262 research outputs found
Core Decomposition in Multilayer Networks: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications
Multilayer networks are a powerful paradigm to model complex systems, where
multiple relations occur between the same entities. Despite the keen interest
in a variety of tasks, algorithms, and analyses in this type of network, the
problem of extracting dense subgraphs has remained largely unexplored so far.
In this work we study the problem of core decomposition of a multilayer
network. The multilayer context is much challenging as no total order exists
among multilayer cores; rather, they form a lattice whose size is exponential
in the number of layers. In this setting we devise three algorithms which
differ in the way they visit the core lattice and in their pruning techniques.
We then move a step forward and study the problem of extracting the
inner-most (also known as maximal) cores, i.e., the cores that are not
dominated by any other core in terms of their core index in all the layers.
Inner-most cores are typically orders of magnitude less than all the cores.
Motivated by this, we devise an algorithm that effectively exploits the
maximality property and extracts inner-most cores directly, without first
computing a complete decomposition.
Finally, we showcase the multilayer core-decomposition tool in a variety of
scenarios and problems. We start by considering the problem of densest-subgraph
extraction in multilayer networks. We introduce a definition of multilayer
densest subgraph that trades-off between high density and number of layers in
which the high density holds, and exploit multilayer core decomposition to
approximate this problem with quality guarantees. As further applications, we
show how to utilize multilayer core decomposition to speed-up the extraction of
frequent cross-graph quasi-cliques and to generalize the community-search
problem to the multilayer setting
Exploring the Evolution of Node Neighborhoods in Dynamic Networks
Dynamic Networks are a popular way of modeling and studying the behavior of
evolving systems. However, their analysis constitutes a relatively recent
subfield of Network Science, and the number of available tools is consequently
much smaller than for static networks. In this work, we propose a method
specifically designed to take advantage of the longitudinal nature of dynamic
networks. It characterizes each individual node by studying the evolution of
its direct neighborhood, based on the assumption that the way this neighborhood
changes reflects the role and position of the node in the whole network. For
this purpose, we define the concept of \textit{neighborhood event}, which
corresponds to the various transformations such groups of nodes can undergo,
and describe an algorithm for detecting such events. We demonstrate the
interest of our method on three real-world networks: DBLP, LastFM and Enron. We
apply frequent pattern mining to extract meaningful information from temporal
sequences of neighborhood events. This results in the identification of
behavioral trends emerging in the whole network, as well as the individual
characterization of specific nodes. We also perform a cluster analysis, which
reveals that, in all three networks, one can distinguish two types of nodes
exhibiting different behaviors: a very small group of active nodes, whose
neighborhood undergo diverse and frequent events, and a very large group of
stable nodes
Mining (maximal) span-cores from temporal networks
When analyzing temporal networks, a fundamental task is the identification of
dense structures (i.e., groups of vertices that exhibit a large number of
links), together with their temporal span (i.e., the period of time for which
the high density holds). We tackle this task by introducing a notion of
temporal core decomposition where each core is associated with its span: we
call such cores span-cores.
As the total number of time intervals is quadratic in the size of the
temporal domain under analysis, the total number of span-cores is quadratic
in as well. Our first contribution is an algorithm that, by exploiting
containment properties among span-cores, computes all the span-cores
efficiently. Then, we focus on the problem of finding only the maximal
span-cores, i.e., span-cores that are not dominated by any other span-core by
both the coreness property and the span. We devise a very efficient algorithm
that exploits theoretical findings on the maximality condition to directly
compute the maximal ones without computing all span-cores.
Experimentation on several real-world temporal networks confirms the
efficiency and scalability of our methods. Applications on temporal networks,
gathered by a proximity-sensing infrastructure recording face-to-face
interactions in schools, highlight the relevance of the notion of (maximal)
span-core in analyzing social dynamics and detecting/correcting anomalies in
the data
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