Digital Commons Network^™

Cyber Social Threats 2021: Ai, Covid-19 Vaccine, Detection And Countering Strategies, Ugur Kursuncu, Jeremy Blackburn, Yelena Mejova, Megan Squire, Amit Sheth

Publications

In recent years, online platforms have been utilized for promoting harmful content and behavior such as extremism, harassment, mis/disinformation, human trafficking, genderbased violence among others affecting our society, often leading to real-world events. Such content and behaviors are inherently complex, making the recognition of these narratives challenging for researchers as well as social media companies. The Cyber Social Threats (CySoc) Workshop 2021 aimed to facilitate a rich forum for researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry in the areas of computing and social science, to discuss novel avenues for research on interdisciplinary aspects of harmful communications on social media, …

Characterization Of Time-Variant And Time-Invariant Assessment Of Suicidality On Reddit Using C-Ssrs, Manas Gaur, Vamsi Aribandi, Amanuel Alambo, Ugur Kursuncu, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Jonathan Beich, Jyotishman Pathak, Amit Sheth

Publications

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S (1999-2019). However, predicting when someone will attempt suicide has been nearly impossible. In the modern world, many individuals suffering from mental illness seek emotional support and advice on well-known and easily-accessible social media platforms such as Reddit. While prior artificial intelligence research has demonstrated the ability to extract valuable information from social media on suicidal thoughts and behaviors, these efforts have not considered both severity and temporality of risk. The insights made possible by access to such data have enormous clinical potential - most dramatically envisioned as a trigger …

Exploring Canadian Children's Social Media Use, Digital Literacy, And Quality Of Life: Pilot Cross-Sectional Survey Study, Lorie Donelle Phd, Rn, Fcan, Danica Facca, Shauna Burke, Bradley Hiebert, Emma Bender, Stephen Ling

Publications

BACKGROUND: Understanding social media use and digital literacy among young Canadian children is an increasing area of concern, given the importance of digital inclusion for full and informed participation in evolving educational, civic, corporate, social, and economic spaces. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to explore internet and social media knowledge as well as social media use among Canadian children aged between 6 and 10 years. METHODS: We conducted interview surveys with 42 children aged between 6 and 10 years who participated in an after-school health promotion program in an urban community in Southwestern Ontario to understand their digital …

Australian Smokers' Sensory Experiences And Beliefs Associated With Menthol And Non-Menthol Cigarettes, Serafino Mancuso, Emily Brennan, Kimberley Dunstone, Amanda Vittiglia, Sarah Durkin, Jim F. Thrasher Ph.D., Ma, Ms, Janet Hoek, Melanie Wakefield

Faculty Publications

Many current smokers incorrectly believe that menthol cigarettes are less harmful, likely due to the biological and sensory effects of menthol, which can lead smokers to have favourable sensory experiences. In this study, we measured the extent to which Australian smokers associate certain sensory experiences with smoking menthol and non-menthol cigarettes, and their beliefs about how damaging and enjoyable they find cigarettes with each of these sensory experiences. A sample of 999 Australian 18–69-year-old weekly smokers was recruited from a non-probability online panel; this study focuses on the 245 respondents who currently smoked menthol cigarettes at least once per week. …

Spatiotemporal Patterns Of Human Mobility And Its Association With Land Use Types During Covid-19 In New York City, Yuqin Jiang, Xiao Huang, Zhenlong Li

Faculty Publications

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted every facet of society. One of the non-pharmacological measures to contain the COVID-19 infection is social distancing. Federal, state, and local governments have placed multiple executive orders for human mobility reduction to slow down the spread of COVID-19. This paper uses geotagged tweets data to reveal the spatiotemporal human mobility patterns during this COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. With New York City open data, human mobility pattern changes were detected by different categories of land use, including residential, parks, transportation facilities, and workplaces. This study further compares human mobility patterns by …

Community Support Model On Breastfeeding And Complementary Feeding Practices In Remote Areas In Vietnam: Implementation, Cost, And Effectiveness, Tuan T. Nguyen, Nemat Hajeebhoy, Jia Li, Chung T. Do, Roger Mathisen, Edward A. Frongillo Jr.

Faculty Publications

Background

Poor access to healthcare facilities and consequently nutrition counseling services hinders the uptake of recommended infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices. To address these barriers and improve IYCF practices, Alive & Thrive (A&T) initiated community support groups in remote villages across nine provinces in Vietnam.

Objective

This study examines the effectiveness of the support group model and related project costs for reaching underserved areas to improve IYCF practices.

Methods

To evaluate the model’s implementation and project costs, we reviewed implementation guidelines, expenditure and coverage reports, monitoring data, and budgets for the nine provinces. To evaluate the model’s effectiveness, …

Differences In ​The Proportion Of Children Meeting Behavior Guidelines ​Between Summer ​And School By Socioeconomic Status And Race, Ethan T. Hunt, Lauren Von Klinggraeff, Alexis Jones, Sarah Burkart, Roddrick Dugger, Bridget Armstrong Ph.D., Michael Beets Ph.D., Gabrielle Turner-Mcgrievy Ph.D., Rd, Marco Geraci, Robert Glenn Weaver Med, Phd

Faculty Publications

Objective

Children who fail to meet activity, sleep, and screen-time guidelines are at increased risk for obesity. Further, children who are Black are more likely to have obesity when compared to children who are White, and children from low-income households are at increased risk for obesity when compared to children from higher-income households. The objective of this study was to evaluate the proportion of days meeting obesogenic behavior guidelines during the school year compared to summer vacation by race and free/reduced priced lunch (FRPL) eligibility.

Methods

Mixed-effects linear and logistic regressions estimated the proportion of days participants met activity, sleep, …

De Novo Transcriptome Assembly Of The Green Alga Ankistrodesmus Falcatus, Rachel A. Schomaker, Jeffry L. Dudycha

Faculty Publications

Ankistrodesmus falcatus is a globally distributed freshwater chlorophyte that is a candidate for biofuel production, is used to study the effects of toxins on aquatic communities, and is used as food in zooplankton research. Each of these research fields is transitioning to genomic tools. We created a reference transcriptome for of A. falcatus using NextGen sequencing and de novo assembly methods including Trinity, Velvet-Oases, and EvidentialGene. The assembled transcriptome has a total of 17,997 contigs, an N50 value of 2,462, and a GC content of 64.8%. BUSCO analysis recovered 83.3% of total chlorophyte BUSCOs and 82.5% of the eukaryotic …

Environmentally Persistent Free Radicals As Sources Of Pops, Eric P. Vejerano, Jeonghyeon Ahn, Junaid Latif, Mustafa Mamun

Faculty Publications

Environmentally persistent free radicals (EPFRs) are a new class organic pollutant sharing some of the attributes of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). This opinion/short review aims to describe the properties of EPFRs that merit their recognition as an additional and potentially significant source of POPs. EPFRs are ubiquitous in diverse environments because of multiple factors: (1) organic precursors from anthropogenic, biogenic, and other natural emission sources are abundant; multiple mechanisms in PM and soils form (2) EPFRs; and (3) EPFRs are stable and persist for a long time, thereby, accumulate in the environment and potentially transported long range. The hazards of …

Cue-Reactivity And Smartphone Dependency, Collytte Cederstrom

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Objective: Although Cue-Reactivity was originally developed and used with substance addictions, there has been development and validation of cue-reactivity paradigms with behavioral addictions. Concurrently, there has been a rise of literature and research into Smartphone dependency, a type of behavioral addiction. However, there has not been a study looking into cue-reactivity in conjunction with smartphone dependency. Therefore, the current study was developed to create and test a cue-reactivity paradigm for smartphone addiction to better understand the learning principles behind it. Since most individuals do not realize the severity of their dependence on the device, it is important to have definitive …

Long Non-Coding Rna Maternally Expressed Gene 3 Affects Cell Proliferation, Apoptosis And Migration By Targeting The Microrna-9-5p/Midkine Axis And Activating The Phosphoinositide-Dependent Kinase/Akt Pathway In Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Dezhi Wu, Zheng Ma, Deyu Ma, Qiquan Li

Publications

Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) maternally expressed gene 3 (MEG3) is a tumor suppressor in several cancers, such as glioma, prostate cancer and esophageal cancer. However, the role of MEG3 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and the related molecular mechanisms are not well understood. The present study aimed to determine the biological function of MEG3 in regulating HCC cell viability, apoptosis and migration. In addition, the interaction between MEG3, microRNA (miR)-9-5p and Midkine (MDK), and the activation of the phosphoinositide-dependent kinase (PDK)/AKT pathway in HCC cell line MHCC-97L were examined. Luciferase reporter assays, reverse transcription-quantitative PCR and western blotting were used to …

April 27, 2021 General Faculty Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

Psychiatric Symptoms, Risk, And Protective Factors Among University Students In Quarantine During The Covid-19 Pandemic In China (Vol 17, 15, 2021), Shufang Sun, Simon B. Goldberg, Danhua Lin, Shan Qiao, Don Operario

Faculty Publications

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has made unprecedented impact on the psychological health of university students, a population vulnerable to distress and mental health disorders. This study investigated psychiatric symptoms (anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress) during state-enforced quarantine among university students in China (N = 1912) through a cross-sectional survey during March and April 2020.

Results

Psychiatric symptoms were alarmingly prevalent: 67.05% reported traumatic stress, 46.55% had depressive symptoms, and 34.73% reported anxiety symptoms. Further, 19.56% endorsed suicidal ideation. We explored risk and protective factors of psychological health, including demographic variables, two known protective factors for mental health (mindfulness, perceived …

Owsnet: Towards Real-Time Offensive Words Spotting Network For Consumer Iot Devices, Bharath Sudharsan, Sweta Malik, Peter Corcoran, Pankesh Patel, John G. Breslin, Muhammad Intizar Ali

Publications

Every modern household owns at least a dozen of IoT devices like smart speakers, video doorbells, smartwatches, where most of them are equipped with a Keyword spotting(KWS) system-based digital voice assistant like Alexa. The state-of-the-art KWS systems require a large number of operations, higher computation, memory resources to show top performance. In this paper, in contrast to existing resource-demanding KWS systems, we propose a light-weight temporal convolution based KWS system named OWSNet, that can comfortably execute on a variety of IoT devices around us and can accurately spot multiple keywords in real-time without disturbing the device's routine functionalities.

When OWSNet …

How Do Canadian Public Health Agencies Respond To The Covid-19 Emergency Using Social Media: A Protocol For A Case Study Using Content And Sentiment Analysis, Anita Kothari, Lyndsay Foisey, Lorie Donelle Phd, Rn, Fcan, Michael Bauer

Publications

INTRODUCTION: Keeping Canadians safe requires a robust public health (PH) system. This is especially true when there is a PH emergency, like the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media, like Twitter and Facebook, is an important information channel because most people use the internet for their health information. The PH sector can use social media during emergency events for (1) PH messaging, (2) monitoring misinformation, and (3) responding to questions and concerns raised by the public. In this study, we ask: what is the Canadian PH risk communication response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of social media? METHODS AND ANALYSIS: …

Garnet & Black Spring 2021, University Of South Carolina, Office Of Student Media

Garnet & Black Magazine

No abstract provided.

Source Evaluation Strategies For The Misinformation Age, Allison I. Faix

South Carolina Libraries

This article provides a summary of recent criticisms of checklist approaches to source evaluation to build a fuller picture of the issues involved with relying on checklists and factors that have increased the complexity of evaluating sources in the misinformation age. It then looks at new source evaluation strategies and methods which can be used by teachers and librarians to better prepare students for the internet realities they now face in their academic and personal online research.

Spatial-Temporal Relationship Between Population Mobility And Covid-19 Outbreaks In South Carolina: Time Series Forecasting Analysis, Chengbo Zeng, Jiajia Zhang Ph.D., Zhenlong Li Ph.D., Xiaowen Sun, Bankole Olatosi Ph.D., Sharon Weissman, Xiaoming Li Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Background: Population mobility is closely associated with COVID-19 transmission, and it could be used as a proximal indicator to predict future outbreaks, which could inform proactive nonpharmaceutical interventions for disease control. South Carolina is one of the US states that reopened early, following which it experienced a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases.

Objective: The aims of this study are to examine the spatial-temporal relationship between population mobility and COVID-19 outbreaks and use population mobility data to predict daily new cases at both the state and county level in South Carolina.

Methods: This longitudinal study used disease surveillance …

Covid-19: Insights Into Virus-Receptor Interactions, Azadeh Sepahvandi, Maryann Ghaffari, Amir Hossein Bahmanpour, Fathollah Moztarzadeh, Payam Zarrintaj, Hasan Uludağ, Masoud Mozafari

Faculty Publications

The recent outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) calls for rapid mobilization of scientists to probe and explore solutions to this deadly disease. A limited understanding of the high transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 (Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) relative to other coronavirus strains guides a deeper investigation into the virus/receptor interactions. The cutting-edge studies in thermodynamic and kinetic properties of interactions such as protein-protein interplays have been reviewed in many modeling and analysis studies. Highlighting the thermodynamic assessments of biological interactions and emphasizing the boosted transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 despite its high similarity in structure and sequence with other coronavirus strains …

The Financial Impact Of Covid-19 On Nonprofit Organizations, Dr. Charles Harrington

SC Upstate Research Symposium

Abstract — Scholars and practitioners have argued that effective financial management, particularly the development of operating reserves, can help nonprofits survive economic shocks. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a significant impact on the nonprofit sector, provides an opportunity to test whether nonprofits have followed that recommendation, and if so, whether nonprofits with operating reserves were better prepared for the pandemic. Using data from an original survey of more than 600 nonprofit human service and arts organizations, administered when most states had stay-at-home restrictions, we show that most nonprofits experienced an immediate impact on their programs and financing. Yet, those …

The Daily Gamecock, Look Back Move Forward, April 2021, University Of South Carolina, Office Of Student Media

April

No abstract provided.

April 7, 2021 Faculty Senate Minutes, University Of South Carolina

Faculty Senate

No abstract provided.

Latent Class Analysis Of K-12 Teachers’ Barriers To Implementing Oer, Hengtao Tang Ph.D., Yu Bao

Faculty Publications

Open educational resources (OER) are a cost-effective alternative to traditional textbooks for K-12 teachers to provide differentiated instruction at a much lower cost. However, teachers have to overcome barriers to implement OER in their classrooms, especially if cultural and economic factors are considered. To help each teacher overcome individual barriers, a person-centered approach to understand teachers’ barriers of implementing OER is needed yet absent. This research thus filled the gap by conducting a latent class analysis of teachers’ profiles in terms of their barriers in using OER. The findings identified three types of teacher profiles and revealed how different profiles …

The Remains Of The Fray: Nascent Colonialism And Heterogeneous Hybridity, Charles R. Cobb, James B. Legg, Steven D. Smith, Chester B. Depratter, Brad R. Lieb, Edmond A. Boudreaux Iii

Faculty Publications

Investigations at the Native American site complex of Stark Farms in Mississippi, USA, have yielded numerous examples of metal artifacts of European origin. Our study suggests that they derive from contact between the AD 1540–1541 winter encampment of the Spanish Hernando de Soto expedition and the local Indigenous polity. The artifacts display a wide range of modifications, uses, and depositional contexts congruent with hybrid practices. We argue that the early colonial setting of Stark Farms requires a different perspective on cultural mixing than is often applied in studies of European colonialism. This is highlighted by the strongly improvisational nature of …

Maternal Pragmatic Language Difficulties In The Fmr1 Premutation And The Broad Autism Phenotype: Associations With Individual And Family Outcomes, Jessica Klusek, Angela John Thurman, Leonard Abbeduto

Faculty Publications

Broader phenotypes associated with genetic liability, including mild difficulties with pragmatic language skills, have been documented in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and mothers of children with fragile X syndrome (FXS). This study investigated the relationship between pragmatic difficulties and indicators of maternal well-being and family functioning. Pragmatic difficulty was associated with loneliness in mothers of children with ASD or FXS, and with depression, decreased life satisfaction, and poorer family relationship quality but only in mothers of children with FXS. Results suggest that subtle maternal pragmatic language difficulties are a risk factor that that may contribute to …

The Eviction Landscape In South Carolina, Ethan Magnuson

Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the South Carolinian eviction crisis from the perspective of radical geography. South Carolina was chosen for the severity of its crisis and the lack of research at a sub-state level. Court records of eviction filings from 2019 were geocoded and tested for spatial clustering, which was clearly visible. Plaintiff names were used to identify the most frequent filers and distinguish landlords by type. At the census tract level, eviction filing counts were compared with neighborhood characteristics using negative binomial regression, and most were found to be significant in South Carolina. …

Meat Alternatives: The State Of The Industry, Barriers To Adoption, And Overcoming Barriers, Steven Maler

Senior Theses

The world faces many environmental problems that can be linked to human activity, including links to the production of food. The meat industry is often seen as a major contributor to such problems. Meat alternatives are often proposed as a way to address these environmental problems. However, these products face barriers when it comes to their adoption by consumers, and firms that produce meat alternatives must overcome these barriers to be successful. I used data from a variety of academic works, newspaper articles, research reports, and company websites to find that these barriers are related to taste, nutrition, convenience, expense, …

The Effect Of Tp53 Mutations On Tumor Response To Standard Cancer Therapeutics, Clare Mctighe

Senior Theses

The human TP53 gene codes for a protein, p53, that regulates DNA repair and the cell cycle [9]. Therefore, TP53 plays an immensely important role in the proper growth and division of human cells. Mutations in TP53 are also associated with resistance to many standard cancer treatment drugs [6]. More than 50 percent of human cancers have mutations within TP53; it has become a major focus over the years in cancer research [10]. Organoids are in vitro cultures of primary cells established from human surgical samples [8]. They recapitulate genetics of human cancers better than do cell lines [14]. Some …

How Can I Help? Investigating The Role Of Social Supports In Academic Resilience For Undergraduate Students, Grace M. Lady

Senior Theses

Academic resilience refers to a student’s ability to emotionally and cognitively adapt to academic adversity, including transitions to new experiences like college. This ability to bounce back is an important characteristic for academic success (Robbins et al., 2018; Hodge et al., 2017). Within the literature, there is a need to understand more interpersonal influences, such as social support, on resilience. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate what social support students rely on and how students use social support through times of academic difficulty, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic and the transition to college. Undergraduate students (N = 189) completed a …

Makeshift Memory: Nostalgia As Collective Solidarity In The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood And Post-Imperial England, Catherine White

Senior Theses

It is a deeply human experience to long for times, people, and places of the past, even pasts we ourselves did not experience. This feeling, which we most often call nostalgia (but has earned many names throughout history) has profound influence especially in how we perceive our collective histories and use these histories to guide us forward. This experience of nostalgia is the underpinning for many of our sources of solidarity (or who we feel loyal or obligated to). However, when we feel these profound connections to the distant past, we often lose the reality of that past in the …