A decision support system framework to track consumer sentiments in social media

With the evolution of web 2.0 and social networks, customers and companies’ online interaction is growing at a fast pace, containing valuable insights about consumers’ expectations that should be monitored and explored in a day-to-day basis. However, such information is highly unstructured and difficult to analyze. There is an urgent need to set up transparent methods and processes to integrate such information in the tourism industry technological infrastructure, especially for small firms that are unable to pay for expensive services to monitor their online reputation. The current paper uses a text mining and sentimental analysis technique to structure online reviews and present them on a decision support system with two different dashboards to assist in decision-making. Such system may help managers develop new insights and strategies aligned with consumers’ expectations in a much more flexible and sustainable pace.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Autonomic emotional responses to food: private label brands versus national brands

Private label brands (PLB) have been increasing both perceived quality and consumer acceptance in the last decades, which has compelled national brands (NBs) to invest in maintaining consumer confidence and preference. Recent economic crisis led consumers to become more price sensitive and more worried about cutting on daily needs, such as food consumption. However, taste is still one of the most important factor of decision for consumers regarding food products. Despite such importance of taste in decision-making, most research on consumer senses still relies on traditional methods of surveying consumers, which are unable to measure the consumers' autonomic emotional reactions. The current paper uses a psychophysiological method to measure emotional arousal–electrodermal activity (EDA) and a self-assessment manikin to measure pleasure. Emotions are then tested to assess their influence on perceived quality and willingness to buy (WTB). Findings show that NB are still perceived by consumers as superior, but consumers' WTB is not higher for NB. These results show that consumers' decisions are not always in favor of the product which is perceived to have a better quality which suggests that the “quality gap” is fading and the “branding gap” is gaining momentum.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Improving international attractiveness of higher education institutions based on text mining and sentiment analysis

Purpose: The increasing competition among higher education institutions (HEI) has led students to conduct a more in-depth analysis to choose where to study abroad. Since students are usually unable to visit each HEIs before making their decision, they are strongly influenced by what is written by former international students (IS) on the Internet. HEIs also benefit from such information online. This paper aims to provide an understanding of the drivers of HEIs success online. Design/methodology/approach: Due to the increasing amount of information published online, HEIs have to use automatic techniques to search for patterns instead of analyzing such information manually. The present paper uses text mining and sentiment analysis to study online reviews of IS about their HEIs. The paper studied 1938 reviews from 65 different business schools with AACSB accreditation. Findings: Results show that HEIs may become more attractive online if they financially support students cost of living, provide courses in English, and promote an international environment. Research limitations/implications Despite the use of a major platform with a broad number of reviews from students around the world, other sources focused on other types of HEIs may have been used to reinforce the findings in the current paper. Originality/value: The study pioneers the use of text mining and sentiment analysis to highlight topics and sentiments mentioned in online reviews by students attending HEIs, clarifying how such opinions are correlated with satisfaction. Using such information, HEIs’ managers may focus their efforts on promoting international attractiveness of their institutions.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Respuestas emocionales-motivacionales de los locales frente a los extranjeros hacia la comida tradicional Y no tradicional

Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to study responses to traditional food of a country, focusing on emotion-motivational responses by locals and foreigners. Design/methodology/approach: Through an experimental design study, Portuguese and Foreign participants were exposed to both traditional and nontraditional food pictures of a country and asked to evaluate their emotional and motivational responses while physiological responses of electrodermal activity were continuously recorded. Predisposition factors of body dissatisfaction, food neophobia, and food involvement were also evaluated given their potential role in predicting the responses to the visualization of the food pictures. Findings: This study found that local traditional food received a higher positive evaluation than nontraditional food with locals evaluating it even higher than foreigners. Higher feelings of arousal and desire as well as willingness to try in response to traditional food were also found as well as higher feelings of pleasure by locals. However, interestingly, and contrary to expectations derived from previous literature, emotion-motivational responses were not significantly different between locals and foreigners. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research addressed an identified research gap in the literature, being the first one evaluating the autonomic responses of consumers to traditional food by exploring how local and foreign consumers respond to traditional food versus nontraditional food using psychophysiological measures of emotion.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Sentiment analysis in online reviews classification using text mining technique

The growth of social media in recent years has led to an increase in online reviews that reflects consumer opinions. Firms benefit greatly from making this information available in order to respond more effectively to consumer dissatisfaction and to exploit market opportunities by observing standards that may represent unsatisfied needs. The present study aims to address this problem through a survey based on the Yelp platform. To this end, 14,000 comments related to different tourism products were used and text mining techniques and topic models were applied to find the main latent topics discussed in the online comments and their associated sentiments. The study presents 20 latent topics from online discussions and reveals that the topic that discusses “Air Travel” themes is the one with a lower sentiment connotation on average and should therefore be the subject of a deeper evaluation.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Mutation of the parkinsonism gene ATP13A2 causes neuronal ceroid-lipofuscinosis

Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCLs) comprise a heterogeneous group of metabolic storage diseases that present with the accumulation of autofluorescent lipopigment, neurodegeneration and premature death. Nine genes have been thus far identified as the cause of different types of NCL, with ages at onset ranging from around birth to adult, although the underlying etiology of the disease still remains elusive. We present a family with typical NCL pathology in which we performed exome sequencing and identified a single homozygous mutation in ATP13A2 that fully segregates with disease within the family. Mutations in ATP13A2 are a known cause of Kufor–Rakeb syndrome (KRS), a rare parkinsonian phenotype with juvenile onset. These data show that NCL and KRS may share etiological features and implicate the lysosomal pathway in Parkinson's disease

Magnetic resonance imaging and Ménière’s disease : unavoidable alliance

Copyright © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer NatureMénière’s disease (MD) is a clinical syndrome characterized by recurrent episodes of spontaneous vertigo, unilateral fluctuating sensorineural hearing loss, tinnitus, and aural fullness. Endolymphatic hydrops is recognized as the pathophysiological substrate of the disease, having been demonstrated in anatomical pathological studies and more recently by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The current criteria of the disease, however, remain symptom based and do not include the demonstration of endolymphatic hydrops. The authors review MRI techniques and diagnostic criteria of endolymphatic hydrops and the role of MRI in MD is discussed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Chihuahua dog: A new animal model for neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis CLN7 disease?

Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCLs) are a group of incurable lysosomal storage disorders characterized by neurodegeneration and accumulation of lipopigments mainly within the neurons. We studied two littermate Chihuahua dogs presenting with progressive signs of blindness, ataxia, pacing, and cognitive impairment from 1 year of age. Because of worsening of clinical signs, both dogs were euthanized at about 2 years of age. Postmortem examination revealed marked accumulation of autofluorescent intracellular inclusions within the brain, characteristic of NCL. Whole-genome sequencing was performed on one of the affected dogs. After sequence alignment and variant calling against the canine reference genome, variants were identified in the coding region or splicing regions of four previously known NCL genes (CLN6, ARSG, CLN2 [=TPP1], and CLN7 [=MFSD8]). Subsequent segregation analysis within the family (two affected dogs, both parents, and three relatives) identified MFSD8:p.Phe282Leufs13*, which had previously been identified in one Chinese crested dog with no available ancestries, as the causal mutation. Because of the similarities of the clinical signs and histopathological changes with the human form of the disease, we propose that the Chihuahua dog could be a good animal model of CLN7 disease

Heritability and genetic variance of dementia with Lewy bodies

Recent large-scale genetic studies have allowed for the first glimpse of the effects of common genetic variability in dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), identifying risk variants with appreciable effect sizes. However, it is currently well established that a substantial portion of the genetic heritable component of complex traits is not captured by genome-wide significant SNPs. To overcome this issue, we have estimated the proportion of phenotypic variance explained by genetic variability (SNP heritability) in DLB using a method that is unbiased by allele frequency or linkage disequilibrium properties of the underlying variants. This shows that the heritability of DLB is nearly twice as high as previous estimates based on common variants only (31% vs 59.9%). We also determine the amount of phenotypic variance in DLB that can be explained by recent polygenic risk scores from either Parkinson's disease (PD) or Alzheimer's disease (AD), and show that, despite being highly significant, they explain a low amount of variance. Additionally, to identify pleiotropic events that might improve our understanding of the disease, we performed genetic correlation analyses of DLB with over 200 diseases and biomedically relevant traits. Our data shows that DLB has a positive correlation with education phenotypes, which is opposite to what occurs in AD. Overall, our data suggests that novel genetic risk factors for DLB should be identified by larger GWAS and these are likely to be independent from known AD and PD risk variants.Peer reviewe