Sentiment, richness, authority, and relevance model of information sharing during social Crises—the case of #MH370 tweets

The study introduces a model of crisis information sharing based on Twitter discussions of the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. Grounded in the Elaboration Likelihood Model, the study tests four salient factors: Sentiment, Richness, Authority, and Relevance, which can be measured by peripheral cues in tweets and in user profiles. Findings suggest that information sharing is positively associated with the presence of peripheral cues indicative of a confident, self-revealing and positive emotional language style, and is negatively related to an angry and informal style. Additionally, information sharing is related to the presence of multimedia cues and cues indicating source popularity

Applying antibodies inside cells: Principles and recent advances in neurobiology, virology and oncology

To interfere with cell function, many scientists rely on methods that target DNA or RNA due to the ease with which they can be applied. Proteins are usually the final executors of function but are targeted only indirectly by these methods. Recent advances in targeted degradation of proteins based on proteolysis-targeting chimaeras (PROTACs), ubiquibodies, deGradFP (degrade Green Fluorescent Protein) and other approaches have demonstrated the potential of interfering directly at the protein level for research and therapy. Proteins can be targeted directly and very specifically by antibodies, but using antibodies inside cells has so far been considered to be challenging. However, it is possible to deliver antibodies or other proteins into the cytosol using standard laboratory equipment. Physical methods such as electroporation have been demonstrated to be efficient and validated thoroughly over time. The expression of intracellular antibodies (intrabodies) inside cells is another way to interfere with intracellular targets at the protein level. Methodological strategies to target the inside of cells with antibodies, including delivered antibodies and expressed antibodies, as well as applications in the research areas of neurobiology, viral infections and oncology, are reviewed here. Antibodies have already been used to interfere with a wide range of intracellular targets. Disease-related targets included proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease (α-synuclein), Alzheimer's disease (amyloid-β) or Huntington's disease (mutant huntingtin [mHtt]). The applications of intrabodies in the context of viral infections include targeting proteins associated with HIV (e.g. HIV1-TAT, Rev, Vif, gp41, gp120, gp160) and different oncoviruses such as human papillomavirus (HPV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and Epstein-Barr virus, and they have been used to interfere with various targets related to different processes in cancer, including oncogenic pathways, proliferation, cell cycle, apoptosis, metastasis, angiogenesis or neo-antigens (e.g. p53, human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 [HER2], signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 [STAT3], RAS-related RHO-GTPase B (RHOB), cortactin, vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 [VEGFR2], Ras, Bcr-Abl). Interfering at the protein level allows questions to be addressed that may remain unanswered using alternative methods. This review addresses why direct targeting of proteins allows unique insights, what is currently feasible in vitro, and how this relates to potential therapeutic applications

DySuse: Susceptibility Estimation in Dynamic Social Networks

Influence estimation aims to predict the total influence spread in social networks and has received surged attention in recent years. Most current studies focus on estimating the total number of influenced users in a social network, and neglect susceptibility estimation that aims to predict the probability of each user being influenced from the individual perspective. As a more fine-grained estimation task, susceptibility estimation is full of attractiveness and practical value. Based on the significance of susceptibility estimation and dynamic properties of social networks, we propose a task, called susceptibility estimation in dynamic social networks, which is even more realistic and valuable in real-world applications. Susceptibility estimation in dynamic networks has yet to be explored so far and is computationally intractable to naively adopt Monte Carlo simulation to obtain the results. To this end, we propose a novel end-to-end framework DySuse based on dynamic graph embedding technology. Specifically, we leverage a structural feature module to independently capture the structural information of influence diffusion on each single graph snapshot. Besides, {we propose the progressive mechanism according to the property of influence diffusion,} to couple the structural and temporal information during diffusion tightly. Moreover, a self-attention block {is designed to} further capture temporal dependency by flexibly weighting historical timestamps. Experimental results show that our framework is superior to the existing dynamic graph embedding models and has satisfactory prediction performance in multiple influence diffusion models.Comment: This paper has been published in Expert Systems With Application

Knockdown der Oberflächenexpression des Neurotrophinrezeptors p75 in Säugerzellen ER-lokalisierter Antikörper

Although p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR) is the first neurotrophin receptor isolated, its precise functions in physiology and underlying signaling have remained elusive for many years. In this study, endoplasmic reticulum retained intrabody (ER-intrabody) technology was applied to knockdown p75NTR surface expression in mammalian cells. By fusing with the C-terminal ER retention signal KDEL, ER-intrabody impedes target receptor protein from secretory trafficking. Monoclonal recombinant scFvs against p75NTR were isolated by phage display. These scFvs bound to p75NTR with nanomolar affinities and were used to generate p75NTR-specific ER-intrabodies. In neuron-like cell lines PC12 and NSC19, p75NTR surface expression was significantly suppressed by the p75NTR-specific ER-intrabody construct SH325-G7-KDEL. The effect of this ER-intrabody on p75NTR surface knockdown could be maintained over a period of more than eight days without obviously activating unfolded protein response (UPR). Finally, the downregulation of p75NTR surface expression was determined in mouse hippocampal primary cultures using the ER-intrabody SH325-G7-KDEL. Sholl analysis showed that dendritic complexity of neurons was significantly increased if the p75NTR expressions were reduced on their surfaces by the ER-intrabody. In conclusion, the novel ER-intrabody SH325-G7-KDEL inhibits the surface translocation of p75NTR and ER-intrabody knockdown technology may become a powerful tool to investigate molecular mechanisms of target neuronal receptors.Obwohl der Neurotrophinrezeptor p75 (p75NTR) als einer der ersten Neurotrophinrezeptoren isoliert wurde, ist seine physiologische Funktion und seine Beteiligung an Signaltransduktionswegen bis heute noch nicht vollständig erforscht. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurden intrazellulären Antikörper (intrabodies) eingesetzt, um einen phänotypischen knockdown des Oberflächenproteins p75NTR auf Säugerzellen zu erreichen. Bei dieser Technik, die auf posttranslationaler Ebene wirkt, wird die Sekretion des Zielantigens verhindert, indem man an einen spezifischen Antikörper ein ER-Retentionssignal anhängt. Dieses Retentionssignal ist für den Verbleib des Zielproteins im ER (Endoplasmatisches Retikulum) der Zelle verantwortlich. Mittels der Phage Display Technologie wurden verschiedene scFvs gegen p75NTR isoliert. Alle scFvs wiesen nanomolare Affinität gegenüber ihrem Antigen auf und wurden im weiteren Verlauf der Arbeit in ER-intrabodies umkloniert. Nach einer transienten Transfektion von p75NTR-positiven Zelllinien (PC12 und NSC19) mit dem intrabody SH325-G7-KDEL konnte mittels Durchflusszytometrie eine signifkante Herunter Regulation des p75NTR-Oberföächenproteins gezeigt werden. Dieser Effekt konnte über einen Zeitraum von acht Tagen aufrechterhalten werden, ohne dabei dem unfolded protein response (UPR), einen Stressindikator der Zelle, zu aktivieren. Weiterhin wurde der Effekt des intrabody SH325-G7-KDEL in murinen, primären Hippocampuszellen untersucht. Nach transienter Transfektion konnte mittels Sholl-Analyse gezeigt werden, dass eine reduzierte p75NTR-Oberflächenexpression zu einer signifikant erhöhten Komplexität der Neuronen führte. Zusammenfassend wurde mit den in dieser Arbeit isolierten funktionellen ER-intrabodies ein weiteres Beispiel dafür gegeben, dass der posttranslationale Knockdown von Proteinen eine viel versprechende Methode ist, um die molekularen Mechanismen von Oberflächenproteinen zu untersuchen

Understanding consumers’ emotions and sensory experience for beauty care products

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and HealthMartin TalaveraUnderstanding consumer experience related to hedonic, sensory, and emotional aspects of products is the key to driving consumer-centric product design for the beauty care category. This dissertation conducted three independent studies aiming to explore consumer experience of beauty care products from two perspectives: liking and beyond liking (emotions), based on conventional sensory and consumer data and online product reviews. The objective of Chapter 2 was to develop an emotion lexicon that could be used to profile consumers’ emotional responses to beauty care products in sensory and consumer tests. The lexicon was developed in four main steps: sourcing terms from online product reviews, term identification and categorization, term refinement, and term validation. The final emotion lexicon consists of 37 positive emotions and 2 negative emotions. Recommendations on the application of this lexicon to each of the three categories of beauty care (skincare, hair care and makeup) were provided. The validated emotion lexicon from this study is readily applicable to other emotion research for skincare, hair care and makeup. Chapter 3 explored sensory drivers of liking and emotional associations for beauty care products. Hand creams were used as testing samples to be evaluated for sensory characteristics and consumer perception. First, the sensory space (aroma, appearance, texture & skinfeel) of twelve hand creams was profiled by a highly trained descriptive panel using a modified flavor/texture profile approach. Then, seven hand creams selected from the descriptive sensory space were rated for overall liking, emotions using the lexicon developed from Chapter 2, and consumer characterization using check-all-that-apply (CATA) in a home use test (HUT) with a hundred female consumers from the Kansas City area. Cluster analysis and external preference mapping identified three consumer clusters with different liking patterns: the thick & waxy-texture likers, mild scent & low-medium-thickness likers, and strong-scent likers. Consumers with different liking patterns differed in their emotional associations with sensory characteristics of hand creams. However, high intensities of certain aroma attributes seemed to elicit high-arousal emotions for all groups. The findings of this study could guide the development of new hand cream products targeting different consumer segments. Chapter 4 explored consumer experience for hand cream products from the “voice of consumers”-online product reviews. A total of 17, 581 reviews representing 46 hand creams of different brands, price points, and sensory attributes were collected from Amazon and Ulta Beauty using a scraping software. Topic modeling using Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) identified five major topics consumers mentioned in these online reviews: greasiness & residue of the product, scent/fragrances of the product, skin feel & efficacy of the product, consumers’ skin issues, and occasions when to apply the product. Term frequency–inverse document frequency (tf-idf) calculated for each rating group suggested that unpleasant scent and overall dissatisfied quality were the main reasons why consumers gave a rating lower than 4 stars. High efficacy and desirable skinfeel were the drivers for 5 stars. These findings highlighted the importance of sensory experience and perception of efficacy in consumers’ whole product experience