scholarly journals Profile-based recommendation: A case study in a parliamentary context

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 665-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis M. de Campos ◽  
Juan M. Fernández-Luna ◽  
Juan F. Huete

In the context of e-government and more specifically that of parliament, this paper tackles the problem of finding Members of Parliament (MPs) according to their profiles which have been built from their speeches in plenary or committee sessions. The paper presents a common solution for two problems: firstly, a member of the public who is concerned about a certain issue might want to know who the best MP is for dealing with their problem (recommending task); and secondly, each new piece of textual information that reaches the house must be correctly allocated to the appropriate MP according to its content (filtering task). This paper explores both these ways of searching for relevant people conceptually by encapsulating them into a single problem: that of searching for the relevant MP’s profile given an information need. Our research work proposes various profile construction methods (by selecting and weighting appropriate terms) and compares these using different retrieval models to evaluate their quality and suitability for different types of information needs in order to simulate real and common situations.

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Fan Zhou ◽  
Xovee Xu ◽  
Goce Trajcevski ◽  
Kunpeng Zhang

The deluge of digital information in our daily life—from user-generated content, such as microblogs and scientific papers, to online business, such as viral marketing and advertising—offers unprecedented opportunities to explore and exploit the trajectories and structures of the evolution of information cascades. Abundant research efforts, both academic and industrial, have aimed to reach a better understanding of the mechanisms driving the spread of information and quantifying the outcome of information diffusion. This article presents a comprehensive review and categorization of information popularity prediction methods, from feature engineering and stochastic processes , through graph representation , to deep learning-based approaches . Specifically, we first formally define different types of information cascades and summarize the perspectives of existing studies. We then present a taxonomy that categorizes existing works into the aforementioned three main groups as well as the main subclasses in each group, and we systematically review cutting-edge research work. Finally, we summarize the pros and cons of existing research efforts and outline the open challenges and opportunities in this field.


Author(s):  
Zoe M. Becerra ◽  
Sweta Parmar ◽  
Keenan May ◽  
Rachel E. Stuck

With the increase of online shopping, animal shelters can use websites to allow potential adopters to view adoptable animals and increase the number of adoptions. However, little research has evaluated the information needs of this user group. This study conducted a user needs analysis to determine the types of information potential adopters want when searching for a new pet, specifically a cat or dog. Twenty-six participants ranked different behavioral and physical characteristics based on the level of importance and identified their top five overall characteristics. In general, cat adopters ranked the cat’s personality and behavior to be very important and dog adopters found physical characteristics highly important. This study shows the importance of understanding potential adopters’ needs to provide relevant and valued information on online pet adoption profiles. The recommendations and insights can be used to develop pet profiles that meet adopters’ needs and help adopters find the right pet.


IFLA Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 034003522199156
Author(s):  
Essam Mansour

The purpose of this study is to investigate the information-seeking behaviour of the Egyptian elderly, including their information needs. A sample of 63 elderly people living in care homes was taken. It was divided into five focus groups. Of the 63 elderly people, 40 were men (63.5%) and 23 women (36.5%). Almost half (47.6%) ranged in aged from 61 to 70. About a quarter (23%) of them held a high school diploma. The highest percentage (28.6%) was labelled as average-income people. The highest percentage (60.3%) was also found to be widows or widowers. The types of information used most by the Egyptian elderly related to physical, medical/health, social, rational and recreational needs. Their information sources varied between formal and informal sources. Nearly two-thirds (63.5%) of them showed that limited knowledge, lack of interest, poor information awareness, aging, loneliness and health problems were the most significant obstacles they faced when seeking information.


1994 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-18
Author(s):  
Richard Jones

As a general medical journal, The BMJ contains a wide range of subject matter, and many types of information need to be incorporated in its semi-annual index. Index Medicus vocabulary can be used for clinical articles, but non-clinical matter presents problems of ‘soft’ language. A weekly publication, the BMJ runs to about 1600 pages a volume, so succinct indexing is important, as is keeping to schedule. The number of authors and the vagueness of journal users present particular problems that can be ameliorated by the design of the index. Medline is a useful adjunct for subject access. Both the journal and the index have changed during a decade in which social and political aspects of medicine have assumed greater importance.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Farnoush Bayatmakou ◽  
Azadeh Mohebi ◽  
Abbas Ahmadi

Purpose Query-based summarization approaches might not be able to provide summaries compatible with the user’s information need, as they mostly rely on a limited source of information, usually represented as a single query by the user. This issue becomes even more challenging when dealing with scientific documents, as they contain more specific subject-related terms, while the user may not be able to express his/her specific information need in a query with limited terms. This study aims to propose an interactive multi-document text summarization approach that generates an eligible summary that is more compatible with the user’s information need. This approach allows the user to interactively specify the composition of a multi-document summary. Design/methodology/approach This approach exploits the user’s opinion in two stages. The initial query is refined by user-selected keywords/keyphrases and complete sentences extracted from the set of retrieved documents. It is followed by a novel method for sentence expansion using the genetic algorithm, and ranking the final set of sentences using the maximal marginal relevance method. Basically, for implementation, the Web of Science data set in the artificial intelligence (AI) category is considered. Findings The proposed approach receives feedback from the user in terms of favorable keywords and sentences. The feedback eventually improves the summary as the end. To assess the performance of the proposed system, this paper has asked 45 users who were graduate students in the field of AI to fill out a questionnaire. The quality of the final summary has been also evaluated from the user’s perspective and information redundancy. It has been investigated that the proposed approach leads to higher degrees of user satisfaction compared to the ones with no or only one step of the interaction. Originality/value The interactive summarization approach goes beyond the initial user’s query, while it includes the user’s preferred keywords/keyphrases and sentences through a systematic interaction. With respect to these interactions, the system gives the user a more clear idea of the information he/she is looking for and consequently adjusting the final result to the ultimate information need. Such interaction allows the summarization system to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the user’s information needs while expanding context-based knowledge and guiding the user toward his/her information journey.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Jesús Aragón-Ayala ◽  
Henry Rodriguez-Carrillo ◽  
Aldor Cornejo-Estrada ◽  
Cender Udai Quispe-Juli

BACKGROUND Use of Facebook has increased and poses new challenges for adoption of professionalism. In this study we describe the accessibility of Facebook profiles in medical students, the disclosure of personal and professional information, and its association with sex and year of study. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to explore the public accessibility of Facebook profiles of medical students from a Peruvian university and the disclosure of personal and professional information, as well as its association with sex and the year of studies. METHODS Through a systematic search on Facebook, the profiles of medical students from the 2nd to the 7th year were located using fictitious profiles. The presence of different types of information in accessible profiles were evaluated. Furthermore, the proportion of the disclosed content was calculated. The data were compared according to year of study and sex. RESULTS 80% of students (488/611) presented publicly accessible profiles. We did not find a significant difference according year of study (p = 0.098) and sex (p = 0.912). Proportion of disclosed content was greater in higher years: 2nd and 3rd (p = 0.022), 2nd and 6th (p < 0.001), and 2nd and 7th (p = 0.002) and in men (33.25 ± 12.47) compared to women (30.38 ± 11.95) (p = 0.01). Some photos (p = 0.009) and links to other social networking sites (p = 0.036) were more commonly visible in women’s profiles, while showing the university (p = 0.017), medical school (p = 0.043) and sexual orientation (p = 0.001) was more common amongst men. CONCLUSIONS Most of the Facebook profiles of medical students were accessible, the disclosed content was greater in senior and male students. It is necessary to create and implement guidelines on e-professionalism in Latin America.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aasif Ahmad Mir ◽  
Sevukan Rathinam ◽  
Sumeer Gul

PurposeTwitter is gaining popularity as a microblogging and social networking service to discuss various social issues. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic and is discussed worldwide. Social media is an instant platform to deliberate various dimensions of COVID-19. The purpose of the study is to explore and analyze the public sentiments related to COVID-19 vaccines across the Twitter messages (positive, neutral, and negative) and the impact tweets make across digital social circles.Design/methodology/approachTo fetch the vaccine-related posts, a manual examination of randomly selected 500 tweets was carried out to identify the popular hashtags relevant to the vaccine conversation. It was found that the hashtags “covid19vaccine” and “coronavirusvaccine” were the two popular hashtags used to discuss the communications related to COVID-19 vaccines. 23,575 global tweets available in public domain were retrieved through “Twitter Application Programming Interface” (API), using “Orange Software”, an open-source machine learning, data visualization and data mining toolkit. The study was confined to the tweets posted in English language only. The default data cleaning and preprocessing techniques available in the “Orange Software” were applied to the dataset, which include “transformation”, “tokenization” and “filtering”. The “Valence Aware Dictionary for sEntiment Reasoning” (VADER) tool was used for classification of tweets to determine the tweet sentiments (positive, neutral and negative) as well as the degree of sentiments (compound score also known as sentiment score). To assess the influence/impact of tweets account wise (verified and unverified) and sentiment wise (positive, neutral, and negative), the retweets and likes, which offer a sort of reward or acknowledgment of tweets, were used.FindingsA gradual decline in the number of tweets over the time is observed. Majority (11,205; 47.52%) of tweets express positive sentiments, followed by neutral (7,948; 33.71%) and negative sentiments (4,422; 18.75%), respectively. The study also signifies a substantial difference between the impact of tweets tweeted by verified and unverified users. The tweets related to verified users have a higher impact both in terms of retweets (65.91%) and likes (84.62%) compared to the tweets tweeted by unverified users. Tweets expressing positive sentiments have the highest impact both in terms of likes (mean = 10.48) and retweets (mean = 3.07) compared to those that express neutral or negative sentiments.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation of the study is that the sentiments of the people expressed over one single social platform, that is, Twitter have been studied which cannot generalize the global public perceptions. There can be a variation in the results when the datasets from other social media platforms will be studied.Practical implicationsThe study will help to know the people's sentiments and beliefs toward the COVID-19 vaccines. Sentiments that people hold about the COVID-19 vaccines are studied, which will help health policymakers understand the polarity (positive, negative, and neutral) of the tweets and thus see the public reaction and reflect the types of information people are exposed to about vaccines. The study can aid the health sectors to intensify positive messages and eliminate negative messages for an enhanced vaccination uptake. The research can also help design more operative vaccine-advocating communication by customizing messages using the obtained knowledge from the sentiments and opinions about the vaccines.Originality/valueThe paper focuses on an essential aspect of COVID-19 vaccines and how people express themselves (positively, neutrally and negatively) on Twitter.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
KITAE SOHN

We present evidence against the well-established education–health gradient by relating education to measured hypertension status in 5,873 men and 6,152 women aged 40[Formula: see text] in Indonesia. Once a basic set of covariates was controlled for, the two variables were not statistically significantly related. We argue that this lack was due to neglect of chronic diseases. It appears that the assumption of full information in theories on the education–health gradient is too strong to be applied to the developing world. Therefore, more information needs to be provided to the public regarding the seriousness of chronic diseases and preventive and curative methods.


2015 ◽  
Vol 773-774 ◽  
pp. 839-844 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohd Idrus bin Mohd Masirin ◽  
Nur Farrina Johari ◽  
Noor Hafiza Nordin ◽  
Abdul Halid Abdullah ◽  
Mohd Isom Azis

Malaysia is a fast developing country which thrives on the growth of its population and economy. Kuala Lumpur is the capital of Malaysia with an area of 243 km2 has a population of 1.4 million [1]. From the statistics, the number of passengers using intercity train services in Malaysia in was 187,345,149 in the year 2012 [2]. Comfortability of a service is a major factor that influences the public. The research will be conducted at the City of Kuala Lumpur, PUTRA LRT (Kelana Jaya Line) and MONOREL Line is selected as the main focus of the research. The data collection will be conducted in the train coaches with two parameters. The noise and vibrations in the train coaches will be taken using the Sound Level Meter (NOR118) and Vibration Meter (Movipack 01dB-Steel) respectively. The noise data were obtained from the interior of the train coaches during operation, while the vibrations were obtained from the wall surface of the coach interior. The vibration aspect for this research is more focused on three parameters which are displacement (μm), vibration velocity (mm/s) and vibration frequency (Hz)[7]. Questionnaires were given out to the train passengers in order to obtain public opinions and satisfaction feedbacks relating their experiences on the train coaches. In this paper it also discusses on the outcomes of the field research work conducted and it was found that PUTRA LRT has a lower vibration value when compared to the MONOREL. The public opinion has also showed unanimous agreement to the field observations conducted by the researchers. However, MONOREL records lower noise levels compared to PUTRA LRT which means quieter journey experience to the commuters. It is hoped that this study will enable the operators to enhance their service weaknesses with the public playing a part in improving the urban rail transit in the City of Kuala Lumpur. Keywords:Comfortability,Noise,Vibration,LRT,MONOREL,


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zainab Afshan Sheikh ◽  
Klaus Hoeyer

This article explores how research participants experienced information practices in an international genetic research collaboration involving the collection of biomaterial and clinical data in both Pakistan and Denmark. We investigated how people make sense of their research participation and the types of information they need and desire. We found great variation in what information exchange does and what participants experience as meaningful. For example, information practices could serve as a source of respect and recognition (in Denmark) or of hope, understanding or help when dealing with suffering (in Pakistan). Policies aimed at harmonizing ethics standards for international research do not encapsulate some of the most important aspects of information practices for the research participants involved. We suggest shifting the focus from standards of one-way information delivery to a more process-oriented form of research ethics, where the contextual exploration of local needs through a mutual engagement with participants gains more ground.


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