Crowdsourcing Knowledge Production of COVID-19 Information on Japanese Wikipedia in the Face of Uncertainty: Empirical Analysis.

BACKGROUND: A worldwide overabundance of information comprising misinformation, rumors, and propaganda concerning COVID-19 has been observed in addition to the pandemic. By addressing this data confusion, Wikipedia has become an important source of information. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate how the editors of Wikipedia have handled COVID-19-related information. Specifically, it focused on 2 questions: What were the knowledge preferences of the editors who participated in producing COVID-19-related information? and How did editors with different knowledge preferences collaborate? METHODS: This study used a large-scale data set, including >2 million edits in the histories of 1857 editors who edited 133 articles related to COVID-19 on Japanese Wikipedia. Machine learning methods, including graph neural network methods, Bayesian inference, and Granger causality analysis, were used to establish the editors' topic proclivity and collaboration patterns. RESULTS: Overall, 3 trends were observed. Two groups of editors were involved in the production of information on COVID-19. One group had a strong preference for sociopolitical topics (social-political group), and the other group strongly preferred scientific and medical topics (scientific-medical group). The social-political group played a central role (contributing 16,544,495/23,485,683, 70.04% of bits of content and 57,969/76,673, 75.61% of the references) in the information production part of the COVID-19 articles on Wikipedia, whereas the scientific-medical group played only a secondary role. The severity of the pandemic in Japan activated the editing behaviors of the social-political group, leading them to contribute more to COVID-19 information production on Wikipedia while simultaneously deactivating the editing behaviors of the scientific-medical group, resulting in their less contribution to COVID-19 information production on Wikipedia (Pearson correlation coefficient=0.231; P<.001). CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study showed that lay experts (ie, Wikipedia editors) in the fields of science and medicine tended to remain silent when facing high scientific uncertainty related to the pandemic. Considering the high quality of the COVID-19-related articles on Japanese Wikipedia, this research also suggested that the sidelining of the science and medicine editors in discussions is not necessarily a problem. Instead, the social and political context of the issues with high scientific uncertainty is more important than the scientific discussions that support accuracy.

Social influence makes outlier opinions in online reviews offer more helpful information.

Identifying helpful information from large-scale online reviews has become a core issue in studies on harnessing wisdom-of-crowds. We investigated whether online reviews expressing dissenting opinions (i.e., outlier reviews) can provide helpful information. Using statistical and simulation methods with a large-scale dataset, we found that, compared with other online reviews, outlier reviews were deemed more helpful because they provided more sufficient, neutral, and concise information. To interpret these results, we considered that in collective behaviours, a prevalent social psychological process-conformity (i.e., changing one's behaviour in response to pressure from others)-pressured reviewers expressing dissenting opinions. This motivated them to provide more convincing evidence (i.e., sufficient, neutral, and concise information). This study offers a simple yet effective approach for eliciting helpful information from many online reviews and deepens the understanding of the mechanism underlying collective online behaviour. Specifically, conformity was considered to cause biases in the collective behaviour of humans; however, this study revealed that conformity can elicit valuable outcomes in collective behaviour.

On an effective and efficient method for exploiting the wisdom of the inner crowd.

Researchers have shown that even an individual can produce the wisdom of the crowds, called "the wisdom of the inner crowd." However, the previous methods leave room for improvements in terms of efficacy and response time. This paper proposes a more efficient method, which required a short time, based on findings from cognitive and social psychology. The procedure is to ask participants to give two answers to the same question: first, their own estimate and, second, their estimate of public opinion. Experiments using this method showed that the averages of the two estimates were more accurate than the participants' first estimates. That is, the wisdom of the inner crowd elicited. In addition, we found that the method could be superior to other methods in terms of efficacy and convenience. Moreover, we identified the conditions where our method worked better. We further clarify the availability and limitations of using the wisdom of the inner crowd. Overall, this paper proposes an effective and short-time method for harvesting the wisdom of the inner crowd.

More knowledge causes a focused attention deployment pattern leading to lower creative performances.

Previous studies demonstrate that people with less professional knowledge can achieve higher performance than those with more professional knowledge in creative activities. However, the factors related to this phenomenon remain unclear. Based on previous discussions in cognitive science, we hypothesised that people with different amounts of professional knowledge have varying attention deployment patterns, leading to different creative performances. To examine our hypothesis, we analysed two datasets collected from a web-based survey and a popular online shopping website, Amazon.com (United States). We found that during information processing, people with less professional knowledge tended to give their divided attention, which positively affected creative performances. Contrarily, people with more professional knowledge tended to give their concentrated attention, which had a negative effect. Our results shed light on the relation between the amount of professional knowledge and attention deployment patterns, thereby enabling a deeper understanding of the factors underlying the different creative performances of people with varying amounts of professional knowledge.

Cooperation patterns of members in networks during co-creation.

Cooperation (i.e., co-creation) has become the principal way of carrying out creative activities in modern society. In co-creation, different participants can play two completely different roles based on two different behaviours: some participants are the originators who generate initial contents, while others are the revisors who provide revisions or coordination. In this study, we investigated different participants' roles (i.e., the originator vs. the revisor) in co-creation and how these roles affected the final cooperation-group outcome. By using cooperation networks to represent cooperative relationships among participants, we found that peripheral members (i.e., those in the periphery of the cooperation networks) and core members (i.e., those in the centre of the cooperation networks) played the roles of originators and revisors, respectively, mainly affecting the quantity versus the quality of their creative outcomes. These results were robust across the three different datasets and the three different indicators defining core and peripheral members. Previous studies have considered cooperation behaviours to be homogeneous, ignoring that different participants may play different roles in co-creation. This study discusses patterns of cooperation among participants based on a model in which different roles in co-creation are considered. Thus, this research advances the understanding of how co-creation occurs in networks.

Influence of d-Amino Acids in Beer on Formation of Uric Acid.

Excessive intake of beer could increase serum uric acid levels, leading to high risk of gout, which was previously attributed to high purine content in beer. Recent reports that purine-rich vegetables and bean products do not cause higher uric acid levels do not support this theory. Why excessive intake of beer could increase a high risk of gout has been unclear. Other factors affecting the accumulation of uric acid in the blood have been explored. Beer contains relatively high levels of d-amino acids due to the racemization of l-amino acids induced by food processing. d-amino acid was catalyzed by d-amino acid oxidase to produce H2O2, which is further oxidized in the presence of Fe2+ to produce hydroxyl radicals, resulting in DNA damage and formation of a large amount of purine bases, which are oxidized to uric acid by a series of enzymes. Some food ingredients, such as vitamins and I-, prompt d-amino acids to form uric acid. d-amino acids in beer are one of the key factors responsible for the increase in uric acid levels. The biological response of d-amino acids could explain gout occurrence in beer drinkers.

Graphene and AuNPs based electrochemical aptasensor for ultrasensitive detection of hydroxylated polychlorinated biphenyl.

An electrochemical aptasensor for ultrasensitive detection of hydroxylated polychlorinated biphenyl (OH-PCB) was developed. In this work, the sulfydryl aptamer selected for OH-PCB was easily immobilized on the surface of the modified glassy carbon electrode via Au-S bond due to incorporation of gold nanoparticles/poly dimethyl diallyl ammonium chloride-graphene composite. The fabrication process of the electrochemical aptasensor was characterized by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry. The peak currents obtained by differential pulse voltammetry decreased with the increasing of OH-PCB concentrations. The current responded approximately logarithmically to the OH-PCB concentration ranging from 2.9 × 10-11 M to 2.9 × 10-7 M with excellent linear correlation performance. The detection limit of OH-PCB was estimated as low as 5.3 × 10-12 M. The developed method had been successfully applied to analyzing lake water. Particularly, the method of the electrochemical aptasensor opens up a new perspective in environmental monitoring by the aptamer identification.

Colorimetric and visual determination of Au(III) ions using PEGylated gold nanoparticles.

A highly selective method is described for the colorimetric determination of Au(III) ions in acidic solution using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) functionalized with thiolated methoxy poly(ethylene glycol) (mPEG). The presence of Au(III) induces the aggregation of the PEG-AuNPs, and this is accompanied by a color change from wine red to blue, and a decrease in absorbance at 525 nm. This can be monitored spectrophotometrically and visually. Absorbance at 525 nm linearly drops in the 0.50 to 1.75 mg·L-1 Au(III) concentration range, with a 0.25 mg·L-1 detection limit. The method is surprisingly selective over other metal ions. It was successfully applied to the analysis of ore samples. Graphical Abstract ᅟ.

PH-Dependent Enantioselectivity of D-amino Acid Oxidase in Aqueous Solution.

D-amino acid oxidases (DAAO) are stereospecific enzymes which are generally almost inactive towards L-enantiomer in neutral solution when L-, D-amino acids are supplied as substrates. In this paper, the D-amino acid oxidase can catalytic oxidize L-amino acids by modulating pH of aqueous solution. With L-Pro as substrate, the catalytic rate (k cat) and the affinity (K m) of DAAO were 6.71 s-1 and 33 mM at pH 8.0, respectively, suggesting that optimal pH condition enhanced the activity of DAAO towards L-Pro. Similar results were obtained when L-Ala (pH 9.8), L-Arg (pH 6.5), L-Phe (pH 9.0), L-Thr (pH 9.4), and L-Val (pH 8.5) were catalyzed by DAAO at various pH values. The racemization of the L-amino acids was not found by capillary electrophoresis analysis during oxidation, and quantification analysis of L-amino acids before and after catalytic reaction was performed, which confirmed that the modulation of enantioselectivity of DAAO resulted from the oxidation of L-amino acids rather than D-amino acids by changing pH. A mechanistic model was proposed to explain enhanced activity of DAAO towards L-amino acids under optimal pH condition.

Antibody-Free Colorimetric Detection of Total Aflatoxins in Rice Based on a Simple Two-Step Chromogenic Reaction.

The prevalently used immunoassays for fast screening of aftatoxins (AFs) usually cannot meet the requirement for simultaneous determination of total AFs (aflatoxin B1 + aflatoxin B2 + aflatoxin G1 + aflatoxin G2) due to the deficiency of highly group-specific antibodies. This paper describes a two-step chromogenic reaction based method to quantitatively detect total AFs in rice using colorimetric measurement without antibody. In the method, colorless AFs transform into green-colored indophenol products through the reaction with sodium hydroxide and 2,6-dibromoquinone-4-chloroimide (DBQC) successively, allowing selectively determining total AFs up to 3.9 µg/kg over other competitive mycotoxins under optimal conditions by a UV-vis spectrophotometer. In addition, the colorimetric measurement results of the rice samples agree well with that of a standard HPLC method, demonstrating the good reliability and applicability of the method. Uniquely, the method has potential for on-site detection of total AFs in rice when using a nylon membrane-based device.