This paper introduces a general Bayesian nonparametric latent feature model suitable to perform automatic exploratory analysis of heterogeneous datasets, where the attributes describing each object can be either discrete, continuous or mixed variables. The proposed model presents several important properties. First, it accounts for heterogeneous data while can be inferred in linear time with re...

Research topics and research communities are not disconnected from each other: communities and topics are interwoven and co-evolving. Yet, scientometric evaluations of topics and communities have been conducted independently and synchronically, with researchers often relying on homogeneous unit of analysis, such as authors, journals, institutions, or topics. Therefore, new methods are warranted...

Virtual communities play an important part in enabling people with common interests to interact with each other. Current research mostly focuses on the aspects of social interaction, usability and success factors for virtual communities. However, few studies have analysed how management teams affect virtual communities. Therefore, our research focuses on the role of management teams for the suc...

Landownership is an important form of wealth, especially in a natural-resource dependent region such as the Black Belt of Alabama. We examine the connection between property ownership, land cover, and the wellbeing of communities in Macon County, Alabama. This study is an exploratory application of geographic information systems to integrate information from property tax assessment records, lan...

This paper explores how emotion evolves during the learning process with the longer term aim of developing learning systems that are able to recognize and respond appropriately to emotions exhibited by learners. We undertook this research by designing and building an experimental prototype of an emotion aware learning system conducting experiments and studying the relationship between emotion a...

Agent-based modelling is useful for policy evaluation in fields such as epidemiology. The current paper presents a model of Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT), or sleeping sickness: a disease which is becoming increasingly prominent due to recent epidemics. Associated medication is often scarce, whilst diagnosis through blood screening is not always effective. Current modelling methodology use...

To understand a pervasive but seldom examined phenomenon that people become heavily dependent on their smartphone, this exploratory study introduces a new concept, smartphone indispensability, defined as the intensive psychological dependency on smartphones due to the absolute necessary and primary role of smartphones in ones’ daily life. Observing that the smartphone indispensability is hetero...