Connected strangers : manipulating social perceptions to study trust

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references.Economic views of trust, grounded in repeated game theory and behavioral economics experiments, largely ignore social factors such as personal relationships between subjects. In this study, we designed a new experimental procedure, the "Social Lending Game", in which aspects of trust are measured as a function of differing social contexts. The procedure harnesses real-world social relationships while keeping subjects' identities confidential. We developed relationship mining methods that categorize social connections into trustful ties, distrustful ties, and neutral ties. Subjects in the Social Lending Game were led to believe they were paired up with a stranger with real social connections to them. The perceived social connections were systematically manipulated to different types and strengths of social ties to measure the effect of social perception on trusting behavior. Surprisingly, we found that people trust strangers as much as they trust a friend's friend. In contrast, people distrust strangers when they are told that there exists no social connection to the strangers. These methods and results point to a number of future research topics that leverage social networks to reinvestigate utility theory, trust-based decisions and risk-taking behaviors in social contexts.by Sheng-Ying Pao.S.M

In silico identification and comparative analysis of differentially expressed genes in human and mouse tissues

BACKGROUND: Screening for differentially expressed genes on the genomic scale and comparative analysis of the expression profiles of orthologous genes between species to study gene function and regulation are becoming increasingly feasible. Expressed sequence tags (ESTs) are an excellent source of data for such studies using bioinformatic approaches because of the rich libraries and tremendous amount of data now available in the public domain. However, any large-scale EST-based bioinformatics analysis must deal with the heterogeneous, and often ambiguous, tissue and organ terms used to describe EST libraries. RESULTS: To deal with the issue of tissue source, in this work, we carefully screened and organized more than 8 million human and mouse ESTs into 157 human and 108 mouse tissue/organ categories, to which we applied an established statistic test using different thresholds of the p value to identify genes differentially expressed in different tissues. Further analysis of the tissue distribution and level of expression of human and mouse orthologous genes showed that tissue-specific orthologs tended to have more similar expression patterns than those lacking significant tissue specificity. On the other hand, a number of orthologs were found to have significant disparity in their expression profiles, hinting at novel functions, divergent regulation, or new ortholog relationships. CONCLUSION: Comprehensive statistics on the tissue-specific expression of human and mouse genes were obtained in this very large-scale, EST-based analysis. These statistical results have been organized into a database, freely accessible at our website , for easy searching of human and mouse tissue-specific genes and for investigating gene expression profiles in the context of comparative genomics. Comparative analysis showed that, although highly tissue-specific genes tend to exhibit similar expression profiles in human and mouse, there are significant exceptions, indicating that orthologous genes, while sharing basic genomic properties, could result in distinct phenotypes

Aspire America Airlines

Inspired by their flight out to Palo Alto, this team decided to tackle the airline industry and wanted to create a better flying experience. Their airline, called Aspire America, helps business travelers arrive at their destinations refreshed and inspired. The customized interior of each plane provides spacious first-class style seating for everyone and a large work area in the tail of the plane with desks, whiteboards and digital tools for teams to collaborate before arriving at their destination. Movable flat-panel displays provide collaborative digital tools, inflight exterior video and entertainment in a flexible manner. Satellite broadband combined with onboard data services keeps data secure while helping employees to perform at their best. The workspaces are equipped with full range studio monitors for audio performance and jam sessions.This enables teams of employees to continue working, rest or otherwise find inspiration inside their reimagined take on classic jet-age travel

Gesture-sensing pen for interfacing physical content with digitally-augmented surfaces

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2015.Page 188 blank. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-165).Humans are inherently creative and we have the desire to express and communicate. Pen and paper have been effective means of creation, expression, and communication for centuries. Today, technology increasingly permeates our environment but the spread of digital displays makes us more susceptible to passive viewership. What if we could combine the benefits of technology and pen and paper to empower people to become more active creators? This thesis explores new affordances for pens that become an interface to transcend the boundaries of paper through a series of gesture interactions that a) transfer content from the surface of creation (i.e., paper) onto surface of attention (i.e., intended surfaces in the immediate or remote locations); b) enable dynamic interactions across time by allowing users to create and transform static drawings on paper into an animated expression; c) maintain privacy for content creation while allowing users to selectively share only chosen content in real-time; d) explore the impact of gesture embodiment on audience engagement and shift their perspectives from being passive viewers to active creators. A series of usability studies were designed and conducted to evaluate the platforms and to explore how people may expand physical content beyond the boundaries of paper with the system. Beyond laboratory development, this thesis also presents the real-world deployment of the gesture-sensing pen as an interactive installation in a museum exhibition. Potential applications range from collaborative workspaces to participatory art experiences. Issues relating to creative process, sharing and privacy, and usability are examined in light of the interactive nature of the system.by Sheng-Ying Pao.Ph. D

The role of commercial friendship between social network site and users

The era of Web 2.0 has dramatically changed the way people live. Users provide their own information to establish mutually beneficial relationships with other friends online. This makes social media an indispensable part of our daily lives. However, past studies have shown that online user\u27s behavior tends to expose individual’s privacy and have started to investigate this phenomena from privacy calculus perspective. Different scholars hold distinct opinions on users’ weighting importance of benefits and risks. In this study, in order to figure out whether different human characteristics would influence user’s view on benefits or risks. We argue that the chronic regulatory focus is to guide the development of different behaviors through experience accumulation. Promotion focus users tend to weight more on the benefits than risks while prevention focus users might concern risks more than benefits when using social network sites (SNS). Given SNS providers have tried to gain trust of users to maintain user engagement with commercial friendships. The magnitude of the influences of promotion focus and prevention focus may be contingent on the commercial friendship. Data will be collected from the Facebook users to examine the research model. We expect to contribute to privacy calculus theory by showing that the effects of promotion focus and prevention focus may be contingent on certain conditions

In silico identification and comparative analysis of differentially expressed genes in human and mouse tissues-3

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "In silico identification and comparative analysis of differentially expressed genes in human and mouse tissues"</p><p>BMC Genomics 2006;7():86-86.</p><p>Published online 21 Apr 2006</p><p>PMCID:PMC1462998.</p><p>Copyright © 2006 Pao et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.</p>as a consequence of their divergent level of expression in the thymus). (B) and (C) microarray data for mouse (B) and human (C) [32], which also showed this discrepancy. In mouse, the expression of this gene in the thymus was more than 10 times the median value, while, in humans, it was around the median, much lower than the value of 3 times the median, the level generally used as the threshold for preferential expression. (B) and (C) were exported from GNF SymAtlas [32]

In silico identification and comparative analysis of differentially expressed genes in human and mouse tissues-0

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "In silico identification and comparative analysis of differentially expressed genes in human and mouse tissues"</p><p>BMC Genomics 2006;7():86-86.</p><p>Published online 21 Apr 2006</p><p>PMCID:PMC1462998.</p><p>Copyright © 2006 Pao et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.</p