Leveraging Twitter data to analyze the virality of Covid-19 tweets: a text mining approach

As the novel coronavirus spreads across the world, work, pleasure, entertainment, social interactions, and meetings have shifted online. The conversations on social media have spiked, and given the uncertainties and new policies, COVID-19 remains the trending topic on all such platforms, including Twitter. This research explores the factors that affect COVID-19 content-sharing by Twitter users. The analysis was conducted using 57,000 plus tweets that mentioned COVID-19 and related keywords. The tweets were subjected to the Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques like Topic modelling, Named Entity-Relationship, Emotion & Sentiment analysis, and Linguistic feature extraction. These methods generated features that could help explain the retweet count of the tweets. The results indicate that tweets with named entities (person, organisation, and location), expression of negative emotions (anger, disgust, fear, and sadness), reference to mental health, optimistic content, and greater length have higher chances of being shared (retweeted). On the other hand, tweets with more hashtags and user mentions are less likely to be shared

Does Participation in Microfinance Programs Improve Household Incomes: Empirical Evidence From Makueni District, Kenya

Although microfinance has elicited different reactions from different stakeholders, there seems to be a general agreement that it is useful in reducing poverty. This study is an attempt to contribute in to the debate on the impact of microfinance on household incomes. We use a pooled data set collected from the south western part of Makueni district in Kenya to study the households’ access to microfinance credit and how the credit affects their incomes. We control for household selection bias as well as endogenity problems in the sample. Cross sectional analysis fails to show any significant positive impact of microfinance on poverty reduction. Only after the inclusion of time dynamics in the study are we able to find a weak positive significance of microfinance on household incomes.household, incomes, Kenya, Makueni, Agricultural Finance, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Financial Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Health Economics and Policy, Labor and Human Capital, Marketing, Production Economics, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Sensitizing processing-resistant foodborne spoilage and pathogenic bacteria to ultra-high pressure by food colorants

Treating foods with ultra-high pressure (UHP) causes significant inactivation of microbial load, however a small number of survivors are often observed after extreme pressure treatments (a tailing phenomenon). Consequently, it is important to identify conditions and additives that enhance the efficacy of pressure against foodborne pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms. Based on preliminary work, it was hypothesized that food colorants could be used in combination with UHP to enhance pressure lethality. The seven U.S. certified food colorants (FD&C Blue No. 1, Blue No. 2, Green No. 3, Red No. 3, Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5, and Yellow No. 6) were tested for synergy with UHP against Lactobacillus plantarum in citrate-phosphate buffer (pH 7.0). FD&C Red No. 3 was the only food colorant exhibited antimicrobial properties as well as enhancing UHP lethality. Further studies were performed using FD&C Red No. 3 against processing-resistant Listeria monocytogenes and Escherichia coli O157:H7 strains. Synergy of inactivation occurred with FD&C Red No. 3 concentrations as low as 3 ppm when the pathogens were treated with 400 MPa for 3 minutes. FD&C Red No. 3 (10 ppm) and UHP (400 MPa for 3 minutes) inactivated a large population (>7 log cfu/ml) of the processing-resistant L. monocytogenes OSY-328; UHP treatment alone inactivated ~0.3 log cfu/ml, whereas dye treatment alone inactivated 1.8 log cfu/ml. Gram-positive strains were sensitive to FD&C Red No. 3 alone, while E. coli O157:H7 was only affected when treated with the colorant in combination with UHP

THE EFFECTS OF A MEDIA LITERACY INTERVENTION ON WOMEN’S BODY DISSATISFACTION: WATCHING AND EXERCISING TO A FITNESS VIDEO

This study sought to compare the effects of a media literacy intervention to an attention control on women’s body dissatisfaction after watching and exercising to a fitness video. Using a crossover design, 83 infrequent exercisers (M age = 24.54) with moderate to higher body dissatisfaction, including a sub-sample of women with higher body dissatisfaction (n=22; M age = 26.73), randomly received a media literacy intervention or attention control materials. Participants then watched and exercised to the video. The Appearance Evaluation and Body Areas Satisfaction subscales were administered at baseline, after watching, and after exercising to the video. Contrary to hypotheses, body dissatisfaction decreases in both samples after watching and exercising, regardless of group assignment. Overall, exposure to the fitness video resulted in increases in body satisfaction. These findings are discussed within a self-enhancement framework, and addresses potential differences between watching versus exercising to a fitness video on body dissatisfaction

Cheeseweed (Malva Parviflora L.) Competition with Cabbage and Lettuce on Maui. Hawaii

In four field experiments transplanted cabbage was grown with cheeseweed sown at transplanting at densities from 0 to 70 weeds per 0.1 m2. Cheeseweed emerged in 3 to 7 days and overgrew the cabbage in 42 to 49 days. At harvest cabbages were trimmed to two wrapper leaves and weighed. Final weed densities and weed fresh weights were recorded. Curvilinear and linear relationships between trimmed cabbage fresh weight and weed density were defined by regression equations. Regression equations were also calculated to define the relationship between cabbage fresh weights and weed fresh weight. In two additional plantings, subplots with cabbage only, cabbage and cheeseweed, and cheeseweed only were harvested weekly. Reductions in cabbage plant fresh weights occurred when cheeseweed attained and surpassed the height of the cabbage. One experiment was conducted with transplanted lettuce and cheeseweed sown to densities from 1 to 15 weeds per 0.1 m2. The relationship between trimmed lettuce head fresh weights in grams (y) and the number of weeds per 0.1 m2 (x) was best expressed by the linear equation y = 842 - 49.4x. When y was regressed on weed fresh weight in grams per 0.1 m2 (x), the equation was y = 929 - 2.3x. In addition to reduced head weights, losses due to rot Increased with increasing weed densities, with a stand reduction as high as 80 percent at 5 weeds per 0.1 m2

Middle School Students\u27 Empathy with the Environment throughout a Critical Place-Based Art Program

The ecological imagination calls for a new mode of education: education that embraces the arts as a way to conceive of new ecological perspectives, other ways of being in relation to the earth, better ecological alternatives, and new dialogues about our role in the world. Through a critical place-based art pedagogy, education can become a means of awakening the ecological imagination—opening the world to new possibilities, new critiques, and, most importantly, new acts. Empathy is especially appropriate to study as an outcome of a critical place-based art program because of its ability to facilitate connections and its close ties with aesthetic experience. Thus, the purpose of this ongoing mixed methods case study is to examine how middle school students in a critical place-based art program experience empathy with the environment. Operating in the pragmatic paradigm, the study asks the following questions: How do middle school students experience empathy with the environment throughout a critical place-based art program? How does participation in a place-based art education program affect students’ pro-environmental orientations (ecological paradigm)? Which aspects of a place-based art education program, if any, contribute to students’ empathy with the environment? Why? Drawing exercises, interviews, surveys, reviews of visual/verbal journals, observations, and focus groups will be used to answer these questions. This study is especially relevant for art educators and administrators seeking to develop programs that are relevant to students and capable of producing empathetic, ecologically-minded, active citizens who are capable of working toward social and ecological change in their communities