Multichannel social signatures and persistent features of ego networks

The structure of egocentric networks reflects the way people balance their need for strong, emotionally intense relationships and a diversity of weaker ties. Egocentric network structure can be quantified with ’social signatures’, which describe how people distribute their communication effort across the members (alters) of their personal networks. Social signatures based on call data have indicated that people mostly communicate with a few close alters; they also have persistent, distinct signatures. To examine if these results hold for other channels of communication, here we compare social signatures built from call and text message data, and develop a way of constructing mixed social signatures using both channels. We observe that all types of signatures display persistent individual differences that remain stable despite the turnover in individual alters. We also show that call, text, and mixed signatures resemble one another both at the population level and at the level of individuals. The consistency of social signatures across individuals for different channels of communication is surprising because the choice of channel appears to be alter-specific with no clear overall pattern, and ego networks constructed from calls and texts overlap only partially in terms of alters. These results demonstrate individuals vary in how they allocate their communication effort across their personal networks and this variation is persistent over time and across different channels of communication

Effects of Duration and Laughter on Subjective Happiness Within Different Modes of Communication

Media naturalness theory and social information processing theory make competing predictions regarding the effectiveness of different modes of communication at creating and maintaining emotionally intense social relationships. We explored how the duration of interaction and the form of laughter influenced happiness in communication modes with different levels of media naturalness. Forty-one participants completed a 14-day contact diary, recording interactions across face-to-face, Skype, telephone, instant messaging, texting, and e-mail/social network sites. Increases in duration of interaction positively predicted happiness only for face-to-face interactions, offering partial support for the media naturalness hypothesis. Laughter positively predicted happiness in all but one of the communication modes, with real and symbolic laughter having similar effects, a result consistent with the social information processing theory. © 2012 International Communication Association

The Three Generations of Electronic Government: From Service Provision to Open Data and to Policy Analytics

Part 1: E-Government FoundationsInternational audienceFor long time research and practice in the area of Electronic Government (e-government) has been focusing on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for improving the efficiency government agencies’ internal operations, as well as transactions with citizens and firms. However, the increased needs and expectations of citizens, and the proliferation of ‘participatory democracy’ ideas, gave rise to a new generation of ICT exploitation by government for increasing and enhancing citizens’ participation. Furthermore, the increasing social problems and challenges that had to be addressed by government through appropriate public policies, such as the increasing inequalities and poverty, the aging society, the environmental degradation, and the rising number of ‘unpredictable’ events, such as the financial and economic crisis, give rise to the development of a new wave of e-government focusing on policy analytics for supporting the design of effective responses - public policies for these challenges. Therefore, evolutions in the needs of modern societies, in combination with technological evolutions, give rise to evolutions in e-government, and the emergence of new generations of it. This paper aims at the identification and better understanding of the main characteristics of the different e-Government generations, using an analytical framework based on two rounds of literature review. The results of the study provide insights on the main features of the three main e-government generations, regarding their main goals, obstacles, key methods and tools, and reveal the new emerging generation of e-Government 3.0 and its basic characteristics. Furthermore, within the first and to some extent the second e-Government generation there have been substantial advancements, which have created distinct sub-generations of them, revealed and analysed through extensive relevant growth/maturity stages research

Risk of new acute myocardial infarction hospitalization associated with use of oral and parenteral non-steroidal anti-inflammation drugs (NSAIDs): a case-crossover study of Taiwan's National Health Insurance claims database and review of current evidence

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Previous studies have documented the increased cardiovascular risk associated with the use of some nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Despite this, many old NSAIDs are still prescribed worldwide. Most of the studies to date have been focused on specific oral drugs or limited by the number of cases examined. We studied the risk of new acute myocardial infarction (AMI) hospitalization with current use of a variety of oral and parenteral NSAIDs in a nationwide population, and compared our results with existing evidence.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We conducted a case-crossover study using the Taiwan's National Health Insurance claim database, identifying patients with new AMI hospitalized in 2006. The 1-30 days and 91-120 days prior to the admission were defined as case and matched control period for each patient, respectively. Uses of NSAIDs during the respective periods were compared using conditional logistic regression and adjusted for use of co-medications.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>8354 new AMI hospitalization patients fulfilled the study criteria. 14 oral and 3 parenteral NSAIDs were selected based on drug utilization profile among 13.7 million NSAID users. The adjusted odds ratio, aOR (95% confidence interval), for risk of AMI and use of oral and parenteral non-selective NSAIDs were 1.42 (1.29, 1.56) and 3.35 (2.50, 4.47), respectively, and significantly greater for parenteral than oral drugs (p for interaction < 0.01). Ketorolac was associated with the highest AMI risk among both of oral and parenteral NSAIDs studied, the aORs were 2.02 (1.00, 4.09) and 4.27 (2.90, 6.29) respectively. Use of oral flurbiprofen, ibuprofen, sulindac, diclofenac, and parenteral ketoprofen were also significantly associated with increased AMI risk. The results of the present study were consistent with the majority of evidence from previous studies.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The collective evidence revealed the tendency of increased AMI risk with current use of some NSAIDs. A higher AMI risk associated with use of parenteral NSAIDs was observed in the present study. Ketorolac had the highest associated risk in both oral and parenteral NSAIDs studied. Though further investigation to confirm the association is warranted, prescribing physicians and the general public should be cautious about the potential risk of AMI when using NSAIDs.</p