Sentiment analysis and the impact of employee satisfaction on firm earnings

Prior text mining studies of corporate reputational sentiment based on newswires, blogs and Twitter feeds have mostly captured reputation from the perspective of two groups of stakeholders – the media and consumers. In this study we examine the sentiment of a potentially overlooked stakeholder group, namely, the firm’s employees. First, we present a novel dataset that uses online employee reviews to capture employee satisfaction. We employ LDA to identify salient aspects in employees’ reviews, and manually infer one latent topic that appears to be associated with the firm’s outlook. Second, we create a composite document by aggregating employee reviews for each firm and measure employee sentiment as the polarity of the composite document using the General Inquirer dictionary to count positive and negative terms. Finally, we define employee satisfaction as a weighted combination of the firm outlook topic cluster and employee sentiment. The results of our joint aspect-polarity model suggest that it may be beneficial for investors to incorporate a measure of employee satisfaction into their method for forecasting firm earnings

Variation in feeding behavior and milk production among dairy cows when supplemented with 2 amounts of mixed ration in combination with 2 amounts of pasture

peer-reviewedVariation in feeding behavior and milk production of grazing dairy cows fed a mixed ration was measured. Experiments were conducted in spring (early lactation) and autumn (late lactation) with 48 Holstein-Friesian dairy cows. Pasture allowance (low vs. high) and amounts of supplement (low vs. high) were applied to determine the effect on variation among cows in feeding behavior and milk production. The experiments investigated 4 dietary treatments in a 2×2 factorial arrangement of treatments. Daily pasture allowances were 15kg of DM/cow per day (low) and 37kg of DM/cow per day (high; to ground level); and 12kg of DM/cow per day (low) and 31kg of DM/cow per day (high; to ground level), for the spring and autumn experiments, respectively. Supplements were offered at 6kg of DM/cow per day (low) and 14kg of DM/cow per day (high); and 6kg of DM/cow per day (low) and 12kg of DM/cow per day (high), for the spring and autumn experiments, respectively. There were 2groups of 6 cows per treatment. All treatments received a partial mixed ration, defined as a total mixed ration fed between periods of grazing that contained wheat grain, corn grain, alfalfa hay, and canola meal. The grain-to-forage ratio of the supplements was 78:22 (DM basis) in both spring and autumn. In both experiments, the pre-experimental period was 14d followed by a 10-d experimental period. The variation among cows within a group in feeding behavior was influenced by the amount of supplement but not the amount of pasture offered. The variation among cows in pasture eating time approximately doubled when the amount of supplement offered increased, indicating that to reduce the variability among cows, supplement feeding management strategies need to be considered. Increasing pasture allowance had no effect on pasture eating time although pasture intake increased as a result of increased grazing intensity compared with the low pasture allowance. However, increasing the amount of supplement in the partial mixed ration feeding system reduced pasture eating time by 51min/cow per day

Phase transitions in the spinless Falicov-Kimball model with correlated hopping

The canonical Monte-Carlo is used to study the phase transitions from the low-temperature ordered phase to the high-temperature disordered phase in the two-dimensional Falicov-Kimball model with correlated hopping. As the low-temperature ordered phase we consider the chessboard phase, the axial striped phase and the segregated phase. It is shown that all three phases persist also at finite temperatures (up to the critical temperature $\tau_c$) and that the phase transition at the critical point is of the first order for the chessboard and axial striped phase and of the second order for the segregated phase. In addition, it is found that the critical temperature is reduced with the increasing amplitude of correlated hopping $t'$ in the chessboard phase and it is strongly enhanced by $t'$ in the axial striped and segregated phase.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Evaluation of the n-alkane technique for estimating the individual intake of dairy cows consuming diets containing herbage and a partial mixed ration

peer-reviewedEstimation of dry matter intake (DMI) using the n-alkane technique was evaluated in lactating dairy cows fed fresh herbage and a partial mixed ration (PMR). Four dietary treatments were investigated in a 2 × 2 factorial experiment using 16 Holstein-Friesian dairy cows. Dietary treatments were combinations of low and high amounts of fresh herbage (8 or 14 kg DM/cow per day) and PMR supplement (6 or 12 kg DM/cow per day). The pre-experimental period was 14 days followed by a 10-day experimental period. Cows were housed in individual metabolism stalls to allow for accurate measurement of DMI and total fecal output. Fecal n-alkane recovery rates were calculated to determine the most accurate corrections for incomplete fecal n-alkane recovery. The n-alkane technique accurately estimated DMI when corrected for incomplete fecal recovery using both published recovery rates and recovery rates calculated in this experiment. The most accurate application of recovery rates was with those calculated for each combination of dietary treatments, compared with using an average recovery rate. This research has important implications for the future use of the n-alkane technique, especially in PMR feeding systems. The discrepancy between estimated (when treatment recovery rates were applied) and measured herbage DMI increased with the amount of herbage offered but was not affected by amount of PMR. It was also found that the recovery rates of all natural n-alkanes increased as the amount of herbage increased. This research demonstrates that the n-alkane technique can be used to accurately estimate individual cow intake when fresh herbage and PMR are offered separately, evidenced by strong Lin’s concordance estimates

Precision measurements of the total and partial widths of the psi(2S) charmonium meson with a new complementary-scan technique in antiproton-proton annihilations

We present new precision measurements of the psi(2S) total and partial widths from excitation curves obtained in antiproton-proton annihilations by Fermilab experiment E835 at the Antiproton Accumulator in the year 2000. A new technique of complementary scans was developed to study narrow resonances with stochastically cooled antiproton beams. The technique relies on precise revolution-frequency and orbit-length measurements, while making the analysis of the excitation curve almost independent of machine lattice parameters. We study the psi(2S) meson through the processes pbar p -> e+ e- and pbar p -> J/psi + X -> e+ e- + X. We measure the width to be Gamma = 290 +- 25(sta) +- 4(sys) keV and the combination of partial widths Gamma_e+e- * Gamma_pbarp / Gamma = 579 +- 38(sta) +- 36(sys) meV, which represent the most precise measurements to date.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables. Final manuscript accepted for publication in Phys. Lett. B. Parts of the text slightly expanded or rearranged; results are unchange

Recommendations to encourage participation of individuals from diverse backgrounds in psychiatric genetic studies

We present innovative research practices in psychiatric genetic studies to ensure representation of individuals from diverse ancestry, sex assigned at birth, gender identity, age, body shape and size, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Due to histories of inappropriate and harmful practices against marginalized groups in both psychiatry and genetics, people of certain identities may be hesitant to participate in research studies. Yet their participation is essential to ensure diverse representation, as it is incorrect to assume that the same genetic and environmental factors influence the risk for various psychiatric disorders across all demographic groups. We present approaches developed as part of the Eating Disorders Genetics Initiative (EDGI), a study that required tailored approaches to recruit diverse populations across many countries. Considerations include research priorities and design, recruitment and study branding, transparency, and community investment and ownership. Ensuring representation in participants is costly and funders need to provide adequate support to achieve diversity in recruitment in prime awards, not just as supplemental afterthoughts. The need for diverse samples in genetic studies is critical to minimize the risk of perpetuating health disparities in psychiatry and other health research. Although the EDGI strategies were designed specifically to attract and enroll individuals with eating disorders, our approach is broadly applicable across psychiatry and other fields

Swarmic sketches and attention mechanism

This paper introduces a novel approach deploying the mechanism of ‘attention’ by adapting a swarm intelligence algorithm – Stochastic Diffusion Search – to selectively attend to detailed areas of a digital canvas. Once the attention of the swarm is drawn to a certain line within the canvas, the capability of another swarm intelligence algorithm – Particle Swarm Intelligence – is used to produce a ‘swarmic sketch’ of the attended line. The swarms move throughout the digital canvas in an attempt to satisfy their dynamic roles – attention to areas with more details – associated to them via their fitness function. Having associated the rendering process with the concepts of attention, the performance of the participating swarms creates a unique, non-identical sketch each time the ‘artist’ swarms embark on interpreting the input line drawings. The detailed investigation of the ‘creativity’ of such systems have been explored in our previous work; nonetheless, this papers provides a brief account of the ‘computational creativity’ of the work through two prerequisites of creativity within the swarm intelligence’s two infamous phases of exploration and exploitation; these phases are described herein through the attention and tracing mechanisms respectively

Structure, Photophysics and the Order-Disorder Transition to the Beta Phase in Poly(9,9-(di -n,n-octyl)fluorene)

X-ray diffraction, UV-vis absorption and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy have been used to study the well-known order-disorder transition (ODT) to the beta phase in poly(9,9-(di n,n-octyl)fluorene)) (PF8) thin film samples through combination of time-dependent and temperature-dependent measurements. The ODT is well described by a simple Avrami picture of one-dimensional nucleation and growth but crystallization, on cooling, proceeds only after molecular-level conformational relaxation to the so called beta phase. Rapid thermal quenching is employed for PF8 studies of pure alpha phase samples while extended low-temperature annealing is used for improved beta phase formation. Low temperature PL studies reveal sharp Franck-Condon type emission bands and, in the beta phase, two distinguishable vibronic sub-bands with energies of approximately 199 and 158 meV at 25 K. This improved molecular level structural order leads to a more complete analysis of the higher-order vibronic bands. A net Huang-Rhys coupling parameter of just under 0.7 is typically observed but the relative contributions by the two distinguishable vibronic sub-bands exhibit an anomalous temperature dependence. The PL studies also identify strongly correlated behavior between the relative beta phase 0-0 PL peak position and peak width. This relationship is modeled under the assumption that emission represents excitons in thermodynamic equilibrium from states at the bottom of a quasi-one-dimensional exciton band. The crystalline phase, as observed in annealed thin-film samples, has scattering peaks which are incompatible with a simple hexagonal packing of the PF8 chains.Comment: Submitted to PRB, 12 files; 1 tex, 1 bbl, 10 eps figure