research continues to generate a large amount of data, and the generated information is often stored in a database and made publicly available. Although combining data from multiple databases should accelerate further studies, the current number of life sciences databases is too large to grasp features and contents of each database. Findings We have developed Sagace, a web-based search engine that enables users to retrieve information from a range of biological databases (such as gene expression profiles and proteomics data) and biological resource banks (such as mouse models of disease and cell lines). With Sagace, users can search more than 300 databases in Japan. Sagace offers features tailored to biomedical research, including manually tuned ranking, a faceted navigation to refine search results, and rich snippets constructed with retrieved metadata for each database entry. Conclusions Sagace will be valuable for experts who are involved in biomedical research and drug development in both academia and industry. Sagace is freely available at http://sagace.nibio.go.jp/en/. PMID:23110816

  3. Automatic labeling and characterization of objects using artificial neural networks

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Campbell, William J.; Hill, Scott E.; Cromp, Robert F.

    1989-01-01

    Existing NASA supported scientific data bases are usually developed, managed and populated in a tedious, error prone and self-limiting way in terms of what can be described in a relational Data Base Management System (DBMS). The next generation Earth remote sensing platforms, i.e., Earth Observation System, (EOS), will be capable of generating data at a rate of over 300 Mbs per second from a suite of instruments designed for different applications. What is needed is an innovative approach that creates object-oriented databases that segment, characterize, catalog and are manageable in a domain-specific context and whose contents are available interactively and in near-real-time to the user community. Described here is work in progress that utilizes an artificial neural net approach to characterize satellite imagery of undefined objects into high-level data objects. The characterized data is then dynamically allocated to an object-oriented data base where it can be reviewed and assessed by a user. The definition, development, and evolution of the overall data system model are steps in the creation of an application-driven knowledge-based scientific information system.

  4. Architecture and prototypical implementation of a semantic querying system for big Earth observation image bases

    PubMed Central

    Tiede, Dirk; Baraldi, Andrea; Sudmanns, Martin; Belgiu, Mariana; Lang, Stefan

    2017-01-01

    ABSTRACT Spatiotemporal analytics of multi-source Earth observation (EO) big data is a pre-condition for semantic content-based image retrieval (SCBIR). As a proof of concept, an innovative EO semantic querying (EO-SQ) subsystem was designed and prototypically implemented in series with an EO image understanding (EO-IU) subsystem. The EO-IU subsystem is automatically generating ESA Level 2 products (scene classification map, up to basic land cover units) from optical satellite data. The EO-SQ subsystem comprises a graphical user interface (GUI) and an array database embedded in a client server model. In the array database, all EO images are stored as a space-time data cube together with their Level 2 products generated by the EO-IU subsystem. The GUI allows users to (a) develop a conceptual world model based on a graphically supported query pipeline as a combination of spatial and temporal operators and/or standard algorithms and (b) create, save and share within the client-server architecture complex semantic queries/decision rules, suitable for SCBIR and/or spatiotemporal EO image analytics, consistent with the conceptual world model. PMID:29098143

  5. The utilization of neural nets in populating an object-oriented database

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Campbell, William J.; Hill, Scott E.; Cromp, Robert F.

    1989-01-01

    Existing NASA supported scientific data bases are usually developed, managed and populated in a tedious, error prone and self-limiting way in terms of what can be described in a relational Data Base Management System (DBMS). The next generation Earth remote sensing platforms (i.e., Earth Observation System, (EOS), will be capable of generating data at a rate of over 300 Mbs per second from a suite of instruments designed for different applications. What is needed is an innovative approach that creates object-oriented databases that segment, characterize, catalog and are manageable in a domain-specific context and whose contents are available interactively and in near-real-time to the user community. Described here is work in progress that utilizes an artificial neural net approach to characterize satellite imagery of undefined objects into high-level data objects. The characterized data is then dynamically allocated to an object-oriented data base where it can be reviewed and assessed by a user. The definition, development, and evolution of the overall data system model are steps in the creation of an application-driven knowledge-based scientific information system.

  6. Open Drug Discovery Teams: A Chemistry Mobile App for Collaboration.

    PubMed

    Ekins, Sean; Clark, Alex M; Williams, Antony J

    2012-08-01

    The Open Drug Discovery Teams (ODDT) project provides a mobile app primarily intended as a research topic aggregator of predominantly open science data collected from various sources on the internet. It exists to facilitate interdisciplinary teamwork and to relieve the user from data overload, delivering access to information that is highly relevant and focused on their topic areas of interest. Research topics include areas of chemistry and adjacent molecule-oriented biomedical sciences, with an emphasis on those which are most amenable to open research at present. These include rare and neglected diseases, and precompetitive and public-good initiatives such as green chemistry. The ODDT project uses a free mobile app as user entry point. The app has a magazine-like interface, and server-side infrastructure for hosting chemistry-related data as well as value added services. The project is open to participation from anyone and provides the ability for users to make annotations and assertions, thereby contributing to the collective value of the data to the engaged community. Much of the content is derived from public sources, but the platform is also amenable to commercial data input. The technology could also be readily used in-house by organizations as a research aggregator that could integrate internal and external science and discussion. The infrastructure for the app is currently based upon the Twitter API as a useful proof of concept for a real time source of publicly generated content. This could be extended further by accessing other APIs providing news and data feeds of relevance to a particular area of interest. As the project evolves, social networking features will be developed for organizing participants into teams, with various forms of communication and content management possible.

  7. Open Drug Discovery Teams: A Chemistry Mobile App for Collaboration

    PubMed Central

    Ekins, Sean; Clark, Alex M; Williams, Antony J

    2012-01-01

    Abstract The Open Drug Discovery Teams (ODDT) project provides a mobile app primarily intended as a research topic aggregator of predominantly open science data collected from various sources on the internet. It exists to facilitate interdisciplinary teamwork and to relieve the user from data overload, delivering access to information that is highly relevant and focused on their topic areas of interest. Research topics include areas of chemistry and adjacent molecule-oriented biomedical sciences, with an emphasis on those which are most amenable to open research at present. These include rare and neglected diseases, and precompetitive and public-good initiatives such as green chemistry. The ODDT project uses a free mobile app as user entry point. The app has a magazine-like interface, and server-side infrastructure for hosting chemistry-related data as well as value added services. The project is open to participation from anyone and provides the ability for users to make annotations and assertions, thereby contributing to the collective value of the data to the engaged community. Much of the content is derived from public sources, but the platform is also amenable to commercial data input. The technology could also be readily used in-house by organizations as a research aggregator that could integrate internal and external science and discussion. The infrastructure for the app is currently based upon the Twitter API as a useful proof of concept for a real time source of publicly generated content. This could be extended further by accessing other APIs providing news and data feeds of relevance to a particular area of interest. As the project evolves, social networking features will be developed for organizing participants into teams, with various forms of communication and content management possible. PMID:23198003

  8. Exposure of Children and Adolescents to Alcohol Marketing on Social Media Websites

    PubMed Central

    Winpenny, Eleanor M.; Marteau, Theresa M.; Nolte, Ellen

    2014-01-01

    Aims: In 2011, online marketing became the largest marketing channel in the UK, overtaking television for the first time. This study aimed to describe the exposure of children and young adults to alcohol marketing on social media websites in the UK. Methods: We used commercially available data on the three most used social media websites among young people in the UK, from December 2010 to May 2011. We analysed by age (6–14 years; 15–24 years) and gender the reach (proportion of internet users who used the site in each month) and impressions (number of individual pages viewed on the site in each month) for Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. We further analysed case studies of five alcohol brands to assess the marketer-generated brand content available on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter in February and March 2012. Results: Facebook was the social media site with the highest reach, with an average monthly reach of 89% of males and 91% of females aged 15–24. YouTube had a similar average monthly reach while Twitter had a considerably lower usage in the age groups studied. All five of the alcohol brands studied maintained a Facebook page, Twitter page and YouTube channel, with varying levels of user engagement. Facebook pages could not be accessed by an under-18 user, but in most cases YouTube content and Twitter content could be accessed by those of all ages. Conclusion: The rise in online marketing of alcohol and the high use of social media websites by young people suggests that this is an area requiring further monitoring and regulation. PMID:24293506

  9. SIRSALE: integrated video database management tools

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Brunie, Lionel; Favory, Loic; Gelas, J. P.; Lefevre, Laurent; Mostefaoui, Ahmed; Nait-Abdesselam, F.

    2002-07-01

    Video databases became an active field of research during the last decade. The main objective in such systems is to provide users with capabilities to friendly search, access and playback distributed stored video data in the same way as they do for traditional distributed databases. Hence, such systems need to deal with hard issues : (a) video documents generate huge volumes of data and are time sensitive (streams must be delivered at a specific bitrate), (b) contents of video data are very hard to be automatically extracted and need to be humanly annotated. To cope with these issues, many approaches have been proposed in the literature including data models, query languages, video indexing etc. In this paper, we present SIRSALE : a set of video databases management tools that allow users to manipulate video documents and streams stored in large distributed repositories. All the proposed tools are based on generic models that can be customized for specific applications using ad-hoc adaptation modules. More precisely, SIRSALE allows users to : (a) browse video documents by structures (sequences, scenes, shots) and (b) query the video database content by using a graphical tool, adapted to the nature of the target video documents. This paper also presents an annotating interface which allows archivists to describe the content of video documents. All these tools are coupled to a video player integrating remote VCR functionalities and are based on active network technology. So, we present how dedicated active services allow an optimized video transport for video streams (with Tamanoir active nodes). We then describe experiments of using SIRSALE on an archive of news video and soccer matches. The system has been demonstrated to professionals with a positive feedback. Finally, we discuss open issues and present some perspectives.

  10. Demographic-Based Content Analysis of Web-Based Health-Related Social Media.

    PubMed

    Sadah, Shouq A; Shahbazi, Moloud; Wiley, Matthew T; Hristidis, Vagelis

    2016-06-13

    An increasing number of patients from diverse demographic groups share and search for health-related information on Web-based social media. However, little is known about the content of the posted information with respect to the users' demographics. The aims of this study were to analyze the content of Web-based health-related social media based on users' demographics to identify which health topics are discussed in which social media by which demographic groups and to help guide educational and research activities. We analyze 3 different types of health-related social media: (1) general Web-based social networks Twitter and Google+; (2) drug review websites; and (3) health Web forums, with a total of about 6 million users and 20 million posts. We analyzed the content of these posts based on the demographic group of their authors, in terms of sentiment and emotion, top distinctive terms, and top medical concepts. The results of this study are: (1) Pregnancy is the dominant topic for female users in drug review websites and health Web forums, whereas for male users, it is cardiac problems, HIV, and back pain, but this is not the case for Twitter; (2) younger users (0-17 years) mainly talk about attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression-related drugs, users aged 35-44 years discuss about multiple sclerosis (MS) drugs, and middle-aged users (45-64 years) talk about alcohol and smoking; (3) users from the Northeast United States talk about physical disorders, whereas users from the West United States talk about mental disorders and addictive behaviors; (4) Users with higher writing level express less anger in their posts. We studied the popular topics and the sentiment based on users' demographics in Web-based health-related social media. Our results provide valuable information, which can help create targeted and effective educational campaigns and guide experts to reach the right users on Web-based social chatter.

  11. Analysing the connectivity and communication of suicidal users on twitter

    PubMed Central

    Colombo, Gualtiero B.; Burnap, Pete; Hodorog, Andrei; Scourfield, Jonathan

    2016-01-01

    In this paper we aim to understand the connectivity and communication characteristics of Twitter users who post content subsequently classified by human annotators as containing possible suicidal intent or thinking, commonly referred to as suicidal ideation. We achieve this understanding by analysing the characteristics of their social networks. Starting from a set of human annotated Tweets we retrieved the authors’ followers and friends lists, and identified users who retweeted the suicidal content. We subsequently built the social network graphs. Our results show a high degree of reciprocal connectivity between the authors of suicidal content when compared to other studies of Twitter users, suggesting a tightly-coupled virtual community. In addition, an analysis of the retweet graph has identified bridge nodes and hub nodes connecting users posting suicidal ideation with users who were not, thus suggesting a potential for information cascade and risk of a possible contagion effect. This is particularly emphasised by considering the combined graph merging friendship and retweeting links. PMID:26973360

  12. Predictors of Facebook User Engagement With Health-Related Content for Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex With Men: Content Analysis

    PubMed Central

    Lachowsky, Nathan; Hawkins, Blake W; Jollimore, Jody; Baharuddin, Fahmy; Hogg, Robert S

    2018-01-01

    Background Social media is used by community-based organizations (CBOs) to promote the well-being of gay and bisexual men (GBM). However, few studies have quantified which factors facilitate the diffusion of health content tailored for sexual minorities. Objective The aim of this study was to identify post characteristics that can be leveraged to optimize the health promotion efforts of CBOs on Facebook. Methods The Facebook application programming interface was used to collect 5 years’ of posts shared across 10 Facebook pages administered by Vancouver-based CBOs promoting GBM health. Network analysis assessed basic indicators of network structure. Content analyses were conducted using informatics-based approaches. Hierarchical negative binomial regression of post engagement data was used to identify meaningful covariates of engagement. Results In total, 14,071 posts were shared and 21,537 users engaged with these posts. Most users (n=13,315) engaged only once. There was moderate correlation between the number of posts and the number of CBOs users engaged with (r=.53, P<.001). Higher user engagement was positively associated with positive sentiment, sharing multimedia, and posting about pre-exposure prophylaxis, stigma, and mental health. Engagement was negatively associated with asking questions, posting about dating, and sharing posts during or after work (versus before). Conclusions Results highlight the existence of a core group of Facebook users who facilitate diffusion. Factors associated with greater user engagement present CBOs with a number of strategies for improving the diffusion of health content. PMID:29625953

  13. Examining the use of evidence-based and social media supported tools in freely accessible physical activity intervention websites.

    PubMed

    Vandelanotte, Corneel; Kirwan, Morwenna; Rebar, Amanda; Alley, Stephanie; Short, Camille; Fallon, Luke; Buzza, Gavin; Schoeppe, Stephanie; Maher, Carol; Duncan, Mitch J

    2014-08-17

    It has been shown that physical activity is more likely to increase if web-based interventions apply evidence-based components (e.g. self-monitoring) and incorporate interactive social media applications (e.g. social networking), but it is unclear to what extent these are being utilized in the publicly available web-based physical activity interventions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether freely accessible websites delivering physical activity interventions use evidence-based behavior change techniques and provide social media applications. In 2013, a systematic search strategy examined 750 websites. Data was extracted on a wide range of variables (e.g. self-monitoring, goal setting, and social media applications). To evaluate website quality a new tool, comprising three sub-scores (Behavioral Components, Interactivity and User Generated Content), was developed to assess implementation of behavior change techniques and social media applications. An overall website quality scored was obtained by summing the three sub-scores. Forty-six publicly available websites were included in the study. The use of self-monitoring (54.3%), goal setting (41.3%) and provision of feedback (46%) was relatively low given the amount of evidence supporting these features. Whereas the presence of features allowing users to generate content (73.9%), and social media components (Facebook (65.2%), Twitter (47.8%), YouTube (48.7%), smartphone applications (34.8%)) was relatively high considering their innovative and untested nature. Nearly all websites applied some behavioral and social media applications. The average Behavioral Components score was 3.45 (±2.53) out of 10. The average Interactivity score was 3.57 (±2.16) out of 10. The average User Generated Content Score was 4.02 (±2.77) out of 10. The average overall website quality score was 11.04 (±6.92) out of 30. Four websites (8.7%) were classified as high quality, 12 websites (26.1%) were classified as moderate quality, and 30 websites (65.2%) were classified as low quality. Despite large developments in Internet technology and growth in the knowledge of how to develop more effective web-based interventions, overall website quality was low and the majority of freely available physical activity websites lack the components associated with behavior change. However, the results show that website quality can be improved by taking a number of simple steps, and the presence of social media applications in most websites is encouraging.

  14. Interactive Design and the Mythical "Intuitive User Interface."

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bielenberg, Daniel R.

    1993-01-01

    Discusses the design of graphical user interfaces. Highlights include conceptual models, including user needs, content, and what multimedia can do; and tools for building the users' mental models, including metaphor, natural mappings, prompts, feedback, and user testing. (LRW)

  15. Using Maximum Entropy to Find Patterns in Genomes

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Sophia; Hockenberry, Adam; Lancichinetti, Andrea; Jewett, Michael; Amaral, Luis

    The existence of over- and under-represented sequence motifs in genomes provides evidence of selective evolutionary pressures on biological mechanisms such as transcription, translation, ligand-substrate binding, and host immunity. To accurately identify motifs and other genome-scale patterns of interest, it is essential to be able to generate accurate null models that are appropriate for the sequences under study. There are currently no tools available that allow users to create random coding sequences with specified amino acid composition and GC content. Using the principle of maximum entropy, we developed a method that generates unbiased random sequences with pre-specified amino acid and GC content. Our method is the simplest way to obtain maximally unbiased random sequences that are subject to GC usage and primary amino acid sequence constraints. This approach can also be easily be expanded to create unbiased random sequences that incorporate more complicated constraints such as individual nucleotide usage or even di-nucleotide frequencies. The ability to generate correctly specified null models will allow researchers to accurately identify sequence motifs which will lead to a better understanding of biological processes. National Institute of General Medical Science, Northwestern University Presidential Fellowship, National Science Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award.

  16. Automatic summarization of soccer highlights using audio-visual descriptors.

    PubMed

    Raventós, A; Quijada, R; Torres, Luis; Tarrés, Francesc

    2015-01-01

    Automatic summarization generation of sports video content has been object of great interest for many years. Although semantic descriptions techniques have been proposed, many of the approaches still rely on low-level video descriptors that render quite limited results due to the complexity of the problem and to the low capability of the descriptors to represent semantic content. In this paper, a new approach for automatic highlights summarization generation of soccer videos using audio-visual descriptors is presented. The approach is based on the segmentation of the video sequence into shots that will be further analyzed to determine its relevance and interest. Of special interest in the approach is the use of the audio information that provides additional robustness to the overall performance of the summarization system. For every video shot a set of low and mid level audio-visual descriptors are computed and lately adequately combined in order to obtain different relevance measures based on empirical knowledge rules. The final summary is generated by selecting those shots with highest interest according to the specifications of the user and the results of relevance measures. A variety of results are presented with real soccer video sequences that prove the validity of the approach.

  17. The Effect of Screen Size on Mobile Phone User Comprehension of Health Information and Application Structure: An Experimental Approach.

    PubMed

    Al Ghamdi, Ebtisam; Yunus, Faisal; Da'ar, Omar; El-Metwally, Ashraf; Khalifa, Mohamed; Aldossari, Bakheet; Househ, Mowafa

    2016-01-01

    This research analyzes the impact of mobile phone screen size on user comprehension of health information and application structure. Applying experimental approach, we asked randomly selected users to read content and conduct tasks on a commonly used diabetes mobile application using three different mobile phone screen sizes. We timed and tracked a number of parameters, including correctness, effectiveness of completing tasks, content ease of reading, clarity of information organization, and comprehension. The impact of screen size on user comprehension/retention, clarity of information organization, and reading time were mixed. It is assumed on first glance that mobile screen size would affect all qualities of information reading and comprehension, including clarity of displayed information organization, reading time and user comprehension/retention of displayed information, but actually the screen size, in this experimental research, did not have significant impact on user comprehension/retention of the content or on understanding the application structure. However, it did have significant impact on clarity of information organization and reading time. Participants with larger screen size took shorter time reading the content with a significant difference in the ease of reading. While there was no significant difference in the comprehension of information or the application structures, there were a higher task completion rate and a lower number of errors with the bigger screen size. Screen size does not directly affect user comprehension of health information. However, it does affect clarity of information organization, reading time and user's ability to recall information.

  18. Annotation Graphs: A Graph-Based Visualization for Meta-Analysis of Data Based on User-Authored Annotations.

    PubMed

    Zhao, Jian; Glueck, Michael; Breslav, Simon; Chevalier, Fanny; Khan, Azam

    2017-01-01

    User-authored annotations of data can support analysts in the activity of hypothesis generation and sensemaking, where it is not only critical to document key observations, but also to communicate insights between analysts. We present annotation graphs, a dynamic graph visualization that enables meta-analysis of data based on user-authored annotations. The annotation graph topology encodes annotation semantics, which describe the content of and relations between data selections, comments, and tags. We present a mixed-initiative approach to graph layout that integrates an analyst's manual manipulations with an automatic method based on similarity inferred from the annotation semantics. Various visual graph layout styles reveal different perspectives on the annotation semantics. Annotation graphs are implemented within C8, a system that supports authoring annotations during exploratory analysis of a dataset. We apply principles of Exploratory Sequential Data Analysis (ESDA) in designing C8, and further link these to an existing task typology in the visualization literature. We develop and evaluate the system through an iterative user-centered design process with three experts, situated in the domain of analyzing HCI experiment data. The results suggest that annotation graphs are effective as a method of visually extending user-authored annotations to data meta-analysis for discovery and organization of ideas.

  19. Wiki use in mental health practice: recognizing potential use of collaborative technology.

    PubMed

    Bastida, Richard; McGrath, Ian; Maude, Phil

    2010-04-01

    Web 2.0, the second-generation of the World Wide Web, differs to earlier versions of Web development and design in that it facilitates more user-friendly, interactive information sharing and mechanisms for greater collaboration between users. Examples of Web 2.0 include Web-based communities, hosted services, social networking sites, video sharing sites, blogs, mashups, and wikis. Users are able to interact with others across the world or to add to or change website content. This paper examines examples of wiki use in the Australian mental health sector. A wiki can be described as an online collaborative and interactive database that can be easily edited by users. They are accessed via a standard Web browser which has an interface similar to traditional Web pages, thus do not require special application or software for the user. Although there is a paucity of literature describing wiki use in mental health, other industries have developed uses, including a repository of knowledge, a platform for collaborative writing, a project management tool, and an alternative to traditional Web pages or Intranets. This paper discusses the application of wikis in other industries and offers suggestions by way of examples of how this technology could be used in the mental health sector.

  20. Impact of heterogeneity and socioeconomic factors on individual behavior in decentralized sharing ecosystems

    PubMed Central

    Gavaldà-Miralles, Arnau; Choffnes, David R.; Otto, John S.; Sánchez, Mario A.; Bustamante, Fabián E.; Amaral, Luís A. N.; Duch, Jordi; Guimerà, Roger

    2014-01-01

    Tens of millions of individuals around the world use decentralized content distribution systems, a fact of growing social, economic, and technological importance. These sharing systems are poorly understood because, unlike in other technosocial systems, it is difficult to gather large-scale data about user behavior. Here, we investigate user activity patterns and the socioeconomic factors that could explain the behavior. Our analysis reveals that (i) the ecosystem is heterogeneous at several levels: content types are heterogeneous, users specialize in a few content types, and countries are heterogeneous in user profiles; and (ii) there is a strong correlation between socioeconomic indicators of a country and users behavior. Our findings open a research area on the dynamics of decentralized sharing ecosystems and the socioeconomic factors affecting them, and may have implications for the design of algorithms and for policymaking. PMID:25288755

  1. Generation of large scale urban environments to support advanced sensor and seeker simulation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Giuliani, Joseph; Hershey, Daniel; McKeown, David, Jr.; Willis, Carla; Van, Tan

    2009-05-01

    One of the key aspects for the design of a next generation weapon system is the need to operate in cluttered and complex urban environments. Simulation systems rely on accurate representation of these environments and require automated software tools to construct the underlying 3D geometry and associated spectral and material properties that are then formatted for various objective seeker simulation systems. Under an Air Force Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contract, we have developed an automated process to generate 3D urban environments with user defined properties. These environments can be composed from a wide variety of source materials, including vector source data, pre-existing 3D models, and digital elevation models, and rapidly organized into a geo-specific visual simulation database. This intermediate representation can be easily inspected in the visible spectrum for content and organization and interactively queried for accuracy. Once the database contains the required contents, it can then be exported into specific synthetic scene generation runtime formats, preserving the relationship between geometry and material properties. To date an exporter for the Irma simulation system developed and maintained by AFRL/Eglin has been created and a second exporter to Real Time Composite Hardbody and Missile Plume (CHAMP) simulation system for real-time use is currently being developed. This process supports significantly more complex target environments than previous approaches to database generation. In this paper we describe the capabilities for content creation for advanced seeker processing algorithms simulation and sensor stimulation, including the overall database compilation process and sample databases produced and exported for the Irma runtime system. We also discuss the addition of object dynamics and viewer dynamics within the visual simulation into the Irma runtime environment.

  2. Development of a PC-based diabetes simulator in collaboration with teenagers with type 1 diabetes.

    PubMed

    Nordfeldt, S; Hanberger, L; Malm, F; Ludvigsson, J

    2007-02-01

    The main aim of this study was to develop and test in a pilot study a PC-based interactive diabetes simulator prototype as a part of future Internet-based support systems for young teenagers and their families. A second aim was to gain experience in user-centered design (UCD) methods applied to such subjects. Using UCD methods, a computer scientist participated in iterative user group sessions involving teenagers with Type 1 diabetes 13-17 years old and parents. Input was transformed into a requirements specification by the computer scientist and advisors. This was followed by gradual prototype development based on a previously developed mathematical core. Individual test sessions were followed by a pilot study with five subjects testing a prototype. The process was evaluated by registration of flow and content of input and opinions from expert advisors. It was initially difficult to motivate teenagers to participate. User group discussion topics ranged from concrete to more academic matters. The issue of a simulator created active discussions among parents and teenagers. A large amount of input was generated from discussions among the teenagers. Individual test runs generated useful input. A pilot study suggested that the gradually elaborated software was functional. A PC-based diabetes simulator may create substantial interest among teenagers and parents, and the prototype seems worthy of further development and studies. UCD methods may generate significant input for computer support system design work and contribute to a functional design. Teenager involvement in design work may require time, patience, and flexibility.

  3. The QoE implications of ultra-high definition video adaptation strategies

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nightingale, James; Awobuluyi, Olatunde; Wang, Qi; Alcaraz-Calero, Jose M.; Grecos, Christos

    2016-04-01

    As the capabilities of high-end consumer devices increase, streaming and playback of Ultra-High Definition (UHD) is set to become commonplace. The move to these new, higher resolution, video services is one of the main factors contributing to the predicted continuation of growth in video related traffic in the Internet. This massive increases in bandwidth requirement, even when mitigated by the use of new video compression standards such as H.265, will place an ever-increasing burden on network service providers. This will be especially true in mobile environments where users have come to expect ubiquitous access to content. Consequently, delivering UHD and Full UHD (FUHD) video content is one of the key drivers for future Fifth Generation (5G) mobile networks. One often voiced, but as yet unanswered question, is whether users of mobile devices with modest screen sizes (e.g. smartphones or smaller tablet) will actually benefit from consuming the much higher bandwidth required to watch online UHD video, in terms of an improved user experience. In this paper, we use scalable H.265 encoded video streams to conduct a subjective evaluation of the impact on a user's perception of video quality across a comprehensive range of adaptation strategies, covering each of the three adaptation domains, for UHD and FUHD video. The results of our subjective study provide insightful and useful indications of which methods of adapting UHD and FUHD streams have the least impact on user's perceived QoE. In particular, it was observed that, in over 70% of cases, users were unable to distinguish between full HD (1080p) and UHD (4K) videos when they were unaware of which version was being shown to them. Our results from this evaluation can be used to provide adaptation rule sets that will facilitate fast, QoE aware in-network adaptation of video streams in support of realtime adaptation objectives. Undoubtedly they will also promote discussion around how network service providers manage their relationships with end users and how service level agreements might be shaped to account for what may be viewed as `unproductive' use of bandwidth to deliver very marginal or imperceptible improvements in viewing experience.

  4. Feeling Expression Using Avatars and Its Consistency for Subjective Annotation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ito, Fuyuko; Sasaki, Yasunari; Hiroyasu, Tomoyuki; Miki, Mitsunori

    Consumer Generated Media(CGM) is growing rapidly and the amount of content is increasing. However, it is often difficult for users to extract important contents and the existence of contents recording their experiences can easily be forgotten. As there are no methods or systems to indicate the subjective value of the contents or ways to reuse them, subjective annotation appending subjectivity, such as feelings and intentions, to contents is needed. Representation of subjectivity depends on not only verbal expression, but also nonverbal expression. Linguistically expressed annotation, typified by collaborative tagging in social bookmarking systems, has come into widespread use, but there is no system of nonverbally expressed annotation on the web. We propose the utilization of controllable avatars as a means of nonverbal expression of subjectivity, and confirmed the consistency of feelings elicited by avatars over time for an individual and in a group. In addition, we compared the expressiveness and ease of subjective annotation between collaborative tagging and controllable avatars. The result indicates that the feelings evoked by avatars are consistent in both cases, and using controllable avatars is easier than collaborative tagging for representing feelings elicited by contents that do not express meaning, such as photos.

  5. An intelligent content discovery technique for health portal content management.

    PubMed

    De Silva, Daswin; Burstein, Frada

    2014-04-23

    Continuous content management of health information portals is a feature vital for its sustainability and widespread acceptance. Knowledge and experience of a domain expert is essential for content management in the health domain. The rate of generation of online health resources is exponential and thereby manual examination for relevance to a specific topic and audience is a formidable challenge for domain experts. Intelligent content discovery for effective content management is a less researched topic. An existing expert-endorsed content repository can provide the necessary leverage to automatically identify relevant resources and evaluate qualitative metrics. This paper reports on the design research towards an intelligent technique for automated content discovery and ranking for health information portals. The proposed technique aims to improve efficiency of the current mostly manual process of portal content management by utilising an existing expert-endorsed content repository as a supporting base and a benchmark to evaluate the suitability of new content A model for content management was established based on a field study of potential users. The proposed technique is integral to this content management model and executes in several phases (ie, query construction, content search, text analytics and fuzzy multi-criteria ranking). The construction of multi-dimensional search queries with input from Wordnet, the use of multi-word and single-word terms as representative semantics for text analytics and the use of fuzzy multi-criteria ranking for subjective evaluation of quality metrics are original contributions reported in this paper. The feasibility of the proposed technique was examined with experiments conducted on an actual health information portal, the BCKOnline portal. Both intermediary and final results generated by the technique are presented in the paper and these help to establish benefits of the technique and its contribution towards effective content management. The prevalence of large numbers of online health resources is a key obstacle for domain experts involved in content management of health information portals and websites. The proposed technique has proven successful at search and identification of resources and the measurement of their relevance. It can be used to support the domain expert in content management and thereby ensure the health portal is up-to-date and current.

  6. Annotating Atomic Components of Papers in Digital Libraries: The Semantic and Social Web Heading towards a Living Document Supporting eSciences

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    García Castro, Alexander; García-Castro, Leyla Jael; Labarga, Alberto; Giraldo, Olga; Montaña, César; O'Neil, Kieran; Bateman, John A.

    Rather than a document that is being constantly re-written as in the wiki approach, the Living Document (LD) is one that acts as a document router, operating by means of structured and organized social tagging and existing ontologies. It offers an environment where users can manage papers and related information, share their knowledge with their peers and discover hidden associations among the shared knowledge. The LD builds upon both the Semantic Web, which values the integration of well-structured data, and the Social Web, which aims to facilitate interaction amongst people by means of user-generated content. In this vein, the LD is similar to a social networking system, with users as central nodes in the network, with the difference that interaction is focused on papers rather than people. Papers, with their ability to represent research interests, expertise, affiliations, and links to web based tools and databanks, represent a central axis for interaction amongst users. To begin to show the potential of this vision, we have implemented a novel web prototype that enables researchers to accomplish three activities central to the Semantic Web vision: organizing, sharing and discovering. Availability: http://www.scientifik.info/

  7. User testing and stakeholder feedback contributed to the development of understandable and useful Summary of Findings tables for Cochrane reviews.

    PubMed

    Rosenbaum, Sarah E; Glenton, Claire; Nylund, Hilde Kari; Oxman, Andrew D

    2010-06-01

    To develop a Summary of Findings (SoF) table for use in Cochrane reviews that is understandable and useful for health professionals, acceptable to Cochrane Collaboration stakeholders, and feasible to implement. We gathered stakeholder feedback on the format and content of an SoF table from an advisory group of more than 50 participants and their constituencies through e-mail consultations. We conducted user tests using a think-aloud protocol method, collecting feedback from 21 health professionals and researchers in Norway and the UK. We analyzed the feedback, defined problem areas, and generated new solutions in brainstorming workshops. Stakeholders were concerned about precision in the data representation and about production feasibility. User testing revealed unexpected comprehension problems, mainly confusion about what the different numbers referred to (class reference). Resolving the tension between achieving table precision and table simplicity became the main focus of the working group. User testing led to a table more useful and understandable for clinical audiences. We arrived at an SoF table that was acceptable to the stakeholders and in principle feasible to implement technically. Some challenges remain, including presenting continuous outcomes and technical/editorial implementation.

  8. Understanding urban green space as a health resource: a qualitative comparison of visit motivation and derived effects among park users in Sheffield, UK.

    PubMed

    Irvine, Katherine N; Warber, Sara L; Devine-Wright, Patrick; Gaston, Kevin J

    2013-01-22

    With increasing interest in the use of urban green space to promote human health, there is a need to understand the extent to which park users conceptualize these places as a resource for health and well-being. This study sought to examine park users' own reasons for and benefits from green space usage and compare these with concepts and constructs in existing person-environment-health theories and models of health. Conducted in 13 public green spaces in Sheffield, UK, we undertook a qualitative content analysis of 312 park users' responses to open-ended interview questions and identified a breadth, depth and salience of visit motivators and derived effects. Findings highlight a discrepancy between reasons for visiting and derived effects from the use of urban green space. Motivations emphasized walking, green space qualities, and children. Derived effects highlighted relaxation, positive emotions within the self and towards the place, and spiritual well-being. We generate a taxonomy of motivations and derived effects that could facilitate operationalization within empirical research and articulate a conceptual framework linking motivators to outcomes for investigating green space as a resource for human health and well-being.

  9. Representation-based user interfaces for the audiovisual library of the year 2000

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Aigrain, Philippe; Joly, Philippe; Lepain, Philippe; Longueville, Veronique

    1995-03-01

    The audiovisual library of the future will be based on computerized access to digitized documents. In this communication, we address the user interface issues which will arise from this new situation. One cannot simply transfer a user interface designed for the piece by piece production of some audiovisual presentation and make it a tool for accessing full-length movies in an electronic library. One cannot take a digital sound editing tool and propose it as a means to listen to a musical recording. In our opinion, when computers are used as mediations to existing contents, document representation-based user interfaces are needed. With such user interfaces, a structured visual representation of the document contents is presented to the user, who can then manipulate it to control perception and analysis of these contents. In order to build such manipulable visual representations of audiovisual documents, one needs to automatically extract structural information from the documents contents. In this communication, we describe possible visual interfaces for various temporal media, and we propose methods for the economically feasible large scale processing of documents. The work presented is sponsored by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France: it is part of the program aiming at developing for image and sound documents an experimental counterpart to the digitized text reading workstation of this library.

  10. Mobile applications for participation at the shopping mall: content analysis and usability for persons with physical disabilities and communication or cognitive limitations.

    PubMed

    Auger, Claudine; Leduc, Emilie; Labbé, Delphine; Guay, Cassioppée; Fillion, Brigitte; Bottari, Carolina; Swaine, Bonnie

    2014-12-01

    The aim of this exploratory study was to determine the important features in content and usability of existing mobile applications evaluating environmental barriers and facilitators (EBF) to participation for persons with physical disabilities presenting mild communication or cognitive limitations. A rigorous process based on a user-centered design approach led to the identification of two relevant mobile applications to evaluate the EBF. An accessibility expert, the research team as well as five users then tested the mobile applications in a shopping mall. A thematic content analysis of the research team's and users' comments established 10 categories of key features that adequately respond to the needs of the clientele targeted in this study. In terms of content, granularity and contextualization of the information provided were considered important. With respect to usability, relevant features were place finding, rating system, presentation of results, compatibility, user-friendliness, aesthetics, credibility of the information as well as connectivity/interactiveness. The research team and the users agreed on some aspects such as aesthetics, but had different perspectives on features such as the rating system or the connectivity/interactiveness of the application. The users proposed new features suggesting that the existing mobile applications did not correspond to all their needs.

  11. Generating Personalized Web Search Using Semantic Context

    PubMed Central

    Xu, Zheng; Chen, Hai-Yan; Yu, Jie

    2015-01-01

    The “one size fits the all” criticism of search engines is that when queries are submitted, the same results are returned to different users. In order to solve this problem, personalized search is proposed, since it can provide different search results based upon the preferences of users. However, existing methods concentrate more on the long-term and independent user profile, and thus reduce the effectiveness of personalized search. In this paper, the method captures the user context to provide accurate preferences of users for effectively personalized search. First, the short-term query context is generated to identify related concepts of the query. Second, the user context is generated based on the click through data of users. Finally, a forgetting factor is introduced to merge the independent user context in a user session, which maintains the evolution of user preferences. Experimental results fully confirm that our approach can successfully represent user context according to individual user information needs. PMID:26000335

  12. Unidata's Vision for Providing Comprehensive and End-to-end Data Services

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ramamurthy, M. K.

    2009-05-01

    This paper presents Unidata's vision for providing comprehensive, well-integrated, and end-to-end data services for the geosciences. These include an array of functions for collecting, finding, and accessing data; data management tools for generating, cataloging, and exchanging metadata; and submitting or publishing, sharing, analyzing, visualizing, and integrating data. When this vision is realized, users no matter where they are or how they are connected to the Internetwill be able to find and access a plethora of geosciences data and use Unidata-provided tools and services both productively and creatively in their research and education. What that vision means for the Unidata community is elucidated by drawing a simple analogy. Most of users are familiar with Amazon and eBay e-commerce sites and content sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr. On the eBay marketplace, people can sell practically anything at any time and buyers can share their experience of purchasing a product or the reputation of a seller. Likewise, at Amazon, thousands of merchants sell their goods and millions of customers not only buy those goods, but provide a review or opinion of the products they buy and share their experiences as purchasers. Similarly, YouTube and Flickr are sites tailored to video- and photo-sharing, respectively, where users can upload their own content and share it with millions of other users, including family and friends. What all these sites, together with social-networking applications like MySpace and Facebook, have enabled is a sense of a virtual community in which users can search and browse products or content, comment and rate those products from anywhere, at any time, and via any Internet- enabled device like an iPhone, laptop, or a desktop computer. In essence, these enterprises have fundamentally altered people's buying modes and behavior toward purchases. Unidata believes that similar approaches, appropriately tailored to meet the needs of the scientific community, can be adopted to provide and share geosciences data and actively collaborate in the future. For example, future case-study data access systems, in addition to providing datasets and tools, will provide services that allow users to provide commentaries on a weather event, say a hurricane, as well as provide feedback on the quality, usefulness, and interpretation of the datasets through integrated blogs, forums, and Wikis, along with uploading and sharing products they derive, ancillary materials that users might have gathered (such as photos and videos from the storm), and publications and curricular materials they develop, all through a single data portal. In essence, such case study collections will be "living" or dynamic, allowing users to be also contributors as they add value to and grow existing case study collections.

  13. MEMS-based microprojection system with a 1.5cc optical engine

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kilcher, Lucio; Abelé, Nicolas

    2012-03-01

    Lemoptix develops next-generation of Micro-Opto-Electromechanical Systems (MOEMS)-based laser scanning and microprojection technologies and products for professional and industrial applications. Lemoptix LSCAN laser scanning micromirrors are designed to be integrated by OEM (original equipment manufacturer) customers into a number of applications such as printers and industrial sensors, enhancing performances and enabling the development of smaller, higher resolution and lower cost products. Lemoptix MVIEW, world's smallest laser microprojection systems are ideal for integration by OEMs and ODMs (original design manufacturers) into various demanding applications such as headup displays in cars or mobile devices. Embedded MVIEW modules will enable the projection of content and information directly from the device on any nearby surface, enabling users to conveniently view and share information and content without the typical limitations of physical displays.

  14. Subtitle Synchronization across Multiple Screens and Devices

    PubMed Central

    Rodriguez-Alsina, Aitor; Talavera, Guillermo; Orero, Pilar; Carrabina, Jordi

    2012-01-01

    Ambient Intelligence is a new paradigm in which environments are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. This is having an increasing importance in multimedia applications, which frequently rely on sensors to provide useful information to the user. In this context, multimedia applications must adapt and personalize both content and interfaces in order to reach acceptable levels of context-specific quality of service for the user, and enable the content to be available anywhere and at any time. The next step is to make content available to everybody in order to overcome the existing access barriers to content for users with specific needs, or else to adapt to different platforms, hence making content fully usable and accessible. Appropriate access to video content, for instance, is not always possible due to the technical limitations of traditional video packaging, transmission and presentation. This restricts the flexibility of subtitles and audio-descriptions to be adapted to different devices, contexts and users. New Web standards built around HTML5 enable more featured applications with better adaptation and personalization facilities, and thus would seem more suitable for accessible AmI environments. This work presents a video subtitling system that enables the customization, adaptation and synchronization of subtitles across different devices and multiple screens. The benefits of HTML5 applications for building the solution are analyzed along with their current platform support. Moreover, examples of the use of the application in three different cases are presented. Finally, the user experience of the solution is evaluated. PMID:23012513

  15. Subtitle synchronization across multiple screens and devices.

    PubMed

    Rodriguez-Alsina, Aitor; Talavera, Guillermo; Orero, Pilar; Carrabina, Jordi

    2012-01-01

    Ambient Intelligence is a new paradigm in which environments are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. This is having an increasing importance in multimedia applications, which frequently rely on sensors to provide useful information to the user. In this context, multimedia applications must adapt and personalize both content and interfaces in order to reach acceptable levels of context-specific quality of service for the user, and enable the content to be available anywhere and at any time. The next step is to make content available to everybody in order to overcome the existing access barriers to content for users with specific needs, or else to adapt to different platforms, hence making content fully usable and accessible. Appropriate access to video content, for instance, is not always possible due to the technical limitations of traditional video packaging, transmission and presentation. This restricts the flexibility of subtitles and audio-descriptions to be adapted to different devices, contexts and users. New Web standards built around HTML5 enable more featured applications with better adaptation and personalization facilities, and thus would seem more suitable for accessible AmI environments. This work presents a video subtitling system that enables the customization, adaptation and synchronization of subtitles across different devices and multiple screens. The benefits of HTML5 applications for building the solution are analyzed along with their current platform support. Moreover, examples of the use of the application in three different cases are presented. Finally, the user experience of the solution is evaluated.

  16. Predictors of Facebook User Engagement With Health-Related Content for Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex With Men: Content Analysis.

    PubMed

    Card, Kiffer George; Lachowsky, Nathan; Hawkins, Blake W; Jollimore, Jody; Baharuddin, Fahmy; Hogg, Robert S

    2018-04-06

    Social media is used by community-based organizations (CBOs) to promote the well-being of gay and bisexual men (GBM). However, few studies have quantified which factors facilitate the diffusion of health content tailored for sexual minorities. The aim of this study was to identify post characteristics that can be leveraged to optimize the health promotion efforts of CBOs on Facebook. The Facebook application programming interface was used to collect 5 years' of posts shared across 10 Facebook pages administered by Vancouver-based CBOs promoting GBM health. Network analysis assessed basic indicators of network structure. Content analyses were conducted using informatics-based approaches. Hierarchical negative binomial regression of post engagement data was used to identify meaningful covariates of engagement. In total, 14,071 posts were shared and 21,537 users engaged with these posts. Most users (n=13,315) engaged only once. There was moderate correlation between the number of posts and the number of CBOs users engaged with (r=.53, P<.001). Higher user engagement was positively associated with positive sentiment, sharing multimedia, and posting about pre-exposure prophylaxis, stigma, and mental health. Engagement was negatively associated with asking questions, posting about dating, and sharing posts during or after work (versus before). Results highlight the existence of a core group of Facebook users who facilitate diffusion. Factors associated with greater user engagement present CBOs with a number of strategies for improving the diffusion of health content. ©Kiffer George Card, Nathan Lachowsky, Blake W Hawkins, Jody Jollimore, Fahmy Baharuddin, Robert S Hogg. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (http://publichealth.jmir.org), 06.04.2018.

  17. The experience of living with stroke and using technology: opportunities to engage and co-design with end users.

    PubMed

    Nasr, Nasrin; Leon, Beatriz; Mountain, Gail; Nijenhuis, Sharon M; Prange, Gerdienke; Sale, Patrizio; Amirabdollahian, Farshid

    2016-11-01

    We drew on an interdisciplinary research design to examine stroke survivors' experiences of living with stroke and with technology in order to provide technology developers with insight into values, thoughts and feelings of the potential users of a to-be-designed robotic technology for home-based rehabilitation of the hand and wrist. Ten stroke survivors and their family carers were purposefully selected. On the first home visit, they were introduced to cultural probe. On the second visit, the content of the probe packs were used as prompt to conduct one-to-one interviews with them. The data generated was analysed using thematic analysis. A third home visit was conducted to evaluate the early prototype. User requirements were categorised into their network of relationships, their attitude towards technology, their skills, their goals and motivations. The user requirements were used to envision the requirements of the system including providing feedback on performance, motivational aspects and usability of the system. Participants' views on the system requirements were obtained during a participatory evaluation. This study showed that prior to the development of technology, it is important to engage with potential users to identify user requirements and subsequently envision system requirements based on users' views. Implications for Rehabilitation An understanding of how stroke survivors make sense of their experiences of living with stroke is needed to design home-based rehabilitation technologies. Linking stroke survivors' goals, motivations, behaviour, feelings and attitude to user requirements prior to technology development has a significant impact on improving the design.

  18. iHOPerator: user-scripting a personalized bioinformatics Web, starting with the iHOP website

    PubMed Central

    Good, Benjamin M; Kawas, Edward A; Kuo, Byron Yu-Lin; Wilkinson, Mark D

    2006-01-01

    Background User-scripts are programs stored in Web browsers that can manipulate the content of websites prior to display in the browser. They provide a novel mechanism by which users can conveniently gain increased control over the content and the display of the information presented to them on the Web. As the Web is the primary medium by which scientists retrieve biological information, any improvements in the mechanisms that govern the utility or accessibility of this information may have profound effects. GreaseMonkey is a Mozilla Firefox extension that facilitates the development and deployment of user-scripts for the Firefox web-browser. We utilize this to enhance the content and the presentation of the iHOP (information Hyperlinked Over Proteins) website. Results The iHOPerator is a GreaseMonkey user-script that augments the gene-centred pages on iHOP by providing a compact, configurable visualization of the defining information for each gene and by enabling additional data, such as biochemical pathway diagrams, to be collected automatically from third party resources and displayed in the same browsing context. Conclusion This open-source script provides an extension to the iHOP website, demonstrating how user-scripts can personalize and enhance the Web browsing experience in a relevant biological setting. The novel, user-driven controls over the content and the display of Web resources made possible by user-scripts, such as the iHOPerator, herald the beginning of a transition from a resource-centric to a user-centric Web experience. We believe that this transition is a necessary step in the development of Web technology that will eventually result in profound improvements in the way life scientists interact with information. PMID:17173692

  19. Content-based Music Search and Recommendation System

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Takegawa, Kazuki; Hijikata, Yoshinori; Nishida, Shogo

    Recently, the turn volume of music data on the Internet has increased rapidly. This has increased the user's cost to find music data suiting their preference from such a large data set. We propose a content-based music search and recommendation system. This system has an interface for searching and finding music data and an interface for editing a user profile which is necessary for music recommendation. By exploiting the visualization of the feature space of music and the visualization of the user profile, the user can search music data and edit the user profile. Furthermore, by exploiting the infomation which can be acquired from each visualized object in a mutually complementary manner, we make it easier for the user to search music data and edit the user profile. Concretely, the system gives to the user an information obtained from the user profile when searching music data and an information obtained from the feature space of music when editing the user profile.

  20. A multi-label, semi-supervised classification approach applied to personality prediction in social media.

    PubMed

    Lima, Ana Carolina E S; de Castro, Leandro Nunes

    2014-10-01

    Social media allow web users to create and share content pertaining to different subjects, exposing their activities, opinions, feelings and thoughts. In this context, online social media has attracted the interest of data scientists seeking to understand behaviours and trends, whilst collecting statistics for social sites. One potential application for these data is personality prediction, which aims to understand a user's behaviour within social media. Traditional personality prediction relies on users' profiles, their status updates, the messages they post, etc. Here, a personality prediction system for social media data is introduced that differs from most approaches in the literature, in that it works with groups of texts, instead of single texts, and does not take users' profiles into account. Also, the proposed approach extracts meta-attributes from texts and does not work directly with the content of the messages. The set of possible personality traits is taken from the Big Five model and allows the problem to be characterised as a multi-label classification task. The problem is then transformed into a set of five binary classification problems and solved by means of a semi-supervised learning approach, due to the difficulty in annotating the massive amounts of data generated in social media. In our implementation, the proposed system was trained with three well-known machine-learning algorithms, namely a Naïve Bayes classifier, a Support Vector Machine, and a Multilayer Perceptron neural network. The system was applied to predict the personality of Tweets taken from three datasets available in the literature, and resulted in an approximately 83% accurate prediction, with some of the personality traits presenting better individual classification rates than others. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Bimanual Interaction with Interscopic Multi-Touch Surfaces

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Schöning, Johannes; Steinicke, Frank; Krüger, Antonio; Hinrichs, Klaus; Valkov, Dimitar

    Multi-touch interaction has received considerable attention in the last few years, in particular for natural two-dimensional (2D) interaction. However, many application areas deal with three-dimensional (3D) data and require intuitive 3D interaction techniques therefore. Indeed, virtual reality (VR) systems provide sophisticated 3D user interface, but then lack efficient 2D interaction, and are therefore rarely adopted by ordinary users or even by experts. Since multi-touch interfaces represent a good trade-off between intuitive, constrained interaction on a touch surface providing tangible feedback, and unrestricted natural interaction without any instrumentation, they have the potential to form the foundation of the next generation user interface for 2D as well as 3D interaction. In particular, stereoscopic display of 3D data provides an additional depth cue, but until now the challenges and limitations for multi-touch interaction in this context have not been considered. In this paper we present new multi-touch paradigms and interactions that combine both traditional 2D interaction and novel 3D interaction on a touch surface to form a new class of multi-touch systems, which we refer to as interscopic multi-touch surfaces (iMUTS). We discuss iMUTS-based user interfaces that support interaction with 2D content displayed in monoscopic mode and 3D content usually displayed stereoscopically. In order to underline the potential of the proposed iMUTS setup, we have developed and evaluated two example interaction metaphors for different domains. First, we present intuitive navigation techniques for virtual 3D city models, and then we describe a natural metaphor for deforming volumetric datasets in a medical context.

  2. A novel sub-shot segmentation method for user-generated video

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lei, Zhuo; Zhang, Qian; Zheng, Chi; Qiu, Guoping

    2018-04-01

    With the proliferation of the user-generated videos, temporal segmentation is becoming a challengeable problem. Traditional video temporal segmentation methods like shot detection are not able to work on unedited user-generated videos, since they often only contain one single long shot. We propose a novel temporal segmentation framework for user-generated video. It finds similar frames with a tree partitioning min-Hash technique, constructs sparse temporal constrained affinity sub-graphs, and finally divides the video into sub-shot-level segments with a dense-neighbor-based clustering method. Experimental results show that our approach outperforms all the other related works. Furthermore, it is indicated that the proposed approach is able to segment user-generated videos at an average human level.

  3. A user-oriented synthetic workload generator

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Kao, Wei-Lun

    1991-01-01

    A user oriented synthetic workload generator that simulates users' file access behavior based on real workload characterization is described. The model for this workload generator is user oriented and job specific, represents file I/O operations at the system call level, allows general distributions for the usage measures, and assumes independence in the file I/O operation stream. The workload generator consists of three parts which handle specification of distributions, creation of an initial file system, and selection and execution of file I/O operations. Experiments on SUN NFS are shown to demonstrate the usage of the workload generator.

  4. Demographic-Based Content Analysis of Web-Based Health-Related Social Media

    PubMed Central

    Shahbazi, Moloud; Wiley, Matthew T; Hristidis, Vagelis

    2016-01-01

    Background An increasing number of patients from diverse demographic groups share and search for health-related information on Web-based social media. However, little is known about the content of the posted information with respect to the users’ demographics. Objective The aims of this study were to analyze the content of Web-based health-related social media based on users’ demographics to identify which health topics are discussed in which social media by which demographic groups and to help guide educational and research activities. Methods We analyze 3 different types of health-related social media: (1) general Web-based social networks Twitter and Google+; (2) drug review websites; and (3) health Web forums, with a total of about 6 million users and 20 million posts. We analyzed the content of these posts based on the demographic group of their authors, in terms of sentiment and emotion, top distinctive terms, and top medical concepts. Results The results of this study are: (1) Pregnancy is the dominant topic for female users in drug review websites and health Web forums, whereas for male users, it is cardiac problems, HIV, and back pain, but this is not the case for Twitter; (2) younger users (0-17 years) mainly talk about attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression-related drugs, users aged 35-44 years discuss about multiple sclerosis (MS) drugs, and middle-aged users (45-64 years) talk about alcohol and smoking; (3) users from the Northeast United States talk about physical disorders, whereas users from the West United States talk about mental disorders and addictive behaviors; (4) Users with higher writing level express less anger in their posts. Conclusion We studied the popular topics and the sentiment based on users' demographics in Web-based health-related social media. Our results provide valuable information, which can help create targeted and effective educational campaigns and guide experts to reach the right users on Web-based social chatter. PMID:27296242

  5. Distance-Based Opportunistic Mobile Data Offloading

    PubMed Central

    Lu, Xiaofeng; Lio, Pietro; Hui, Pan

    2016-01-01

    Cellular network data traffic can be offload onto opportunistic networks. This paper proposes a Distance-based Opportunistic Publish/Subscribe (DOPS) content dissemination model, which is composed of three layers: application layer, decision-making layer and network layer. When a user wants new content, he/she subscribes on a subscribing server. Users having the contents decide whether to deliver the contents to the subscriber based on the distance information. If in the meantime a content owner has traveled further in the immediate past time than the distance between the owner and the subscriber, the content owner will send the content to the subscriber through opportunistic routing. Simulations provide an evaluation of the data traffic offloading efficiency of DOPS. PMID:27314361

  6. Distance-Based Opportunistic Mobile Data Offloading.

    PubMed

    Lu, Xiaofeng; Lio, Pietro; Hui, Pan

    2016-06-15

    Cellular network data traffic can be offload onto opportunistic networks. This paper proposes a Distance-based Opportunistic Publish/Subscribe (DOPS) content dissemination model, which is composed of three layers: application layer, decision-making layer and network layer. When a user wants new content, he/she subscribes on a subscribing server. Users having the contents decide whether to deliver the contents to the subscriber based on the distance information. If in the meantime a content owner has traveled further in the immediate past time than the distance between the owner and the subscriber, the content owner will send the content to the subscriber through opportunistic routing. Simulations provide an evaluation of the data traffic offloading efficiency of DOPS.

  7. A medical digital library to support scenario and user-tailored information retrieval.

    PubMed

    Chu, W W; Johnson, D B; Kangarloo, H

    2000-06-01

    Current large-scale information sources are designed to support general queries and lack the ability to support scenario-specific information navigation, gathering, and presentation. As a result, users are often unable to obtain desired specific information within a well-defined subject area. Today's information systems do not provide efficient content navigation, incremental appropriate matching, or content correlation. We are developing the following innovative technologies to remedy these problems: 1) scenario-based proxies, enabling the gathering and filtering of information customized for users within a pre-defined domain; 2) context-sensitive navigation and matching, providing approximate matching and similarity links when an exact match to a user's request is unavailable; 3) content correlation of documents, creating semantic links between documents and information sources; and 4) user models for customizing retrieved information and result presentation. A digital medical library is currently being constructed using these technologies to provide customized information for the user. The technologies are general in nature and can provide custom and scenario-specific information in many other domains (e.g., crisis management).

  8. Virtual in Real. Interactive Solutions for Learning and Communication in the National Archaeological Museum of Marche

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Clini, P.; Nespeca, R.; Ruggeri, L.

    2017-05-01

    Today the ICTs are favourable additions to museum exhibitions. This work aims to realize an innovative system of digital exploitation of artefacts in the National Archaeological Museum of Marche (MANaM), in order to create a shared museum that will improve the knowledge of cultural contents through the paradigm "learning by interacting" and "edutainment". The main novelty is the implementation of stand-alone multimedia installations for digital artefacts that combine real and virtual scenarios in order to enrich the experience, the knowledge and the multi-sensory perception. A Digital Library (DL) is created using Close Range Photogrammetry (CRP) techniques applied to 21 archaeological artefacts belonging to different categories. Enriched with other data (texts, images, multimedia), all 3D models flow into the cloud data server from which are recalled in the individual exhibitions. In particular, we have chosen three types of technological solutions: VISUAL, TACTILE, SPATIAL. All the solutions take into account the possibility of group interaction, allowing the participation of the interaction to an appropriate number of users. Sharing the experience enables greater involvement, generating communicative effectiveness much higher than it would get from a lonely visit. From the "Museum Visitors Behaviour Analysis" we obtain a survey about users' needs and efficiency of the interactive solutions. The main result of this work is the educational impact in terms of increase in visitors, specially students, learning increase of historical and cultural content, greater user involvement during the visit to the museum.

  9. AGUIA: autonomous graphical user interface assembly for clinical trials semantic data services.

    PubMed

    Correa, Miria C; Deus, Helena F; Vasconcelos, Ana T; Hayashi, Yuki; Ajani, Jaffer A; Patnana, Srikrishna V; Almeida, Jonas S

    2010-10-26

    AGUIA is a front-end web application originally developed to manage clinical, demographic and biomolecular patient data collected during clinical trials at MD Anderson Cancer Center. The diversity of methods involved in patient screening and sample processing generates a variety of data types that require a resource-oriented architecture to capture the associations between the heterogeneous data elements. AGUIA uses a semantic web formalism, resource description framework (RDF), and a bottom-up design of knowledge bases that employ the S3DB tool as the starting point for the client's interface assembly. The data web service, S3DB, meets the necessary requirements of generating the RDF and of explicitly distinguishing the description of the domain from its instantiation, while allowing for continuous editing of both. Furthermore, it uses an HTTP-REST protocol, has a SPARQL endpoint, and has open source availability in the public domain, which facilitates the development and dissemination of this application. However, S3DB alone does not address the issue of representing content in a form that makes sense for domain experts. We identified an autonomous set of descriptors, the GBox, that provides user and domain specifications for the graphical user interface. This was achieved by identifying a formalism that makes use of an RDF schema to enable the automatic assembly of graphical user interfaces in a meaningful manner while using only resources native to the client web browser (JavaScript interpreter, document object model). We defined a generalized RDF model such that changes in the graphic descriptors are automatically and immediately (locally) reflected into the configuration of the client's interface application. The design patterns identified for the GBox benefit from and reflect the specific requirements of interacting with data generated by clinical trials, and they contain clues for a general purpose solution to the challenge of having interfaces automatically assembled for multiple and volatile views of a domain. By coding AGUIA in JavaScript, for which all browsers include a native interpreter, a solution was found that assembles interfaces that are meaningful to the particular user, and which are also ubiquitous and lightweight, allowing the computational load to be carried by the client's machine.

  10. CD-ROM End-User Instruction: A Planning Model.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Johnson, Mary E.; Rosen, Barbara S.

    1990-01-01

    Discusses methods and content of library instruction for CD-ROM searching in terms of the needs of end-users. Instructional methods explored include staff instruction, structured instruction, database documentation, tutorials and help screens, and floaters. Suggestions for effective instruction in transfer of skills, database content, database…

  11. Engaging Elderly People in Telemedicine Through Gamification

    PubMed Central

    Tabak, Monique; Dekker - van Weering, Marit; Vollenbroek-Hutten, Miriam

    2015-01-01

    Background Telemedicine can alleviate the increasing demand for elderly care caused by the rapidly aging population. However, user adherence to technology in telemedicine interventions is low and decreases over time. Therefore, there is a need for methods to increase adherence, specifically of the elderly user. A strategy that has recently emerged to address this problem is gamification. It is the application of game elements to nongame fields to motivate and increase user activity and retention. Objective This research aims to (1) provide an overview of existing theoretical frameworks for gamification and explore methods that specifically target the elderly user and (2) explore user classification theories for tailoring game content to the elderly user. This knowledge will provide a foundation for creating a new framework for applying gamification in telemedicine applications to effectively engage the elderly user by increasing and maintaining adherence. Methods We performed a broad Internet search using scientific and nonscientific search engines and included information that described either of the following subjects: the conceptualization of gamification, methods to engage elderly users through gamification, or user classification theories for tailored game content. Results Our search showed two main approaches concerning frameworks for gamification: from business practices, which mostly aim for more revenue, emerge an applied approach, while academia frameworks are developed incorporating theories on motivation while often aiming for lasting engagement. The search provided limited information regarding the application of gamification to engage elderly users, and a significant gap in knowledge on the effectiveness of a gamified application in practice. Several approaches for classifying users in general were found, based on archetypes and reasons to play, and we present them along with their corresponding taxonomies. The overview we created indicates great connectivity between these taxonomies. Conclusions Gamification frameworks have been developed from different backgrounds—business and academia—but rarely target the elderly user. The effectiveness of user classifications for tailored game content in this context is not yet known. As a next step, we propose the development of a framework based on the hypothesized existence of a relation between preference for game content and personality. PMID:26685287

  12. Engaging Elderly People in Telemedicine Through Gamification.

    PubMed

    de Vette, Frederiek; Tabak, Monique; Dekker-van Weering, Marit; Vollenbroek-Hutten, Miriam

    2015-12-18

    Telemedicine can alleviate the increasing demand for elderly care caused by the rapidly aging population. However, user adherence to technology in telemedicine interventions is low and decreases over time. Therefore, there is a need for methods to increase adherence, specifically of the elderly user. A strategy that has recently emerged to address this problem is gamification. It is the application of game elements to nongame fields to motivate and increase user activity and retention. This research aims to (1) provide an overview of existing theoretical frameworks for gamification and explore methods that specifically target the elderly user and (2) explore user classification theories for tailoring game content to the elderly user. This knowledge will provide a foundation for creating a new framework for applying gamification in telemedicine applications to effectively engage the elderly user by increasing and maintaining adherence. We performed a broad Internet search using scientific and nonscientific search engines and included information that described either of the following subjects: the conceptualization of gamification, methods to engage elderly users through gamification, or user classification theories for tailored game content. Our search showed two main approaches concerning frameworks for gamification: from business practices, which mostly aim for more revenue, emerge an applied approach, while academia frameworks are developed incorporating theories on motivation while often aiming for lasting engagement. The search provided limited information regarding the application of gamification to engage elderly users, and a significant gap in knowledge on the effectiveness of a gamified application in practice. Several approaches for classifying users in general were found, based on archetypes and reasons to play, and we present them along with their corresponding taxonomies. The overview we created indicates great connectivity between these taxonomies. Gamification frameworks have been developed from different backgrounds-business and academia-but rarely target the elderly user. The effectiveness of user classifications for tailored game content in this context is not yet known. As a next step, we propose the development of a framework based on the hypothesized existence of a relation between preference for game content and personality.

  13. Pro-anorexia and pro-recovery photo sharing: a tale of two warring tribes.

    PubMed

    Yom-Tov, Elad; Fernandez-Luque, Luis; Weber, Ingmar; Crain, Steven P

    2012-11-07

    There is widespread use of the Internet to promote anorexia as a lifestyle choice. Pro-anorexia content can be harmful for people affected or at risk of having anorexia. That movement is actively engaged in sharing photos on social networks such as Flickr. To study the characteristics of the online communities engaged in disseminating content that encourages eating disorders (known as "pro-anorexia") and to investigate if the posting of such content is discouraged by the posting of recovery-oriented content. The extraction of pro-anorexia and pro-recovery photographs from the photo sharing site Flickr pertaining to 242,710 photos from 491 users and analyzing four separate social networks therein. Pro-anorexia and pro-recovery communities interact to a much higher degree among themselves than what is expected from the distribution of contacts (only 59-72% of contacts but 74-83% of comments are made to members inside the community). Pro-recovery users employ similar words to those used by pro-anorexia users to describe their photographs, possibly in order to ensure that their content appears when pro-anorexia users search for images. Pro-anorexia users who are exposed to comments from the opposite camp are less likely to cease posting pro-anorexia photographs than those who do not receive such comments (46% versus 61%), and if they cease, they do so approximately three months later. Our observations show two highly active communities, where most interaction is within each community. However, the pro-recovery community takes steps to ensure that their content is visible to the pro-anorexia community, both by using textual descriptions of their photographs that are similar to those used by the pro-anorexia group and by commenting to pro-anorexia content. The latter activity is, however, counterproductive, as it entrenches pro-anorexia users in their stance. Our results highlight the nature of pro-anorexia and pro-recovery photo sharing and accentuate the need for clinicians to be aware of such content and its effect on their patients. Our findings suggest that some currently used interventions are not useful in helping pro-anorexia users recover. Thus, future work should focus on new intervention methods, possibly tailored to individual characteristics.

  14. Pro-Anorexia and Pro-Recovery Photo Sharing: A Tale of Two Warring Tribes

    PubMed Central

    Yom-Tov, Elad; Weber, Ingmar; Crain, Steven P

    2012-01-01

    Background There is widespread use of the Internet to promote anorexia as a lifestyle choice. Pro-anorexia content can be harmful for people affected or at risk of having anorexia. That movement is actively engaged in sharing photos on social networks such as Flickr. Objective To study the characteristics of the online communities engaged in disseminating content that encourages eating disorders (known as “pro-anorexia”) and to investigate if the posting of such content is discouraged by the posting of recovery-oriented content. Methods The extraction of pro-anorexia and pro-recovery photographs from the photo sharing site Flickr pertaining to 242,710 photos from 491 users and analyzing four separate social networks therein. Results Pro-anorexia and pro-recovery communities interact to a much higher degree among themselves than what is expected from the distribution of contacts (only 59-72% of contacts but 74-83% of comments are made to members inside the community). Pro-recovery users employ similar words to those used by pro-anorexia users to describe their photographs, possibly in order to ensure that their content appears when pro-anorexia users search for images. Pro-anorexia users who are exposed to comments from the opposite camp are less likely to cease posting pro-anorexia photographs than those who do not receive such comments (46% versus 61%), and if they cease, they do so approximately three months later. Our observations show two highly active communities, where most interaction is within each community. However, the pro-recovery community takes steps to ensure that their content is visible to the pro-anorexia community, both by using textual descriptions of their photographs that are similar to those used by the pro-anorexia group and by commenting to pro-anorexia content. The latter activity is, however, counterproductive, as it entrenches pro-anorexia users in their stance. Conclusions Our results highlight the nature of pro-anorexia and pro-recovery photo sharing and accentuate the need for clinicians to be aware of such content and its effect on their patients. Our findings suggest that some currently used interventions are not useful in helping pro-anorexia users recover. Thus, future work should focus on new intervention methods, possibly tailored to individual characteristics. PMID:23134671

  15. Pragmatic User Model Implementation in an Intelligent Help System.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fernandez-Manjon, Baltasar; Fernandez-Valmayor, Alfredo; Fernandez-Chamizo, Carmen

    1998-01-01

    Describes Aran, a knowledge-based system designed to help users deal with problems related to Unix operation. Highlights include adaptation to the individual user; user modeling knowledge; stereotypes; content of the individual user model; instantiation, acquisition, and maintenance of the individual model; dynamic acquisition of objective and…

  16. Enriching Earthdata by Improving Content Curation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bagwell, R.; Wong, M. M.; Murphy, K. J.

    2014-12-01

    Since the launch of Earthdata in the later part of 2011, there has been an emphasis on improving the user experience and providing more enriched content to the user, ultimately with the focus to bring the "pixels to the people" or to ensure that a user clicks the fewest amount of times to get to the data, tools, or information which they seek. Earthdata was founded to be a single source of information for Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) components and services as a conglomeration between over 15 different websites. With an increased focus on access to Earth science data, the recognition is now on transforming Earthdata from a static website to one that is a dynamic, data-driven site full of enriched content.In the near future, Earthdata will have a number of components that will drive the access to the data, such as Earthdata Search, the Common Metadata Repository (CMR), and a redesign of the Earthdata website. The focus on content curation will be to leverage the use of these components to provide an enriched content environment and a better overall user experience, with an emphasis on Earthdata being "powered by EOSDIS" components and services.

  17. Characteristics of "Music Education" Videos Posted on Youtube

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Whitaker, Jennifer A.; Orman, Evelyn K.; Yarbrough, Cornelia

    2014-01-01

    This content analysis sought to determine information related to users uploading, general content, and specific characteristics of music education videos on YouTube. A total of 1,761 videos from a keyword search of "music education" were viewed and categorized. Results for relevant videos indicated users posted videos under 698 different…

  18. Hierarchical video summarization

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ratakonda, Krishna; Sezan, M. Ibrahim; Crinon, Regis J.

    1998-12-01

    We address the problem of key-frame summarization of vide in the absence of any a priori information about its content. This is a common problem that is encountered in home videos. We propose a hierarchical key-frame summarization algorithm where a coarse-to-fine key-frame summary is generated. A hierarchical key-frame summary facilitates multi-level browsing where the user can quickly discover the content of the video by accessing its coarsest but most compact summary and then view a desired segment of the video with increasingly more detail. At the finest level, the summary is generated on the basis of color features of video frames, using an extension of a recently proposed key-frame extraction algorithm. The finest level key-frames are recursively clustered using a novel pairwise K-means clustering approach with temporal consecutiveness constraint. We also address summarization of MPEG-2 compressed video without fully decoding the bitstream. We also propose efficient mechanisms that facilitate decoding the video when the hierarchical summary is utilized in browsing and playback of video segments starting at selected key-frames.

  19. ISART: A Generic Framework for Searching Books with Social Information

    PubMed Central

    Cui, Xiao-Ping; Qu, Jiao; Geng, Bin; Zhou, Fang; Song, Li; Hao, Hong-Wei

    2016-01-01

    Effective book search has been discussed for decades and is still future-proof in areas as diverse as computer science, informatics, e-commerce and even culture and arts. A variety of social information contents (e.g, ratings, tags and reviews) emerge with the huge number of books on the Web, but how they are utilized for searching and finding books is seldom investigated. Here we develop an Integrated Search And Recommendation Technology (IsArt), which breaks new ground by providing a generic framework for searching books with rich social information. IsArt comprises a search engine to rank books with book contents and professional metadata, a Generalized Content-based Filtering model to thereafter rerank books with user-generated social contents, and a learning-to-rank technique to finally combine a wide range of diverse reranking results. Experiments show that this technology permits embedding social information to promote book search effectiveness, and IsArt, by making use of it, has the best performance on CLEF/INEX Social Book Search Evaluation datasets of all 4 years (from 2011 to 2014), compared with some other state-of-the-art methods. PMID:26863545

  20. ISART: A Generic Framework for Searching Books with Social Information.

    PubMed

    Yin, Xu-Cheng; Zhang, Bo-Wen; Cui, Xiao-Ping; Qu, Jiao; Geng, Bin; Zhou, Fang; Song, Li; Hao, Hong-Wei

    2016-01-01

    Effective book search has been discussed for decades and is still future-proof in areas as diverse as computer science, informatics, e-commerce and even culture and arts. A variety of social information contents (e.g, ratings, tags and reviews) emerge with the huge number of books on the Web, but how they are utilized for searching and finding books is seldom investigated. Here we develop an Integrated Search And Recommendation Technology (IsArt), which breaks new ground by providing a generic framework for searching books with rich social information. IsArt comprises a search engine to rank books with book contents and professional metadata, a Generalized Content-based Filtering model to thereafter rerank books with user-generated social contents, and a learning-to-rank technique to finally combine a wide range of diverse reranking results. Experiments show that this technology permits embedding social information to promote book search effectiveness, and IsArt, by making use of it, has the best performance on CLEF/INEX Social Book Search Evaluation datasets of all 4 years (from 2011 to 2014), compared with some other state-of-the-art methods.

  1. Quantifying the development of user-generated art during 2001–2010

    PubMed Central

    Yazdani, Mehrdad; Chow, Jay; Manovich, Lev

    2017-01-01

    One of the main questions in the humanities is how cultures and artistic expressions change over time. While a number of researchers have used quantitative computational methods to study historical changes in literature, music, and cinema, our paper offers the first quantitative analysis of historical changes in visual art created by users of a social online network. We propose a number of computational methods for the analysis of temporal development of art images. We then apply these methods to a sample of 270,000 artworks created between 2001 and 2010 by users of the largest social network for art—DeviantArt (www.deviantart.com). We investigate changes in subjects, techniques, sizes, proportions and also selected visual characteristics of images. Because these artworks are classified by their creators into two general categories—Traditional Art and Digital Art—we are also able to investigate if the use of digital tools has had a significant effect on the content and form of artworks. Our analysis reveals a number of gradual and systematic changes over a ten-year period in artworks belonging to both categories. PMID:28792494

  2. Quantifying the development of user-generated art during 2001-2010.

    PubMed

    Yazdani, Mehrdad; Chow, Jay; Manovich, Lev

    2017-01-01

    One of the main questions in the humanities is how cultures and artistic expressions change over time. While a number of researchers have used quantitative computational methods to study historical changes in literature, music, and cinema, our paper offers the first quantitative analysis of historical changes in visual art created by users of a social online network. We propose a number of computational methods for the analysis of temporal development of art images. We then apply these methods to a sample of 270,000 artworks created between 2001 and 2010 by users of the largest social network for art-DeviantArt (www.deviantart.com). We investigate changes in subjects, techniques, sizes, proportions and also selected visual characteristics of images. Because these artworks are classified by their creators into two general categories-Traditional Art and Digital Art-we are also able to investigate if the use of digital tools has had a significant effect on the content and form of artworks. Our analysis reveals a number of gradual and systematic changes over a ten-year period in artworks belonging to both categories.

  3. Sharing feelings online: studying emotional well-being via automated text analysis of Facebook posts

    PubMed Central

    Settanni, Michele; Marengo, Davide

    2015-01-01

    Digital traces of activity on social network sites represent a vast source of ecological data with potential connections with individual behavioral and psychological characteristics. The present study investigates the relationship between user-generated textual content shared on Facebook and emotional well-being. Self-report measures of depression, anxiety, and stress were collected from 201 adult Facebook users from North Italy. Emotion-related textual indicators, including emoticon use, were extracted form users’ Facebook posts via automated text analysis. Correlation analyses revealed that individuals with higher levels of depression, anxiety expressed negative emotions on Facebook more frequently. In addition, use of emoticons expressing positive emotions correlated negatively with stress level. When comparing age groups, younger users reported higher frequency of both emotion-related words and emoticon use in their posts. Also, the relationship between online emotional expression and self-report emotional well-being was generally stronger in the younger group. Overall, findings support the feasibility and validity of studying individual emotional well-being by means of examination of Facebook profiles. Implications for online screening purposes and future research directions are discussed. PMID:26257692

  4. Open Data, Jupyter Notebooks and Geospatial Data Standards Combined - Opening up large volumes of marine and climate data to other communities

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Clements, O.; Siemen, S.; Wagemann, J.

    2017-12-01

    The EU-funded Earthserver-2 project aims to offer on-demand access to large volumes of environmental data (Earth Observation, Marine, Climate data and Planetary data) via the interface standard Web Coverage Service defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium. Providing access to data via OGC web services (e.g. WCS and WMS) has the potential to open up services to a wider audience, especially to users outside the respective communities. Especially WCS 2.0 with its processing extension Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) is highly beneficial to make large volumes accessible to non-expert communities. Users do not have to deal with custom community data formats, such as GRIB for the meteorological community, but can directly access the data in a format they are more familiar with, such as NetCDF, JSON or CSV. Data requests can further directly be integrated into custom processing routines and users are not required to download Gigabytes of data anymore. WCS supports trim (reduction of data extent) and slice (reduction of data dimension) operations on multi-dimensional data, providing users a very flexible on-demand access to the data. WCPS allows the user to craft queries to run on the data using a text-based query language, similar to SQL. These queries can be very powerful, e.g. condensing a three-dimensional data cube into its two-dimensional mean. However, the more processing-intensive the more complex the query. As part of the EarthServer-2 project, we developed a python library that helps users to generate complex WCPS queries with Python, a programming language they are more familiar with. The interactive presentation aims to give practical examples how users can benefit from two specific WCS services from the Marine and Climate community. Use-cases from the two communities will show different approaches to take advantage of a Web Coverage (Processing) Service. The entire content is available with Jupyter Notebooks, as they prove to be a highly beneficial tool to generate reproducible workflows for environmental data analysis.

  5. Is there a "net generation" in veterinary medicine? A comparative study on the use of the Internet and Web 2.0 by students and the veterinary profession.

    PubMed

    Tenhaven, Christoph; Tipold, Andrea; Fischer, Martin R; Ehlers, Jan P

    2013-01-01

    Informal and formal lifelong learning is essential at university and in the workplace. Apart from classical learning techniques, Web 2.0 tools can be used. It is controversial whether there is a so-called net generation amongst people under 30. To test the hypothesis that a net generation among students and young veterinarians exists. An online survey of students and veterinarians was conducted in the German-speaking countries which was advertised via online media and traditional print media. 1780 people took part in the survey. Students and veterinarians have different usage patterns regarding social networks (91.9% vs. 69%) and IM (55.9% vs. 24.5%). All tools were predominantly used passively and in private, to a lesser extent also professionally and for studying. The use of Web 2.0 tools is useful, however, teaching information and media skills, preparing codes of conduct for the internet and verification of user generated content is essential.

  6. 3DGRAPE/AL User's Manual

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Sorenson, Reese L.; Alter, Stephen J.

    1995-01-01

    This document is a users' manual for a new three-dimensional structured multiple-block volume g generator called 3DGRAPE/AL. It is a significantly improved version of the previously-released a widely-distributed programs 3DGRAPE and 3DMAGGS. It generates volume grids by iteratively solving the Poisson Equations in three-dimensions. The right-hand-side terms are designed so that user-specific; grid cell heights and user-specified grid cell skewness near boundary surfaces result automatically, with little user intervention. The code is written in Fortran-77, and can be installed with or without a simple graphical user interface which allows the user to watch as the grid is generated. An introduction describing the improvements over the antecedent 3DGRAPE code is presented first. Then follows a chapter on the basic grid generator program itself, and comments on installing it. The input is then described in detail. After that is a description of the Graphical User Interface. Five example cases are shown next, with plots of the results. Following that is a chapter on two input filters which allow use of input data generated elsewhere. Last is a treatment of the theory embodied in the code.

  7. Transforming User Needs into Functional Requirements for an Antibiotic Clinical Decision Support System

    PubMed Central

    Bright, T.J.

    2013-01-01

    Summary Background Many informatics studies use content analysis to generate functional requirements for system development. Explication of this translational process from qualitative data to functional requirements can strengthen the understanding and scientific rigor when applying content analysis in informatics studies. Objective To describe a user-centered approach transforming emergent themes derived from focus group data into functional requirements for informatics solutions and to illustrate these methods to the development of an antibiotic clinical decision support system (CDS). Methods The approach consisted of five steps: 1) identify unmet therapeutic planning information needs via Focus Group Study-I, 2) develop a coding framework of therapeutic planning themes to refine the domain scope to antibiotic therapeutic planning, 3) identify functional requirements of an antibiotic CDS system via Focus Group Study-II, 4) discover informatics solutions and functional requirements from coded data, and 5) determine the types of information needed to support the antibiotic CDS system and link with the identified informatics solutions and functional requirements. Results The coding framework for Focus Group Study-I revealed unmet therapeutic planning needs. Twelve subthemes emerged and were clustered into four themes; analysis indicated a need for an antibiotic CDS intervention. Focus Group Study-II included five types of information needs. Comments from the Barrier/Challenge to information access and Function/Feature themes produced three informatics solutions and 13 functional requirements of an antibiotic CDS system. Comments from the Patient, Institution, and Domain themes generated required data elements for each informatics solution. Conclusion This study presents one example explicating content analysis of focus group data and the analysis process to functional requirements from narrative data. Illustration of this 5-step method was used to develop an antibiotic CDS system, resolving unmet antibiotic prescribing needs. As a reusable approach, these techniques can be refined and applied to resolve unmet information needs with informatics interventions in additional domains. PMID:24454586

  8. Effects of hormonal contraceptives on mental rotation and verbal fluency.

    PubMed

    Griksiene, Ramune; Ruksenas, Osvaldas

    2011-09-01

    Cognitive abilities, such as verbal fluency and mental rotation, are most sensitive to changes in sex steroids but poorly studied in the context of hormonal contraceptive usage. Therefore, we investigated the performance of mental rotation and verbal fluency in young (21.5±1.8 years) healthy oral contraceptive (OC) users (23 women) and non-users (20 women) during the follicular, ovulatory and luteal phases of the menstrual cycle. Salivary 17β-estradiol, progesterone and testosterone levels were assayed to evaluate hormonal differences between groups and the phases of the menstrual cycle. To assess the effects of progestins having androgenic/anti-androgenic properties, OC users were subdivided into the third and new generation OC users. In addition, positive and negative affects as factors possibly affecting cognitive performance were evaluated. Salivary 17β-estradiol and progesterone levels were significantly lower in hormonal contraception users. Level of salivary testosterone was slightly lower in the OC users group with significant difference only during ovulatory phase. Naturally cycling women performed better on verbal fluency task as compared to OC users. Subjects who used the third generation (androgenic) OCs generated significantly fewer words as compared to new generation (anti-androgenic) OC users and non-users. The third generation OC users demonstrated significantly longer RT in MRT task as compared to non-users. The MRT, verbal fluency and mood parameters did not depend on the phase of menstrual cycle. The parameters of the PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule) scales did not differ between OC users and non-users. Our findings show that hormonal contraception has an impact on verbal and spatial abilities. Different performances between users of oral contraceptives with androgenic and anti-androgenic properties suggest an essential role for the progestins contained in OCs on cognitive performance. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. Land User and Land Cover Maps of Europe: a Webgis Platform

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Brovelli, M. A.; Fahl, F. C.; Minghini, M.; Molinari, M. E.

    2016-06-01

    This paper presents the methods and implementation processes of a WebGIS platform designed to publish the available land use and land cover maps of Europe at continental scale. The system is built completely on open source infrastructure and open standards. The proposed architecture is based on a server-client model having GeoServer as the map server, Leaflet as the client-side mapping library and the Bootstrap framework at the core of the front-end user interface. The web user interface is designed to have typical features of a desktop GIS (e.g. activate/deactivate layers and order layers by drag and drop actions) and to show specific information on the activated layers (e.g. legend and simplified metadata). Users have the possibility to change the base map from a given list of map providers (e.g. OpenStreetMap and Microsoft Bing) and to control the opacity of each layer to facilitate the comparison with both other land cover layers and the underlying base map. In addition, users can add to the platform any custom layer available through a Web Map Service (WMS) and activate the visualization of photos from popular photo sharing services. This last functionality is provided in order to have a visual assessment of the available land coverages based on other user-generated contents available on the Internet. It is supposed to be a first step towards a calibration/validation service that will be made available in the future.

  10. [The role of social media in academic training in Urology. Adequate use.

    PubMed

    Gómez Rivas, Juan; Tortolero Blanco, Leonardo; Rodríguez Socarras, Moises; García Sanz, Miguel; Carrión, Diego M; Okhunov, Zhamshid; Veneziano, Domenico

    2018-01-01

    Social media is characterized because all its services are participative. Users of 2.0 technologies can interact easily and openly with other people, share resources and communicate immediately and simultaneously. Research improves from participatory technologies by allowing groups to share reflections, methodologies, resources and results.The social media platform with greater diffusion and use in urology is possibly Twitter because it allows to realize what is known like "microblogging", the users generate comments and brief messages through the creation of "tweets". It is possible to determine that there are three broad areas from a scientific point of view in which social media are manifested: sharing research, resources and results. The use and applications of social media become a major responsibility in the area of health and urology, obviously for reasons of privacy, scientific rigor, ethics and the nature of the medical - legal content.

  11. If You Build (and Moderate) It, They Will Come: The Smokefree Women Facebook Page

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    This analysis explores the impact of modifying the Smokefree Women Facebook social media strategy, from primarily promoting resources to encouraging participation in communications about smoking cessation by posting user-generated content. Analyses were performed using data from the Smokefree Women Facebook page to assess the impact of the revised strategy on reach and engagement. Fan engagement increased 430%, and a strong and statistically significant correlation (P < .05) between the frequency of moderator posts and community engagement was observed. The reach of the page also increased by 420%. Our findings indicate that the strategy shift had a statistically significant and positive effect on the frequency of interactions on the Facebook page, providing an example of an approach that may prove useful for reaching and engaging users in online communities. Additional research is needed to assess the association between engagement in virtual communities and health behavior outcomes. PMID:24395993

  12. LDEF materials special investigation group's data bases

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Strickland, John W.; Funk, Joan G.; Davis, John M.

    1993-01-01

    The Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) was composed of and contained a wide array of materials, representing the largest collection of materials flown for space exposure and returned for ground-based analyses to date. The results and implications of the data from these materials are the foundation on which future space missions will be built. The LDEF Materials Special Investigation Group (MSIG) has been tasked with establishing and developing data bases to document these materials and their performance to assure not only that the data are archived for future generations but also that the data are available to the space user community in an easily accessed, user-friendly form. The format and content of the data bases developed or being developed to accomplish this task are discussed. The hardware and software requirements for each of the three data bases are discussed along with current availability of the data bases.

  13. Use of an engineering data management system in the analysis of Space Shuttle Orbiter tiles

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Giles, G. L.; Vallas, M.

    1981-01-01

    This paper demonstrates the use of an engineering data management system to facilitate the extensive stress analyses of the Space Shuttle Orbiter thermal protection system. Descriptions are given of the approach and methods used (1) to gather, organize, and store the data, (2) to query data interactively, (3) to generate graphic displays of the data, and (4) to access, transform, and prepare the data for input to a stress analysis program. The relational information management system was found to be well suited to the tile analysis problem because information related to many separate tiles could be accessed individually from a data base having a natural organization from an engineering viewpoint. The flexible user features of the system facilitated changes in data content and organization which occurred during the development and refinement of the tile analysis procedure. Additionally, the query language supported retrieval of data to satisfy a variety of user-specified conditions.

  14. [Life risk and nature of SAMU: users' perspectives and implications for nursing].

    PubMed

    Veronese, Andréa Márian; de Oliveira, Dora Lúcia Leidens Corrêa; Nast, Karoline

    2012-12-01

    The article is part of a qualitative study analisys developed in 2009 aiming at investigating the demand of emergency calls to the Emergency Mobile Attendance Service/Porto Alegre (SAMU) that classifies it as non-pertinent. The information was gathered from 16 semi-structured interviews with the subjects of that demand by utilizing as a methodological guideline the Grounded Theory. The article approaches the content of the sub-category "Entering into conflict with SAMU regulation in the evaluation of life-threatening", by focusing the divergences between the regulation and the users' perception about the operation of the service and the meaning of "life-threatening", factors implied in the construction of the non-pertinent demand. The importance of Nursing within this scenery is in its competence to perform education actions about first aid and to participate in projects among sectors which are able to intervene in situations that generate vulnerability.

  15. An overview of emerging technologies in contemporary decision support system development

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nursal, Ahmad Taufik; Omar, Mohd Faizal; Nawi, Mohd Nasrun Mohd

    2014-12-01

    The rapid development of Web technology has opened a new approach to Decision Support System (DSS) development. For instance, Social Media is one of the Web 2.0 digital platforms that allow the creation and exchanges of user-generate content through an interactive interface, high user control and mass participation. The concept and characteristics of Web 2.0 such as remote, platform-independent, context-rich and easy to use, which is fulfill the concept and purpose of DSS. This paper outlines some of the elementary concepts of Web 2.0 and social media technology which can be potentially integrated within DSS to enhance the decision-making process. Our initial investigation indicates that there is limited study attempt to embed Web 2.0 into DSS. Thus, this paper highlights the importance of Web 2.0 technology in order to foster the betterment of DSS development and its usability.

  16. If you build (and moderate) it, they will come: the Smokefree Women Facebook page.

    PubMed

    Post, Samantha D; Taylor, Shani C; Sanders, Amy E; Goldfarb, Jeffrey M; Hunt, Yvonne M; Augustson, Erik M

    2013-12-01

    This analysis explores the impact of modifying the Smokefree Women Facebook social media strategy, from primarily promoting resources to encouraging participation in communications about smoking cessation by posting user-generated content. Analyses were performed using data from the Smokefree Women Facebook page to assess the impact of the revised strategy on reach and engagement. Fan engagement increased 430%, and a strong and statistically significant correlation (P < .05) between the frequency of moderator posts and community engagement was observed. The reach of the page also increased by 420%. Our findings indicate that the strategy shift had a statistically significant and positive effect on the frequency of interactions on the Facebook page, providing an example of an approach that may prove useful for reaching and engaging users in online communities. Additional research is needed to assess the association between engagement in virtual communities and health behavior outcomes.

  17. Supporting metabolomics with adaptable software: design architectures for the end-user.

    PubMed

    Sarpe, Vladimir; Schriemer, David C

    2017-02-01

    Large and disparate sets of LC-MS data are generated by modern metabolomics profiling initiatives, and while useful software tools are available to annotate and quantify compounds, the field requires continued software development in order to sustain methodological innovation. Advances in software development practices allow for a new paradigm in tool development for metabolomics, where increasingly the end-user can develop or redeploy utilities ranging from simple algorithms to complex workflows. Resources that provide an organized framework for development are described and illustrated with LC-MS processing packages that have leveraged their design tools. Full access to these resources depends in part on coding experience, but the emergence of workflow builders and pluggable frameworks strongly reduces the skill level required. Developers in the metabolomics community are encouraged to use these resources and design content for uptake and reuse. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. A rudimentary database for three-dimensional objects using structural representation

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Sowers, James P.

    1987-01-01

    A database which enables users to store and share the description of three-dimensional objects in a research environment is presented. The main objective of the design is to make it a compact structure that holds sufficient information to reconstruct the object. The database design is based on an object representation scheme which is information preserving, reasonably efficient, and yet economical in terms of the storage requirement. The determination of the needed data for the reconstruction process is guided by the belief that it is faster to do simple computations to generate needed data/information for construction than to retrieve everything from memory. Some recent techniques of three-dimensional representation that influenced the design of the database are discussed. The schema for the database and the structural definition used to define an object are given. The user manual for the software developed to create and maintain the contents of the database is included.

  19. Put on a smiley face: textspeak and personality perceptions.

    PubMed

    Fullwood, Chris; Quinn, Sally; Chen-Wilson, Josephine; Chadwick, Darren; Reynolds, Katie

    2015-03-01

    With the emergence of Web 2.0, there has been a dramatic surge in user-generated content. Although the Internet provides greater freedom in self-presentation, computer-mediated communication is characterized by a more relaxed attitude to grammar, spelling, and punctuation. The language of the Internet, or textspeak, may be suitable for casual interactions but inappropriate in professional contexts. Participant perceptions of an author's personality were tested in two distinct contexts (formal vs. informal) and the written information was manipulated under three levels of textspeak: none, low, and high. Participants judged the author as less conscientious and less open but more emotionally stable when textspeak was used. However, context had no impact. Personality perceptions of textspeak users differ to those who write in Standard English, and this is likely to extend to informal impression management contexts (e.g., online dating). These findings also have a number of implications, for example in terms of screening applicants via social media.

  20. Samba: a real-time motion capture system using wireless camera sensor networks.

    PubMed

    Oh, Hyeongseok; Cha, Geonho; Oh, Songhwai

    2014-03-20

    There is a growing interest in 3D content following the recent developments in 3D movies, 3D TVs and 3D smartphones. However, 3D content creation is still dominated by professionals, due to the high cost of 3D motion capture instruments. The availability of a low-cost motion capture system will promote 3D content generation by general users and accelerate the growth of the 3D market. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a real-time motion capture system based on a portable low-cost wireless camera sensor network. The proposed system performs motion capture based on the data-driven 3D human pose reconstruction method to reduce the computation time and to improve the 3D reconstruction accuracy. The system can reconstruct accurate 3D full-body poses at 16 frames per second using only eight markers on the subject's body. The performance of the motion capture system is evaluated extensively in experiments.

  1. Measuring the level and content of consciousness during epileptic seizures: the Ictal Consciousness Inventory.

    PubMed

    Cavanna, A E; Mula, M; Servo, S; Strigaro, G; Tota, G; Barbagli, D; Collimedaglia, L; Viana, M; Cantello, R; Monaco, F

    2008-07-01

    Ictal alterations of the level of general awareness and subjective content of consciousness play a pivotal role in the clinical phenomenology of epilepsy, and reflect the pathological involvement of different neurobiological substrates. However, no self-reported measures have been proposed for patients experiencing altered conscious states during seizures. This study describes the development and validation of a new scale for the quantitative assessment of the level and content of ictal consciousness, the Ictal Consciousness Inventory (ICI). The ICI is a 20-item questionnaire generated on the basis of interviews with patients, literature review, and consultation with experts. It was tested on a sample of 110 patients attending three different epilepsy clinics in Northern Italy, who also completed standardized clinical scales. Standard psychometric methods were used to demonstrate that this scale satisfies criteria for acceptability, reliability, and validity. The ICI is proposed as a user-friendly and clinically sound instrument for the measurement of ictal alterations of consciousness in patients with epilepsy.

  2. Samba: A Real-Time Motion Capture System Using Wireless Camera Sensor Networks

    PubMed Central

    Oh, Hyeongseok; Cha, Geonho; Oh, Songhwai

    2014-01-01

    There is a growing interest in 3D content following the recent developments in 3D movies, 3D TVs and 3D smartphones. However, 3D content creation is still dominated by professionals, due to the high cost of 3D motion capture instruments. The availability of a low-cost motion capture system will promote 3D content generation by general users and accelerate the growth of the 3D market. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a real-time motion capture system based on a portable low-cost wireless camera sensor network. The proposed system performs motion capture based on the data-driven 3D human pose reconstruction method to reduce the computation time and to improve the 3D reconstruction accuracy. The system can reconstruct accurate 3D full-body poses at 16 frames per second using only eight markers on the subject's body. The performance of the motion capture system is evaluated extensively in experiments. PMID:24658618

  3. A web-oriented software for the optimization of pooled experiments in NGS for detection of rare mutations.

    PubMed

    Evangelista, Daniela; Zuccaro, Antonio; Lančinskas, Algirdas; Žilinskas, Julius; Guarracino, Mario R

    2016-02-17

    The cost per patient of next generation sequencing for detection of rare mutations may be significantly reduced using pooled experiments. Recently, some techniques have been proposed for the planning of pooled experiments and for the optimal allocation of patients into pools. However, the lack of a user friendly resource for planning the design of pooled experiments forces the scientists to do frequent, complex and long computations. OPENDoRM is a powerful collection of novel mathematical algorithms usable via an intuitive graphical user interface. It enables researchers to speed up the planning of their routine experiments, as well as, to support scientists without specific bioinformatics expertises. Users can automatically carry out analysis in terms of costs associated with the optimal allocation of patients in pools. They are also able to choose between three distinct pooling mathematical methods, each of which also suggests the optimal configuration for the submitted experiment. Importantly, in order to keep track of the performed experiments, users can save and export the results of their experiments in standard tabular and charts contents. OPENDoRM is a freely available web-oriented application for the planning of pooled NGS experiments, available at: http://www-labgtp.na.icar.cnr.it/OPENDoRM. Its easy and intuitive graphical user interface enables researchers to plan theirs experiments using novel algorithms, and to interactively visualize the results.

  4. Data Security and Privacy in Apps for Dementia: An Analysis of Existing Privacy Policies.

    PubMed

    Rosenfeld, Lisa; Torous, John; Vahia, Ipsit V

    2017-08-01

    Despite tremendous growth in the number of health applications (apps), little is known about how well these apps protect their users' health-related data. This gap in knowledge is of particular concern for apps targeting people with dementia, whose cognitive impairment puts them at increased risk of privacy breaches. In this article, we determine how many dementia apps have privacy policies and how well they protect user data. Our analysis included all iPhone apps that matched the search terms "medical + dementia" or "health & fitness + dementia" and collected user-generated content. We evaluated all available privacy policies for these apps based on criteria that systematically measure how individual user data is handled. Seventy-two apps met the above search teams and collected user data. Of these, only 33 (46%) had an available privacy policy. Nineteen of the 33 with policies (58%) were specific to the app in question, and 25 (76%) specified how individual-user as opposed to aggregate data would be handled. Among these, there was a preponderance of missing information, the majority acknowledged collecting individual data for internal purposes, and most admitted to instances in which they would share user data with outside parties. At present, the majority of health apps focused on dementia lack a privacy policy, and those that do exist lack clarity. Bolstering safeguards and improving communication about privacy protections will help facilitate consumer trust in apps, thereby enabling more widespread and meaningful use by people with dementia and those involved in their care. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  5. AltText: A Showcase of User Centred Design in the Netherlands

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Asjes, Kathleen

    In the information processing chain many documents are produced that are inaccessible to the reading impaired. The altText project aims to increase the accessibility of this content by: a) raising awareness among content providers about content adaption; b) allowing content providers to deliver content in a way that suits the needs of the information receiver; c) developing an online service that converts written text into several accessible formats (Braille, synthetic speech, large print or DaisyXML). The name of this service is the altText conversion portal. The paper argues that user centred innovation will be crucial to the success of this project.

  6. Knowledge Management in Sensor Enabled Online Services

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Smyth, Dominick; Cappellari, Paolo; Roantree, Mark

    The Future Internet, has as its vision, the development of improved features and usability for services, applications and content. In many cases, services can be provided automatically through the use of monitors or sensors. This means web generated sensor data becoming available not only to the companies that own the sensors but also to the domain users who generate the data and to information and knowledge workers who harvest the output. The goal is improving the service through better usage of the information provided by the service. Applications and services vary from climate, traffic, health and sports event monitoring. In this paper, we present the WSW system that harvests web sensor data to provide additional and, in some cases, more accurate information using an analysis of both live and warehoused information.

  7. GONUTS: the Gene Ontology Normal Usage Tracking System

    PubMed Central

    Renfro, Daniel P.; McIntosh, Brenley K.; Venkatraman, Anand; Siegele, Deborah A.; Hu, James C.

    2012-01-01

    The Gene Ontology Normal Usage Tracking System (GONUTS) is a community-based browser and usage guide for Gene Ontology (GO) terms and a community system for general GO annotation of proteins. GONUTS uses wiki technology to allow registered users to share and edit notes on the use of each term in GO, and to contribute annotations for specific genes of interest. By providing a site for generation of third-party documentation at the granularity of individual terms, GONUTS complements the official documentation of the Gene Ontology Consortium. To provide examples for community users, GONUTS displays the complete GO annotations from seven model organisms: Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Dictyostelium discoideum, Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster, Danio rerio, Mus musculus and Arabidopsis thaliana. To support community annotation, GONUTS allows automated creation of gene pages for gene products in UniProt. GONUTS will improve the consistency of annotation efforts across genome projects, and should be useful in training new annotators and consumers in the production of GO annotations and the use of GO terms. GONUTS can be accessed at http://gowiki.tamu.edu. The source code for generating the content of GONUTS is available upon request. PMID:22110029

  8. Social media's and online user-generated content's role in services advertising

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Stavrianea, A.; Kavoura, Androniki

    2015-02-01

    The aim of this paper is to present results from a study that examines the use of the Internet for collecting material and the attention people pay to advertisements through different media sources in the context of services. A representative stratified sample of 301 respondents of foreign arrivals of tourists in the Athens airport, Greece, collected in June and July 2014 was employed. We present which social media sources and user-generated material that promote advertisements were found to be important in capturing people's attention. Results illustrated the significant role that advertisements on Facebook play on the way people pay attention to. In fact, Facebook was found to be the second most important medium that people use when collecting material. In addition, Facebook was found to be the third source that respondents strongly agreed that they pay attention to advertisements, with the official websites/blogs to be the first source and travel guidebooks and travel magazines to follow, leaving traditional media far behind. Implications and suggestions are provided for online communication programs that may incorporate social media in services marketing communications campaigns. Libraries and corporate bodies may employ social media for advertising their services based on the significant role social media have.

  9. A User-Centered Approach to Adaptive Hypertext Based on an Information Relevance Model

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mathe, Nathalie; Chen, James

    1994-01-01

    Rapid and effective to information in large electronic documentation systems can be facilitated if information relevant in an individual user's content can be automatically supplied to this user. However most of this knowledge on contextual relevance is not found within the contents of documents, it is rather established incrementally by users during information access. We propose a new model for interactively learning contextual relevance during information retrieval, and incrementally adapting retrieved information to individual user profiles. The model, called a relevance network, records the relevance of references based on user feedback for specific queries and user profiles. It also generalizes such knowledge to later derive relevant references for similar queries and profiles. The relevance network lets users filter information by context of relevance. Compared to other approaches, it does not require any prior knowledge nor training. More importantly, our approach to adaptivity is user-centered. It facilitates acceptance and understanding by users by giving them shared control over the adaptation without disturbing their primary task. Users easily control when to adapt and when to use the adapted system. Lastly, the model is independent of the particular application used to access information, and supports sharing of adaptations among users.

  10. Global Handwashing Day 2012: a qualitative content analysis of Chinese social media reaction to a health promotion event.

    PubMed

    Fung, Isaac Chun-Hai; Cai, Jingxian; Hao, Yi; Ying, Yuchen; Chan, Benedict Shing Bun; Tse, Zion Tsz Ho; Fu, King-Wa

    2015-01-01

    Global Handwashing Day (GHD) is a handwashing promotion campaign organized by the Global Public-Private Partnership of Handwashing with Soap. In China, it has been promoted by the Chinese public health authorities, international organizations and multinational corporations through various channels including social media such as Sina Weibo, the leading Chinese microblogging site similar to Twitter. The objective of this study is to qualitatively assess Chinese social media users' reactions to a health promotion campaign using Global Handwashing Day (GHD) 2012 as an example. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of 552 Weibo posts generated on GHD 2012 by Weibo users with 1000 or more followers with the Chinese keyword for "handwashing." We categorized the Weibo posts into groups by keywords that frequently appeared in the data set. These groups were either exact reposts of an original post, or they conveyed similar information. We observed the interconnections between traditional media and social media in handwashing promotion. Social media were found to serve as amplifiers of contents provided by traditional media. We observed the contextualization of global hygiene messages in a unique national social media market in China. Our study showed that social media and traditional media are two interconnected arms of the GHD campaign in China. Our analysis demonstrated that public health campaigns in China can be evaluated using social media data. The themes and topics identified in this study will help public health practitioners evaluate future social media handwashing promotion campaigns.

  11. Content-Based Discovery for Web Map Service using Support Vector Machine and User Relevance Feedback

    PubMed Central

    Cheng, Xiaoqiang; Qi, Kunlun; Zheng, Jie; You, Lan; Wu, Huayi

    2016-01-01

    Many discovery methods for geographic information services have been proposed. There are approaches for finding and matching geographic information services, methods for constructing geographic information service classification schemes, and automatic geographic information discovery. Overall, the efficiency of the geographic information discovery keeps improving., There are however, still two problems in Web Map Service (WMS) discovery that must be solved. Mismatches between the graphic contents of a WMS and the semantic descriptions in the metadata make discovery difficult for human users. End-users and computers comprehend WMSs differently creating semantic gaps in human-computer interactions. To address these problems, we propose an improved query process for WMSs based on the graphic contents of WMS layers, combining Support Vector Machine (SVM) and user relevance feedback. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can improve the accuracy and efficiency of WMS discovery. PMID:27861505

  12. Content-Based Discovery for Web Map Service using Support Vector Machine and User Relevance Feedback.

    PubMed

    Hu, Kai; Gui, Zhipeng; Cheng, Xiaoqiang; Qi, Kunlun; Zheng, Jie; You, Lan; Wu, Huayi

    2016-01-01

    Many discovery methods for geographic information services have been proposed. There are approaches for finding and matching geographic information services, methods for constructing geographic information service classification schemes, and automatic geographic information discovery. Overall, the efficiency of the geographic information discovery keeps improving., There are however, still two problems in Web Map Service (WMS) discovery that must be solved. Mismatches between the graphic contents of a WMS and the semantic descriptions in the metadata make discovery difficult for human users. End-users and computers comprehend WMSs differently creating semantic gaps in human-computer interactions. To address these problems, we propose an improved query process for WMSs based on the graphic contents of WMS layers, combining Support Vector Machine (SVM) and user relevance feedback. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can improve the accuracy and efficiency of WMS discovery.

  13. The Effects of Website Information Utility on the Outcomes of User-Website Interactions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hasley, Joseph Paul

    2010-01-01

    This study investigates the relationships between website information content utility and various outcomes of user interactions with e-tail websites. Although previous research has consistently identified high quality information content as a critical factor of successful e-commerce websites, those studies have not reported how to identify the…

  14. Measuring Learner's Performance in E-Learning Recommender Systems

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ghauth, Khairil Imran; Abdullah, Nor Aniza

    2010-01-01

    A recommender system is a piece of software that helps users to identify the most interesting and relevant learning items from a large number of items. Recommender systems may be based on collaborative filtering (by user ratings), content-based filtering (by keywords), and hybrid filtering (by both collaborative and content-based filtering).…

  15. Guidelines for Making Web Content Accessible to All Users

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Thompson, Terrill; Primlani, Saroj; Fiedor, Lisa

    2009-01-01

    The main goal of accessibility standards and guidelines is to design websites everyone can use. The "IT Accessibility Constituent Group" developed this set of draft guidelines to help EQ authors, reviewers, and staff and the larger EDUCAUSE community ensure that web content is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. This…

  16. Detecting Rumors Through Modeling Information Propagation Networks in a Social Media Environment.

    PubMed

    Liu, Yang; Xu, Songhua; Tourassi, Georgia

    2015-01-01

    In the midst of today's pervasive influence of social media content and activities, information credibility has increasingly become a major issue. Accordingly, identifying false information, e.g. rumors circulated in social media environments, attracts expanding research attention and growing interests. Many previous studies have exploited user-independent features for rumor detection. These prior investigations uniformly treat all users relevant to the propagation of a social media message as instances of a generic entity. Such a modeling approach usually adopts a homogeneous network to represent all users, the practice of which ignores the variety across an entire user population in a social media environment. Recognizing this limitation of modeling methodologies, this study explores user-specific features in a social media environment for rumor detection. The new approach hypothesizes that whether a user tends to spread a rumor is dependent upon specific attributes of the user in addition to content characteristics of the message itself. Under this hypothesis, information propagation patterns of rumors versus those of credible messages in a social media environment are systematically differentiable. To explore and exploit this hypothesis, we develop a new information propagation model based on a heterogeneous user representation for rumor recognition. The new approach is capable of differentiating rumors from credible messages through observing distinctions in their respective propagation patterns in social media. Experimental results show that the new information propagation model based on heterogeneous user representation can effectively distinguish rumors from credible social media content.

  17. Directing the public to evidence-based online content.

    PubMed

    Cooper, Crystale Purvis; Gelb, Cynthia A; Vaughn, Alexandra N; Smuland, Jenny; Hughes, Alexandra G; Hawkins, Nikki A

    2015-04-01

    To direct online users searching for gynecologic cancer information to accurate content, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) 'Inside Knowledge: Get the Facts About Gynecologic Cancer' campaign sponsored search engine advertisements in English and Spanish. From June 2012 to August 2013, advertisements appeared when US Google users entered search terms related to gynecologic cancer. Users who clicked on the advertisements were directed to relevant content on the CDC website. Compared with the 3 months before the initiative (March-May 2012), visits to the CDC web pages linked to the advertisements were 26 times higher after the initiative began (June-August 2012) (p<0.01), and 65 times higher when the search engine advertisements were supplemented with promotion on television and additional websites (September 2012-August 2013) (p<0.01). Search engine advertisements can direct users to evidence-based content at a highly teachable moment--when they are seeking relevant information. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  18. Science vs conspiracy: collective narratives in the age of misinformation.

    PubMed

    Bessi, Alessandro; Coletto, Mauro; Davidescu, George Alexandru; Scala, Antonio; Caldarelli, Guido; Quattrociocchi, Walter

    2015-01-01

    The large availability of user provided contents on online social media facilitates people aggregation around shared beliefs, interests, worldviews and narratives. In spite of the enthusiastic rhetoric about the so called collective intelligence unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories-e.g., chemtrails, reptilians or the Illuminati-are pervasive in online social networks (OSN). In this work we study, on a sample of 1.2 million of individuals, how information related to very distinct narratives-i.e. main stream scientific and conspiracy news-are consumed and shape communities on Facebook. Our results show that polarized communities emerge around distinct types of contents and usual consumers of conspiracy news result to be more focused and self-contained on their specific contents. To test potential biases induced by the continued exposure to unsubstantiated rumors on users' content selection, we conclude our analysis measuring how users respond to 4,709 troll information-i.e. parodistic and sarcastic imitation of conspiracy theories. We find that 77.92% of likes and 80.86% of comments are from users usually interacting with conspiracy stories.

  19. Toward visual user interfaces supporting collaborative multimedia content management

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Husein, Fathi; Leissler, Martin; Hemmje, Matthias

    2000-12-01

    Supporting collaborative multimedia content management activities, as e.g., image and video acquisition, exploration, and access dialogues between naive users and multi media information systems is a non-trivial task. Although a wide variety of experimental and prototypical multimedia storage technologies as well as corresponding indexing and retrieval engines are available, most of them lack appropriate support for collaborative end-user oriented user interface front ends. The development of advanced user adaptable interfaces is necessary for building collaborative multimedia information- space presentations based upon advanced tools for information browsing, searching, filtering, and brokering to be applied on potentially very large and highly dynamic multimedia collections with a large number of users and user groups. Therefore, the development of advanced and at the same time adaptable and collaborative computer graphical information presentation schemes that allow to easily apply adequate visual metaphors for defined target user stereotypes has to become a key focus within ongoing research activities trying to support collaborative information work with multimedia collections.

  20. An Inter-Personal Information Sharing Model Based on Personalized Recommendations

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kamei, Koji; Funakoshi, Kaname; Akahani, Jun-Ichi; Satoh, Tetsuji

    In this paper, we propose an inter-personal information sharing model among individuals based on personalized recommendations. In the proposed model, we define an information resource as shared between people when both of them consider it important --- not merely when they both possess it. In other words, the model defines the importance of information resources based on personalized recommendations from identifiable acquaintances. The proposed method is based on a collaborative filtering system that focuses on evaluations from identifiable acquaintances. It utilizes both user evaluations for documents and their contents. In other words, each user profile is represented as a matrix of credibility to the other users' evaluations on each domain of interests. We extended the content-based collaborative filtering method to distinguish other users to whom the documents should be recommended. We also applied a concept-based vector space model to represent the domain of interests instead of the previous method which represented them by a term-based vector space model. We introduce a personalized concept-base compiled from each user's information repository to improve the information retrieval in the user's environment. Furthermore, the concept-spaces change from user to user since they reflect the personalities of the users. Because of different concept-spaces, the similarity between a document and a user's interest varies for each user. As a result, a user receives recommendations from other users who have different view points, achieving inter-personal information sharing based on personalized recommendations. This paper also describes an experimental simulation of our information sharing model. In our laboratory, five participants accumulated a personal repository of e-mails and web pages from which they built their own concept-base. Then we estimated the user profiles according to personalized concept-bases and sets of documents which others evaluated. We simulated inter-personal recommendation based on the user profiles and evaluated the performance of the recommendation method by comparing the recommended documents to the result of the content-based collaborative filtering.

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