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Tweets containing malicious links are more likely to contain negative emotions, and It is the content of the tweet that increases the likelihood that it will be liked and shared., as researchers at Cardiff University have demonstrated for the first time.
He new study has been published in the magazine ACM Transactions on the Web.
Malicious tweets
As part of the study, the team analyzed a random sample of around 275,000 from a corpus of over 3.5 million tweets which were sent during seven major sporting events: the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the 2015 and 2016 Superbowl, the 2015 Cricket World Cup, the 2015 Rugby World Cup, the UEFA EURO 2016 and the 2016 Olympic Games.
The team identified 105,642 tweets containing malicious URLs and 169,178 tweets containing benign URLs from this data set, and then used sophisticated computer models to estimate how these tweets survived on the platform 24 hours after the sporting event.
Tweets that were classified as benign were more likely to spread if a user had a large number of followers and the tweet contained positive emotions such as “team,” “love,” “happy,” “enjoyment,” and “fun.”
However, the results showed that malicious tweets were not strongly associated with the number of followers of the poster and were more likely to spread when the content of the tweet contained negative emotions. Tweets reflecting fear were 114% more likely to be retweeted, with words like “kill,” “fight,” “shoot,” and “controversy” regularly included in tweets containing malicious URLs.
Cybercriminals are increasingly using this method, known as a “drive-by download attack,” to hide a malicious URL in an attractive tweet and use it as click bait to lure users to a malicious web page.
The study suggests that the results show that even with Twitter's security measures, malicious URLs can still go undetected and that this gap is large enough to expose millions of users to malware in a short period of time.
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The news
Tweets containing malicious links are more likely to contain negative emotions
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Vaccines, climate change... all are complex issues that, however, must be clarified through scientific literature.
However, according to the study The Politicization of Health and Science: Role of Political Cues in Shaping the Beliefs of the Vaccine-Autism Link, by S. Mo Jones-Jang and Chris Noland, the political opinion It would be the source of that clarification for a part of the electorate.
Donald Trump and vaccines
Ordinary people do not have the ability or motivation to assess health risks on their own. Therefore, we are forced to trust the experts. The problem is that we often assume that our political leaders are always correct and accurate.
When it comes to the false claim that vaccines cause autism, Republicans tend to be more swayed by donald trump than by scientists, according to the aforementioned study.
In the study, 648 participants were asked to carefully read an article on the controversy between vaccines and autism. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of four different versions of the article: one that cited Donald Trump claiming there was no vaccine-autism link, one by a scientist claiming there was no vaccine-autism link autism, and two others in the opposite direction, also with Trump and a scientist, that is, there was a link between vaccines and autism.
The researchers found that Democratic and independent participants tended to align their beliefs about vaccines with the scientist's opinion, regardless of whether the scientist was pro- or anti-vaccine, but were not influenced by Trump's opinion. Among the Republican participants, however, Trump's opinion had a greater impact than the scientist's opinion.
The key finding is that political leaders easily influence partisans on any issue, including beliefs about vaccines, although political leaders' opinions are not necessarily accurate or scientific.
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The news
In the United States, there are people who trust the opinions of politicians more than scientific evidence
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Hay resultados matemáticos cuyo descubrimiento parece requerir una intuición especial. Ahora, unos algoritmos podrían sustituir a los genios matemáticos.
Utilizan la topografía y las corrientes ascendentes nocturnas para volar alto y rápido.
El proyecto SAMI, que estudia cómo giran, crecen, se agrupan y mueren las galaxias, acaba de publicar su tercer y último conjunto de datos, basado en siete años de observaciones.
As if we were a gusiluz, as if, paraphrasing Paulo Coelho, we all shine with our own light, the body of a human being emits visible light and the intensity of the light rises and falls throughout the day (this visible light differs from infrared radiation, an invisible form of light, which comes from heat bodily).
But why don't we see it? Because it is 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive.
All creatures do it
In fact, we are not facing a human superpower: Virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is believed to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.
To learn more about this weak visible light, Japanese researchers used extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20s were placed bare-chested in front of cameras in complete darkness in light-proof rooms for 20 minutes every three hours from 10 am to 10 pm for three days.
The researchers found that the body's brightness rose and fell throughout the day, with its lowest point at 10 a.m. and its peak at 4 p.m. These findings suggest that there is light emission related to body clocks, probably due to how our metabolic rates fluctuate throughout the day.
Besides, The faces shone brighter than the rest of the body.. This may be because faces are more tanned than the rest of the body, as they are exposed to more sunlight. The pigment behind skin color, melanin, has fluorescent components that could amplify the body's tiny light production.
Since this faint light is related to the body's metabolism, this finding suggests that cameras that can detect the faint emissions could help detect medical conditions.
Further proof that most of what surrounds us is invisible to us, and that we must use science, and also the measuring instruments created thanks to technology, to establish models that allow us to get a little closer to the pale reflection of reality:
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The news
We all emit light, but a thousand times less than what the human eye is capable of capturing.
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
According to a new study, published in the journal Public Understanding of Science, stereotypes about psychedelics and their users can affect people's perception of scientists.
Therefore, researchers who admit to using psychedelic substances tend to be seen as less upright compared to their abstinent counterparts. Almost a thousand volunteers participated in the study.
Stereotypes in three studies
The study was further subdivided into three studies. In the first two, participants read a short story about a scientist who was conducting research on psychedelic substances. The researchers found that participants considered the scientist to have less scientific integrity when the story mentioned that he had extensive personal experience with taking psychedelics.
All in all, knowledge of the scientist's substance use did not affect evaluations of the quality of his research or its perceived value.
In a third study, Participants were asked to rate the quality of research presented at a “Science of Psychedelics” conference.. The conference was described as including psychedelic-related social activities, such as a shamanic drum circle and a group meditation session, or it was described as including more conventional social activities, such as a tour of a local brewery. The conference was also held in a spacious hall with colored light installations, while the latest version of the conference was staged in an ordinary university auditorium.
Participants tended to view the quality of the research at the conference as lower when it included psychedelic activities and images.
The findings indicate that “both self-admitted personal use of psychedelics and association with the psychedelic subculture can negatively affect the public perception of those researchers (in terms of their integrity) and/or their findings (in terms of their validity) at different rates.” degrees".
Ironically, This stereotype mostly affects people who have no first-hand experience with psychedelic substances..
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The news
Scientists who take psychedelic substances are perceived as having less integrity than those who do not.
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
In The ages of globalization We are going to find out the pros and cons of globalization, and also that it is in some ways inevitable (and that we should try to minimize its damage because its benefits are too important).
Among other issues, its author, Jeffrey D. Sachs, addresses some thorny questions such as: what have been the main drivers of change on a global scale? How do geography, technology and institutions interact? How are changes from one region dispersed to others?
The seven ages
To trace the history of globalization, Sachs describes seven distinct ages:
- Paleolithic Age: our prehistory, when humans were still searching for food.
- Neolithic Age: when agriculture began.
- Equestrian Age: when the domestication of the horse and the development of proto-writing enabled long-distance trade and communications.
- classic age: when the first great empires emerged.
- Oceanic Age: when empires began to expand across the oceans and beyond the usual ecological zones of the homeland.
- Industrial Age: when some societies, led by Great Britain, ushered in the industrial economy.
- Digital Age: our own time, in which almost everyone is instantly interconnected through digital data.
Sachs's book is a marvel if what we want is to understand the history of humanity as an inevitable process towards global cooperation, and therefore has been a source of inspiration for entries for Xataka Ciencia such as This is how spectacular the growth in the world's urbanization rate has been.
The ages of globalization: Geography, technology and institutions (No collection)
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The news
Books that inspire us: 'The Ages of Globalization' by Jeffrey D. Sachs
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
The world population has not grown especially until very recently, and the same has happened with the rate of urbanization, that is, the proportion of the world's population that resides in urban areas.
These data come from the Global Environmental History Database or History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE), spanning 12,000 years.
Population rate
- 10,000 – 3,000 BC: The estimated population grew from 2 million to 45, with an annual growth rate of only 0.04 percent.
- 3000 – 1000 BC: 0.05 percent annual growth rate.
- 1000 BC – 1500 AD: 0.06 percent.
- 1500 – 1800: 0.25 percent. The world population multiplies by two, from 461 million to 990 million.
- 1800 – 2000: 0.92 percent. The population multiplies by six, from 990 million to 6,145 million.
Urbanization rate
The urbanization rate runs quite even with the population rate. Even in year 1, most of humanity lived in small agricultural settlements, and only 1% lived in cities.
In the year 1000, 3 percent lived in cities. In the 1500s, 3.6 percent. As explained Jeffrey D. Sachs in his book The ages of globalization:
As late as 1900, the global urbanization rate was only 16 percent. It is not until the 20th century that more than half of humanity then lives in urban environments (an estimated 55 percent in 2020).
That is to say, it is right now that we can affirm that, for the first time in the history of humanity, there are more people living in cities. And probably, before the end of this century, the percentage will have skyrocketed.
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The news
This is how spectacular the growth in the world's urbanization rate has been
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.