What kind of #conversation is Twitter? Mining #psycholinguistic cues for emergency coordination

The information overload created by social media messages in emergency situations challenges response organizations to find targeted content and users. We aim to select useful messages by detecting the presence of conversation as an indicator of coordinated citizen action. Using simple linguistic indicators drawn from conversation analysis in social science, we model the presence of coordination in the communication landscape of Twitter¹ using a corpus of 1.5 million tweets for various disaster and non-disaster events spanning different periods, lengths of time, and varied social significance. Within replies, retweets and tweets that mention other Twitter users, we found that domain-independent, linguistic cues distinguish likely conversation from non-conversation in this online form of mediated communication. We demonstrate that these likely conversation subsets potentially contain more information than non-conversation subsets, whether or not the tweets are replies, retweets, or mention other Twitter users, as long as they reflect conversational properties. From a practical perspective, we have developed a model for trimming the candidate tweet corpus to identify a much smaller subset of data for submission to deeper, domain-dependent semantic analyses for the identification of actionable information nuggets for coordinated emergency response.     

Predicting missing contacts in mobile social networks

Experimentally measured contact traces, such as those obtained in a conference setting by using short range wireless sensors, are usually limited with respect to the practical number of sensors that can be deployed as well as the number of available human volunteers. Moreover, most previous experiments in this field can report only partial contact information since not everyone participating in the experiment carries a sensor device. Previously collected contact traces have significantly contributed to the development of more realistic human mobility models. This in turn has influenced proposed routing algorithms for Delay Tolerant Networks where human contacts play a vital role in message delivery. By exploiting time-spatial properties of contact graphs as well as the popularity and social information of mobile nodes, we propose a novel method to reconstruct the missing parts of contact graphs where only a subset of nodes are able to sense contacts.     

Guest Editor's Introduction

Journal of Signal Processing Systems -     

Aminofunctional polyethers: smart materials for applications in solution and on surfaces

In recent years, biocompatible polyethers with multi‐aminofunctionality have been used for a variety of applications in different fields. Both established and recently developed synthesis strategies for such polymers and applications as stimuli‐responsive materials, non‐viral vectors, shell crosslinked micelles and for surface functionalization are reviewed. The intriguing potential of such materials is due to both polyether and polyamine components and can thus be readily tuned by the copolymer microstructure and composition. © 2013 Society of Chemical Industry     

Luminescent Conjugated Oligothiophenes for Sensitive Fluorescent Assignment of Protein Inclusion Bodies

Small hydrophobic ligands identifying intracellular protein deposits are of great interest, as protein inclusion bodies are the pathological hallmark of several degenerative diseases. Here we report that fluorescent amyloid ligands, termed luminescent conjugated oligothiophenes (LCOs), rapidly and with high sensitivity detect protein inclusion bodies in skeletal muscle tissue from patients with sporadic inclusion body myositis (s‐IBM). LCOs having a conjugated backbone of at least five thiophene units emitted strong fluorescence upon binding, and showed co‐localization with proteins reported to accumulate in s‐IBM protein inclusion bodies. Compared with conventional amyloid ligands, LCOs identified a larger fraction of immunopositive inclusion bodies. When the conjugated thiophene backbone was extended with terminal carboxyl groups, the LCO revealed striking spectral differences between distinct protein inclusion bodies. We conclude that 1) LCOs are sensitive, rapid and powerful tools for identifying protein inclusion bodies and 2) LCOs identify a wider range of protein inclusion bodies than conventional amyloid ligands.     

Use of dairy proteins in lean poultry meat batters – a comparative study

The use of dry whole milk, skimmed milk, caseinate, regular and modified whey, at 2% level (w/w) and with 2% additional protein level was studied in a chicken breast meat system with 51% water addition. At the 2% (w/w) level, all dairy proteins significantly reduced cooking loss compared with the control, with caseinate showing the best results. When compared on an equal protein level (2% total protein), the best performing ingredients were the whole milk and modified whey. A similar observation was made in their effect on the products’ hardness and fracturability. A cost analysis revealed that modified whey provided the most economical ingredient even when used in quantities three times greater than that of as caseinate. Microscopy results showed the formation of larger fine‐protein‐matrix regions in the treatments that provided higher fracturability values.     

Species variation in PrPSc protofibril models

The misfolding and aggregation of the prion protein (PrP) is the primary cause of a group of infectious neurodegenerative diseases including Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in humans and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in cows. A single disease can exhibit different infectious strains distinguishable by incubation time and morphology or distribution of the aggregates. Infected brain tissue from one species can be used to infect other species, but with different efficiencies, suggesting a spectrum of species compatibility. If PrP is, as widely believed, the sole component of infection, then the species and strain differences must be accounted for by the structure of the aggregates, likely influenced by each species’ PrP sequence. As there are no high-resolution data exploring this hypothesis, we performed molecular dynamics simulations of PrP for human, bovine, hamster, and D147N mutant hamster sequences at low pH to induce misfolding of the protein. We selected representative converted structures from each of the four sequences and, with the guidance of experimental data, constructed models of the infectious aggregates. Both hamster monomers showed high flexibility during conversion, suggesting hamster may more easily adopt altered conformations, which in turn may explain why it is more easily infected by some other species. Human and bovine aggregates were similar, with monomers docking in P3₁ symmetry to form a left-handed spiral. In contrast, hamster aggregates formed a P3₁ right-handed spiral. We detail the differences in the converted monomers that give rise to this difference and show that our results compare favorably with experimental data. This paper is part of the special Journal of Materials Science issue Nano- and micromechanical properties of hierarchical biological materials: Linking mechanics, chemistry and biology; Guest Editor: Markus J. Buehler that appeared in Journal of Materials Science volume 42, issue 21, November 2007. This paper was delayed for nonscientific reasons.     

EDA工具适应当今的FPGA设计

几年以前,高容量的现场可编程器件(FPGA)指 的是包含有5万个门电路,应用于逻辑结合比较紧密的 电路。但今天的FPGA已包含数百万个门电路,成为某 些增长最快的高科技市场的电子系统核心。摩尔定律在FPGA上呈现,包括门数与速率。高容量、高性能的FPGA已处在硅技术的前沿,甚至在某些场合替代了ASIC。     

Exploring the Gender Gap in Engineering: A Re‐Specification and Test of the Hypothesis of Cumulative Advantages and Disadvantages

Researchers using the hypothesis of cumulative advantages and disadvantages argue that the accumulation of small advantages for men and small disadvantages for women contributes to the gender gap in engineering. This paper uses data from a 1998 survey of engineering undergraduates to test a re‐specification of this hypothesis that treats the gender distribution of advantages and disadvantages as an empirical question. We considered four sets of factors that have been shown to promote choice of an engineering major, persistence in engineering, and progress in engineering: family background, high school participation in mathematics and science, university participation in engineering, and integration into engineering. We found gender differences for each set of factors. We also found that men and women accumulate different advantages and disadvantages as they move through the education pipeline. By demonstrating that the accumulation of advantages and disadvantages is gendered, these results highlight the importance of examining the impact of micro‐inequities on the persistence and progress of men and women in engineering.     

Underrated transformations in the open space—The case of an urbanized and multifunctional area

The open space in Flanders is subjected to different transformation processes. These processes are related to dynamic interactions within an urbanizing society and to competition for space by an increasing number of functions. Despite the acknowledgement of dynamic land use demands, the current categorizations of land use and land cover are not always able to catch transformations related to e.g. newcomers in land use, ecosystem services and multifunctionality in mixed urban–rural areas. Remote sensing tools and census data are insufficient when studying a complex and intensively used space. This research therefore aims to identify underrated transformations in the study area Flanders (the northern part of Belgium) using two main sources: (i) open expert interviews and (ii) three case studies. The interviews serve to formulate a renewed framework that can be used to describe transformations in the open space. The transformation processes that emerge from the interviews and case studies are compared to those defined and recognized in the current spatial planning policy and in existing monitoring data, in order to identify bottlenecks and options for future spatial planning policy. The major conclusions of this paper are (i) a critical view on the analysis and categorization of functions and open space as it is currently practiced in land use monitoring and land use planning programs, (ii) additional data needs to encompass transformation processes in the open space and (iii) the need for a more integral vision for open space.