Mobile
The Effect of Mobile Platforms on Twitter Content Generation
Perreault, Mathieu (McGill University) | Ruths, Derek (McGill University)
The increased popularity of feature-rich mobile devices in recent years has enabled widespread consumption and production of social media content via mobile devices. Because mobile devices and mobile applications change context within which an individual generates and consumes microblog content, we might expect microblogging behavior to differ depending on whether the user is using a mobile device. To our knowledge, little has been established about what, if any, effects such mobile interfaces have on microblogging. In this paper, we investigate this question within the context of Twitter, among the most popular microblogging platforms. This work makes three specific contributions. First, we quantify the ways in which user profiles are effected by the mobile context: (1) the extent to which users tend to be either fully non-mobile or mobile and (2) the relative activity of the mobile Twitter community. Second, we assess the differences in content between mobile and non-mobile tweets (posts to the Twitter platform). Our results show that mobile platforms produce very different patterns of Twitter usage. As part of our analysis, we propose and apply a classification system for tweets. We consider this to be the third contribution of this work. While other classification systems have been proposed, ours is the first to permit the independent encoding of a tweet’s form, content, and intended audience. In this paper we apply this system to show how tweets differ between mobile and non-mobile contexts. However, because of its flexibility and breadth, the schema may be useful to researchers studying Twitter content in other contexts as well.
Using Hierarchical Community Structure to Improve Community-Based Message Routing
Stabeler, Matthew (University College Dublin) | Lee, Conrad (University College Dublin) | Williamson, Graham (University College Dublin) | Cunningham, Pádraig (University College Dublin)
Information about community structure can be useful in a variety of mobile web applications. For instance, it has been shown that community-based methods can be more effective than alternatives for routing messages in delay-tolerant networks. In this paper we present initial research that shows that information on hierarchical structures in communities can further improve the effectiveness of message routing. This is interesting because despite much previous work on the topic, there have been few concrete applications which exploit hierarchical community structure.
An Empirical Study of Geographic User Activity Patterns in Foursquare
Noulas, Anastasios (University of Cambridge) | Scellato, Salvatore (University of Cambridge) | Mascolo, Cecilia (University of Cambridge) | Pontil, Massimiliano (University College London)
We present a large-scale study of user behavior in Foursquare, conducted on a dataset of about 700 thousand users that spans a period of more than 100 days. We analyze user checkin dynamics, demonstrating how it reveals meaningful spatio-temporal patterns and offers the opportunity to study both user mobility and urban spaces. Our aim is to inform on how scientific researchers could utilise data generated in Location-based Social Networks to attain a deeper understanding of human mobility and how developers may take advantage of such systems to enhance applications such as recommender systems.
Supporting End-User Authoring of Alternate Reality Games with Cross-Location Compatibility
Hajarnis, Sanjeet (Georgia Institute of Technology) | Barve, Chinmay (Georgia Institute of Technology) | Karnik, Devika (Georgia Institute of Technology) | Riedl, Mark (Georgia Institute of Technology)
A typical ARG consists of a Puppet Master who issues that have historically prevented ARGs from designs the game and informs players of the unfolding of mainstream adoption. A generic game engine runs on a the story. With the advent of smart-phones with GPS, geo-location enabled mobile device enables users to play ARGs progressively make use of the actual world as the any game modeled as a dependency graph of game content.
Ambulatory Assessment of Lifestyle Factors for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias
Tung, James Yungjen (University of Waterloo) | Semple, Jonathan FL (University of Waterloo) | Woo, Wei X (University of Waterloo) | Hsu, Wei-Shou (University of Waterloo) | Sinn, Mathieu (University of Waterloo) | Roy, Eric A (University of Waterloo) | Poupart, Pascal (University of Waterloo)
Considering few treatments are available to slow or stop neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD), modifying lifestyle factors to prevent disease onset are recommended. The Voice, Activity, and Location Monitoring system for Alzheimer’s disease (VALMA) is a novel ambulatory sensor system designed to capture natural behaviours across multiple domains to profile lifestyle risk factors related to ADRD. Objective measures of physical activity and sleep are provided by lower limb accelerometry. Audio and GPS location records provide verbal and mobility activity, respectively. Based on a familiar smartphone package, data collection with the system has proven to be feasible in community-dwelling older adults. Objective assessments of everyday activity will impact diagnosis of disease and design of exercise, sleep, and social interventions to prevent and/or slow disease progression.
Smart Homes or Smart Occupants? Reframing Computational Design Models for the Green Home
Bartram, Lyn (Simon Fraser University) | Woodbury, Rob (Simon Fraser University)
Buildings designed around occupant A sustainable home is more than a green building: it is also intelligence will provide flexible, adaptive task a living experience that encourages occupants to use fewer environments, refined control zones and technologies that resources more effectively. Research has shown that small maximize occupants' access to adaptive opportunities changes in behaviour in how we use our homes, such as (Cole & Brown, 2009). Architects, engineers and system turning off lights, reducing heat and uncovering or designers are faced with the challenge of reframing design covering windows, or shortening showers, can result in strategies as a co-evolution of human and building substantial energy and water savings. But changing the intelligence that will encourage as well as underpin way we use resources is proving challenging.
Activity Recognition with Time-Delay Emobeddings
Frank, Jordan (McGill University) | Mannor, Shie (Technion) | Precup, Doina (McGill University)
Applications range from the detection of potential all times t 1,...T (m 1)τ. We refer to such a sequence problems (such as an elderly person who has fallen down as a model of the system. Note that these models are in their home) to general monitoring of disease progression nonparametric. Theoretically, under some smoothness assumptions (e.g. in Parkinson's disease), or simply tracking the amount (Takens, 1981), if m is big enough, and τ is not of exercise and physical activity that a person gets. Ideally, a multiple of the period of the system, such a model captures such activities should be monitored as precisely as possible, all the relevant dynamics. However, real data is noisy, but using cheap or easily available devices, and in a way that so nonparametric models of the same activity can have high does not interfere with daily life.
Predictors of short-term decay of cell phone contacts in a large scale communication network
Raeder, Troy, Lizardo, Omar, Hachen, David, Chawla, Nitesh V.
Under what conditions is an edge present in a social network at time t likely to decay or persist by some future time t + Delta(t)? Previous research addressing this issue suggests that the network range of the people involved in the edge, the extent to which the edge is embedded in a surrounding structure, and the age of the edge all play a role in edge decay. This paper uses weighted data from a large-scale social network built from cell-phone calls in an 8-week period to determine the importance of edge weight for the decay/persistence process. In particular, we study the relative predictive power of directed weight, embeddedness, newness, and range (measured as outdegree) with respect to edge decay and assess the effectiveness with which a simple decision tree and logistic regression classifier can accurately predict whether an edge that was active in one time period continues to be so in a future time period. We find that directed edge weight, weighted reciprocity and time-dependent measures of edge longevity are highly predictive of whether we classify an edge as persistent or decayed, relative to the other types of factors at the dyad and neighborhood level.
A Gender-Centric Analysis of Calling Behavior in a Developing Economy Using Call Detail Records
Frias-Martinez, Vanessa (Telefonica Research, Madrid) | Frias-Martinez, Enrique (Telefonica Research, Madrid) | Oliver, Nuria (Telefonica Research, Madrid)
The gender divide in the access to technology in developing economies makes gender characterization and automatic gender identification two of the most critical needs for improving cell phone-based services. Gender identification has been typically solved using voice or image processing. However, such techniques cannot be applied to cell phone networks mostly due to privacy concerns. In this paper, we present a study aimed at characterizing and automatically identifying the gender of a cell phone user in a developing economy based on behavioral, social and mobility variables. Our contributions are twofold: (1) understanding the role that gender plays on phone usage, and (2) evaluating common machine learning approaches for gender identification. The analysis was carried out using the encrypted CDRs (Call Detail Records) of approximately 10,000 users from a developing economy, whose gender was known a priori. Our results indicate that behavioral and social variables, including the number of input/output calls and the in degree/out degree of the social network, reveal statistically significant differences between male and female callers. Finally, we propose a new gender identification algorithm that can achieve classification rates of up to 80% when the percentage of predicted instances is reduced.
Reality Mining Africa
Hill, Shawndra (University of Pennsylvania) | Banser, Anita (University of Pennsylvania) | Berhan, Getachew (Addis Ababa University) | Eagle, Nathan (Santa Fe Institute)
Cellular phones can be used as mobile sensors, continuously logging users’ behavior including movement, communication and proximity to others. While it is well understood that data generated from mobile phones includes a record of phone calls, there are also more sophisticated data types, such as Bluetooth or cell tower proximity logging, which reveal movement patterns and day-to-day human interactions. We explore the possibility of using mobile phone data to compare movement and communication patterns across cultures. The goal of this proof-of-concept study is to quantify behavior in order to compare different populations. We compare our ability to predict future calling behavior and movement patterns from the cellular phone data of subjects in two distinct groups: a set of university students at MIT in the United States and the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In addition, we show how Bluetooth data may be used to estimate the diffusion of an airborne pathogen outbreak in the different populations.