"(Weitergeleitet von Journalistin)": The Gendered Presentation of Professions on Wikipedia

Previous research has shown the existence of gender biases in the depiction of professions and occupations in search engine results. Such an unbalanced presentation might just as likely occur on Wikipedia, one of the most popular knowledge resources on the Web, since the encyclopedia has already been found to exhibit such tendencies in past studies. Under this premise, our work assesses gender bias with respect to the content of German Wikipedia articles about professions and occupations along three dimensions: used male vs. female titles (and redirects), included images of persons, and names of professionals mentioned in the articles. We further use German labor market data to assess the potential misrepresentation of a gender for each specific profession. Our findings in fact provide evidence for systematic over-representation of men on all three dimensions. For instance, for professional fields dominated by females, the respective articles on average still feature almost two times more images of men; and in the mean, 83% of the mentioned names of professionals were male and only 17% female.Comment: In the 9th International ACM Web Science Conference 2017 (WebSci'17), June 25-28, 2017, Troy, NY, USA. Based on the results of the thesis: arXiv:1702.0082

Gender Disparities in Science? Dropout, Productivity, Collaborations and Success of Male and Female Computer Scientists

Scientific collaborations shape ideas as well as innovations and are both the substrate for, and the outcome of, academic careers. Recent studies show that gender inequality is still present in many scientific practices ranging from hiring to peer-review processes and grant applications. In this work, we investigate gender-specific differences in collaboration patterns of more than one million computer scientists over the course of 47 years. We explore how these patterns change over years and career ages and how they impact scientific success. Our results highlight that successful male and female scientists reveal the same collaboration patterns: compared to scientists in the same career age, they tend to collaborate with more colleagues than other scientists, seek innovations as brokers and establish longer-lasting and more repetitive collaborations. However, women are on average less likely to adapt the collaboration patterns that are related with success, more likely to embed into ego networks devoid of structural holes, and they exhibit stronger gender homophily as well as a consistently higher dropout rate than men in all career ages

When Politicians Talk: Assessing Online Conversational Practices of Political Parties on Twitter

Assessing political conversations in social media requires a deeper understanding of the underlying practices and styles that drive these conversations. In this paper, we present a computational approach for assessing online conversational practices of political parties. Following a deductive approach, we devise a number of quantitative measures from a discussion of theoretical constructs in sociological theory. The resulting measures make different - mostly qualitative - aspects of online conversational practices amenable to computation. We evaluate our computational approach by applying it in a case study. In particular, we study online conversational practices of German politicians on Twitter during the German federal election 2013. We find that political parties share some interesting patterns of behavior, but also exhibit some unique and interesting idiosyncrasies. Our work sheds light on (i) how complex cultural phenomena such as online conversational practices are amenable to quantification and (ii) the way social media such as Twitter are utilized by political parties.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables, Proc. 8th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2014

Semantic Stability in Social Tagging Streams

One potential disadvantage of social tagging systems is that due to the lack of a centralized vocabulary, a crowd of users may never manage to reach a consensus on the description of resources (e.g., books, users or songs) on the Web. Yet, previous research has provided interesting evidence that the tag distributions of resources may become semantically stable over time as more and more users tag them. At the same time, previous work has raised an array of new questions such as: (i) How can we assess the semantic stability of social tagging systems in a robust and methodical way? (ii) Does semantic stabilization of tags vary across different social tagging systems and ultimately, (iii) what are the factors that can explain semantic stabilization in such systems? In this work we tackle these questions by (i) presenting a novel and robust method which overcomes a number of limitations in existing methods, (ii) empirically investigating semantic stabilization processes in a wide range of social tagging systems with distinct domains and properties and (iii) detecting potential causes for semantic stabilization, specifically imitation behavior, shared background knowledge and intrinsic properties of natural language. Our results show that tagging streams which are generated by a combination of imitation dynamics and shared background knowledge exhibit faster and higher semantic stability than tagging streams which are generated via imitation dynamics or natural language streams alone

Breathing Life into Polycations

The lack of efficient delivery systems is still limiting the full therapeutic potential of siRNA. For the purpose of nucleic acid transfer, among other synthetic carrier systems, polycations have been applied. Favorable characteristics of suitable polymers include nucleic acid binding, compaction, protection, and biocompatibility. However the lack of nucleic acid transfer activity in transfection-based screening often abandons promising candidates. Here we present that functionalization may turn polycations with poor delivery activity into efficient carriers:  for example, polylysine, on its own lacking nucleic acid transfer activity, displayed high efficiency in siRNA delivery after modification with polyethylene glycol and a pH-responsive endosomolytic peptide. Hence these findings have implication for the selection process of polymeric carriers for siRNA

The Impact of Business-to-Business e-marketplaces as Extended Media in the Procurement Supply Chain of Airlines

In recent years, a growing number of companies in many industry sectors have decided to include e-Business as an integral part of their strategy to enhance competitive advantage. The airline industry, having always been a great instigator and guarantor for innovative changes, is one of the industries where developments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in general have proven to be an inevitable factor of success. Among recent innovative developments are B2B e-Marketplaces, which have been hypothesised to optimise procurement processes and to add significant value in airlines’ supply chains. However, while e-Marketplaces have been analysed in more detail from an institutional perspective, very limited research has been undertaken to date in exploring the e-Marketplace adoption drivers and performance indicators, particularly from a diffusion-of-innovation (DOI) and innovation-organisation-environment (IOE) viewpoint. To address these issues, this research establishes a contingency framework and hypotheses are then developed that are subsequently subjected to empirical testing through quantitative methods. Methodological triangulation has been employed to address weaknesses and bias of using a single research method. Thus, extensive qualitative and quantitative data were collected by means of two survey instruments aiming at airlines (response rate 29%) and e-Marketplaces (response rate 65%). In addition, two explorative case studies were developed to qualitatively interlink the survey findings from both an e-Marketplace adopter and a non-adopter perspective. Results confirm that e-Marketplaces have gained momentum in the airline industry, following the typical S-curve pattern of technology adoption. As expected, e-Marketplaces have secured a relatively high degree of diffusion, with 65% of airlines already having used and e-Marketplace of some sort and 25% being financially involved in terms of ownership. Factors affecting the adoption of e-Marketplaces were investigated. The airline’s strategic classification has an impact on e-Marketplace adoption. 82% of full service airlines have adopted e-Marketplaces, followed by low-cost airlines with 79%, regional airlines with 50% and finally charter airlines with 27%. There is also a significant divide between large and small airlines, the latter of which often adhere to more traditional forms of purchasing. Other drivers or strategic ‘stimuli’ for e-Marketplace adoption in the airline industry include the extent of strategic partnerships, the level of overall ICT sophistication and the level of internet services used. In contrast to theoretically derived expectations, pressures from the business context, the level of resource/information sharing, the extent of outsourcing and joint procurement integration, and the purchasing organisation centralisation/decentralisation could not be confirmed as adoption drivers. In terms of performance indicators, this study confirms that e-Marketplace use is positively related to the overall satisfaction with an airline’s procurement practices and processes. Results suggest that e-Marketplaces do reduce search cost of airlines, mostly in the area of spares and repairs, tools/GSE and office supplies. Other benefits illustrated by the study typically occur in the facilitation of order processes, a higher transparency of suppliers, reduced inventories, product price reductions and a reduction in purchase order costs. Savings from e-Marketplace adoption, which occur more in process costs rather than product costs, tend to exceed the investment costs. However, results indicate that e-Marketplace adoption does not have a direct impact on overall airline performance, but on operational effectiveness and efficiency. The results also suggest that while the e-Marketplace diffusion level is relatively high among airlines, many airlines still make only rudimentary use of all offered services. There are still a number of challenges ahead for e-Marketplace implementation, such as further supplier integration, training and education of staff or the development of further e-Marketplace services, as the technology is often not yet ready to support the range of airline requirements. The primary contribution of the study is to provide an original starting point for a more structured focus to improve understanding of the adoption process and value creation of B2B e-Marketplaces. This foundation will allow for further investigation

What increases (social) media attention: Research impact, author prominence or title attractiveness?

Do only major scientific breakthroughs hit the news and social media, or does a 'catchy' title help to attract public attention? How strong is the connection between the importance of a scientific paper and the (social) media attention it receives? In this study we investigate these questions by analysing the relationship between the observed attention and certain characteristics of scientific papers from two major multidisciplinary journals: Nature Communication (NC) and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). We describe papers by features based on the linguistic properties of their titles and centrality measures of their authors in their co-authorship network. We identify linguistic features and collaboration patterns that might be indicators for future attention, and are characteristic to different journals, research disciplines, and media sources.Comment: Paper presented at 23rd International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators (STI 2018) in Leiden, The Netherland

Effectiveness of Best Management Cropping Systems to Abate Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Best management practices (BMPs) for cropping systems that involve conservation tillage and nutrient management are proposed as potential win-win solutions for both farmers and the environment. While originally targeted as a means for improving soil and water quality, these BMPs may also contribute to the mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Mitigation efforts have focused primarily on the ability of BMPs to sequester carbon and the subsequent potential revenue source carbon sequestration may represent to farmers. Increasingly, evidence from experimental stations calls into question the potential for C-sequestration with reduced tillage in soils in Eastern Canada. However, there are other ways in which BMPs can reduce GHG emissions: lowering fuel and nitrogen fertilizer consumption and, potentially, lowering emissions of nitrous oxide from the soil. This article examines the profitability and emission reduction potential of best management cropping practices for Ontario.Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management,