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Background Food safety is of global importance and has been of concern in university settings in recent years. However, effective methods to conduct food safety education are limited. This study aims to evaluate the effects of an intervention on food safety knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) by social media, WeChat, among university students. Methods A quasi-experimental study was conducted in Chongqing, China. Two departments were recruited randomly from a normal university and a medical university. One department from each university was randomly selected as the intervention group and the other as the control group. All freshmen students in each selected department were chosen to participate in this study. One thousand and twenty-three students were included at baseline, and 444 students completed the study. This intervention was conducted through food safety-related popular science articles with an average of three articles per week released by WeChat official accounts called "Yingyangren" for two months to the intervention group. No intervention was conducted in the control group. An independent t-test was used to test statistical differences in the food safety KAP scores between the two groups. A paired t-test was used to test statistical differences in the food safety KAP scores between before and after the intervention. And quantile regression analysis was conducted to explore the difference between the two groups across the quantile levels of KAP change. Results After the intervention, compared with control group, participants in the intervention group did not score significant higher on knowledge (p = 0.98), attitude (p = 0.13), and practice (p = 0.21). And the scores of food safety knowledge and practices slightly improved after the intervention both in the intervention group (p = 0.01 and p = 0.01, respectively) and in the control group (p = 0.0003 and p = 0.0001, respectively). Additionally, the quantile regression analysis showed that the intervention had no effect on improving the food safety KAP scores. Conclusions The intervention using the WeChat official account had limited effects on improving the food safety KAP among the university students. This study was an exploration of food safety intervention using the WeChat official account; valuable experience can be provided for social media intervention in future study. Trial registration ChiCTR-OCH-14004861.

Background The prevalence of infertility in China is high, but the advent of assisted reproduction technology (ART) has greatly eased this situation. Social media, such as WeChat official accounts, have become the preferred tool for ART centers to communicate with patients, but their attention and operational status differ, and the Internet influence of WeChat official accounts is insufficient. In addition, questions about whether Internet influence is consistent with academic influence and whether the Internet can influence patients’ choice of medical treatment to a certain extent have not been explored. Objective This study aimed to examine the operational status and Internet influence of WeChat official accounts for ART centers and to explore the degree of Internet influence on patients’ choices of medical treatment. Methods We collected information from the WeChat official accounts for ART centers approved by the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China and used the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution to build an Internet influence model of the ART centers and obtained a Ranking of Internet Influence on Reproductive Centers (RIIRC) for each center. Results We found there were 451 ART centers throughout the country by the end of 2016 and 498 by the end of 2018. The number of medical institutions is quite large, but their distribution is uneven, and their level of medical technical ability is very different. Analysis of the text data of posts of WeChat official accounts showed the ART centers have insufficient awareness of network exposure and publicity, and the RIIRC of some medical institutions was inconsistent with their medical level and academic status. Conclusions ART institutions have varying degrees of emphasis and use of WeChat official accounts in China. They fail to realize that the Internet influence of WeChat may bring them potential patient resources and that Internet influence may affect the future market structure of ART and may also potentially affect academic rankings.

In order to achieve home intelligence, this paper introduces an interactive system of intelligent cloud home based on CC3200 Wi-Fi microcontroller unit(MCU), WeChat official account and Ali cloud server. Users can not only control household equipment by WeChat official account remotely，but also get the status of sensors. The paper provides an overall design scheme and introduces the hardware component of system. It also gives the software design of CC3200 MCU, WeChat official account and Ali cloud server. Experiments results show that the proposed system runs steadily, has better user experiences，and has high application value.

Background Widespread adoption and continued developments in mobile health care technologies have led to the improved accessibility and quality of medical services. In China, WeChat, an instant messaging and social networking app released by the company Tencent, has developed a specific type of user account called WeChat official account (WOA), which is now widely adopted by hospitals in China. It enables health care providers to connect with local citizens, allowing them to, among other actions, send regular updates through mass circulation. However, with the diversity in function provided by WOA, little is known about its major constitution as well as the influence factors on the WeChat communication index (WCI). The WCI has been widely used in social media impact ranking with various types of WeChat content to fully reflect the dissemination and coverage of tweets as well as the maturity and impact of WOA. Objective There are two typical WOAs available to users, namely, WeChat subscription account (WSSA) and WeChat service account (WSVA). The biggest difference between them is the frequency of messages transmitted. This study aimed to explore the function constitution of WSVA adopted by top tertiary hospitals in China and the major contributors of the WCI score. Methods A total of 681 top tertiary hospitals were selected from the Hospital Quality Monitoring System; the WOA of every top tertiary hospital was retrieved in the WeChat app. We divided core functional items of WSVAs using categorical principal component analysis. To elicit the factors that influenced the use of WSVA, quantile regression was employed to analyze the WCI score. Results From the 668 WOAs identified, adoption of WSVAs (543/668, 81.3%) was more than that of WSSAs (125/668, 18.7%). Functional items of WSVAs were categorized into four clusters: (1) hospital introduction, (2) medical services, (3) visiting assistants, and (4) others. With regard to the influence factors on the WCI, the impact of the activity index of WSVA and the total visiting number of outpatients and emergencies on WCI were statistically significant and positive in all quantiles. However, the year of certification, the type of hospital, the year of public hospital reform, and the number of beds merely affected the WCI at some quantiles. Conclusions Our findings are considered helpful to tertiary hospitals in developing in-depth functional items that improve patient experience. The tertiary hospitals should take full advantage of times of posting and provide high-quality tweets to meet the various needs of patients.

Background Malaria is the main health risk for Chinese expatriates working in Niger. Health education is a recommended intervention for prevention of malaria among non-immune travellers and expatriate workers. It is urgent to develop an effective and feasible way for these populations to obtain information about the prevention and treatment of malaria. Methods An individually randomized, unblinded, controlled trial was used to evaluate the effectiveness of using WeChat official accounts for health education to improve malaria health literacy among Chinese expatriates in Niger. A total 1441 participants completed a baseline malaria health literacy questionnaire and were randomly assigned to an intervention or comparison group in a ratio of 1:1. From July to October 2014, 50 malaria prevention and treatment messages were sent to the intervention group; 50 health news messages were concurrently sent to the control group. Both groups completed the malaria health literacy questionnaire again 4 months after the start of the education intervention. A questionnaire addressing satisfaction with the health education programme was completed by the intervention group. Malaria morbidity data for 2013 and 2014 were also collected. Results At baseline, participant health literacy rates were 58.29, 62, 54, and 34% for skills, knowledge, practice, and attitude, respectively. After the intervention, rates for all four aspects of malaria literacy were above 70%. There was greater change in knowledge, attitude, practice, skills, and overall health literacy among the intervention group compared with the controls, with a statistically significant difference (p

Mestrado Finanças Nos últimos anos, a conta oficial de WeChat tem sido amplamente aceite pela maioria dos Chineses, tanto no pais como no estrangeiro, como uma nova plataforma que facilite o acesso a notícias e informações. Muitas startups também aproveitam esta plataforma para prestar serviços diversos aos seus usuários e alcançam grande sucesso. Uma vez que existem mais de dois milhões de residentes chineses na Europa, e a sua presença no mercado financeiro europeu ainda é fraca, é uma grande oportunidade para lançar uma plataforma financeira com base na conta oficial de WeChat e outra mídia social para fornecer notícias, informações e serviços financeiros à comunidade chinesa em toda a Europa. A fim de avaliar se vale a pena investir neste projecto, a técnica financeira geralmente aceite, NPV do projeto com os fluxos de caixa descontado, será aplicado. Se o NPV do projeto for positivo, o projeto pode ser aceite. Caso contrário, o projeto deverá ser rejeitado. A avaliação empresarial com base no método DCF é, portanto, realizada para avaliar o valor teórico do projeto. In the past few years, WeChat official account has been widely accepted as a new means of receiving news and information by Chinese both at home and abroad. Many startups also use this platform to provide various services to their users and achieve great success. Since there are more than two million Chinese citizens in Europe, and their presence in the European financial market is limited, it is a great opportunity to develop a financial platform based on WeChat and other social media to provide financial news, information and services to the Chinese community across Europe. In order to know whether it is worth investing in this project, the most widely accepted financial technique, NPV of the project with discounted free cash flows, will be used. If NPV of the project is positive, the project can be accepted. Otherwise, the project should be rejected. A business valuation based on the DCF method is, therefore, performed to assess the theoretical value of the project. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion