54,226 research outputs found
Causal Inference in Disease Spread across a Heterogeneous Social System
Diffusion processes are governed by external triggers and internal dynamics
in complex systems. Timely and cost-effective control of infectious disease
spread critically relies on uncovering the underlying diffusion mechanisms,
which is challenging due to invisible causality between events and their
time-evolving intensity. We infer causal relationships between infections and
quantify the reflexivity of a meta-population, the level of feedback on event
occurrences by its internal dynamics (likelihood of a regional outbreak
triggered by previous cases). These are enabled by our new proposed model, the
Latent Influence Point Process (LIPP) which models disease spread by
incorporating macro-level internal dynamics of meta-populations based on human
mobility. We analyse 15-year dengue cases in Queensland, Australia. From our
causal inference, outbreaks are more likely driven by statewide global
diffusion over time, leading to complex behavior of disease spread. In terms of
reflexivity, precursory growth and symmetric decline in populous regions is
attributed to slow but persistent feedback on preceding outbreaks via
inter-group dynamics, while abrupt growth but sharp decline in peripheral areas
is led by rapid but inconstant feedback via intra-group dynamics. Our proposed
model reveals probabilistic causal relationships between discrete events based
on intra- and inter-group dynamics and also covers direct and indirect
diffusion processes (contact-based and vector-borne disease transmissions).Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1711.0635
Quantifying knowledge exchange in R&D networks: A data-driven model
We propose a model that reflects two important processes in R&D activities of
firms, the formation of R&D alliances and the exchange of knowledge as a result
of these collaborations. In a data-driven approach, we analyze two large-scale
data sets extracting unique information about 7500 R&D alliances and 5200
patent portfolios of firms. This data is used to calibrate the model parameters
for network formation and knowledge exchange. We obtain probabilities for
incumbent and newcomer firms to link to other incumbents or newcomers which are
able to reproduce the topology of the empirical R&D network. The position of
firms in a knowledge space is obtained from their patents using two different
classification schemes, IPC in 8 dimensions and ISI-OST-INPI in 35 dimensions.
Our dynamics of knowledge exchange assumes that collaborating firms approach
each other in knowledge space at a rate for an alliance duration .
Both parameters are obtained in two different ways, by comparing knowledge
distances from simulations and empirics and by analyzing the collaboration
efficiency . This is a new measure, that takes also in
account the effort of firms to maintain concurrent alliances, and is evaluated
via extensive computer simulations. We find that R&D alliances have a duration
of around two years and that the subsequent knowledge exchange occurs at a very
low rate. Hence, a firm's position in the knowledge space is rather a
determinant than a consequence of its R&D alliances. From our data-driven
approach we also find model configurations that can be both realistic and
optimized with respect to the collaboration efficiency .
Effective policies, as suggested by our model, would incentivize shorter R&D
alliances and higher knowledge exchange rates.Comment: 35 pages, 10 figure
Networks and the epidemiology of infectious disease
The science of networks has revolutionised research into the dynamics of interacting elements. It could be argued that epidemiology in particular has embraced the potential of network theory more than any other discipline. Here we review the growing body of research concerning the spread of infectious diseases on networks, focusing on the interplay between network theory and epidemiology. The review is split into four main sections, which examine: the types of network relevant to epidemiology; the multitude of ways these networks can be characterised; the statistical methods that can be applied to infer the epidemiological parameters on a realised network; and finally simulation and analytical methods to determine epidemic dynamics on a given network. Given the breadth of areas covered and the ever-expanding number of publications, a comprehensive review of all work is impossible. Instead, we provide a personalised overview into the areas of network epidemiology that have seen the greatest progress in recent years or have the greatest potential to provide novel insights. As such, considerable importance is placed on analytical approaches and statistical methods which are both rapidly expanding fields. Throughout this review we restrict our attention to epidemiological issues
Quantification and Comparison of Degree Distributions in Complex Networks
The degree distribution is an important characteristic of complex networks.
In many applications, quantification of degree distribution in the form of a
fixed-length feature vector is a necessary step. On the other hand, we often
need to compare the degree distribution of two given networks and extract the
amount of similarity between the two distributions. In this paper, we propose a
novel method for quantification of the degree distributions in complex
networks. Based on this quantification method,a new distance function is also
proposed for degree distributions, which captures the differences in the
overall structure of the two given distributions. The proposed method is able
to effectively compare networks even with different scales, and outperforms the
state of the art methods considerably, with respect to the accuracy of the
distance function
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