Publications by authors named "Chad Melton"

Background: Health promotion can empower populations to gain more control over their well-being by using digital interventions that focus on preventing the root causes of diseases. Digital platforms for personalized health coaching can improve health literacy and information-seeking behavior, leading to better health outcomes. Personal health records have been designed to enhance patients' self-management of a disease or condition.

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As social media use has grown in recent years, ease of access and rapid data collection through online social media has permitted researchers to measure and track sentiments related to emerging public health threats. Herein, we explore the possibilities of examining messaging shared via social media networks for sentiment classification as it relates to women's reproductive healthcare, especially access to abortion. In our previous works, our team has successfully employed various natural language processing (NLP) models for the analysis of social media shared sentiments.

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Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new opportunities for health communication, including an increase in the public's use of online outlets for health-related emotions. People have turned to social media networks to share sentiments related to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we examine the role of social messaging shared by Persons in the Public Eye (ie, athletes, politicians, news personnel, etc) in determining overall public discourse direction.

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Background: The emergence of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and the necessary separation of populations have led to an unprecedented number of new social media users seeking information related to the pandemic. Currently, with an estimated 4.5 billion users worldwide, social media data offer an opportunity for near real-time analysis of large bodies of text related to disease outbreaks and vaccination.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the world, having taken the lives of over 6 million individuals. Accordingly, this pandemic has caused a shift in conversations surrounding the burden of diseases worldwide, welcoming insights from multidisciplinary fields including digital health and artificial intelligence. Africa faces a heavy disease burden that exacerbates the current COVID-19 pandemic and limits the scope of public health preparedness, response, containment, and case management.

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The COVID-19 pandemic fueled one of the quickest vaccine developments in history. Misinformation on online social media often leads to negative vaccine sentiment. We conducted a sentiment analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling from Reddit communities focusing on the COVID-19 vaccine.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the world, having taken the lives of over 6 million individuals. Accordingly, this pandemic has caused a shift in conversations surrounding the burden of diseases worldwide, welcoming insights from multidisciplinary fields including digital health and artificial intelligence. Africa faces a heavy disease burden that exacerbates the current COVID-19 pandemic and limits the scope of public health preparedness, response, containment, and case management.

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Almost half of the world population has received at least one dose of vaccine against the COVID-19 virus. However, vaccine hesitancy amongst certain populations is driving new waves of infections at alarming rates. The popularity of online social media platforms attracts supporters of the anti-vaccination movement who spread misinformation about vaccine safety and effectiveness.

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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic fueled one of the most rapid vaccine developments in history. However, misinformation spread through online social media often leads to negative vaccine sentiment and hesitancy.

Methods: To investigate COVID-19 vaccine-related discussion in social media, we conducted a sentiment analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling on textual data collected from 13 Reddit communities focusing on the COVID-19 vaccine from Dec 1, 2020, to May 15, 2021.

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We used a pulsed laser ablation synthesis in solution (LASIS) to produce cobalt oxide/hydroxide nanoparticles (NPs) with tailored size, morphology and structure at different laser fluences, wavelengths (532 and 1064 nm) and solvent conditions. Specifically, LASIS on bulk Co in the presence and absence of O2 in an aqueous solution initially produces cobalt monoxide (CoO) and single crystal β-cobalt hydroxide (β-Co(OH)2) nanoparticles (NPs) respectively that finally transform into cobaltosic oxide (Co3O4) through oxidation and/or thermal decomposition. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS) measurements on the final products reveal a bimodal size distribution of agglomerated NPs (for the 1064 and 532 nm laser) at low laser fluences, where the ablation mechanism is dominated by vaporization and normal boiling.

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