In the last few years, the world has been gripped by a crisis of forced migration and displaced persons. Being forced migrants, asylum-seekers are a unique and diverse population, originating from many countries with different backgrounds and experiences. This makes fulfilling the information needs of the asylum community difficult. Online participatory platforms, such as blogs and discussion forums, are flexible, adaptive information resources that could be used to meet the diverse needs of this population. In this study, I compare two online resources used by asylum-seekers, a blog and discussion forum, using social network analysis and topic modeling techniques. Through these analyses, I have determined the conversational archetype the best reflects both websites and discovered the information needs expressed and, in many cases, resolved through conversations in these online spaces. The core finding of this study is that providing direct access to an expert, such as through an interactive blog, promotes dialogue on a greater variety of topics and increases the likelihood of a thorough response. Furthermore, blog posts may inform participants' comments by providing them with the necessary vocabulary to participate fully in the online setting.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, School of Human and Community Development, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by coursework and research report in the field of in Organisational Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg September 2017 / Emails have become a fundamental computer application and business tool, in organisations across the global. This is because of the accessibility and convenience of emails which have generated an array of benefits to both employees and their organisations. However, this accessibility has led to an over-reliance on emails, which often has the negative consequence of email overload. Email overload continues to be a recurring issues experienced by employees universally, which research has found to have negative implications on employees’ wellbeing and productivity. Yet there has been limited research, particularly in South Africa, that aims to reduce email overload among employees. Thus, this research report investigated how the role of providing employees with a job resource (training intervention) could increase perceived productivity and eliminate email overload and change caused by the job demands (emails) on employees .In order to examine this effect, this research utilised a pretest post-test control group design on order to compare the impact of a training intervention in reducing email overload and increasing productivity. The quantitative results revealed that the training intervention contributed to a decrease in feelings of email overload among the participants. Additionally, focus groups were administered to determine participants’ experience with emails both prior to the training and after the training, to gain a clearer understanding of the best practices used to eliminate email overload. These findings observed that the participants transferred learnt contents from training into their working lives. Thus research both further contributes to other research currently associated with email and email overload, and also provides a greater understanding of the need to provide employees with job resources much like training intervention in order to counteract those job demands like emails, that are often ignored. / XL2018

Current sentiment analysis on Twitter is hampered by two factors namely, not all accounts are genuine and not all users have the same level of influence. Including non credible and irrelevant Tweets in sentiment analysis dilutes the effectiveness of any sentiment produced. Similarly, counting a Tweet with a potential audience of 10 users as having the same impact as a Tweet that could reach 1 million users is not accurately reflecting its importance. In order to mitigate against these inherent problems a novel method was devised to account for credibility and to measure influence. The current definition of credibility on Twitter was redefined and expanded to incorporate the subtle nuances that exist beyond the simple variance between human or bot account. Once basic sentiment was produced it was filtered by removing non credible Tweets and the remaining sentiment was augmented by weighting it based upon both the user’s and the Tweet’s influence scores. Measuring one person’s opinion is costly and lacking in power, however, machine learning techniques allow us to capture and analyse millions of opinions. Combining a Tweet’s sentiment with the user’s influence score and their credibility rating greatly increases the understanding and usefulness of that sentiment. In order to gauge and measure the impact of this research and highlight its generalisability, this thesis examined 2 distinct real world datasets, the UK General Election 2015 and the Rugby World Cup 2015, which also served to validate the approach used. A better more accurate understanding of sentiment on Twitter has the potential for broad impact from providing targeted advertising that is in tune with people’s needs and desires to providing governments with a better understanding of the will and desire of the people.

Pyrazoles have been intensely studied in the design and synthesis of biologically active agents because they display considerable medicinal activities. Recent studies have shown that integration of a ferrocenyl unit with structural features of pyrazoles can result in the formation of the new products with enhanced or/and unexpected biological activity since several ferrocene derivatives have already been illustrated to be active against a number of tumors. Therefore, we have investigated the electrophilic cyclizations of the hydrazones to afford 5-ferrocenyl-4-((4-nitrophenyl)sulfenyl)-substituted pyrazole derivatives. First, the requisite hydrazone derivatives were synthesized by the reactions of ferrocenyl propargyl aldehydes or ketones with a series of hydrazines. Then electrophilic cyclizations of these hydrazones were investigated by treating with 4-(nitrophenyl)sulfenyl chloride as electrophile. By employing these electrophilic cyclizations, a series of 5-ferrocenyl-4-((4-nitrophenyl)sulfenyl)-1H-pyrazoles, 5-ferrocenyl-4-((4-nitrophenyl) sulfenyl)-3-methyl-1H-pyrazoles and 5-ferrocenyl-4-((4-nitrophenyl)sulfenyl)-3-phenyl-1H-pyrazoles have been synthesized in moderate to good yields.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on September 22, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 193-209). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Virginia Commonwealth University, 2009. / Prepared for: Dept. of Information Systems. Title from title-page of electronic thesis. Bibliography: leaves 168-174.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 193-209). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 2001. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2921. Typescript. Abstract precedes thesis as preliminary leaves [1-2]. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-97).

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Computer Science, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 37-38).