News Room

Visual cues are overtaking the text in their messaging in defining online conversations. A new study published by INFORMS, an international association for operations research and analytics professionals, and conducted by researchers from the University of Colorado, the New Economics School in Russia and the University of Washington, found a strong link between the visual portrayal of a brand in online imagery created by consumers and the larger brand perceptions.

The "multiechelon inventory optimization" model turned an inventory management process that previously relied on "rule-of-thumb heuristics and spreadsheets" into one where planners accept an algorithm's automatically generated inventory targets 99.5% of the time, the researchers said.

For many Americans, “Hey, Siri, type a text,” or “Alexa, turn up the volume” have become common phrases as voice assistants and smart speakers have become more popular. Now, artificial intelligence and voice tech experts predict that consumers will be issuing similar commands in retail spaces if doing so helps reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

Paul Delamater, assistant professor in the Department of Geography at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Julie Swann, head of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University, have run models about the coronavirus spread in the state and found it's much more extensive than reported but still nowhere near enough to lessen restrictions aimed at limiting it.