The world-wide-web has become a popular medium for health-related information exchange. New tools in Web 2.0 allow dynamic, disease-specific discussions. The impact on self-care and healthcare-related decisions merit academic focus and recognition. Our goal of this thesis is to assess the extent to which online social media are useful as information diffusion and knowledge exchange media, as guided by Asthma and COPD Action Plan recommendations. In this work, text data collected from online discussion forums were mined using syntax classification components of Symptoms and Actions. Coded text data were mapped to SNOMED-CT, UMLS, and Consumer Health Vocabulary to match clinical data terminology standards specified by the action plan. Those mapped data were converted into meta-matrix data for online group social networks and statistical analysis. The data analyses supported the hypothesis that unguided social media information exchange is congruent with two out of eight symptoms and actions. Results lead to the conclusion that health professional mediation is recommended.

Crée en 1944, la Banque Internationale pour la Reconstruction et le développement entre en activité en 1947. Parmi les premières activités auxquelles elle se consacre au cours des années quarante, les missions et prêts de la Banque Mondiale en Colombie représentent un moment clef dans l’évolution de cette institution vers la forme d’organisation, l’articulation des procédures et la définition des objectifs qui la caractérisent encore aujourd’hui. Notre recherche porte sur ce processus, en se concentrant en particulier sur la mission organisée en 1949 et sur les conséquences de cette celle-ci sur l’évolution de la Banque, ainsi que sur la politique économique colombienne. Nous avons étudié l’ensemble des pratiques liées à l’évolution des politiques de la Banque mondiale dans les premières années d’activité, en soulignant en particulier le caractère émergent de cette organisation. Dans cette évolution, les missions représenteraient un moment d’interaction entre experts internationaux et experts locaux, fondamental pour comprendre l’évolution de l’action de la Banque mondiale. À partir de cette hypothèse, le défi principal de la recherche a été celui d’élaborer une méthode d’analyse permettant de saisir les stratégies et les pratiques mises en place au cours des missions de la Banque Mondiale et de les mettre en relation avec les résultats de ces missions. Pour saisir ces stratégies nous avons analysé les liens mises en place entre les acteurs, locaux et transnationaux, au cours des missions et en observer l’évolution dans le temps. La reconstruction de ces liens nous a permis de mieux comprendre l’émergence de certaines institutions à la base de la demande et de la gestion des prêts, ainsi que des critères d’évaluation et d’intervention des experts internationaux dans les pays en développement. Nous essayons donc d’étudier un phénomène transnational par une approche micro historique. / The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development was founded in 1944 and began its operations in 1947. Among the first activities the Bank carried out in the 1940s, the missions and loans in Colombia represented a key moment in the evolution of this institution towards the form of organization, the articulation of procedures and the definition of the objectives that characterize the Bank still today. Our research focuses on this process, focusing in particular on the General Survey mission organized in 1949 and its implications for the evolution of the Bank, as well as Colombian economic policy. Through this mission, we examined the practices related to the evolution of the World Bank's policies during the first years of activity, highlighting in particular the emergent nature of this organization. These missions, analyzed as a moment of interaction between international experts and local experts, are fundamental to understanding the evolution of the World Bank's work. Based on this assumption, one of the main challenge of the research was to develop a method of analysis to capture the strategies and practices developed during the World Bank missions and to relate them to the results of these missions. In order to understand these strategies, we analyzed the links established among the actors, local and international, and observed their evolution over time. Crafting and studying these links allowed us to better understand the emergence of certain institutions related to the demand and management of the loans, as well as the criteria the Bank established for the evaluation and intervention of international experts in developing countries. This implied the study of a transnational phenomenon by a micro-historical approach.

With the advancement of the Internet and related technologies, many traditional crimes have made the leap to digital environments. The successes of data mining in a wide variety of disciplines have given birth to crime analysis. Traditional crime analysis is mainly focused on understanding crime patterns, however, it is unsuitable for identifying and monitoring emerging crimes. The true nature of crime remains buried in unstructured content that represents the hidden story behind the data. User feedback leaves valuable traces that can be utilised to measure the quality of various aspects of products or services and can also be used to detect, infer, or predict crimes. Like any application of data mining, the data must be of a high quality standard in order to avoid erroneous conclusions. This thesis presents a methodology and practical experiments towards discovering whether (i) user feedback can be harnessed and processed for crime intelligence, (ii) criminal associations, structures, and roles can be inferred among entities involved in a crime, and (iii) methods and standards can be developed for measuring, predicting, and comparing the quality level of social data instances and samples. It contributes to the theory, design and development of a novel framework for crime intelligence and algorithm for the estimation of social data quality by innovatively adapting the methods of monitoring water contaminants. Several experiments were conducted and the results obtained revealed the significance of this study in mining social data for crime intelligence and in developing social data quality filters and decision support systems.

A avaliação acadêmica (de docentes, departamentos, programas de pós-graduação ou instituições) é uma atividade rotineira e utilizada para, por exemplo, a concessão de recursos para um projeto, definição da verba que será liberada a um dado programa de pós-graduação ou mesmo para a autorização do oferecimento de um curso de doutorado para um programa de pós-graduação. Contudo, determinar a qualidade do ensino não é uma tarefa trivial, com metodologias comparativas ainda em estudo. Dois destes critérios são informações bibliométricas e análise das redes de coautorias dos programas. Assim, o desenvolvimento de métodos e ferramentas para automatizar parte da avaliação ou mesmo para identificar a importância de diferentes métricas podem tanto auxiliar no processo de avaliação como servir para auxiliar as pessoas ou os grupos que serão avaliados. Neste trabalho foram desenvolvidas ferramentas para a realização automática de análise bibliométrica e de redes sociais para a caracterização e ranqueamento de grupos acadêmicos, bem como investigar a relação entre diferentes medidas e alguns ranqueamentos acadêmicos existentes. As ferramentas foram avaliadas considerando departamentos internacionais e programas de pós-graduação da área de Ciência da Computação. Os resultados de nosso estudo indicaram quais métricas contribuíram positivamente e negativamente para a posição dos ranqueamentos dos programas / The academic evaluation (of researchers, departments, graduate programs or institutions) is a routine activity and used for the granting of resources for a project, definition of the funds that will be released to a given graduate program or even for the authorization of the offering of a doctorate course. However, this activity is complex with comparative methodologies still in evaluation. Two criteria used are bibliometrics information and scientific social network analysis. Thus, the development of methods and tools to automate part of the evaluation or even to identify the importance of different metrics for the evaluation can both aid the evaluation process and serve as a guide for the researchers or groups that will be evaluated. In this work, tools were developed for performing automatically bibliometric and social networks analysis for the characterization and ranking of academic groups, as well as to investigate the relationship between different measures and some existing academic rankings. The tools were evaluated considering international departments and graduate programs in the Computer Science area. Our results showed which metrics contributed positively and negatively in the rank positioning of the programs

A avaliação acadêmica (de docentes, departamentos, programas de pós-graduação ou instituições) é uma atividade rotineira e utilizada para, por exemplo, a concessão de recursos para um projeto, definição da verba que será liberada a um dado programa de pós-graduação ou mesmo para a autorização do oferecimento de um curso de doutorado para um programa de pós-graduação. Contudo, determinar a qualidade do ensino não é uma tarefa trivial, com metodologias comparativas ainda em estudo. Dois destes critérios são informações bibliométricas e análise das redes de coautorias dos programas. Assim, o desenvolvimento de métodos e ferramentas para automatizar parte da avaliação ou mesmo para identificar a importância de diferentes métricas podem tanto auxiliar no processo de avaliação como servir para auxiliar as pessoas ou os grupos que serão avaliados. Neste trabalho foram desenvolvidas ferramentas para a realização automática de análise bibliométrica e de redes sociais para a caracterização e ranqueamento de grupos acadêmicos, bem como investigar a relação entre diferentes medidas e alguns ranqueamentos acadêmicos existentes. As ferramentas foram avaliadas considerando departamentos internacionais e programas de pós-graduação da área de Ciência da Computação. Os resultados de nosso estudo indicaram quais métricas contribuíram positivamente e negativamente para a posição dos ranqueamentos dos programas / The academic evaluation (of researchers, departments, graduate programs or institutions) is a routine activity and used for the granting of resources for a project, definition of the funds that will be released to a given graduate program or even for the authorization of the offering of a doctorate course. However, this activity is complex with comparative methodologies still in evaluation. Two criteria used are bibliometrics information and scientific social network analysis. Thus, the development of methods and tools to automate part of the evaluation or even to identify the importance of different metrics for the evaluation can both aid the evaluation process and serve as a guide for the researchers or groups that will be evaluated. In this work, tools were developed for performing automatically bibliometric and social networks analysis for the characterization and ranking of academic groups, as well as to investigate the relationship between different measures and some existing academic rankings. The tools were evaluated considering international departments and graduate programs in the Computer Science area. Our results showed which metrics contributed positively and negatively in the rank positioning of the programs

How do informal groups emerge in adolescent communities? What distinguishes a group from just a set of students? Who will end up together in a group and who will be left out? Why are there more groups in some classrooms and fewer in others? What determines whether these groups overlap in their members or they are completely segregated, perhaps antagonistic? While a huge body of research in sociology and social psychology focuses on these questions, an integrated approach that is able to answer all of them is yet to be developed. Without realizing that these five issues are interrelated, we cannot hope to understand how groups influence individuals and how they shape our communities. This thesis proposes an integrative theory of informal group formation in communities. Based on the tradition of Social Network Analysis, it develops a framework in which interpersonal relations and reputations are formed through a process called informal status production. Groups emerge from this micro-process by the alignment of positive relations and agreement in peer-perceptions between actors. The main micro-mechanisms predicted by the theory are tested on a unique longitudinal network dataset from school classrooms. To this end, a new empirical procedure was developed, by which a few aggregated networks can be constructed from tens of relational items. This allows the analysis of rich network data with several relational dimensions. The empirical studies of multiplex network dynamics confirm that there are strong interdependencies between friendships and perceptions. Students who agree about their peers tend to become friends, but more so when they hold a minority opinion in the class. This contributes to group formation. Friends also influence each other's perceptions, but we manage to show that the presence of groups around them interferes with this process by moderating the influence of individual peers.

Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第15350号 / 工博第3229号 / 新制||工||1486(附属図書館) / 27828 / 京都大学大学院工学研究科都市社会工学専攻 / (主査)教授 小林 潔司, 教授 川﨑 雅史, 教授 藤井 聡 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当

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La visualisation d'informations est un domaine qui connaît un réel intérêt depuis une dizaine d'années. Dernièrement, avec l'explosion des moyens de communication, l'analyse de réseaux sociaux fait l'objet de nombreux travaux de recherches. Nous présentons dans cette thèse des travaux sur l'analyse de réseaux sociaux dynamiques, c'est à dire que nous prenons en compte l'aspect temporel des données. [...] / Since ten years, informations visualization domain knows a real interest.Recently, with the growing of communications, the research on social networks analysis becomes strongly active. In this thesis, we present results on dynamic social networks analysis. That means that we take into account the temporal aspect of data. We were particularly interested in communities extraction within networks and their evolutions through time. [...]

With the advancement of the Internet and related technologies, many traditional crimes have made the leap to digital environments. The successes of data mining in a wide variety of disciplines have given birth to crime analysis. Traditional crime analysis is mainly focused on understanding crime patterns, however, it is unsuitable for identifying and monitoring emerging crimes. The true nature of crime remains buried in unstructured content that represents the hidden story behind the data. User feedback leaves valuable traces that can be utilised to measure the quality of various aspects of products or services and can also be used to detect, infer, or predict crimes. Like any application of data mining, the data must be of a high quality standard in order to avoid erroneous conclusions. This thesis presents a methodology and practical experiments towards discovering whether (i) user feedback can be harnessed and processed for crime intelligence, (ii) criminal associations, structures, and roles can be inferred among entities involved in a crime, and (iii) methods and standards can be developed for measuring, predicting, and comparing the quality level of social data instances and samples. It contributes to the theory, design and development of a novel framework for crime intelligence and algorithm for the estimation of social data quality by innovatively adapting the methods of monitoring water contaminants. Several experiments were conducted and the results obtained revealed the significance of this study in mining social data for crime intelligence and in developing social data quality filters and decision support systems. / Commonwealth Scholarship Commission.