Targeting HIV-related Medication Side Effects and Sentiment Using Twitter Data

We present a descriptive analysis of Twitter data. Our study focuses on extracting the main side effects associated with HIV treatments. The crux of our work was the identification of personal tweets referring to HIV. We summarize our results in an infographic aimed at the general public. In addition, we present a measure of user sentiment based on hand-rated tweets

On the Ground Validation of Online Diagnosis with Twitter and Medical Records

Social media has been considered as a data source for tracking disease. However, most analyses are based on models that prioritize strong correlation with population-level disease rates over determining whether or not specific individual users are actually sick. Taking a different approach, we develop a novel system for social-media based disease detection at the individual level using a sample of professionally diagnosed individuals. Specifically, we develop a system for making an accurate influenza diagnosis based on an individual's publicly available Twitter data. We find that about half (17/35 = 48.57%) of the users in our sample that were sick explicitly discuss their disease on Twitter. By developing a meta classifier that combines text analysis, anomaly detection, and social network analysis, we are able to diagnose an individual with greater than 99% accuracy even if she does not discuss her health.Comment: Presented at of WWW2014. WWW'14 Companion, April 7-11, 2014, Seoul, Kore

On the Ground Validation of Online Diagnosis with Twitter and Medical Records

Social media has been considered as a data source for tracking disease. However, most analyses are based on models that prioritize strong correlation with population-level disease rates over determining whether or not specific individual users are actually sick. Taking a different approach, we develop a novel system for social-media based disease detection at the individual level using a sample of professionally diagnosed individuals. Specifically, we develop a system for making an accurate influenza diagnosis based on an individual's publicly available Twitter data. We find that about half (17/35 = 48.57%) of the users in our sample that were sick explicitly discuss their disease on Twitter. By developing a meta classifier that combines text analysis, anomaly detection, and social network analysis, we are able to diagnose an individual with greater than 99% accuracy even if she does not discuss her health.Comment: Presented at of WWW2014. WWW'14 Companion, April 7-11, 2014, Seoul, Kore

The Social Maintenance of Cooperation through Hypocrisy

Cooperation is widespread in human societies, but its maintenance at the group level remains puzzling if individuals benefit from not cooperating. Explanations of the maintenance of cooperation generally assume that cooperative and non-cooperative behavior in others can be assessed and copied accurately. However, humans have a well known capacity to deceive and thus to manipulate how others assess their behavior. Here, we show that hypocrisy - claiming to be acting cooperatively while acting selfishly - can maintain social cooperation because it prevents the spread of selfish behavior. We demonstrate this effect both theoretically and experimentally. Hypocrisy allows the cooperative strategy to spread by taking credit for the success of the non-cooperative strateg

Digital Epidemiology

Mobile, social, real-time: the ongoing revolution in the way people communicate has given rise to a new kind of epidemiology. Digital data sources, when harnessed appropriately, can provide local and timely information about disease and health dynamics in populations around the world. The rapid, unprecedented increase in the availability of relevant data from various digital sources creates considerable technical and computational challenges

Neurocircuitry underlying stress and emotional regulation in animals prenatally exposed to alcohol and subjected to chronic mild stress in adulthood

Individuals exposed to alcohol during gestation show higher rates of psychopathologies. The hyperresponsivity to stress induced by prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) may be related to this increased rate of psychopathologies, especially because this population is more likely to be exposed to stressful environments throughout life. However, alcohol-induced changes in the overlapping neurocircuitries that underlie stress and the expression of psychopathologies are not fully understood. Here, we performed a comprehensive analysis of the neural activity within central areas known to play key roles in both emotional and stress regulation. Adult male and female offspring from PAE, pair-fed, and ad libitum-fed control conditions were exposed to chronic mild stress (CMS). Following CMS, the neural activity (c-fos mRNA) of the amygdala, ventral hippocampal formation, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and paraventricular nucleus of hypothalamus (PVN) was assessed in response to an acute stress (elevated plus maze). Our results demonstrate that, overall, PAE decreased neura

Digital epidemiology

Mobile, social, real-time: the ongoing revolution in the way people communicate has given rise to a new kind of epidemiology. Digital data sources, when harnessed appropriately, can provide local and timely information about disease and health dynamics in populations around the world. The rapid, unprecedented increase in the availability of relevant data from various digital sources creates considerable technical and computational challenges

Governing the Global Commons with Local Institutions

Most problems faced by modern human society have two characteristics in common - they are tragedy-of-the-commons type of problems, and they are global problems. Tragedy-of-the-commons type of problems are those where a commonly shared resource is overexploited by free riders at the expense of everyone sharing the resource. The exploitation of global resources such as clean air and water, political stability and peace, etc. underlies many of the most pressing human problems. Punishment of free riding behavior is one of the most frequently used strategies to combat the problem, but the spatial reach of sanctioning institutions is often more limited than the spatial effects of overexploitation. Here, we analyze a general game theoretical model to assess under what circumstances sanctioning institutions with limited reach can maintain the larger commons. We find that the effect of the spatial reach has a strong effect on whether and how the commons can be maintained, and that the transitions between those outcomes are characterized by phase transitions. The latter indicates that a small change in the reach of sanctioning systems can profoundly change the way the global commons can be managed

Maternal body mass index and post-term birth: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Acknowledgements All authors contributed to the design of the research, acquisition of data and writing of the manuscript. NH and JR obtained funding. NH, RV and LH carried out the analysis. The authors would like to acknowledge Dr Helen Simpson at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Dr Helene Brandon at Gateshead NHS Foundation Trust for their contribution to the clinical relevance and interpretation of this study. Dr Simpson and Dr Brandon are consultant obstetricians with a special interest in maternal obesity and risk management. This research was part funded by a Medical Research Council and Newcastle University Faculty of Medical Sciences Doctoral Training award for ES. The funders had no role in design and conduct of the study, collection, management, analysis and interpretation of the data and preparation, review or approval of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The experimental analysis of the interruptive, interfering, and identity-distorting effects of chronic pain

Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience urging the individual to take action to restore the integrity of the body. The transition from a common episode of acute pain to a state of intermittent or chronic pain has been a constant preoccupation of researchers and clinicians alike. In this review, we approach chronic pain from a modern learning perspective that incorporates cognitive, affective, behavioral and motivational aspects. We view pain as a biologically hard-wired signal of bodily harm that competes with other demands in the person’s environment. The basic tenet is that pain urges people to interrupt ongoing activity, elicits protective responses that paradoxically increase interference with daily activities, and compromises the sense of self. Here we briefly summarize existing evidence showing how pain captures attention, and how attention for pain can be controlled. We also consider pain as a strong motivator for learning, and review the recent evidence on the acquisition and generalization of pain-related fear and avoidance behavior, which are likely to interfere with daily life activities. We highlight the paradoxical effects of pain avoidance behavior, and review treatment effects of exposure in vivo. A generally neglected area of research is the detrimental consequences of repeated interference by pain with daily activities on one’s sense of “self”. We end this review with a plea for the implementation of single-case experimental designs as a means to help customize and develop novel cognitive-behavioral treatments for individuals for chronic pain aimed at reducing the suffering of this large group of individuals