The picture of health on Instagram: Congruent vs. incongruent emotions in predicting the sentiment of comments

Mentored and collaborated student-led research. Research manuscript was peer-reviewed and accepted for presentation at the annual AEJMC conference.Published versio

Tobacco advertising

Tobacco advertising involves a variety of media formats (i.e., print, radio, television, billboards, point-of-sale, movie placement, Internet or social media, direct mail) and applies multiple persuasive tactics (e.g., visual appeal, sex appeal, masculinity and femininity cues, celebrity endorsement, motivational appeal) to encourage tobacco purchase and use. Scientific evidence points to the association between exposure to tobacco advertisements and subsequent increases in tobacco use. Due to the health risks of tobacco use, especially for youth, tobacco advertising is among the most regulated types of advertising. Globally, empirical research found that comprehensive tobacco advertising bans can reduce tobacco consumption, whereas partial tobacco advertising bans will have little or no effect as manufacturers may turn to non-banned media formats of advertisements. Other factors, such as transnational tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, as well as electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) enabled by the Internet, social media, and mobile communication, also pose additional challenges to health communication programs in tobacco control and prevention. This entry consists of five sections: (i) tobacco products and health risks, (ii) tobacco advertising and persuasive tactics, (iii) regulatory activities, (iv) anti-tobacco health communication, and (v) implications for health communication.Accepted manuscrip

Messaging for change: investigating effective communication strategies to promote youth vaping cessation on social media

This dissertation comprises three studies with the overarching goal of investigating effective messaging strategies to encourage e-cigarette cessation among youth who use e-cigarettes. Study one employs the McGuire’s Communication/ Persuasion model to identify research gaps in the literature on health messages targeting youth e-cigarette use. The systematic review reveals a lack of research specifically targeting vaping cessation among youth who currently use e-cigarettes. As a result, the subsequent studies in this dissertation focus on youth vaping cessation to address this research gap. Study two presents a content analysis of existing vaping-cessation related TikTok videos. The findings of study 2 suggest that themes pertaining to physical health outcomes, nicotine addiction, harmful chemicals, and relatable message sources were associated with higher engagement, underscoring the importance of tailored messaging content and relatable sources to engage the young audience on TikTok. Study 3 consists of an experimental study that specifically examines the effects of message frames (gain vs. loss) and two types of expert message sources (formal vs. informal expert sources) on youth intention to quit vaping. The study found that TikTok videos employing gain-framed messages hold promise in promoting positive emotional responses and, consequently, intention to quit vaping among youth. Lastly, chapter 5 provides a summary of the findings within this dissertation, offering insights into future research directions and proposing practical implications derived from the three studies

Efficient simulation of open quantum systems coupled to a reservoir through multiple channels

The simulation of open quantum systems coupled to a reservoir through multiple channels remains a substantial challenge. This kind of open quantum system arises when considering the radiationless decay of excited states that are coupled to molecular vibrations, for example. We use the chain mapping strategy in the interaction picture to study systems linearly coupled to a harmonic bath through multiple interaction channels. In the interaction picture, the bare bath Hamiltonian is removed by a unitary transformation (the system-bath interactions remain), and a chain mapping transforms the bath modes to a new basis. The transformed Hamiltonian contains time-dependent local system-bath couplings. The open quantum system is coupled to a limited number of (transformed) bath modes in the new basis. As such, the entanglement generated by the system-bath interactions is local, making efficient dynamical simulations possible with matrix product states. We use this approach to simulate singlet fission, using a generalized spin-boson Hamiltonian. The electronic states are coupled to a vibrational bath both diagonally and off-diagonally. This approach generalizes the chain mapping scheme to the case of multi-channel system-bath couplings, enabling the efficient simulation of this class of open quantum systems using matrix product states.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

The relationship between sleep quality and occupational well-being in employees: The mediating role of occupational self-efficacy

ObjectiveThis study aimed to examine the impact of sleep quality on occupational well-being in employees by primarily focusing on the mediating role of occupational self-efficacy.MethodsA total of 487 junior staff completed a set of questionnaires comprised Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scale, Occupational Self-efficacy Scale, and occupational well-being measurements.ResultsThe results revealed that both sleep quality and occupational self-efficacy were significantly correlated with occupational well-being. The structural equation modeling analysis and the bootstrap test indicated that occupational self-efficacy partially mediated the effect of poor sleep quality on occupational well-being.DiscussionThese findings expand upon existing research on the relationship between sleep quality and well-being among occupational workers, shed light on the correlation of poor sleep quality with occupational well-being, and are valuable in promoting the occupational well-being of employees

DeepC2: AI-powered Covert Botnet Command and Control on OSNs

Botnets are one of the major threats to computer security. In previous botnet command and control (C&C) scenarios using online social networks (OSNs), methods for addressing (e.g., IDs, links, or DGAs) are hardcoded into bots. Once a bot is reverse engineered, the botmaster and C&C infrastructure will be exposed. Additionally, abnormal content from explicit commands may expose botmasters and raise anomalies on OSNs. To overcome these deficiencies, we proposed DeepC2, an AI-powered covert C&C method on OSNs. By leveraging neural networks, bots can find botmasters by avatars, which are converted into feature vectors and embedded into bots. Adversaries cannot infer botmasters' accounts from the vectors. Commands are embedded into normal contents (e.g., tweets and comments) using text data augmentation and hash collision. Experiments on Twitter show that command-embedded contents can be generated efficiently, and bots can find botmasters and obtain commands accurately. Security analysis on different scenarios show that DeepC2 is robust and hard to be shut down. By demonstrating how AI may help promote covert communication on OSNs, this work provides a new perspective on botnet detection and confrontation.Comment: 13 pages, 15 figures, 7 tables. Discussion on possible countermeasures update