How did people change their behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic? In an article recently published in EPJ Data Science, Daniela Perrotta and co-authors illustrate how timely data collection via Facebook, along with appropriate survey designs and statistical methods, can help answer this question.
Can removal of woody materials from forests for renewable bioenergy production be environmentally sustainable? A recent review in Energy, Sustainability and Society demonstrates that a wide range of environmental and social values can be protected when harvesting forest biomass, such as harvest residues, salvaged sub-merchantable trees, diseased or dead trees, and whole-tree thinnings.
Historic legal deeds are one of the most abundant resources in British archives, yet we know a surprisingly little amount about how they are manufactured. In a recent article in Heritage Science, numerous parchments were studied, indicating a preference for using sheepskin parchment. Intriguingly, it seems this may have been to deter fraud. Sean Paul Doherty discusses the findings.
A new study published in EPJ Data Science shows that fans of beyond-mainstream music, such as hard rock and ambient, may receive less accurate recommendations than fans of mainstream music, such as pop. A team of researchers at Know-Center Graz, Graz University of Technology, University of Innsbruck, University of Utrecht, and Johannes Kepler University Linz analysed the characteristics of beyond-mainstream music listeners to better understand the needs of this underserved user group.
What exactly makes memes transmitted through online social networks go viral? Research published recently in Applied Network Science uses machine learning techniques to examine and predict the success of a meme. Furthermore, these memes could provide a looking glass into the thoughts of internet users in the time of COVID-19. Nóra Balogh, a co-author of the study, talks about the findings.