University of Stirling

About: University of Stirling is a education organization based out in Stirling, Stirling, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Polyunsaturated fatty acid. The organization has 7722 authors who have published 20549 publications receiving 732940 citations. The organization is also known as: Stirling University.

SenticNet: A Publicly Available Semantic Resource for Opinion Mining

Abstract: Today millions of web-users express their opinions about many topics through blogs, wikis, fora, chats and social networks. For sectors such as e-commerce and e-tourism, it is very useful to automatically analyze the huge amount of social information available on the Web, but the extremely unstructured nature of these contents makes it a difficult task. SenticNet is a publicly available resource for opinion mining built exploiting AI and Semantic Web techniques. It uses dimensionality reduction to infer the polarity of common sense concepts and hence provide a public resource for mining opinions from natural language text at a semantic, rather than just syntactic, level.

Testosterone influences basal metabolic rate in male house sparrows: a new cost of dominance signalling?

Abstract: Sexually selected signals of individual dominance have profound effects on access to resources, mate choice and gene flow. However, why such signals should honestly reflect individual quality is poorly understood. Many such signals are known to develop under the influence of testosterone. We conducted an experiment in male house sparrows in which testosterone was manipulated independently during two periods: before the onset of the breeding season and prior to the autumn moult. We then measured the effects of these manipulations on basal metabolic rate and on the size of the chest bib, a sexually selected signal. The results demonstrate that testosterone simultaneously affects both signal development and basal metabolic rate in the house sparrow (Passer domesticus). This evidence, therefore, supports a novel conclusion: that testosterone-dependent signals act as honest indicators of male quality possibly because only high-quality individuals can sustain the energetic costs associated with signal development.

Initiation and continuation of breastfeeding: theory of planned behaviour

Abstract: JournalofAdvancedNursing50(3),272–282Initiation and continuation of breastfeeding: theory of planned behaviourAims. This paper reports a study investigating new mothers’ subjective norms inrelationtobothbreast-andbottle-feeding.Theinfluenceofnormsonwomen’sinfantfeeding decisions and the relative influence of social referents at varying degrees ofsocial distance were assessed.Background. Increasing breastfeeding initiation and continuation rates is a keychallenge for health educators. The perceived influence of other people’s views(subjective norms), including the views of women’s partners and health care profes-sionals, is an important predictor of infant feeding behaviour.Methods. Semi-structured questionnaires were administered to 203 new mothers incentral and northern Scotland and followed-up by postal questionnaire at 6 weeks.Infant feeding intentions, feeding behaviour at birth and follow-up, behaviouralbeliefs and subjective norms for both breastfeeding and bottle-feeding were assessed.The data were collected in 1998–1999.Results. Subjective norms were important determinants of initiation and continu-ation of breastfeeding for breast- and bottlefeeders. Breastfeeders rated close socialreferentsasmoreinfavourofbottle-feedingandmoreagainstbreastfeedingatfollow-up, whereas bottlefeeders’ ratings did not change. Partner’s and nurses’/midwives’views were an important influence at baseline and follow-up. Breastfeeding ‘contin-uers’ perceived their partners as more pro-breastfeeding at 6 weeks. Discontinuersperceived more overall social pressure to bottle-feed. However, sampling limitationsmay have led to over-representation of the views of breastfeeders at baseline andfollow-up.Conclusions. Nurses and midwives have a crucial role in communicating positiveviewsonbreastfeedingtonewmothersatdifferenttimepoints.Futureinterventionstopromote breastfeeding could adopt a broad social approach, encouraging positivenorms for existing and potential mothers and fathers, families and people in general.Keywords: subjective norms, Theory of Planned Behaviour, midwifery,bottle-feeding, breastfeeding

The hourglass of emotions

Abstract: Human emotions and their modelling are increasingly understood to be a crucial aspect in the development of intelligent systems. Over the past years, in fact, the adoption of psychological models of emotions has become a common trend among researchers and engineers working in the sphere of affective computing. Because of the elusive nature of emotions and the ambiguity of natural language, however, psychologists have developed many different affect models, which often are not suitable for the design of applications in fields such as affective HCI, social data mining, and sentiment analysis. To this end, we propose a novel biologically-inspired and psychologically-motivated emotion categorisation model that goes beyond mere categorical and dimensional approaches. Such model represents affective states both through labels and through four independent but concomitant affective dimensions, which can potentially describe the full range of emotional experiences that are rooted in any of us.