Sentiment Analysis, Quantification, and Shift Detection

This dissertation focuses on event detection within streams of Tweets based on sentiment quantification. Sentiment quantification extends sentiment analysis, the analysis of the sentiment of individual documents, to analyze the sentiment of an aggregated collection of documents. Although the former has been widely researched, the latter has drawn less attention but offers greater potential to enhance current business intelligence systems. Indeed, knowing the proportion of positive and negative Tweets is much more valuable than knowing which individual Tweets are positive or negative. We also extend our sentiment quantification research to analyze the evolution of sentiment over time to automatically detect a shift in sentiment with respect to a topic or entity. We introduce a probabilistic approach to create a paired sentiment lexicon that models the positivity and the negativity of words separately. We show that such a lexicon can be used to more accurately predict the sentiment features for a Tweet than univalued lexicons. In addition, we show that employing these features with a multivariate Support Vector Machine (SVM) that optimizes the Hellinger Distance improves sentiment quantification accuracy versus other distance metrics. Furthermore, we introduce a mean of representing sentiment over time through sentiment signals built from the aforementioned sentiment quantifier and show that sentiment shift can be detected using geometric change-point detection algorithms. Finally, our evaluation shows that, of the methods implemented, a two-dimensional Euclidean distance measure, analyzed using the first and second order statistical moments, was the most accurate in detecting sentiment shift

Fate of TiO2 nanoparticles in the aquatic environment in the presence of anthropogenic compounds

International audienceThe increasing production and use of nanoparticles (NP) in consumer products inevitably lead to ENP emissions into the environment. The physicochemical properties of NP depend on various parameters (e.g. pH, cations, IS). In natural waters, the stability of NP can vary as a function of a sum of these parameters and occurs by one of the numerous scenarios. In particular, the presence of anthropogenic organic molecules (AOM) can change the NP fate. Also, the presence of NP may affect the organic pollutants (fate and toxicity). The main objective of the work was to study the aggregation of TiO2 NP (pure hydrophilic 100 % rutile and pure hydrophilic 100 % anatase, 5−30 nm) in the presence of the most frequently occur and representative pesticides (glyphosate, AMPA, 2.4D) in natural waters considering lab experiments under relevant aqueous conditions (pH, ionic strength, presence and concentrations of mono- and bivalent cations). The presence of pesticides affected TiO2 NP homoaggregation in solutions (IS=10-3M - 10-2M) with pH values below the NP point of zero charge (PZC) for the anatase NPs (pH=6.5) and with pH values above the NP PZC for the rutile NP (pH=4.5). No changes in NP aggregation were observed in very low (IS=10-4M) or very high (IS= 10-1M) ionic strength solutions. The presence of the pesticides caused a significant modification of the NP surface charge (zeta potential) over a large range of salt concentrations (IS=10-4M - 10-1M). Compared to mono-valent cations (Na+), bi-valent cations (Ca2+) favor an increase in zeta potential of NP (anatase and rutile) at pH 8. There is no significant difference between at pH 5. Finally, these results demonstrated that, among the studied AOMs, glyphosate (with 4 pKa-s from 0.8 to 11) affects NP aggregation/stabilization in a wider range of physicochemical conditions. Overall, these results will aid in the evaluation of potential environmental risks posed by engineered NP in the aquatic environments exposed to pesticide load

Living Bacterial Sacrificial Porogens to Engineer Decellularized Porous Scaffolds

Decellularization and cellularization of organs have emerged as disruptive methods in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Porous hydrogel scaffolds have widespread applications in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and drug discovery as viable tissue mimics. However, the existing hydrogel fabrication techniques suffer from limited control over pore interconnectivity, density and size, which leads to inefficient nutrient and oxygen transport to cells embedded in the scaffolds. Here, we demonstrated an innovative approach to develop a new platform for tissue engineered constructs using live bacteria as sacrificial porogens. E.coli were patterned and cultured in an interconnected three-dimensional (3D) hydrogel network. The growing bacteria created interconnected micropores and microchannels. Then, the scafold was decellularized, and bacteria were eliminated from the scaffold through lysing and washing steps. This 3D porous network method combined with bioprinting has the potential to be broadly applicable and compatible with tissue specific applications allowing seeding of stem cells and other cell types

Nanomaterials in the Environment: Behavior, Fate, Bioavailability, and Effects-An Updated Review.

This review covers developments in studies of nanomaterials (NMs) in the environment, since the much-cited review of Klaine et al. (2008). It discusses novel insights on fate and behavior, metrology, transformations, bioavailability, toxicity mechanisms and environmental impacts, with a focus on terrestrial and aquatic systems. Overall the findings were that: i) despite the substantial developments, there remain critical gaps, in large part due to the lack of analytical, modelling and field capabilities and in part due to the breadth and complexity of the area; ii) a key knowledge gap is the lack of data on environmental concentrations and dosimetry generally; iii) there is substantial evidence that there are nano-specific effects (different from both ions and larger particles) in the environment in terms of fate, bioavailability and toxicity, but this is not consistent for all NMs, species and all relevant processes; iv) a paradigm is emerging that NMs are less toxic than equivalent dissolved materials but more toxic than the corresponding bulk materials; v) translation of incompletely understood science into regulation and policy continues to be challenging. There is a developing consensus that NMs may pose a relatively low environmental risk, however, with the uncertainty and lack of data in many areas, definitive conclusions cannot be drawn. In addition, this emerging consensus will likely change rapidly with qualitative changes in the technology and increased future discharges. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved