Graphical Analysis of Social Group Dynamics

Identifying communities in social networks becomes an increasingly important research problem. Several methods for identifying such groups have been developed, however, qualitative analysis (taking into account the scale of the problem) still poses serious problems. This paper describes a tool for facilitating such an analysis, allowing to visualize the dynamics and supporting localization of different events (such as creation or merging of groups). In the final part of the paper, the experimental results performed using the benchmark data (Enron emails) provide an insight into usefulness of the proposed tool.Comment: Fourth International Conference on Computational Aspects of Social Networks, CASoN 2012, Sao Carlos, Brazil, November 21-23, 2012, pp. 41-46; IEEE Computer Society, 201

Sport activity of polish runners and the resulting marketing potential

The purpose of this article is to analyze the sport activity of runners and to estimate on this basis their marketing potential in cross-industry. The prepared publication is therefore empirical-cognitive, resulting in the identification of the behavior and the determinants of purchase decisions made by the sports-active persons. The empirical part of the paper was prepared on the basis of one survey conducted twice by one of the authors, on the sample of several thousand runners. The outcomes were confronted with the available results of other studies conducted in recent years on the Polish sports market. The results of the research concerning issues such as attitude towards running, the importance of this activity in life, the role and importance of information sources, the frequency and place of purchases show the high heterogeneity of behavior of Polish runners. Based on the empirical evidence it may be observed that  marketing potential of this market segment from the vendor point of view is very promising

Effect of Pluronics and surfactant adsorption onto dolomite suspension zeta potential and stability

Two kinds of Pluronics (PEO-PPO-PEO triblock copolymers) were used in these studies. They have mixed with anionic surfactant (sodium oleate). The adsorption isotherms of surfactant and copolymer-surfactant mixture onto dolomite have been determined.The adsorbed amount of the Pluronics increases with increasing concentration and reaches plateau. An increase of adsorbed amounts of anionic surfactant onto the mineral surfaces (dolomite) has been observed at the presence of Pluronic copolymers. The adsorption effect of triblock copolymers has been investigated on the zeta potential of dolomite at the water suspension. The interaction of anionic surfactant with copolymers causes a decrease of zeta potential to small amount due to the deformation of double electrical layer. The adsorbed non-ionic Pluronic layer partially screens the surface charge of mineral particles, and thus, reduces the zeta potential. On the other hand, the adsorption of anionic surfactant and copolymer caused a decrease of negative value of zeta potential both investigated minerals. The stability of dolomite suspension depends on the both copolymer and sodium oleate concentrations

Determinants of the Engagement of Virtual Runs’ Participants in the Co-creation of Customer Value during the Pandemic

The study focuses on the research question of the determinants and motivating factors which stimulate  consumers to engage in the co-creation of customer value, even though the product they are offered is merely a substitute for the one they are used to. The research focuses on the virtual runs and its subject are the runners participating in the Białystok Virtual Half-Marathon. There are two equivalent objectives of the study: (a) the identification and the assessment of the determinants of the runners’ engagement, and (b) the segmentation of the virtual run participants on the basis of the diagnosed determinants of their involvement. The article is based on the results of the survey conducted in 2020 on a sample of 419 runners, by means of the CAWI method. The respondents were asked to assess 17 factors related to the customer engagement in the co-creation of value, with reference to the virtual run in which they participated. The Białystok Virtual Half-Marathon, the second biggest virtual run organised in 2020 in Poland, was used as a point of reference for this survey. This run was an alternative proposal prepared by the organiser in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the ban on the organisation of real runs in the whole country. The research findings allowed for expanding the theoretical knowledge of the concept of the  customer value co-creation and the consumers’ engagement in this process. The research resulted in distinguishing four meta-factors determining the runners’ engagement and  establishing the strength of their influence on the customer value co-creation. The research also revealed the runners’ motivation for participating in the virtual run. The runners’ involvement was determined by the hedonistic and social factors, though the structure and the strength of their impact varied in relation to the respondents’ demographics. All in all, four segments of runners were distinguished

Identification of Group Changes in Blogosphere

The paper addresses a problem of change identification in social group evolution. A new SGCI method for discovering of stable groups was proposed and compared with existing GED method. The experimental studies on a Polish blogosphere service revealed that both methods are able to identify similar evolution events even though both use different concepts. Some differences were demonstrated as wellComment: The 2012 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, IEEE Computer Society, 2012, pp. 1233-123

Predicting Community Evolution in Social Networks

Nowadays, sustained development of different social media can be observed worldwide. One of the relevant research domains intensively explored recently is analysis of social communities existing in social media as well as prediction of their future evolution taking into account collected historical evolution chains. These evolution chains proposed in the paper contain group states in the previous time frames and its historical transitions that were identified using one out of two methods: Stable Group Changes Identification (SGCI) and Group Evolution Discovery (GED). Based on the observed evolution chains of various length, structural network features are extracted, validated and selected as well as used to learn classification models. The experimental studies were performed on three real datasets with different profile: DBLP, Facebook and Polish blogosphere. The process of group prediction was analysed with respect to different classifiers as well as various descriptive feature sets extracted from evolution chains of different length. The results revealed that, in general, the longer evolution chains the better predictive abilities of the classification models. However, chains of length 3 to 7 enabled the GED-based method to almost reach its maximum possible prediction quality. For SGCI, this value was at the level of 3 to 5 last periods.Comment: Entropy 2015, 17, 1-x manuscripts; doi:10.3390/e170x000x 46 page

Application of headspace solid-phase microextraction followed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry to determine short-chain alkane monocarboxylic acids in aqueous samples

In this study, a procedure was developed to determine short-chain alkane monocarboxylic acids (SCMAs) in aqueous samples using headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) followed by gas chromatography (GC) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS). A Stabilwax-DA capillary column (30 m × 0.32-mm inner diameter, 0.50-μm film thickness) was used for GC separation and a 60-μm poly(ethylene glycol) fiber was used to isolate SCMAs from water and introduce them into the gas chromatograph. Parameters of HS-SPME, analyte desorption, and GC-MS analysis were selected and an analytical procedure was proposed. Limits of quantitation were on the order of about 0.2 mg L-1. As an example of the application of the procedure, SCAMs were determined in municipal wastewater at different steps of treatment