Features – Dr. Zhiwen Hu

Research at the edge of computational social science

We use lexicography, historiography, information forensics, meta-analysis and disciplinics to study structures and dynamics of real-world in a human context.

Determinants of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance

The landscape of public opinion transmission on vaccines-related topics. The seven different colored dots represent the seven main topics. The lines between them represent the mutual influence between them, and the density of the lines represents the degree of influence. Most Chinese believe that the vaccine is cheaper than previously thought, while some claim they could not afford it for their entire family. The Chinese are inclined to be positive to side effects over time and proud of China’s development regarding vaccines. Nevertheless, they have a collective misunderstanding about inactivated vaccines, insisting that inactivated vaccines are safer than other vaccines. Reflecting on those collective responses, the unfolding determinants of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance provide illuminating benchmarks for vaccine-promoting policy-makings.

The Psic Effect

The Psic Effect of linguistic steganography. The term “Psic Effect” was coined by Zhongliang Yang and Zhiwen Hu. Herein, ‘psic’ is a blend of ‘perception’ and the Latin ‘sic’ (‘in such a way’). The Psic effect, which is often linked to both perceptual-imperceptibility and statistical-imperceptibility, is a conflict phenomenon of generative steganography –– the quality of the generated carrier is gradually getting worse with the increase of the embedding rate, whereas its anti-steganalysis ability is gradually increasing. The abscissa represents the average number of bits embedded in per word (bpw). The orange line indicates the calculated mean perplexity (the smaller, the better) of these generated steganographic sentences. The size and transparency of the dots represent the average human score (the larger, the better), with the specific score at the top. The blue line represents the steganographic detection accuracy (the lower, the better) under different embedding rates.

The hidden burden of stigma

**Dynamic interest of stigmatized monikers against Chinese in typical territories with low cumulative rates**. This illustration unveils the geographical interest of stigmatized monikers in 13 typical territories -Egypt, Greece, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Finland, Russia, Philippines, Denmark, Vietnam, Nepal and Mexico -between 1 January 2020 and 26 February 2020. The median volumes of the corresponding search queries facsimile the trend of collective behavioral propensities over time. Comparatively, some stigmatized monikers against Chinese have been enjoyed with very high frequencies after 16 January. The substantial pattern of high consistent curve indicates that negative perceptual bias is observed in the perception of natural origin of COVID-19 in the public.

150 years of Nature

The chronological account of the dedicated editors-in-chief of Nature is a faithful mirror of this renowned “weekly illustrated journal of science”. The scientific fame curves between 1859 and 2008 are facsimiled according to the n-gram frequency in the Google Books Corpus, and those after 2008 are obtained from the Google Scholar search engine due to the coverage of the Google Books n-gram database. Our findings indicate that Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer (red), Sir Richard Arman Gregory (orange), Lionel John Farnham Brimble (blue), Arthur J. V. Gale (green), Sir John Royden Maddox (cyan), David Dai Davies (magenta) and Philip Campbell (black) enjoyed fame and reputation during their tenures, and the collective memory of these unsung journalists has both short-term and long-term components.

Blind Guci Musicians in Ancient Chinese Imperial Courts

**Guci art and blind court musicians, each shedding light on the significance of the other, appear in literature from Chinese antiquity.** Those blind pioneers played a role in epic history while other blind people lived rather constricted lives. They are credited with having “magical auditory and tactile sense, prodigious memory, keen discernment and proficiency in temperament” in historical paradigms. Unfortunately, those blind artists have contributed greatly to the development of Chinese culture, especially in music – but hitherto their work has not yet been properly valued. We recover the fascinating ‘missing history’ with detailed extensive documentation, and suggest some reasons why these records and bias in later accounts disappeared from view.

Listen to the bimillennial-years Chinese rap here A precious audio snippet featured the original record of the radio programme “Yongkang Guci” on August 28, 2009. (26 downloads)

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.“

— Albert Schweitzer (Nobel Laureate of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize)