/news-archive/tag/tuja-khaund/ ĚÇĐÄVlog´«Ă˝ Little Rock Thu, 24 May 2018 13:01:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 /news-archive/2018/05/24/social-bots-natural-disasters/ Thu, 24 May 2018 13:01:28 +0000 /news/?p=70649 ... Social bots disrupt online communication about natural disasters]]> Researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock are studying how social bots influence the delivery of news via social media during major disasters.  The study examines the role of social bots – automated Twitter accounts that attempt to affect or influence the behaviors of others – and their coordination and communication patterns with complex organizational structures to disseminate information during four natural disasters that occurred in 2017. The paper, “Analyzing Social Bots and their Coordination during Natural Disasters,” will be discussed at the International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation to be held July 10-13 in Washington D.C. , a Ph.D. student in computer and information science at ĚÇĐÄVlog´«Ă˝ Little Rock, is the lead author who will present the paper. She is also a researcher at (Collaboratorium for Social Media and Behavioral Studies) – a research group led by Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science. Khaund also presented this work at the ĚÇĐÄVlog´«Ă˝ Little Rock Student Research and Creative Works Showcase and was awarded first place in the graduate student technology division. The paper’s co-authors include Dr. Samer Al-Khateeb, a postdoctoral research fellow at COSMOS, Dr., a research project analyst at the office of Medicaid Inspector General and a postdoctoral research fellow at COSMOS, and Agarwal. Researchers collected data from Twitter during Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria as well as the 7.1-magnitude Central Mexico earthquake that killed 370 people on Sept. 19, 2017. The study resulted in the collection of more than 1.2 million tweets generated by more than 800,000 Twitter accounts. The researchers detected the presence of social bots in the collected dataset and studied the social networks of the top ranked bot accounts as well as the top ranked non-bot accounts (humans) and then compared both networks. They discovered that social bots, which evolve constantly and become more sophisticated as time progresses, can disrupt discourse in online spaces. While humans have more tightly knit online communities, social bots tend to make rather weaker connections that result in a lack of a sense of belonging in the online community. Analysis of their content revealed that the discourse was not just limited to the disaster events. Non-relevant hashtags including hoaxes and alternate narratives were latched on to the event-specific hashtags and were disseminated in Spanish, Arabic, French, and Japanese, among other languages. In future research, COSMOS investigators hope to understand the different strategies that social bots use to coordinate disinformation campaigns in which online discourse is successfully manipulated. The research is supported in part by grants from the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR), U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Maulden-Entergy endowment at ĚÇĐÄVlog´«Ă˝ Little Rock. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. Researchers gratefully acknowledge the support. ]]> /news-archive/2018/05/04/student-research-winners/ Fri, 04 May 2018 21:47:21 +0000 /news/?p=70436 ... Student research and creative works winners announced]]> The winners of the 2018 Student Research and Creative Works Showcase at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock were announced during an awards ceremony May 1 in the Student Services Center. Students presented more than 150 research and creative works April 12 in the Jack Stephens Center. Student projects were judged on the novelty and clarity of their research, the soundness of their methodology, the potential application of their findings, and the student’s ability to explain their project to an expert and lay audience. A complete list of winners and their projects include: Undergraduate Winners Art First Place: Corrie Green, “The New African-American Women:Exploring Intersectionality in Non-traditional Casting” First Place (tie): Thomas Jackson, “Concept Statement for the play  Art by Yasmina Reza” Economics First Place: Abigail Resendiz, “The 1920 Merchant Marine Act: An Outdated and Protectionist Law Disturbing Economic Growth” First Place (tie): Logan Vickery and Nick Stevens, “The Cost of Responsibility: Impacts on Rental Prices of the Implied Warrant of Habitability” Education First Place: Madison Christie, “Visual Verse: Translating English Poems into ASL” Second Place: Cameryn Kirkham, “Teaching Charlie May Simon as an Author, Artist, and Arkansan” Engineering First Place: J’von Jackson, “Venturi Scrubber Design for Syngas System” Second Place: Begros Asgeirsdottir, “Utilization of Rainwater for Cooling House Interior” Life & Physical Science First Place: Davonte Hokes, “Investigation of Bio-Inspired Polymeric Coating for Improvement in ORR Activity of Amidomacrocyclic Cobal (III) Catalyst Complexes” Second Place: Emily Anderson and Cordell Gilreath, “Development for Lyme Disease” Third Place: Marina Avram, “Algal Oculata Biotemplated Water-Splitting Nanocatalysts Nickel/Iron Oxides” Social Science First Place: Abigail Resendiz, “Financial Impact of the Jones Act” Second Place: Emily Elam, “500 Fiddle Tunes: Transcriptions of Billy Mathews’ Old-Time Archive” Third Place: Cynthia Wyman, “Intellectual and Hungry: Assessing the State of Campus Food Insecurity” Technology First Place: Deepali Lal, “Are Alcohol Establishments Marketing Crime?” Second Place: Yumeng Ye, “A Project – First Approach to Teaching Entity Resolution and Identity Management” Humanities First Place: El-Noor Ahkter, “The Color of Women” First Place (tie): Michael Caysido, “Aram II’yich Khachaturian and the Use of Folk Songs in His Compositions” Second Place: Emily Junkans, “Phonetic Features of Native Spanish Speakers Learning English” Physical Science First Place: Rebecca Moreira, “Novel Renewable Resource Based Nanocomposites for Removal and Recovery of Phosphorus from Contaminated Wastewaters” Second Place: Nathan Taylor, “Ionizing Radiation Protection by Inhibition of PP2A” Second Place (tie): Samantha Macchi, “Supercapacitor application of phosphorus and nitrogen co-doped carbon materials from renewable precursor materials” Service Work and Professional Application First Place: Rebecca Moreira, “How Spanish Interpreting at the 12th Street Clinic Can Lead to Medical School” GRADĚÇĐÄVlog´«Ă˝TE WINNERS Biology First Place: Diamond McGehee with M. Lahiani, F. Irwin, and M. Green, “Investigation of the Effects of Carbon –Based Nanomaterials on the Metabolomics Level in Plants” Engineering First Place: Trigun Maroo, “A Novel Gripper System for Corrugated Box Grasping and Manipulation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” First Place (tie): Ali Abdulhussein, “Facile fabrication of a free-standing superhydrophobic and superoleophilic carbon nanofiber-polymer block that effectively absorbs oils and chemical pollutants from water” Health Science First Place: Asween Marco, Naveen Patil, Jane Voyles, Yan Egbe, and Leonard Mukasa. “The Threat of Tuberculosis Transmission Among the US-born: Lessons from Two Outbreaks, Arkansas” Second Place: Elizabeth Burnham, “The Social (Media) Social Work(er)” Life Science Second Place: Rebekah White, “Toxic Effects of Copper and Nickel on Synechocystis PCC 6803” Life & Physical Science First Place: Amita Nakarmi and Rebecca Moreira, “Phosphate Removal From Contaminated Waters” Second Place: Dane Hudson, “Cylic Electron Flow Prevents Photoinhibition in Solanum habrochaites Under Drought Stress” Physical Science First Place: Busra Ergul, Mahbuba Begum, Nancy Kariuki, and Deborah Myers. “Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity of Platinum Thin Films with Different Densities” First Place (tie): Daniel Nde, “Algae-Biotemplated Water-splitting Nanocatalysts for Efficient Oxygen Evolution Reaction” Professional Studies First Place: Thu Nguyen, “Do In-house Investor Relations Professionals in Real Estate Management Use PR and Strategic Communications Principles?” Second Place: Raad Alawajji, Zeid A. Nima, Ahmed K. Hashoosh, Karrer M. Alghazali, Emilie Darrigues, Nigel Kelly (undergraduate), Ashley Strohmeyer (undergraduate), and Ali Abdulhussein (presenter). “Fabrication of Transparent Superhydrophobic Polytetrafluoroethylene Coating” Social Science First Place: Jennifer Watkins: “Why don’t they listen to me: A qualitative interpretive meta synthesis of a child’s perception of their sexual abuse” Second Place: Margaret Kealy-Machella, “What’s App: Little Rock AFB Mobile App Communication Plan” Systems Engineering First Place: Rajat Singh, “Flexible Control of Synergistic Group of Muscles” Technology First Place (tie): Tuja Khaund and Samer Al-Khateeb. “Analyzing Social Bots and their Coordination during Crisis Weather Events” Second Place: Evan Xiangwen Liu, “Deep Neutral Networks Self-taught Learning” Second Place: Chen Xu, “Monitoring Traffic through IDS on OpenStack Cloud” In the photo above right, ĚÇĐÄVlog´«Ă˝ Little Rock student Corrie Green (right) talks about her project, “The New African-American Woman: Exploring Intersectionality in Non-Traditional Casting,” to Jana McAuliffe, who was judging student works at the Student Research and Creative Works Showcase. Photo by Benjamin Krain]]>