WISC at MediaEval 2017 : multimedia satellite task

This working note describes the work of the WISC team on the Multimedia Satellite Task at MediaEval 2017. We describe the runs that our team submitted to both the DIRSM and FDSI subtasks, as well as our evaluations on the development set. Our results demonstrate high accuracy in the detection of flooded areas from user-generated content in social media. In the first subtask consisting of disaster image retrieval from social media, we found that tags defined by users to describe the images are very helpful for achieving high accuracy classification. In the second subtask consisting of detecting flood in satellite images, we found that social media can increase the precision in analyses when combined with satellite images by taking advantage of spatial and temporal overlaps between data sources

Using semantic drift on social media for event detection, differentiation and segmentation

With observable paradigm shift in computer science from predictive modeling to the generative one, it became important to maximise exploration of the pathways towards useful data production. With currently dominating statistical and compositional data augmentation strategies, opportunities also emerged for more application-driven routes. The main value of such approaches lies in their capacity to offer insights into context or event specific data productions, currently overlooked by more topologically neutral machine learning approaches. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to provide empirical evidence for useful data generation by dynamic event-specific lexical semantic resources. Various Web 2.0 applications due to their popularity have been accumulating large amounts of semantically rich metadata, which became readily available and easily exploitable. Tags, usually consisting of a single word, are one type of such data. Tag uses can vary largely across systems and platforms; Also known under the term folksonomy, tags are usually non-hierarchical and open-ended, thus re-flecting users' unique perspectives regarding various contexts, or resources. This platform-enabled liberty of expression, however, has led to situations of frequent semantic ambiguity due to spelling mistakes, morphological variations, polysemy, multilingualism or inaccurate tag-to-resource associations. As a consequence, tag spaces are often regarded as inconsistent, noisy and hardly reliable data sources. Recent surge of interest amongst distributional semanticists in long- and short-term fluctuations of word meanings on social media has suggested routes for successful temporal sense disambiguation, thus inviting discussions around useful real-world applications for such emerging data resources. One of such applications - event analytics from the crowd behaviour perspective - is gaining an increasing attention from researchers and practitioners, especially in the fields of operations and situational management. Pursuing pragmatic aims of event detection, differen- tiation and segmentation, this application domain is represented predominantly by repetitive catastrophic events (such as natural hazards), during which directly or indirectly exposed populations tend to share their situational experiences on social media. This thesis consists of three main parts, each corresponding to specific problem in event analytics: (i) detection, (ii) differentiation and (iii) segmentation. In the first part I used the concept of ontological semantic proximity on the words candidates for semantic drift in order to highlight the dynamics of their semantic oscillations within event-specific category (i.e., flooding). In my second experiment I followed on these initial findings and performed an analysis verifying whether semantically unstable lexical material can augment our knowledge about main sub-types of floods, such as `slow' (e.g., groundwater and pluvial floods) and `fast' (surface water and riverine floods) ones. In my third experiment I employed combined lexico-visual modalities of the crowdsourced material to reconstruct changing perceptions of flood events in order to understand how event severity can or cannot determine situationally resilient behaviours

Predicting the impact of urban flooding using open data

This paper aims to explore whether there is a relationship between search patterns for flood risk information on the Web and how badly localities have been affected by flood events. We hypothesize that localities where people stay more actively informed about potential flooding experience less negative impact than localities where people make less effort to be informed. Being informed, of course, does not hold the waters back; however, it may stimulate (or serve as an indicator of) such resilient behaviours as timely use of sandbags, relocation of possessions from basements to upper floors and/or temporary evacuation from flooded homes to alternative accommodation. We make use of open data to test this relationship empirically. Our results demonstrate that although aggregated Web search reflects average rainfall patterns, its eigenvectors predominantly consist of locations with similar flood impacts during 2014–2015. These results are also consistent with statistically significant correlations of Web search eigenvectors with flood warning and incident reporting datasets

Predicting floods with Flickr tags

Increasingly, user generated content (UGC) in social media postings and their associated metadata such as time and location stamps are being used to provide useful operational information during natural hazard events such as hurricanes, storms and floods. The main advantage of these new sources of data are twofold. First, in a purely additive sense, they can provide much denser geographical coverage of the hazard as compared to traditional sensor networks. Second, they provide what physical sensors are not able to do: By documenting personal observations and experiences, they directly record the impact of a hazard on the human environment. For this reason interpretation of the content (e.g., hashtags, images, text, emojis, etc) and metadata (e.g., keywords, tags, geolocation) have been a focus of much research into social media analytics. However, as choices of semantic tags in the current methods are usually reduced to the exact name or type of the event (e.g., hashtags ‘#Sandy’ or ‘#flooding’), the main limitation of such approaches remains their mere nowcasting capacity. In this study we make use of polysemous tags of images posted during several recent flood events and demonstrate how such volunteered geographic data can be used to provide early warning of an event before its outbreak

To dig or not to dig? Place and perception in subsurface housing

Cities of the future are envisioned to be fully optimised, owing to technological advancements, distributed sensor networks and automation. With the proliferation of new data sources, opportunities also exist for better understanding of how people act and make decisions, as well as discerning the conditions in which they wish to live and what they expect from their surrounding environment. Following the recently proposed normative strand in urban planning, this study uses distributed personal underground development as a case study for extracting the values behind this emerging self-build movement, alongside observers’ opinions obtained from associated web-based data

From Kontrollverlust to Kontrollgewinn : rediscovering a meso-Level normative hierarchy for integrated water management in England using on-line activities

This paper presents a unique study into how to identify a meso-level normative (i.e., institutional) hierarchy of procedures that aim to deliver the ecological status of waterbodies in the UK. Using traditional survey and workshop methods, the majority of recent studies concentrate on engagement practices between macro- (government bodies) and micro- (local residents) level structures, which can be potentially replicated elsewhere. Meso-level elements (middle-level structures of control) are often regarded as ‘subjective institutional change’, e.g., failures to implement programs locally or misinterpretations of reflexive dialogs with communities. Nevertheless, it is often only meso-level structures that are capable of promoting and replicating policies elsewhere. At the same time, there is increasing appeal by governmental departments for communities to ‘selforganize’ and take responsibility for prioritizing environmental tasks, which themselves might be instigated by local trusts and voluntary organizations, the existence of which remains largely unaccounted for by central offices. The recent proliferation of Twitter accounts, with the prominent themes of water, ecology and ecosystems, which include people, organizations, businesses and ‘bots’ of various types, presents new opportunities for digital methods to gain insights into structures and functions of these virtual communities. We hypothesize that our methods can produce invaluable insights into the ‘crafting’ of environmental institutions through approaches commonly ignored by traditional ‘analog’ meso-level mechanisms. We use the example of Integrated Catchment Management in the UK, and specifically the Tamar Catchment in southwest England, in order to demonstrate how well Twitter can capture this transitory meso-level environmental political system

Generation of dendritic cells from human peripheral blood monocytes - comparison of different culture media

Culture medium or medium supplement is one of the factors responsible for dendritic cell (DC) generation, but little is known about the influence of various media on DC culture. In our study we generated DC from adherent monocytes of human peripheral blood in the presence of GM-CSF, IL-4 and TNF-α. The following culture media were used: RPMI 1640 supplemented with 2% human serum albumin; RPMI 1640 supplemented with 2% TCH serum replacement; X-VIVO 15 and Panserin 501. Flow cytometry analysis revealed that in all media cells were CD83+ and lost CD14. Interestingly, the use of Panserin and RPMI with albumin preferentially gave rise to CD1a+ DC, whereas in X-VIVO and RPMI with TCH we observed both CD1a+ and CD1a-. Our results showed that RPMI with TCH yielded the highest percentage of cells expressing both CD80 and CD86 molecules and, in contrast to other media, the higher percentage of CD86+ cells in comparison to CD80+ cells

The Impact of Intersectional Racial and Gender Biases on Minority Female Leadership Over Two Centuries

This study scrutinizes the enduring effects of racial and gender biases that contribute to the consistent underrepresentation of minority women in leadership roles within American private, public, and third sector organizations. We adopt a cultural situatedness approach, merging psychological schema theory with sociological intersectionality theory, to evaluate the enduring implications of these biases on female leadership development. Our examination is concentrated on Black female leaders, employing an extensive analysis of leadership rhetoric data spanning 200 years across the aforementioned sectors. We shed light on the continued scarcity of minority female representation in leadership roles, highlighting the role of intersectionality dynamics. Despite Black female leaders frequently embracing higher risks to counter intersectional invisibility compared to their White counterparts, their aspirations are not realized and problems not solved generation after generation, forcing Black female leaders to concentrate on the same issues for dozens and, sometimes, hundreds of years. Our findings suggest that the compound influence of racial and gender biases hinders the advancement of minority female leadership by perpetuating stereotypical behavioral schemas, leading to persistent discriminatory outcomes. We argue for the necessity of organizations to initiate a cultural transformation that fosters positive experiences for future generations of female leaders, recommending a shift in focus from improving outcomes for specific groups to creating an inclusive leadership culture

RESEARCH OF CONSUMER PROPERTIES OF DEVELOPED BISCUITS BASED ON ORGANIC RAW MATERIALS

The article discusses the recipes of new biscuits based on organic raw materials, as well as the results of the study of their quality and safety indicators. The aim of this research is studying the consumer properties of biscuits, developed on the basis of organic raw materials, which will expand the range of organic confectionery products. The main difference between the developed biscuit recipes is that instead of wheat flour buckwheat flour, spelled flour and hemp flour were used, and coconut and maple sugar were used as sweeteners. To determine the organoleptic characteristics, a 25-point scale was developed, which includes indicators: taste, smell, appearance, crust state, crumb color. On the basis of the carried out organoleptic assessment, it has been established that the developed biscuits have a pleasant taste and good aroma and are highly appreciated by the tasting commission. Physico-chemical characteristics and safety performance of the developed products were within the normal range. Thanks to the use of non-traditional raw materials, the energy value of biscuits was reduced. On the basis of the obtained data, the expediency of expanding the range of organic confectionery products with new types of biscuits is substantiated

Determination of Safety Indicators in the Developed Muffins with Non-traditional Raw Materials

The aim of research is studying the effect of unconventional raw materials (buckwheat, oatmeal, rye, corn, milk whey, skimmed milk powder, propolis, flower pollen, bean powder, sesame oil, pumpkin seed oil, walnut oil, walnut kernels, candied fruit mixes (apple-cherry fruits of bilberries, natural honey with floral pollen, natural honey with propolis) for the quality and safety of new muffins. The article analyzes the results of the study of the quality and safety indicators of muffins of improved composition, manufactured using non-traditional raw materials. For the preparation of new types of muffins, part of the wheat flour was replaced with buckwheat, corn, oat, milk whey, skimmed milk powder and additives of vegetable origin. Margarine has been replaced by vegetable oils. It has been established that flour confectionery products have high organoleptic properties. From the physico-chemical parameters, the mass fraction of total sugar was determined, which ranged from 28.17 % to 33.07 %, the mass fraction of fat – 16.2–20.66 %, the mass fraction of moisture – 18.0–22.0, mass fraction of ash – 0.03–1.3 %, alkalinity – 0.03–1.8°, the content of toxic elements (copper, zinc, lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury) and microbiological indicators were also determined. Based on the data obtained as a research result, the expediency of using non-traditional raw materials to expand the range of flour confectionery products, in particular muffins is substantiated