GAUGING PUBLIC INTEREST FROM SERVER LOGS, SURVEYS AND INLINKS

As the World Wide Web (the Web) has turned into a full-fledged medium to disseminate news, it is very important for journalism and information science researchers to investigate how Web users access online news reports and how to interpret such usage patterns. This doctoral thesis collected and analyzed Web server log statistics, online surveys results, online reprints of the top 50 news reports, as well as external inlinks data of a leading comprehensive online newspaper (the People’s Daily Online) in China, one of the biggest Web/information markets in today’s world. The aim of the thesis was to explore various methods to gauge the public interest from a Webometrics perspective. A total of 129 days of Web server log statistics, including the top 50 Chinese and English news stories with the highest daily pageview numbers, the comments attracted by these news items and the emailed frequencies of the same stories were collected from October 2007 to September 2008. These top 50 news items’positions on the Chinese and English homepages and the top 50 queries submitted to the website search engine of the People’s Daily Online were also retrieved. Results of the two online surveys launched in March 2008 and March 2009 were collected after their respective closing dates. The external inlinks to the People’s Daily Online were retrieved by Yahoo! (Chinese and English versions), and the online reprints were retrieved by Google. Besides the general usage patterns identified from the top 50 news stories, this study, by conducting statistical tests on the data sets, also reveals the following findings. First, the editors’ choices and the readers’ favorites do not always match each other; thus content of news title is more important than its homepage position in attracting online visits. Second, the Chinese and English readers’ interests in the same events are different. Third, the pageview numbers and comments posted to the news items reflect the unfavorable attitudes of the Chinese people toward the United States and Japan, which might offer us a method to investigate the public interest in some other issues or nations after necessary modifications. More importantly, some publicly available data, such as the comments posted to the news stories and online survey results, further show that the pageview measure does reflect readers’ interests/needs truthfully, as proved by the strong correlations between the top news reports and relevant top queries. The external ininks to the news websites and the online reprints of the top news items help us examine readers\u27 interests from other perspectives, as well as establish online profiles of the news websites. Such publicly accessible information could be an alternative data source for researchers to study readers\u27 interests when the Web server log data are not available. This doctoral thesis not only shows the usefulness of Web server log statistics, survey results, and other publicly accessible data in studying Web user’s information needs, but also offers practical suggestions for online news sites to improve their contents and homepage designs. However, no single method can draw a complete picture of the online news readers’ interests. The above mentioned research methodologies should be employed together, in order to make more comprehensive conclusions. Future research is especially needed to investigate the continuously rapid growth of the “Mobile News Readers,” which poses both challenges and opportunities to the press industry in the 21st century

GAUGING PUBLIC INTEREST FROM SERVER LOGS, SURVEYS AND INLINKS A Multi-Method Approach to Analyze News Websites

As the World Wide Web (the Web) has turned into a full-fledged medium to disseminate news, it is very important for journalism and information science researchers to investigate how Web users access online news reports and how to interpret such usage patterns. This doctoral thesis collected and analyzed Web server log statistics, online surveys results, online reprints of the top 50 news reports, as well as external inlinks data of a leading comprehensive online newspaper (the People\u27s Daily Online) in China, one of the biggest Web/information markets in today\u27s world. The aim of the thesis was to explore various methods to gauge the public interest from a Webometrics perspective. A total of 129 days of Web server log statistics, including the top 50 Chinese and English news stories with the highest daily pageview numbers, the comments attracted by these news items and the emailed frequencies of the same stories were collected from October 2007 to September 2008. These top 50 news items’positions on the Chinese and English homepages and the top 50 queries submitted to the website search engine of the People’s Daily Online were also retrieved. Results of the two online surveys launched in March 2008 and March 2009 were collected after their respective closing dates. The external inlinks to the People’s Daily Online were retrieved by Yahoo! (Chinese and English versions), and the online reprints were retrieved by Google. Besides the general usage patterns identified from the top 50 news stories, this study, by conducting statistical tests on the data sets, also reveals the following findings. First, the editors’ choices and the readers’ favorites do not always match each other; thus content of news title is more important than its homepage position in attracting online visits. Second, the Chinese and English readers’ interests in the same events are different. Third, the pageview numbers and comments posted to the news items reflect the unfavorable attitudes of the Chinese people toward the United States and Japan, which might offer us a method to investigate the public interest in some other issues or nations after necessary modifications. More importantly, some publicly available data, such as the comments posted to the news stories and online survey results, further show that the pageview measure does reflect readers’ interests/needs truthfully, as proved by the strong correlations between the top news reports and relevant top queries. The external ininks to the news websites and the online reprints of the top news items help us examine readers\u27 interests from other perspectives, as well as establish online profiles of the news websites. Such publicly accessible information could be an alternative data source for researchers to study readers\u27 interests when the Web server log data are not available. This doctoral thesis not only shows the usefulness of Web server log statistics, survey results, and other publicly accessible data in studying Web user’s information needs, but also offers practical suggestions for online news sites to improve their contents and homepage designs. However, no single method can draw a complete picture of the online news readers’ interests. The above mentioned research methodologies should be employed together, in order to make more comprehensive conclusions. Future research is especially needed to investigate the continuously rapid growth of the “Mobile News Readers,” which poses both challenges and opportunities to the press industry in the 21st century

Характеристика для вибору моделей у ансамблі класифікаторів

Проведено аналіз досліджень та підходів практичного застосування ансамблів та визначено характерні фактори впливу на комбінацію моделей. Фактори несуть визначальний характер та притаманні комбінаціям застосувань. Обґрунтовано необхідність використання ознак моделей, які характерні тільки для ансамблів. Встановлені характерні особливості ансамблів та визначено необхідність розробки специфічних характеристик застосувань в розрізі комбінації рішень з визначення їх характерних ознак. Ці ознаки, а саме точність та відмінність здійснюють визначальний вплив на вибір та застосовність рішень в ансамблях і дозволяють вибрати найбільш дієву комбінацію. Запропоновано до використання таку характеристику рішення в ансамблі як відмінність певного рангу за параметром точності. Ця характеристики моделей дозволяє здійснювати їх вибір та характеризує модель в ансамблі. Вона застосовна тільки у випадку комбінації моделей. Вказує на відмінність однієї моделі від іншої та враховує точність моделі. Застосовується для моделей різної природи. Дозволяє визначити глибину відмінності моделей та дозволяє поєднуватись і з іншими відомими характеристиками класифікаторів. Особливість її полягає в тому, що вона дозволяє дати оцінку використання рішень в ансамблі та здійснювати вибір рішень.Проведен анализ исследований и подходов практического применения ансамблей и определены характерные факторы влияния на комбинацию моделей. Факторы несут определяющий характер и присущи комбинациям приложений. Обоснована необходимость использования признаков моделей, которые характерны только для ансамблей. Установлены характерные особенности ансамблей и определена необходимость разработки специфических характеристик приложений в разрезе комбинации решений по определению их характерных признаков. Эти признаки, а именно точность и отличие осуществляют определяющее влияние на выбор и применимость решений в ансамблях и позволяют выбрать наиболее действенную комбинацию. Предложено к использованию такую характеристику решение в ансамбле как различие определенного ранга по параметру точности. Эта характеристики моделей позволяет осуществлять их выбор и характеризует модель в ансамбле. Она применима только в случае комбинации моделей. Указывает на различие одной модели от другой и учитывает точность модели. Применяется для определения моделей различной природы. Позволяет определить глубину различия моделей и позволяет сочетаться и с другими известными характеристиками классификаторов. Особенность ее заключается в том, что она позволяет дать оценку использования решений в ансамбле и осуществлять выбор решений.The analysis of researches and approaches of practical application of ensembles is carried out and the characteristic factors of influence on a combination of models are determined. Factors are determinative and inherent in combinations of models. The necessity of using patterns of models that are characteristic only for ensembles is substantiated. The characteristic features of ensembles are established and the necessity of developing specific characteristics of models in terms of a combination of solutions by definition of their characteristic features is determined. These attributes, namely precision and distinction have a decisive influence on the choice and applicability of solutions in ensembles and allow to choose the most effective combination. We propose to use such a characteristic of the models in the ensemble as distinction of a certain rank by precision parameter. These characteristics of the models allow them to be chosen and characterize the model in the ensemble. It applies only in the case of a combination of models and indicates the distinction between one model and another and takes into account the precision of the model. This approach allows you to define models of different nature, to determine the depth of model distinction and allows it to be combined with other well-known characteristics of classifiers. Its peculiarity consists in the fact that it allows to evaluate the use of solutions in the ensemble and to carry out the selection of models

Adaptive Low-level Storage of Very Large Knowledge Graphs

The increasing availability and usage of Knowledge Graphs (KGs) on the Web calls for scalable and general-purpose solutions to store this type of data structures. We propose Trident, a novel storage architecture for very large KGs on centralized systems. Trident uses several interlinked data structures to provide fast access to nodes and edges, with the physical storage changing depending on the topology of the graph to reduce the memory footprint. In contrast to single architectures designed for single tasks, our approach offers an interface with few low-level and general-purpose primitives that can be used to implement tasks like SPARQL query answering, reasoning, or graph analytics. Our experiments show that Trident can handle graphs with 10^11 edges using inexpensive hardware, delivering competitive performance on multiple workloads.Comment: Accepted WWW 202

Learning Representations on Logs for AIOps

AI for IT Operations (AIOps) is a powerful platform that Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) use to automate and streamline operational workflows with minimal human intervention. Automated log analysis is a critical task in AIOps as it provides key insights for SREs to identify and address ongoing faults. Tasks such as log format detection, log classification, and log parsing are key components of automated log analysis. Most of these tasks require supervised learning; however, there are multiple challenges due to limited labelled log data and the diverse nature of log data. Large Language Models (LLMs) such as BERT and GPT3 are trained using self-supervision on a vast amount of unlabeled data. These models provide generalized representations that can be effectively used for various downstream tasks with limited labelled data. Motivated by the success of LLMs in specific domains like science and biology, this paper introduces a LLM for log data which is trained on public and proprietary log data. The results of our experiments demonstrate that the proposed LLM outperforms existing models on multiple downstream tasks. In summary, AIOps powered by LLMs offers an efficient and effective solution for automating log analysis tasks and enabling SREs to focus on higher-level tasks. Our proposed LLM, trained on public and proprietary log data, offers superior performance on multiple downstream tasks, making it a valuable addition to the AIOps platform.Comment: 11 pages, 2023 IEEE 16th International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD

Civil society under authoritarian rule: disasters, social capital, and their consequences in Chinese state-society relations

This dissertation addresses the question “how disasters change state-society relations under authoritarian rule?” Specifically, I investigate how space and social capital were created after major earthquakes and the relationships between local governments and civil society organizations (CSOs). Based on four years of interviews conducted with government officials and CSO leaders and two rounds of surveys in 126 villages in rural Sichuan province, utilizing experiments, focus groups, and interviews, I argue that social capital and space for CSOs were created after major earthquakes. Adding to the literature of consultative authoritarianism and graduated control, I demonstrate that within the newly created space, local governments use a deliberate differentiation strategy towards different CSOs. Such differentiation is more driven by the state’s interest to extract productivity and outsource responsibility for public goods provision by regime-supporting CSOs, and less dictated by the state’s need to acquire information from regime-challenging CSOs with collective action potential. Such approach contributes to the authoritarian resilience in China. Despite the interference from the state from above, the newly created space also faces challenges from the private sphere with individual citizens being skeptical of the CSO sector due to limited interactions, mismatch of criteria, institutional constraints, and lack of civility. I then draw from the qualitative data and construct a dynamic framework of state-society relations under an authoritarian state after disasters by starting from co-operational, complementary, competitive, and confrontational relations, and end up in either co-optation or confrontation in the long run. Finally, I trace the development of the newly drafted charity law and the foreign NGO law. I argue that the state-organized legalization process would first allow the state to use the “zone of indifference” to get to know the new developments in the public sphere. Then, through a process of toleration, participation, initiation, replication, and bifurcation, the state manages to extract productivity from, and outsource responsibility to, the regime-supporting players, and drive out the regime challenging ones. The laws, made through this process, is also vulnerable to state intervention at any time, and therefore, prevents China from having a meaningful civil society.2020-02-22T00:00:00

The Politics of Constitutional Common Law in Hong Kong under Chinese Sovereignty

This article studies how the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal has come to develop a sophisticated judicial gloss on the provisions of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s constitutional document, in ways unforeseen by the Chinese National People’s Congress that enacted it. The ascendancy of constitutional common law in Hong Kong after the end of British rule is remarkable when considered in light of the continuing denial of democratic self-rule by China’s authoritarian Party-state. This article argues that the profusion of political transaction costs due to the fragmentation of the ruling elite and state-society discord consequent to the resumption of Chinese sovereignty has created the requisite space for the Court to craft, with impunity, consequential yet politically realistic doctrines bearing on such weighty matters as constitutional interpretation, central-local relations, separation of powers, and rights protection

Countering Local Disaster Capitalism

Disaster capitalism creates political and economic space for neoliberal projects to benefit the wealthy disproportionately while marginalizing Indigenous groups. This paper examines how and the extent to which local disaster capitalism has affected Indigenous communities in Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley, as they recover from the 2015 earthquakes, and how local disaster capitalism ought to be countered. Based on an in-depth analysis of local disaster capitalism in Rudrayani Guthi, Nepal, the findings of this study demonstrate that Indigenous peoples have been negatively affected by state-sponsored disaster recovery schemes, whereas wealthy people and businesses have benefitted from them. Such schemes focus on “physical reconstruction” and “economic development”, dispossessing Indigenous lands to pave the way for housing, motorways, greenfield urban development, and hydropower. Many Indigenous groups are forced to be part of such schemes, while local disaster capitalism continues in the name of “disaster recovery”. The paper highlights the unfortunate reality of the local disaster capitalism taking shape and destroying Indigenous lives and livelihoods. The paper concludes by offering some principles used by Indigenous peoples while countering local disaster capitalism through confrontations with powerful actors and while protecting their land during the process of disaster recovery

Inovação bancária : um estudo cientométrico sobre os avanços do mobile banking

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso (graduação)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Tecnologia, Departamento de Engenharia de Produção, 2018.O presente estudo teve como objetivo dissertar sobre as mais importantes inovações bancárias ocorridas no Brasil e abordar os expressivos avanços do Mobile banking na oferta de serviços bancários e como esses avanços levaram as organizações a novos patamares de resultados financeiros positivos. Para mostrar a relevância da temática em nível mundial, foi feita uma pesquisa bibliométrica por meio da teoria do enfoque meta analítico consolidado (TEMAC). O Mobile banking está mudando os paradigmas relacionados à prestação de serviços bancários e já é a plataforma onde mais de um terço das transações bancárias são realizadas no Brasil (35%), tornando-se quase uma obrigatoriedade a ativação desse canal digital nas aberturas de contas. Do ano de 2014 para o ano de 2015 houve um aumento de 138,30% na quantidade de transações bancarias feitas pelo Mobile Banking e nesse período todos os bancos analisados obtiveram uma performance positiva em seus lucros líquidos. Diante disso, foi possível evidenciar que o aumento da utilização do Mobile banking tem uma correlação positiva com o aumento dos resultados financeiros dos bancos, uma vez que ele reduz despesas e custos operacionais, sendo fundamental uma boa gestão desse canal de atendimento para que a instituição financeira crie vantagem competitiva e alcance o sucesso.The present study aimed to discuss the most important banking innovations in Brazil and to address the significant advances made by Mobile banking in the provision of banking services and how these advances have led organizations to new levels of positive financial results. In order to show the relevance of the theme at a worldwide level, a bibliometric research was carried out through the theory of the consolidated meta-analytic approach (TEMAC). Mobile banking is changing paradigms related to the provision of banking services and it is already the platform where more than a third part of banking transactions are carried out in Brazil (35%), making it almost mandatory to activate this digital channel in account openings. From 2014 to 2015 there was a 138.30% increase in the number of banking transactions carried out by Mobile Banking, and in this period all the banks analyzed had a positive performance in their net profits. In view of this, it was possible to show that the increase in the use of Mobile banking has a positive correlation with the increase of the financial results of the banks, since it reduces expenses and operational costs, being fundamental to good management of this service channel so that the institution create competitive advantage achieving success

Evolutionary Computation 2020

Intelligent optimization is based on the mechanism of computational intelligence to refine a suitable feature model, design an effective optimization algorithm, and then to obtain an optimal or satisfactory solution to a complex problem. Intelligent algorithms are key tools to ensure global optimization quality, fast optimization efficiency and robust optimization performance. Intelligent optimization algorithms have been studied by many researchers, leading to improvements in the performance of algorithms such as the evolutionary algorithm, whale optimization algorithm, differential evolution algorithm, and particle swarm optimization. Studies in this arena have also resulted in breakthroughs in solving complex problems including the green shop scheduling problem, the severe nonlinear problem in one-dimensional geodesic electromagnetic inversion, error and bug finding problem in software, the 0-1 backpack problem, traveler problem, and logistics distribution center siting problem. The editors are confident that this book can open a new avenue for further improvement and discoveries in the area of intelligent algorithms. The book is a valuable resource for researchers interested in understanding the principles and design of intelligent algorithms