Search

In this paper we present a methodology to assess moviegoers' early reactions to movies' premieres through the extraction of analytics from Twitter conversations that take place in the weekend in which a movie is released. We then apply data mining techniques to a sample of 22 movies to identify models able to predict box-office sales in the first weekend. We show that better predictions are obtained when traffic metrics are combined with social network or conversational indicators rather than with sentiment and that online sentiment achieves the lowest explanatory power among all the considered variables. Our findings confirm that the importance of commonly used buzz-metrics, such as sentiment, is probably overstated, and that conversational analytics can contribute significantly to explain the variance of box office revenues in the first week end of release. More broadly, our work adds to research on information diffusion in online networks by providing evidence that diffusion of messages is not content-neutral and that the analysis of conversational dynamics can help to understand the interplay between collective generation and diffusion of content in social networks as well as to obtain insights on whether information diffusion influences off-line behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a novel method to extract and visualize actionable information from streams of social media messages, analyzed as conversational elements. Our method has been applied to over 4 million messages related to more than 35 different events, demonstrating good results identifying conversational patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For environmental reasons, it was proposed to remove the lead shielding in the front panel of a glove box and replace it with another material. This technical note shows that steel could be used. Also, the thickness of steel required to maintain acceptable doses to an operator is determined. Computer modeling and analysis show that 3.175 cm (1 1/4 in.) of steel is required to maintain the same dose to the operator from gamma radiation as 0.635 cm (1 1/4 in.) of lead. However, it was demonstrated that source placement and geometry play a large role in the operator's dose independent of the structural material because of streaming through ports and windows. Because of streaming, the dose received through the metal in the front panel was not the dominant source of radiation to the operator. It was found that 1.5875 cm (5/8 in.) of steel could be used in the panel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]