SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS − A UNIFYING DEFINITION, COMPREHENSIVE FRAMEWORK, AND ASSESSMENT OF ALGORITHMS FOR IDENTIFYING INFLUENCERS IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Given its relative infancy, there is a dearth of research on a comprehensive view of business social media analytics (SMA). This dissertation first examines current literature related to SMA and develops an integrated, unifying definition of business SMA, providing a nuanced starting point for future business SMA research. This dissertation identifies several benefits of business SMA, and elaborates on some of them, while presenting recent empirical evidence in support of foregoing observations. The dissertation also describes several challenges facing business SMA today, along with supporting evidence from the literature, some of which also offer mitigating solutions in particular contexts. The second part of this dissertation studies one SMA implication focusing on identifying social influencer. Growing social media usage, accompanied by explosive growth in SMA, has resulted in increasing interest in finding automated ways of discovering influencers in online social interactions. Beginning 2008, many variants of multiple basic approaches have been proposed. Yet, there is no comprehensive study investigating the relative efficacy of these methods in specific settings. This dissertation investigates and reports on the relative performance of multiple methods on Twitter datasets containing between them tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of tweets. Accordingly, the second part of the dissertation helps further an understanding of business SMA and its many aspects, grounded in recent empirical work, and is a basis for further research and development. This dissertation provides a relatively comprehensive understanding of SMA and the implementation SMA in influencer identification

The Effect of Social Factors on User-Generated Content Productivity: Evidence from Flickr.com

User-generated content (UGC) is a valuable information resource on social media. However, we currently know little about why people are constantly producing digital content. In an effort to gather more contents, many UGC service providers are trying to help users improve their social experience. Through the lens of social network theories, our study illustrates that social influence and social interaction between users will motivate users to contribute contents on UGC platforms. We hence design an empirical study to discover the social factors influencing users’ productivity. By collecting data from Flickr.com, we expect to support that individuals’ perception of “social comparison” and “social identity” will positively influence users’ behavior of content generation. We also assume that social interaction, in terms of tie strength, will increase users’ productivity of content

Artificial Intelligence and Visual Analytics: A Deep-Learning Approach to Analyze Hotel Reviews & Responses

With a growing number of online reviews, consumers often rely on these reviews to make purchase decisions. However, little is known about managerial responses to online hotel reviews. This paper reports on a framework to integrate visual analytics and machine learning techniques to investigate whether hotel managers respond to positive and negative reviews differently and how to use a deep-learning approach to prioritize responses. In this study, forty 4- and 5-star hotels in London with 91,051 reviews and 70,397 responses were collected and analyzed. Visual analyses and machine learning were conducted. The results indicate most hotels (72.5%) showing no preference to respond to positive and negative reviews. Our proposed deep-learning approach outperformed existing algorithms to prioritize responses

A review of the zooplankton in Singapore waters

24 pages, 1 figure, 2 tablesThe island of Singapore is located between 1°09'N¿1°29'N and 103°38'E¿104°06'E at the confluence of the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea. To date, both the marine and freshwater zooplanktons of this area are poorly studied, and availability of taxonomic identification is scarce. Moreover, most of the studies were published between the 1950s to the beginning of the 1970s. The available data are mainly qualitative, with only a few studies on zooplankton biology and ecology. Here, the literature on zooplankton communities in Singapore waters is reviewed in order to provide a baseline for future zooplankton surveys, and to better understand the aquatic ecosystems of this area. Also included are recent data obtained from a one-year plankton monitoring in 2012 from two marine stations in Singapore. The temporal variation of the plankton groups was observed in the study to be similar to what was described in some works from the 1970s. The species richness increased in these more recent studies, probably due to changes in the sampling and preservation methods. Because of these changes, comparing between data-sets is challenging; however, similarities in species richness and seasonality between a recent study and previous data-sets were evident. Finally, it is argued that continuous marine plankton monitoring would be an asset for Singapore and the regionThe authors would like to thanks the National Parks of Singapore, the DHI-NTU Research Centre for the financial support of project MadeInPlankton, where the present study is framed. The work was also supported by Elite Forsk grants nb 10-093759 and 10-094773 from the Danish Agency for Science Technology and Innovation to GD, and by project PROTOS (CTM2009-08783) from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation to ACPeer Reviewe

TPMD: a database and resources of microsatellite marker genotyped in Taiwanese populations

Taiwan Polymorphic Marker Database (TPMD) (http://tpmd.nhri.org.tw/) is a marker database designed to provide experimental details and useful marker information allelotyped in Taiwanese populations accompanied by resources and technical supports. The current version deposited more than 372 000 allelotyping data from 1425 frequently used and fluorescent-labeled microsatellite markers with variation types of dinucleotide, trinucleotide and tetranucleotide. TPMD contains text and map displays with searchable and retrievable options for marker names, chromosomal location in various human genome maps and marker heterozygosity in populations of Taiwanese, Japanese and Caucasian. The integration of marker information in map display is useful for the selection of high heterozygosity and commonly used microsatellite markers to refine mapping of diseases locus followed by identification of disease gene by positional candidate cloning. In addition, our results indicated that the number of markers with heterozygosity over 0.7 in Asian populations is lower than that in Caucasian. To increase accuracy and facilitate genetic studies using microsatellite markers, we also list markers with genotyping difficulty due to ambiguity of allele calling and recommend an optimal set of microsatellite markers for genotyping in Taiwanese, and possible extension of genotyping in other Mongoloid populations

Determination of band alignment in the single layer MoS2/WSe2 heterojunction

The emergence of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) as 2D electronic materials has stimulated proposals of novel electronic and photonic devices based on TMD heterostructures. Here we report the determination of band offsets in TMD heterostructures by using microbeam X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy ({\mu}-XPS) and scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/S). We determine a type-II alignment between $\textrm{MoS}_2$ and $\textrm{WSe}_2$ with a valence band offset (VBO) value of 0.83 eV and a conduction band offset (CBO) of 0.76 eV. First-principles calculations show that in this heterostructure with dissimilar chalcogen atoms, the electronic structures of $\textrm{WSe}_2$ and $\textrm{MoS}_2$ are well retained in their respective layers due to a weak interlayer coupling. Moreover, a VBO of 0.94 eV is obtained from density functional theory (DFT), consistent with the experimental determination.Comment: ^ These authors contributed equally. *Corresponding author E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] 20 pages, 4 figures in main tex

Identifying early decline of daily function and its association with physical function in chronic kidney disease: performance-based and self-reported measures

Objective To verify self-reported basic and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) with a disability and the results of performance-based tests (namely the Taiwan performance-based IADL (TPIADL), the 2-minute step test (2MST), the 30-second chair-stand test (30-s CST), and handgrip dynamometer measurement) to identify disability early and assess the associations with functional fitness in patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD). Methods A cross-sectional study of 99 patients with stage 4–5 CKD and 57 healthy elderly adults were recruited. Self-reported measures were used to collect information on basic (Barthel Index) and IADL (Lawton–Brody scale). Objective measures of the TPIADL and functional fitness (2MST, 30-s CST, handgrip dynamometer) were also assessed. Results Only IADL, as detected by the TPIADL, were impaired to a greater extent in the CKD patients than those of healthy elderly adults. Among all the patients with CKD, a greater impairment in the TPIADL remained statistically associated with a lower ability in the 2MST. A one step increase in the 2MST score was significantly associated with an improvement of 0.2 s in the total performance time of the TPIADL. Conclusion Performance-based measures, such as the TPIADL, may detect a functional limitation before it becomes measurable by traditional self-reported basic and IADL scales; functional limitation is mainly associated with cardiac endurance for advanced CKD

Biological Properties of Acidic Cosmetic Water from Seawater

This current work was to investigate the biological effects of acidic cosmetic water (ACW) on various biological assays. ACW was isolated from seawater and demonstrated several bio-functions at various concentration ranges. ACW showed a satisfactory effect against Staphylococcus aureus, which reduced 90% of bacterial growth after a 5-second exposure. We used cultured human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) to test the properties of ACW in inflammatory cytokine release, and it did not induce inflammatory cytokine release from un-stimulated, normal PBMCs. However, ACW was able to inhibit bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammatory cytokine TNF-α released from PBMCs, showing an anti-inflammation potential. Furthermore, ACW did not stimulate the rat basophilic leukemia cell (RBL-2H3) related allergy response on de-granulation. Our data presented ACW with a strong anti-oxidative ability in a superoxide anion radical scavenging assay. In mass spectrometry information, magnesium and zinc ions demonstrated bio-functional detections for anti-inflammation as well as other metal ions such as potassium and calcium were observed. ACW also had minor tyrosinase and melanin decreasing activities in human epidermal melanocytes (HEMn-MP) without apparent cytotoxicity. In addition, the cell proliferation assay illustrated anti-growth and anti-migration effects of ACW on human skin melanoma cells (A375.S2) indicating that it exerted the anti-cancer potential against skin cancer. The results obtained from biological assays showed that ACW possessed multiple bioactivities, including anti-microorganism, anti-inflammation, allergy-free, antioxidant, anti-melanin and anticancer properties. To our knowledge, this was the first report presenting these bioactivities on ACW

Porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) induces cell proliferation, fusion, and chemokine expression in swine monocytic cells in vitro

Granulomatous lymphadenitis is one of the pathognomonic lesions in post-weaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS)-affected pigs. This unique lesion has not been reported in direct association with viral infection in pigs. The objective of the present study was to evaluate whether porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) alone is able to induce functional modulation in porcine monocytic cells in vitro to elucidate its possible role in the development of granulomatous inflammation. It was found that the proliferation activity of blood monocytes (Mo) and monocyte-derived macrophages (MDM) was significantly enhanced by PCV2. During monocyte-macrophage differentiation, the PCV2 antigen-containing rate and formation of multinucleated giant cells (MGC) were significantly increased in MDM when compared to those in Mo. The MDM-derived MGC displayed a significantly higher PCV2 antigen-containing rate than did the mono-nucleated MDM. Supernatants from PCV2-inoculated MDM at 24 h post-inoculation induced an increased tendency of chemotactic activity for blood Mo. At the same inoculation time period, levels of mRNA expression of the monocytic chemokines, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 and macrophage inflammatory protein-1, also significantly increased in PCV2-inoculated MDM. The results suggest that PCV2 alone may induce cell proliferation, fusion, and chemokine expression in swine monocytic cells. Thus, PCV2 itself may play a significant role in the induction of granulomatous inflammation in PMWS-affected pigs