Fundamental structures of dynamic social networks

Social systems are in a constant state of flux with dynamics spanning from minute-by-minute changes to patterns present on the timescale of years. Accurate models of social dynamics are important for understanding spreading of influence or diseases, formation of friendships, and the productivity of teams. While there has been much progress on understanding complex networks over the past decade, little is known about the regularities governing the micro-dynamics of social networks. Here we explore the dynamic social network of a densely-connected population of approximately 1000 individuals and their interactions in the network of real-world person-to-person proximity measured via Bluetooth, as well as their telecommunication networks, online social media contacts, geo-location, and demographic data. These high-resolution data allow us to observe social groups directly, rendering community detection unnecessary. Starting from 5-minute time slices we uncover dynamic social structures expressed on multiple timescales. On the hourly timescale, we find that gatherings are fluid, with members coming and going, but organized via a stable core of individuals. Each core represents a social context. Cores exhibit a pattern of recurring meetings across weeks and months, each with varying degrees of regularity. Taken together, these findings provide a powerful simplification of the social network, where cores represent fundamental structures expressed with strong temporal and spatial regularity. Using this framework, we explore the complex interplay between social and geospatial behavior, documenting how the formation of cores are preceded by coordination behavior in the communication networks, and demonstrating that social behavior can be predicted with high precision.Comment: Main Manuscript: 16 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary Information: 39 pages, 34 figure

Plasmodesmata “in Communicado”

Cell-to-cell communication is fundamental to multicellular life. For this to occur effectively there must be pathways and dynamic networks for communication. These might depend upon electrical or chemical signals or the mass transfer of molecules between adjacent cells. Molecular communication occurs either via an extra-cellular pathway or through physical structures, called plasmodesmata, that connect the cytoplasm of neighboring cells. Plasmodesmata bridge the rigid physical barrier presented by the cell wall to extend the symplasm from single cells to tissue domains that have functional importance for tissue growth, development, and defense. Although recent years have seen advances in our knowledge of the physical nature of PD, the trafficked molecules, and of the wider processes they affect, our knowledge of PD structure and function is still relatively rudimentary. This article will consider the technical/experimental difficulties hindering PD research and suggest priorities in the future research effort that might advance the field at a significantly faster rate

Unreduced Dynamic Complexity: Towards the Unified Science of Intelligent Communication Networks and Software

Operation of autonomic communication networks with complicated user-oriented functions should be described as unreduced many-body interaction process. The latter gives rise to complex-dynamic behaviour including fractally structured hierarchy of chaotically changing realisations. We recall the main results of the universal science of complexity (http://cogprints.org/4471/) based on the unreduced interaction problem solution and its application to various real systems, from nanobiosystems (http://cogprints.org/4527/) and quantum devices to intelligent networks (http://cogprints.org/4114/) and emerging consciousness (http://cogprints.org/3857/). We concentrate then on applications to autonomic communication leading to fundamentally substantiated, exact science of intelligent communication and software. It aims at unification of the whole diversity of complex information system behaviour, similar to the conventional, "Newtonian" science order for sequential, regular models of system dynamics. Basic principles and first applications of the unified science of complex-dynamic communication networks and software are outlined to demonstrate its advantages and emerging practical perspectives

Mixbiotic society measures: Comparison of organizational structures based on communication simulation

The philosophical world has proposed the concept of "mixbiotic society," in which individuals with freedom and diverse values mix and mingle to recognize their respective "fundamental incapability" each other and sublimate into solidarity, toward solving the issues of social isolation and fragmentation. Based on this concept, the mixbiotic society measures have been proposed to evaluate dynamic communication patterns with reference to classification in cellular automata and particle reaction-diffusion that simulate living phenomena. In this paper, we applied these measures to five typologies of organizational structure (Red: impulsive, Amber: adaptive, Orange: achievement, Green: pluralistic, and Teal: evolutionary) and evaluated their features. Specifically, we formed star, tree, tree+jumpers, tree+more jumpers, and small-world type networks corresponding to each of five typologies, conducted communication simulations on these networks, and calculated values for mixbiotic society measures. The results showed that Teal organization has the highest value of the mixism measure among mixbiotic society measures, i.e., it balances similarity (mixing) and dissimilarity (mingling) in communication, and is living and mixbiotic between order and chaos. Measures other than mixism showed that in Teal organization, information is not concentrated in a central leader and that communication takes place among various members. This evaluation of organizational structures shows that the mixbiotic society measures is also useful for assessing organizational change. In the future, these measures will be used not only in business organizations, but also in digital democratic organizations and platform cooperatives in conjunction with information technology.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figure

Organic Design of Massively Distributed Systems: A Complex Networks Perspective

The vision of Organic Computing addresses challenges that arise in the design of future information systems that are comprised of numerous, heterogeneous, resource-constrained and error-prone components or devices. Here, the notion organic particularly highlights the idea that, in order to be manageable, such systems should exhibit self-organization, self-adaptation and self-healing characteristics similar to those of biological systems. In recent years, the principles underlying many of the interesting characteristics of natural systems have been investigated from the perspective of complex systems science, particularly using the conceptual framework of statistical physics and statistical mechanics. In this article, we review some of the interesting relations between statistical physics and networked systems and discuss applications in the engineering of organic networked computing systems with predictable, quantifiable and controllable self-* properties.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, preprint of submission to Informatik-Spektrum published by Springe

Names, addresses and identities in ambient networks

Ambient Networks interconnect independent realms that may use different local network technologies and may belong to different administrative or legal entities. At the core of these advanced internetworking concepts is a flexible naming architecture based on dynamic indirections between names, addresses and identities. This paper gives an overview of the connectivity abstractions of Ambient Networks and then describes its naming architecture in detail, comparing and contrasting them to other related next-generation network architectures

Complex Dynamics of Autonomous Communication Networks and the Intelligent Communication Paradigm

Dynamics of arbitrary communication system is analysed as unreduced interaction process. The applied generalised, universally nonperturbative method of effective potential reveals the phenomenon of dynamic multivaluedness of competing system configurations forced to permanently replace each other in a causally random order, which leads to universally defined dynamical chaos, complexity, fractality, self-organisation, and adaptability. We demonstrate the origin of huge, exponentially high efficiency of the unreduced, complex network dynamics and specify the universal symmetry of complexity as the fundamental guiding principle for creation and control of such qualitatively new kind of networks and devices. The emerging intelligent communication paradigm and its practical realisation in the form of knowledge-based networks involve the properties of true, unreduced intelligence and consciousness (http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003857/) appearing in the complex (multivalued) network dynamics and results