Related papers: A Canine Census to Influence Public Policy
Human spoken language has long been the subject of scientific investigation, particularly with regard to the mechanisms underpinning speech production. Likewise, the study of animal communications has a substantial literature, with many…
Animals play a profoundly important and intricate role in our lives today. Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years, but they now work closely with us to assist the disabled, and in combat and search and rescue situations.…
How hosts language influence their pets' vocalization is an interesting yet underexplored problem. This paper presents a preliminary investigation into the possible correlation between domestic dog vocal expressions and their human host's…
We use mobile phone records for the analysis of mobility patterns and the detection of possible risk zones of Chagas disease in two Latin American countries. We show that geolocalized call records are rich in social and individual…
Scientific studies of society increasingly rely on digital traces produced by various aspects of human activity. In this paper, we use a relatively unexplored source of data, anonymized records of bank card transactions collected in Spain…
Livestock industries are vulnerable to disease threats, which can cost billions of dollars and have substantial negative social ramifications. Losses are mitigated through increased use of disease-related biosecurity practices, making…
Understanding the spread of any disease is a highly complex and interdisciplinary exercise as biological, social, geographic, economic, and medical factors may shape the way a disease moves through a population and options for its eventual…
The world's digital transformation has influenced not only the way we do business, but also the way we perform daily activities. In fact, the past Presidential elections in the United States as well as those in Great Britain (Brexit) and in…
Online social networks are known to be demographically biased. Currently there are questions about what degree of representativity of the physical population they have, and how population biases impact user-generated content. In this paper…
Technology is uniquely positioned to help us analyze large amounts of information to provide valuable insight during widespread public health concerns, like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, information technology companies like Apple…
Large scale comparative research into municipal governance is often prohibitively difficult due to a lack of high-quality data. But, recent advances in speech-to-text algorithms and natural language processing has made it possible to more…
The unprecedented availability of large-scale human behavioral data is profoundly changing the world we live in. Researchers, companies, governments, financial institutions, non-governmental organizations and also citizen groups are…
Starting with the neo-Bayesian revival of the 1950s, many statisticians argued that it was inappropriate to use Bayesian methods, and in particular subjective Bayesian methods in governmental and public policy settings because of their…
Urban sound has a huge influence over how we perceive places. Yet, city planning is concerned mainly with noise, simply because annoying sounds come to the attention of city officials in the form of complaints, while general urban sounds do…
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced public health experts to develop contingent policies to stem the spread of infection, including measures such as partial/complete lockdowns. The effectiveness of these policies has varied with geography,…
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the national systems of population movement around the world. Existing work has focused on countries of the Global North and restricted to the immediate effects of COVID-19 data during 2020. Data have…
Data can be collected in scientific studies via a controlled experiment or passive observation. Big data is often collected in a passive way, e.g. from social media. In studies of causation great efforts are made to guard against bias and…
More and more smart devices enter our homes. Often these devices come with a variety of sensors, mostly simple sensors, e.g., for light, temperature, humidity or motion. And they all collect data. While it is data of the home environment it…
Human mobility is one of the key factors at the basis of the spreading of diseases in a population. Containment strategies are usually devised on movement scenarios based on coarse-grained assumptions. Mobility phone data provide a unique…
Ensuring that the benefits of sign language technologies are distributed equitably among all community members is crucial. Thus, it is important to address potential biases and inequities that may arise from the design or use of these…