141,325 research outputs found
How women organize social networks different from men
Superpositions of social networks, such as communication, friendship, or
trade networks, are called multiplex networks, forming the structural backbone
of human societies. Novel datasets now allow quantification and exploration of
multiplex networks. Here we study gender-specific differences of a multiplex
network from a complete behavioral dataset of an online-game society of about
300,000 players. On the individual level females perform better economically
and are less risk-taking than males. Males reciprocate friendship requests from
females faster than vice versa and hesitate to reciprocate hostile actions of
females. On the network level females have more communication partners, who are
less connected than partners of males. We find a strong homophily effect for
females and higher clustering coefficients of females in trade and attack
networks. Cooperative links between males are under-represented, reflecting
competition for resources among males. These results confirm quantitatively
that females and males manage their social networks in substantially different
ways.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure
From Network Structure to Dynamics and Back Again: Relating dynamical stability and connection topology in biological complex systems
The recent discovery of universal principles underlying many complex networks
occurring across a wide range of length scales in the biological world has
spurred physicists in trying to understand such features using techniques from
statistical physics and non-linear dynamics. In this paper, we look at a few
examples of biological networks to see how similar questions can come up in
very different contexts. We review some of our recent work that looks at how
network structure (e.g., its connection topology) can dictate the nature of its
dynamics, and conversely, how dynamical considerations constrain the network
structure. We also see how networks occurring in nature can evolve to modular
configurations as a result of simultaneously trying to satisfy multiple
structural and dynamical constraints. The resulting optimal networks possess
hubs and have heterogeneous degree distribution similar to those seen in
biological systems.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Proceedings of "Dynamics On and Of
Complex Networks", ECSS'07 Satellite Workshop, Dresden, Oct 1-5, 200
Viral Networks: Connecting Digital Humanities and Medical History
This volume of original essays explores the power of network thinking and analysis for humanities research. Contributing authors are all scholars whose research focuses on a medical history topic—from the Black Death in fourteenth-century Provence to psychiatric hospitals in twentieth-century Alabama. The chapters take readers through a variety of situations in which scholars must determine if network analysis is right for their research; and, if the answer is yes, what the possibilities are for implementation. Along the way, readers will find practical tips on identifying an appropriate network to analyze, finding the best way to apply network analysis, and choosing the right tools for data visualization. All the chapters in this volume grew out of the 2018 Viral Networks workshop, hosted by the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine (NIH), funded by the Office of Digital Humanities of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and organized by Virginia Tech
The Contagion Effects of Repeated Activation in Social Networks
Demonstrations, protests, riots, and shifts in public opinion respond to the
coordinating potential of communication networks. Digital technologies have
turned interpersonal networks into massive, pervasive structures that
constantly pulsate with information. Here, we propose a model that aims to
analyze the contagion dynamics that emerge in networks when repeated activation
is allowed, that is, when actors can engage recurrently in a collective effort.
We analyze how the structure of communication networks impacts on the ability
to coordinate actors, and we identify the conditions under which large-scale
coordination is more likely to emerge.Comment: Submitted for publicatio
Quantifying Social Network Dynamics
The dynamic character of most social networks requires to model evolution of
networks in order to enable complex analysis of theirs dynamics. The following
paper focuses on the definition of differences between network snapshots by
means of Graph Differential Tuple. These differences enable to calculate the
diverse distance measures as well as to investigate the speed of changes. Four
separate measures are suggested in the paper with experimental study on real
social network data.Comment: In proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computational
Aspects of Social Networks, CASoN 201
Individual Differences in Learning Social and Non-Social Network Structures
How do people acquire knowledge about which individuals belong to different cliques or communities? And to what extent does this learning process differ from the process of learning higher-order information about complex associations between non-social bits of information? Here, we employ a paradigm in which the order of stimulus presentation forms temporal associations between the stimuli, collectively constituting a complex network. We examined individual differences in the ability to learn community structure of networks composed of social versus non-social stimuli. Although participants were able to learn community structure of both social and non-social networks, their performance in social network learning was uncorrelated with their performance in non-social network learning. In addition, social traits, including social orientation and perspective-taking, uniquely predicted the learning of social community structure but not the learning of non-social community structure. Taken together, our results suggest that the process of learning higher-order community structure in social networks is partially distinct from the process of learning higher-order community structure in non-social networks. Our study design provides a promising approach to identify neurophysiological drivers of social network versus non-social network learning, extending our knowledge about the impact of individual differences on these learning processes
Deterministic Small-World Networks
Many real life networks, such as the World Wide Web, transportation systems,
biological or social networks, achieve both a strong local clustering (nodes
have many mutual neighbors) and a small diameter (maximum distance between any
two nodes). These networks have been characterized as small-world networks and
modeled by the addition of randomness to regular structures. We show that
small-world networks can be constructed in a deterministic way. This exact
approach permits a direct calculation of relevant network parameters allowing
their immediate contrast with real-world networks and avoiding complex computer
simulations.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur
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