Predicting Community Evolution in Social Networks

Nowadays, sustained development of different social media can be observed worldwide. One of the relevant research domains intensively explored recently is analysis of social communities existing in social media as well as prediction of their future evolution taking into account collected historical evolution chains. These evolution chains proposed in the paper contain group states in the previous time frames and its historical transitions that were identified using one out of two methods: Stable Group Changes Identification (SGCI) and Group Evolution Discovery (GED). Based on the observed evolution chains of various length, structural network features are extracted, validated and selected as well as used to learn classification models. The experimental studies were performed on three real datasets with different profile: DBLP, Facebook and Polish blogosphere. The process of group prediction was analysed with respect to different classifiers as well as various descriptive feature sets extracted from evolution chains of different length. The results revealed that, in general, the longer evolution chains the better predictive abilities of the classification models. However, chains of length 3 to 7 enabled the GED-based method to almost reach its maximum possible prediction quality. For SGCI, this value was at the level of 3 to 5 last periods.Comment: Entropy 2015, 17, 1-x manuscripts; doi:10.3390/e170x000x 46 page

Preparing for a Northwest Passage: A Workshop on the Role of New England in Navigating the New Arctic

Preparing for a Northwest Passage: A Workshop on the Role of New England in Navigating the New Arctic (March 25 - 27, 2018 -- The University of New Hampshire) paired two of NSF\u27s 10 Big Ideas: Navigating the New Arctic and Growing Convergence Research at NSF. During this event, participants assessed economic, environmental, and social impacts of Arctic change on New England and established convergence research initiatives to prepare for, adapt to, and respond to these effects. Shipping routes through an ice-free Northwest Passage in combination with modifications to ocean circulation and regional climate patterns linked to Arctic ice melt will affect trade, fisheries, tourism, coastal ecology, air and water quality, animal migration, and demographics not only in the Arctic but also in lower latitude coastal regions such as New England. With profound changes on the horizon, this is a critical opportunity for New England to prepare for uncertain yet inevitable economic and environmental impacts of Arctic change