Tracking collective emotions in sixteen countries during COVID-19: A novel methodology for identifying major emotional events using Twitter

Using messages posted on Twitter, this research developed a new methodology for estimating collective emotions (CEs) within countries. It applied time-series analytic methodology to develop and demonstrate a novel application of CEs to identify emotional events that are significant at the societal level. The study analyzed over 200 million words from over 10 million Twitter messages posted in sixteen countries during the first 120 days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Daily levels of collective anxiety and positive emotions were estimated using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count’s (LIWC) psychologically validated lexicon. The resulting time series estimates of both collective emotions were analyzed for structural breaks which mark abrupt changes in a series due to external shocks. External shocks to collective emotions come from events that are of shared emotional relevance and the analysis of structural breaks showed that a reduction in collective anxiety and increase in collective positive emotions in most countries followed WHO’s declaration of the COVID-19 situation as a global pandemic. Announcements of economic support packages and social restrictions also had similar impacts in countries. This indicated that reduction of uncertainties around the rapidly evolving COVID-19 situation during the first 120 days of the pandemic had a positive emotional impact on people in all the countries in the study. The study contributes to the field of CEs and applied research on collective psychological phenomena

Seasonality and regional disparity in attention to homelessness in UK newspapers between 2001 and 2020

This research examined the amount of media attention to homelessness in 11 UK newspapers with two main research questions: (1) Does the media coverage exhibit seasonal cyclical patterns in their attention to homelessness? (2) Do England's nine regions differ in the attention they receive after adjusting for their relative homelessness levels? Time series of all 4105 news reports with the keyword “homeless*” in their headline between 2001 and 2020 were tested for meteorological and monthly seasonal effects, revealing significantly greater attention in winter but decreased coverage in spring and summer. Contrary to expectation, further analysis suggested that the increased winter coverage was not related to the colder months but to the Christmas period. Regarding regional differences, London received the highest mentions in the news but after adjusting for the relative burden of homelessness, the North West emerged as receiving the most relative coverage. The East Midlands and East of England had the lowest adjusted attention scores. As suggested by the public arenas model, the findings of this research suggest that media focus on social problems like homelessness be culturally patterned with key events like Christmas shaping issue-prominence. Similarly, regional imbalances in attention may reflect a systemic bias in news reporting

Detection of Mixed Infections with Plasmodium spp. by PCR, India, 2014

In 8 malaria-endemic states in India, mixed Plasmodium spp. infections were detected by PCR in 17.4% (265/1,521) of blood samples that microscopy had shown to contain only P. falciparum. The quality of microscopy must be improved because use of PCR for detection of malaria parasites is limited in rural areas

Exploration of Gold Colloidal beyond Trillion Times Dilution

The physical and chemical properties of the colloidal solution change as a function of the concentration of nanoparticles. Here, we have studied the effect of systematic ultra-low dilution (up to 10200 times) of gold nanoparticle colloidal, revealing the mechanism of colloidal formation in such extreme dilution. Optical spectroscopy confirms the presence of nanoparticles with narrow size distribution and high surface activity in higher dilutions (up to 10200 times) colloidal solution. Particle size analysis of the serially diluted solution shows that the size distribution becomes more-narrow with increasing dilution. Transmission electron microscopy confirm the presence of nanoparticle up to 10200 times dilution. The process of dilution introduces an active carbon layer on these particles. The understanding of such extreme dilution can be utilized in biomedical applications, especially in the Homoeopathy system