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The Metaverse is rapidly reshaping the understanding of tourism, yet the public perception of this new domain remains largely uncharted empirically. This paper aims to build on the technology acceptance model (TAM) and diffusion of innovations theory (DIT) to fill this gap, offering crucial insights that could inform scholars and practitioners in both the tourism and technology sectors.

Using a big-data approach, the authors applied machine learning to scrape comments made by social media users on recent popular posts or videos related to tourism in the Metaverse from three prominent social media platforms. The cleaning process narrowed down 15,461 comments to 2,650, which were then analysed using thematic, emotion and sentiment analysis techniques.

The thematic analysis revealed that virtual tourism evokes a complex range of public beliefs. While many express awe and excitement toward its immersive capabilities, others remain sceptical about authenticity compared to physical travel. Additional themes show people draw comparisons to real-world tourism, discuss technology’s role and note educational value and novelty. However, some comments raise concerns about potential societal harms, exploitation and mental health impacts. Sentiment analysis found over half of the comments positive, though some were negative. Emotion analysis showed contentment, happiness and excitement as most frequent, though sadness, worry and loneliness also featured. Overall, perceptions of Metaverse tourism encompass enthusiasm yet substantial ambivalence.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to comprehensively analyse public discussions on Metaverse tourism. It takes TAM and Rogers’s DIT a step further and provides fresh insights into how these theories can be employed in the emerging field of Metaverse tourism. The themes revealed new conceptual insights into multidimensional factors shaping public beliefs about Metaverse tourism and thus informing scholarly research on virtual interaction and technology acceptance regarding Metaverse tourism. In addition, the results can help tourism providers, platforms and marketers address salient public beliefs and sentiments/attitudes in developing marketing offerings, experiences and communications. Over time, this analysis methodology can be used to track the evolving public perceptions of Metaverse tourism.

By a thorough bibliometric examination of the area through time, this paper analyses the research landscape of metaverse in education. It is an effort that is focused on the metaverse research trends, academic production and conceptual focus of scientific publications.

The Web of Science (WoS) database was explored for information containing research articles and associated publications that met the requirements. For a thorough analysis of the trend, thematic focus and scientific output in the subject of metaverse in education, a bibliometric technique was used to analyse the data. The bibliometrix package of R software, specifically the biblioshiny interface of R-studio, was used to conduct the analysis.

The analysis of the metaverse in education spanning from 1995 to the beginning of 2023 reveals a dynamic and evolving landscape. Notably, the field has experienced robust annual growth, with a peak of publications in 2022. Citation analysis highlights seminal works, with Dionisio et al. (2013) leading discussions on the transition of virtual worlds into intricate digital cultures. Thematic mapping identifies dominant themes such as “system,” “augmented reality” and “information technology,” indicating a strong technological focus. Surprisingly, China emerges as a leading contributor with significant citation impact, emphasising the global nature of metaverse research. The thematic map suggests ongoing developments in performance and future aspects, emphasising the essential role of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Overall, the findings depict a vibrant and multidimensional metaverse in education, poised for continued exploration and innovation.

The study is among the pioneers that provide a comprehensive bibliometric analysis in the area of metaverse in education which will guide the novice researchers to identify the unexplored areas.

This study aims to explore the application scenarios of metaverse offices in organizations, including immersive work experiences, weak social networks and virtual meetings. Based on the exploration of this application scenario, this study discusses four levels of organizational change that will be brought about by the future metaverse office, such as the inter-enterprise ecological collaboration model, distributed autonomous organization, flexible leadership and individual belongingness. The metaverse office has some special advantages over traditional office models, but the metaverse office still raises some issues, such as privacy, security, addiction, equity and usability. These issues brake the widespread adoption of metaverse technologies. The study recommends that researchers take these issues into account in future metaverse research and development.

This study surveys the relevant literature by means of a literature review in order to analyze how metaverse technology can be applied to teleworking. Two databases including Web of Science (https://www.webofscience.com/) and Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) were selected for this study. Keywords such as “teleworking and metaverse” were used, and 18 publications were found to be relevant to the study. After excluding duplicates, less relevant and older literature, only 14 articles could be used as references for this study. Based on the exploration of this application scenario, this study discusses four levels of organizational change and issues that will be brought about by the metaverse office of the future.

It presents the application scenarios of the metaverse office in organizations, including immersive work experience, weak social networking and virtual meetings.

The pandemic triggers a desire for contactless working. The three main applications of the metaverse office also have a practical value which has been proven in some high-tech companies. It is foreseeable that an efficient, electronic and personalized office model will be enthusiastically adopted by society. Metaverse office will gradually step into people's view in the future.

The concept of the metaverse office has rarely been touched upon by theoretical research, although the technology is gradually becoming known. Even its application to teleworking has only recently been reached by some organizations.

The phase angle (PhA) measured by bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is associated with nutritional status and cellular health, and it is a clinically important parameter used to assess the risk of various diseases. It remains unclear whether PhA is associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the BIA parameter PhA and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

This cross-sectional study was conducted with 300 adults aged 20–64 years (NAFLD: 196, normal: 104). Some biochemical findings of the participants were collected, and whole-body and segmental PhAs were measured using Tanita (MC-780) at 50 kHz.

The PhA values of the whole body (p = 0.003), trunk (p < 0.001), right and left legs (p < 0.001 for both) were found to significantly differ according to the degrees of fatty liver. It was observed that the highest PhA values were in normal individuals. Logistic regression analysis showed that the reduction in PhAs of the whole body (p = 0.038), right (p = 0.019) and left legs (p = 0.049) and trunk (p = 0.001) after adjusting for all confounding factors increased the risk of NAFLD. Additionally, whole body PhA was significantly associated with age (year, p = 0.02), BMI (kg/m²; p < 0.001), fat mass (kg; p = 0.001), fat mass (%; p < 0.001), albumin (g/L; p < 0.001) and CRP (mg/dL; p = 0.001).

The results of this study showed that PhA can be used in the management of NAFLD. To identify potential mechanisms in the relationship between the angle of the liver and NAFLD, large-scale prospective studies are needed.