Sarah Seraj

University of Texas at Austin | UT · Department of Psychology

The words that people use in everyday life tell us about their psychological states: their beliefs, emotions, thinking habits, lived experiences, social relationships, and personalities. From the time of Freud’s writings about “slips of the tongue” to the early days of computer-based text analysis, researchers across the social sciences have amasse...

Linguistic features of a message necessarily shape its persuasive appeal. However, studies have largely examined the effect of linguistic features on persuasion in isolation and do not incorporate properties of language that are often involved in real-world persuasion. As such, little is known about the key verbal dimensions of persuasion or the re...

Most scientists agree that climate change is the largest existential threat of our time. Despite the magnitude of the threat, surprisingly few climate-related discussions take place on social media. What factors drive online discussions about climate change? In this study, we examined the occurrence of Reddit discussions around three types of clima...

p>Fine particle air pollution (PM_2.5) is the largest global environmental risk factor for ill-health and is implicated in >7% of all human deaths. Improved air quality is a key policy goal for cities, yet in-situ PM_2.5 measurements are missing for >50% of the world’s urban population. Here, we apply satellite remote sensing to...

Significance By analyzing language on the social media platform Reddit, we tracked people’s social, cognitive, and emotional lives as they dealt with the breakup of a close intimate relationship. Language markers can detect impending relationship breakups up to 3 mo before they occur, with continued psychological aftereffects lasting 6 mo after the...

The Indian national capital, Delhi, routinely experiences some of the world's highest urban particulate matter concentrations. While fine particulate matter (PM2.5) mass concentrations in Delhi are at least an order of magnitude higher than in many western cities, the particle number (PN) concentrations are not similarly elevated. Here we report on...

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns for many regarding personal and public health implications, financial security and economic stability. Alongside many other unprecedented challenges, there are increasing concerns over social isolation and mental health. We introduce \textit{Expressive Interviewing}--an interview-style conversationa...

The Indian national capital, Delhi, routinely experiences some of the world's highest urban particulate matter concentrations. While fine particulate matter (PM2.5) mass concentrations in Delhi are at least an order of magnitude higher than in many western cities, the particle number (PN) concentrations are not similarly elevated. Here we report on...

Delhi, India, routinely experiences some of the world's highest urban particulate matter concentrations. We established the Delhi Aerosol Supersite study to provide long-term characterization of the ambient submicron aerosol composition in Delhi. Here we report on 1.25 years of highly time-resolved speciated submicron particulate matter (PM1) data,...

Delhi, India routinely experiences some of the world's highest urban particulate matter concentrations. We established the Delhi Aerosol Supersite campaign to provide long-term characterization of the ambient submicron aerosol composition in Delhi. Here we report on 1.25 years of highly time resolved speciated submicron particulate matter (PM1) dat...

Engineers often contribute to projects that impact many people and have ethical implications. Some may even move to a career of political advocacy and policy-making. However, most engineering curricula have a strongly technical focus and do not require students to think critically about ethical issues related to engineering. To bridge this gap, we...

Well-defined palladium−gold nanoparticles (PdAuNPs) with randomly alloyed structures and broadly tunable compositions were studied in catalytic nitrite (NO2−) reduction. The catalysts were synthesized using a microwave-assisted polyol coreduction method. PdxAu100−xNPs with systematically varied compositions (x = 18−83) were supported on amorphous s...