Online Footprint Research Articles

A Systematic Evaluation of the Quality of Health Information on Cleft Lip and Palate in the Arabic Language.

The internet serves as a vital health information resource, yet the quality of data on specific health conditions, especially in Arabic, is often overlooked. This research assesses the quality of Arabic online information about cleft lip and palate (CLP) and proposes avenues for enhancement. From July to August 2022, a systematic evaluation of Arabic articles on CLP was performed using the DISCERN tool for quality assessment. Searches on Google and Bing resulted in 119 articles that met the study's criteria. The quality of available Arabic information on CLP displayed substantial gaps. Commercial sources dominated (49.6%), followed by private (32.8%) and nonprofit entities (17.6%). The average DISCERN score was 2.26 of 5 (SD = 1.06), indicating the need for enhanced content, particularly concerning treatment risks. The study underscores the subpar quality of Arabic CLP information online, which might mislead patients and impede access to accurate advice. Nonprofit organizations should bolster their online footprint, offering refined health content. A deep dive into DISCERN scores reveals pinpointed improvement areas. Clinicians should direct patients and their families to reliable information sources. Addressing these gaps promises improved CLP knowledge in Arabic, fostering superior patient education and outcomes for those with this condition.

THE DIGITAL COMPETENCE OF FUTURE SOCIAL WORKERS: SELF-ASSESSMENT

In 2022, a study was conducted to evaluate the digital competence of fourth year students pursuingdegrees in "Social Activities" at the Universit y “Neofit Rilski” of Blagoevgrad, both in full time and part time studymodes. The research encompassed a cohort of 30 students and aimed to gauge their digital proficiency based on selfassessment. This assessment relied on the Digital Competence Self Ass essment Matrix, aligned with the EuropeanDigital Competence Framework for Citizens ( which encompasses five core domains: Information andData literacy, Communication and Collaboration, Digital content creation, Safety/security, and Problem solvi ng.Resultsfrom the self assessment revealed that 55% of the students consider ed themselves proficient at a core levelin the first area of competence (Information and Data literacy), while 30% rated themselves at a cross functionallevel, and 15% assessed themselves as functional. Notably, 90% of the students could store and retrie ve digital files,use search engines, and apply filters when searching for information. However, only 25% used cloud services tostore data.Inthe second area of competence (Digital content creation), a mere 15% of respondents rated themselves asprofessionally competent, underscoring its significance in their future professional pr actice. The study indicated thenecessity for students to acquire skills in content creation, programming, and multimedia element integration,especially in the context of social media.Inthe third area (Communication and Collaboration), all students exhibited proficiency in basic digitalcommunication tools like mobile phones and e mail. However, only 25% considered themselves functionally adept inonline communication, highlighting the importance of digital communication skills in social work.Concerningthe fourth area (Problem solving), 55% of students assessed their proficiency as core, while 35% ratedthemselves as cross functional, and only 10% as functio nal. This underlines the need for further development ofproblem solving skills related to digital technologies.Thefifth and final area (Safety/ revealed that most students understood the importance of online privacy buthad limited skills in shaping their digital identity and monitoring their online footprint. Enhancing d igitalcompetence emerged as a crucial need for future social workers to navigate online risks and protect clients fromabuse.The study underscores the necessity of integrating digital competence into social work curricula. It advocates foradditional lectures, seminars, workshops, and internships to expand students' digital skillse t. In the digital age, socialworkers must improve their digital competencies to effectively communicate, advocate for marginalized groups, andprovide efficient social services. Developing these competencies within the educational framework is essential f orthe application of information and communication technologies in addressing the challenges of digital social work,ultimately promoting social equality and safeguarding clients in an increasingly digital world.

Deciphering the Visibility of Higher Education Institutions: A Statistical Analysis of Google Search Console Data

The research presented here delves into the connection between data from Google Search Console (GSC) and the Webometrics visibility score of a specific public university's web presence. The study scrutinized GSC parameters such as clicks, impressions, click-through-rate (CTR), and average position to assess their impact on the university's digital visibility. The results indicate that impressions and average position play a critical role in determining the Webometrics visibility score, underscoring the significance of search engine optimization for learning establishments. The research also pinpointed the most effective search queries that drive substantial visitor traffic to the university's website, underlining the need for precise content targeting to optimize search performance. In this study, a predictive model was developed using multiple linear regression analysis to accurately predict the Webometrics visibility score based on GSC metrics, suggesting that strategic efforts to enhance these parameters could boost a university's online prominence. Additionally, a theoretical model was proposed to clarify the dynamic relationship between impressions, positions, and clicks in shaping the overall web visibility. Although this study provides valuable insights, it is based on data from a single university, which calls for further investigation using more varied datasets. Ultimately, the study emphasizes the immense potential of leveraging GSC data to bolster a university's online footprint, suggesting that strategic enhancements of vital parameters can greatly improve a university's online visibility according to Webometrics. As the academic world becomes increasingly digital, implementing these findings to guide search engine optimization strategies is a crucial element of institutional administration.

Examining the Effect of Incorporating Social Media Literacy into Moroccan Schools

Access to the internet is easier and faster than ever, forcing most people around the globe to adopt a web-based lifestyle. This generates tons of online footprint data, which feeds digital systems and leads to massive information abundance. To address this issue, people, especially teens, who are the most social media users, need to develop certain skills to use these platforms constructively. According to recent evidence, social media literacy (SML) is a golden choice to attain this goal. Considering this, the goal of this study was to implement an online SML course in a Moroccan educational setting and assess how well it could prepare millennials to use social media. The research population covered Moroccan baccalaureate students. The researcher used an experimental design, hallmarking the participation of a control and an experimental group. The mean scores’ differences of the pre-test and the post-test suggested that the course was significantly impactful in improving the SML level of the treatment group. It is hoped that this research will contribute to the online empowerment of Moroccan students, urge policymakers to officially recognize SML in the Moroccan educational system, and help syllabus designers and educators create SML programs that meet the needs of this generation.

Deep Neural Network-Based Footprint Prediction and Attack Intention Inference of Hypersonic Glide Vehicles

In response to the increasing threat of hypersonic weapons, it is of great importance for the defensive side to achieve fast prediction of their feasible attack domain and online inference of their most probable targets. In this study, an online footprint prediction and attack intention inference algorithm for hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) is proposed by leveraging the utilization of deep neural networks (DNNs). Specifically, this study focuses on the following three contributions. First, a baseline multi-constrained entry guidance algorithm is developed based on a compound bank angle corridor, and then a dataset containing enough trajectories for the following DNN learning is generated offline by traversing different initial states and control commands. Second, DNNs are developed to learn the functional relationship between the flight state/command and the corresponding ranges; on this basis, an online footprint prediction algorithm is developed by traversing the maximum/minimum ranges and different heading angles. Due to the substitution of DNNs for multiple times of trajectory integration, the computational efficiency for footprint prediction is significantly improved to the millisecond level. Third, combined with the predicted footprint and the hidden information in historical flight data, the attack intention and most probable targets can be further inferred. Simulations are conducted through comparing with the state-of-the-art algorithms, and results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve accurate prediction for flight footprint and attack intention while possessing significant real-time advantage.

Alzheimer Cafék online tevékenysége a koronavírus járvány kitörése előtti és utáni fél évben II.

Alzheimer Cafés may play an important psychosocial supporting role in the life of people living with dementia and of their family caregivers by providing a community of understanding, in­clusion, solidarity and mutual support. They can promote policy-, professional- and social dis­courses, the recognition of dementia as a social reality, and overall awareness of this complex challenge. They can also foster transdisciplinary collaboration among professionals as well as between professionals and lay people affected by dementia based on mutual understanding, cat­alysing the formation and operation of acting communities and networks of interest.
 The active and purposeful presence and activities of Alzheimer Cafés on Internet platforms, in the increasingly prominent channels and fields of social discourse and community life in the 21st century, can be an important tool in the realization of these benefits.
 This two-part paper analyses the publicly accessible online footprint and behaviour of Alz­heimer Cafés from this perspective as measured by a list of 10 possible functions. It scrutinizes the realisation of possible benefits and advantages offered by Internet platforms between Sep­tember 2019 and August 2020, with a special focus on technology-based adaptive responses to the coronavirus-outbreak midway through that period.
 The first part of the paper (Kucsera – Holpert 2021) briefly overviewed the Alzheimer Café concept and its history in Hungary, presented the methodology of the study and the first half of the research results. This second part of the paper presents the rest of the results, and makes recommendations for making more effective use of the potential of online platforms to realise the goals.

Alzheimer Cafék online tevékenysége a koronavírus járvány kitörése előtti és utáni fél évben I.

Alzheimer Cafés may play an important psychosocial supporting role in the life of people li­ving with dementia and of their family caregivers by providing a community of understanding, inclusion, solidarity and mutual support. They can promote policy-, professional- and social dis­courses, the recognition of dementia as a social reality, and overall awareness of this complex challenge. They can also foster transdisciplinary collaboration among professionals as well as between professionals and lay people affected by dementia based on mutual understanding, ca­talysing the formation and operation of acting communities and networks of interest.
 The active and purposeful presence and activities of Alzheimer Cafés on Internet platforms, in the increasingly prominent channels and fields of social discourse and community life in the 21st century, can be an important tool in the realization of these benefits.
 This two-part paper analyses the publicly accessible online footprint and behaviour of Alzhe­imer Cafés from this perspective as measured by a list of 10 possible functions. It scrutinizes the realisation of possible benefits and advantages offered by Internet platforms between Septem­ber 2019 and August 2020, with a special focus on technology-based adaptive responses to the coronavirus-outbreak midway through that period.
 This first part of the paper, which briefly overviews the Alzheimer Café concept and its his­tory in Hungary, and then presents the methodology of the study and the first half of the re­search results. The second part of the paper will continue to present the results, and will make recommendations for making more effective use of the potential of online platforms to realise the goals.

P6. A BIG DATA APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING PATIENT SATISFACTION WITH MASTOPEXY SURGERY

PURPOSE: A physician’s online footprint is becoming increasingly important in the age of social media. Therefore, understanding what drives patient satisfaction and behavior on social media is paramount to increasing patient satisfaction and maintaining a pristine online image. This study utilizes data obtained from Realself.com, a social media platform that allows patients to leave reviews of their plastic surgery experiences, to further elucidate the drivers behind patient satisfaction. METHODS: Patient reviews from the ‘Mastopexy’ category of Realself.com were collected using Scrapy, a python web crawling software that collects textual data from websites. Patient review data includes star ratings 1-5 in overall rating and various subcategories, as well as a free text entry, and cost data. Each entry was manually reviewed and categorized. Additionally, multiple regression was performed to assess independent predictors of overall satisfaction on the overall experience. RESULTS: A total of 968 mastopexy reviews were collected, 85.6% positive and 14.4% negative. The most common reasons for positive experience were aesthetic appearance (66.5%) and good physician bedside manner (21.7%). Similarly, negative reviews also most frequently cited appearance(58.3%) and bedside manner (26.6%). Several independent predictors of overall satisfaction were identified. Physician bedside manner (p<0.001), after-care follow up(p<0.001), staff professionalism and courtesy(p=0.016) and wait times (p=0.011) were independently associated with a positive overall review. CONCLUSION: We found that physician bedside manner, after-care follow up, staff professionalism and courtesy and wait times are independent predictors of overall patient satisfaction. Understanding the importance of these factors will increase rates of patient satisfaction and improve their overall online footprint.

Real-Time Footprint Planning and Model Predictive Control Based Method for Stable Biped Walking.

In order to walk in a physical environment, the biped will encounter various external disturbances, and walking under persistent conditions is still challenging. This paper tries to improve the push recovery performance based on capture point (CP) and model predictive control. The trajectory of zero moment point (ZMP) and center of mass are solved and predicted in a limited time horizon. Online footprint generator is combined with MPC walking pattern generation, which can keep biped stable in the next few steps, and projection of ZMP is used to calculate the next footprint and reach the target CP in an incremental way. Verification of the proposed stable biped walking method is conducted by simulation and experiments.

Mining Twitter Data for Business Intelligence Using Naive Bayes Algorithm for Sentiment Analysis

Today social media has grown to be a big player in the way businesses and organizations operate, especially with the coronavirus pandemic increasing the online footprint of organizations. The use of data from social media to drive business intelligence is now of growing interest to both researchers and business owners. Business owners can now utilize platforms like Twitter to learn about their target audience and improve their business processes to meet their growing needs. Twitter makes it easy to see what is going or about to go viral and vital details like why it is going viral and the players behind it. This research aims to help business owners’ especially small and medium enterprises and start-ups gain a competitive advantage in their industry by using the crowd wisdom opportunity via social media. The proposed system is based on Twitter and crawls the platform for relevant data, including; locations, trends, and important actors (influencers) within a specified field; the system cleans the data and presents the information in an actionable format. Python was used for Twitter data mining, and sentiment analysis of the tweets was done using Naive Bayes classifiers.

HackerScope: the dynamics of a massive hacker online ecosystem

One would have thought that hackers would be striving to hide from public view, but we find that this is not the case: they have a public online footprint. Apart from online security forums, this footprint appears also in software development platforms, where authors create publicly accessible malware repositories to share and collaborate. With the exception of a few recent efforts, the existence and the dynamics of this community has received surprisingly limited attention. The goal of our work is to analyze this ecosystem of hackers in order to: (a) understand their collaborative patterns and (b) identify and profile its most influential authors. We develop HackerScope, a systematic approach for analyzing the dynamics of this hacker ecosystem. Leveraging our targeted data collection, we conduct an extensive study of 7389 authors of malware repositories on GitHub, which we combine with their activity on four security forums. From a modelling point of view, we study the ecosystem using three network representations: (a) the author-author network, (b) the author-repository network and (c) cross-platform egonets. Our analysis leads to the following key observations: (a) the ecosystem is growing at an accelerating rate as the number of new malware authors per year triples every 2 years, (b) it is highly collaborative, more so than the rest of GitHub authors, and (c) it includes influential and professional hackers. We find 101 authors maintain an online “brand” across GitHub and our online forums. Our study is a significant step towards using public online information for understanding the malicious hacker community.

A customisable pipeline for the semi-automated discovery of online activists and social campaigns on Twitter

Substantial research is available on detecting influencers on social media platforms. In contrast, comparatively few studies exists on the role of online activists, defined informally as users who actively participate in socially-minded online campaigns. Automatically discovering activists who can potentially be approached by organisations that promote social campaigns is important, but not easy, as they are typically active only locally, and, unlike influencers, they are not central to large social media networks. We make the hypothesis that such interesting users can be found on Twitter within temporally and spatially localised contexts. We define these as small but topical fragments of the network, containing interactions about social events or campaigns with a significant online footprint. To explore this hypothesis, we have designed an iterative discovery pipeline consisting of two alternating phases of user discovery and context discovery. Multiple iterations of the pipeline result in a growing dataset of user profiles for activists, as well as growing set of online social contexts. This mode of exploration differs significantly from prior techniques that focus on influencers, and presents unique challenges because of the weak online signal available to detect activists. The paper describes the design and implementation of the pipeline as a customisable software framework, where user-defined operational definitions of online activism can be explored. We present an empirical evaluation on two extensive case studies, one concerning healthcare-related campaigns in the UK during 2018, the other related to online activism in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Just Being Dalí: The Story of Artist Salvador Dalí by Amy Guglielmo

Reviewed by: Just Being Dalí: The Story of Artist Salvador Dalí by Amy Guglielmo Deborah Stevenson, Editor Guglielmo, Amy Just Being Dalí: The Story of Artist Salvador Dalí; illus. by Brett Helquist. Putnam, 2021 [40p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781984816580 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781984816597 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R 6-9 yrs The irrepressible Dalí was as much a phenomenon as an artist, and this picture book biography wisely depicts him as both. When Salvador was a young boy in Spain, his father was frustrated with his dreamy son, but "Salvador couldn't help being himself," a refrain that soon becomes familiar. He attends art school, goes to Paris and joins up with the surrealists, finds love, and paints the work that makes him immortal, The Persistence of Memory. Celebrity meant that "soon Salvador's antics drew more attention than his art," but Dalí and his fans weren't bothered by the art establishment's disapproval; he may have spent a lot more time "appearing on television and having parties," but the man who regularly dined in restaurants with his pet ocelot left an indelible mark on the cultural landscape. The text is deftly compact in condensing a wild life into a brief narrative, and Guglielmo appropriately takes Dalí's side on the value of his life choices. Helquist's familiar style of measured exuberance suits its subject well, calmly throwing in the odd eccentricity unmentioned in the text (like Dalí's Parisian stroll with a leashed anteater) and tastefully depicting without mimicking relevant artworks. An artist who focused on garnering attention and exploring absurdity has innate kid appeal; audiences will definitely be induced to seek out Dali's work and online footprint and consider the throughline to more recent figures such as Lady Gaga. End matter includes a [End Page 263] further note about Dalí, a selected bibliography, a note about quotes, and a key to the featured works of art. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Predicting the Material Footprint in Germany between 2015 and 2020 via Seasonally Decomposed Autoregressive and Exponential Smoothing Algorithms

Recent research on the natural resource use of private consumption suggests a sustainable Material Footprint of 8 tons per capita by 2050 in industrialised countries. We analyse the Material Footprint in Germany from 2015 to 2020 in order to test whether the Material Footprint decreases accordingly. We studied the Material Footprint of 113,559 users of an online footprint calculator and predicted the Material Footprint by seasonally decomposed autoregressive (STL-ARIMA) and exponential smoothing (STL-ETS) algorithms. We find a relatively stable Material Footprint for private consumption. The overall Material Footprint decreased by 0.4% per year between 2015 and 2020 on average. The predictions do not suggest that the Material Footprint of private consumption follows the reduction path of 3.3% per year that will lead to the sustainable consumption of natural resources.

Reply by Authors.

You have accessJournal of UrologyLetters to the Editor/Errata1 Oct 2020Reply by Authorsis a reply to letterRe: COVID-19 and the Urology Match: Perspectives and a Call to Action A. T. Gabrielson, T. P. Kohn, and M. M. Clifton A. T. GabrielsonA. T. Gabrielson More articles by this author , T. P. KohnT. P. Kohn More articles by this author , and M. M. CliftonM. M. Clifton More articles by this author View All Author Informationhttps://doi.org/10.1097/JU.0000000000001146AboutPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints ShareFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail We thank Warren et al for their thoughtful comments. In addition to the uncertainty that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused, the cancelation of visiting student learning opportunities and in person interviews will certainly exacerbate the tendency for students to apply to an excessive number of residency programs during this cycle. An application cap would cut costs and may reduce the likelihood of applicants applying to geographic regions or programs they may not be truly interested in. To determine a reasonable cap (one that applicants and residency programs can agree on), a rational strategy could involve limiting urology applicants to the average number of applications submitted during this past cycle (72 per applicant), a number that more than 85% of students applying in this upcoming cycle may accept per a recent survey. While implementing a permissive application cap may address many of the aforementioned dilemmas, it is unlikely to be an all-encompassing solution. Just as medical students may feel pressured to apply to more programs, residency programs may similarly feel pressured to increase the number of applicants they interview in order to better assess the applicant class. These applicants may have less exposure to urology and fewer letters of recommendation compared to prior cohorts. If programs follow the recommendations of the Association of American Medical Colleges and use virtual platforms for interviews, applicants can attend, and residency programs can offer, a larger number of interviews than in the past. Thus, if student applications are capped and residency programs increase the number of interview offers, this may lead to a minority of students garnering and retaining a large number of interview positions. Therefore, if application caps are implemented, limits on the number of interviews that residency programs can offer must be put into place as well. Determining an appropriate interview limit for residency programs will be challenging to implement with a one-size-fits-all policy. Strategies could involve limiting the number of interviews based on the number of positions a program offers (eg 60 interviews for a program with 3 positions, 45 interviews for a program with 2 positions etc) or implementing a quota based on how many interviews a program offered the year before. This may require special considerations for smaller programs with 1 position per year. To ensure adherence, there would likely need to be a mandate or statement issued by the Society of Academic Urologists or the American Urological Association. So how does an applicant know which programs they should apply to this cycle? Ultimately there is a need for improved transparency among residency programs and improved access to data driven metrics for applicants to understand the characteristics of candidates that certain programs are matching. Helping students navigate the black box of “Will I be considered for an interview at this program?” will streamline efficiency of the self-selection process and improve future application cycles as well. Before the upcoming application deadline the Johns Hopkins Department of Urology intends to publish 15-year aggregated and anonymized application data (including test score ranges, research activities, number of clerkship honors etc) of applicants who were offered interviews at our institution. We hope this will allow applicants the opportunity to assess their fit with our program and initiate the transparency process for other programs. Lastly, just as residency programs will struggle to gauge student fit with their program, so too will medical students struggle to determine their fit with programs. We strongly recommend that urology departments bolster their virtual and online footprint (ie department websites, social media pages, town hall meetings, video content etc). Programs may consider offering virtual visiting student learning opportunities, allowing students an opportunity to interact with faculty and residents at their institution. Unlike in previous years, when the onus was on applicants to seek out program information and networking opportunities, residency programs must establish new mechanisms of seeking out applicants in the virtual setting. © 2020 by American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsRelated articlesJournal of Urology27 May 2020Re: COVID-19 and the Urology Match: Perspectives and a Call to Action Volume 204Issue 4October 2020Page: 851-852 Advertisement Copyright & Permissions© 2020 by American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc.MetricsAuthor Information A. T. Gabrielson More articles by this author T. P. Kohn More articles by this author M. M. Clifton More articles by this author Expand All Advertisement Advertisement PDF downloadLoading ...

The quality of YouTube videos on endoscopic third ventriculostomy and endoscopic third ventriculostomy with choroid plexus cauterization procedures available to families of patients with pediatric hydrocephalus.

YouTube has become an important information source for pediatric neurosurgical patients and their families. The goal of this study was to determine whether the informative quality of videos of endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) and endoscopic third ventriculostomy with choroid plexus cauterization (ETV + CPC) is associated with metrics of popularity. This cross-sectional study used comprehensive search terms to identify videos pertaining to ETV and ETV + CPC presented on the first 3 pages of search results on YouTube. Two pediatric neurosurgeons, 1 neurosurgery resident, and 2 patient families independently reviewed the selected videos. Videos were assessed for overall informational quality by using a validated 5-point Global Quality Score (GQS) and compared to online metrics of popularity and engagement such as views, likes, likes/views ratio, comments/views ratio, and likes/dislikes ratio. Weighted kappa scores were used to measure agreement between video reviewers. A total of 58 videos (47 on ETV, 7 on ETV + CPC, 4 on both) of 120 videos assessed met the inclusion criteria. Video styles included "technical" (62%), "lecture" (24%), "patient testimonial" (4%), and "other" (10%). In terms of GQS, substantial agreement was seen between surgeons (kappa 0.67 [95% CI 0.55, 0.80]) and excellent agreement was found between each surgeon and the neurosurgical resident (0.77 [95% CI 0.66, 0.88] and 0.89 [95% CI 0.82, 0.97]). Only fair to moderate agreement was seen between professionals and patient families, with weighted kappa scores ranging from 0.07 to 0.56. Academic lectures were more likely to be rated good or excellent (64% vs 0%, p < 0.001) versus surgical procedure and testimonial video types. There were significant associations between a better GQS and more likes (p = 0.01), views (p = 0.02), and the likes/dislikes ratio (p = 0.016). The likes/views ratio (p = 0.31) and comments/views ratio (p = 0.35) were not associated with GQS. The number of likes (p = 0.02), views (p = 0.03), and the likes/dislikes ratio (p = 0.015) were significantly associated with video style (highest for lecture-style videos). Medical professionals tended to agree when assessing the overall quality of YouTube videos, but this agreement was not as strongly seen when compared to parental ratings. The online metrics of likes, views, and likes/dislikes ratio appear to predict quality. Neurosurgeons seeking to increase their online footprint via YouTube would be well advised to focus more on the academic lecture style because these were universally better rated.

Functional structures of US state governments

Governments in modern societies undertake an array of complex functions that shape politics and economics, individual and group behavior, and the natural, social, and built environment. How are governments structured to execute these diverse responsibilities? How do those structures vary, and what explains the differences? To examine these longstanding questions, we develop a technique for mapping Internet "footprint" of government with network science methods. We use this approach to describe and analyze the diversity in functional scale and structure among the 50 US state governments reflected in the webpages and links they have created online: 32.5 million webpages and 110 million hyperlinks among 47,631 agencies. We first verify that this extensive online footprint systematically reflects known characteristics: 50 hierarchically organized networks of state agencies that scale with population and are specialized around easily identifiable functions in accordance with legal mandates. We also find that the footprint reflects extensive diversity among these state functional hierarchies. We hypothesize that this variation should reflect, among other factors, state income, economic structure, ideology, and location. We find that government structures are most strongly associated with state economic structures, with location and income playing more limited roles. Voters' recent ideological preferences about the proper roles and extent of government are not significantly associated with the scale and structure of their state governments as reflected online. We conclude that the online footprint of governments offers a broad and comprehensive window on how they are structured that can help deepen understanding of those structures.

Opportunities and limitations of carbon footprint calculators to steer sustainable household consumption – Analysis of Nordic calculator features

The current patterns of household consumption are environmentally unsustainable, especially in wealthy societies such as the Nordic countries. Globally, housing and energy use at home, travel, food, and the consumption of other goods and services contribute to roughly 60–70% of greenhouse gas emissions. Online footprint calculators have been introduced as a soft policy measure in order to raise public awareness of the carbon footprint of ordinary living. We examined ten calculation tools and interviewed six calculator hosts to study calculator features and hosts' expectations and experiences on engaging people to use calculators and to steer consumption. Our findings show that knowledge intensive calculators are designed to support a rational reflection of lifestyle and activities from an environmental perspective. Tips and pledges are presented in calculators to support taking action. However, engaging people to use calculators, especially more than once, is often considered to be challenging. We further discuss our findings with a framework based on practice theories and point out how features of calculators hold potential for further development, as well as have limitations. The limitations should be taken seriously in considering the role of calculators in policy-mixes to steer household consumption. We also propose that future studies on calculators would benefit from practice approaches in order to further explore patterns of calculator (non)use and how calculator use is (dis)connected from the practices they aim to change, and to avoid over emphasising the role of knowledge in reconfiguring practices.

TTaPP: Together Take a Pause and Ponder: A Critical Thinking Tool for Exploring the Public/Private Lives of Patients

The broad use of social networking and user-generated content has increased the online footprint of many individuals. A generation of healthcare professionals have grown up with online search activities as part of their everyday lives. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have given the public new ways to share intimate details about their public and private lives and the lives of their friends and families. As a result, careproviders have the ability to find out more about their patients with just the tap of a key or the click of a mouse. This type of online searching for patient information is known as patient-targeted googling or PTG. This article provides an overview of the emergence of PTG, identifies the potential benefits and possible pitfalls of engaging in PTG, and explores current ethical frameworks that guide decisions about PTG. The article describes the development of a critical thinking tool developed by the Behavioral Health Ethics Committee at CHI Health, that can serve as a best-practice model for other hospitals and health systems. Called TTaPP (Together Take a Pause and Ponder), this tool is designed to help healthcare professionals across settings practice collaborative critical thinking skills as they consider the ethical questions of whether or not to engage in PTG. Finally, this article suggests areas for further study, including ways to prompt collaboration and appropriate documentation by maximizing electronic medical records systems, exploring the effectiveness of the TTaPP tool as a way to promote a culture of collaborative critical thinking practices, and the attitudes of patients and the public regarding PTG.

On web user tracking of browsing patterns for personalised advertising

On today’s Web, users trade access to their private data for content and services. App and service providers want to know everything they can about their users, in order to improve their product experience. Also, advertising sustains the business model of many websites and applications. Efficient and successful advertising relies on predicting users’ actions and tastes to suggest a range of products to buy. Both service providers and advertisers try to track users’ behaviour across their product network. For application providers this means tracking users’ actions within their platform. For third-party services following users, means being able to track them across different websites and applications. It is well known how, while surfing the Web, users leave traces regarding their identity in the form of activity patterns and unstructured data. These data constitute what is called the user’s online footprint. We analyse how advertising networks build and collect users footprints and how the suggested advertising reacts to changes in the user behaviour.