Using network science to analyze football passing networks: dynamics, space, time and the multilayer nature of the game

From the diversity of applications of Network Science, in this Opinion Paper we are concerned about its potential to analyze one of the most extended group sports: Football (soccer in U.S. terminology). As we will see, Network Science allows addressing different aspects of the team organization and performance not captured by classical analyses based on the performance of individual players. The reason behind relies on the complex nature of the game, which, paraphrasing the foundational paradigm of complexity sciences "can not be analyzed by looking at its components (i.e., players) individually but, on the contrary, considering the system as a whole" or, in the classical words of after-match interviews "it's not just me, it's the team".Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

Social Norms in Virtual Worlds of Computer Games

Immersing in the virtual world of the Internet, information and communication technologies are changing the human being. In spite of the apparent similarity of on-line and off-line, social laws of their existence are different. According to the analysis of games, based on the violation of the accepted laws of the world off-line, their censoring, as well as the cheating, features of formation and violations of social norms in virtual worlds were formulated. Although the creators of the games have priority in the standardization of the virtual world, society as well as players can have impact on it to reduce the realism. The violation of the prescribed rules by a player is regarded as cheating. And it is subjected to sanctions, but the attitude toward it is ambiguous, sometimes positive. Some rules are formed as a result of the interaction between players

The role of homophily in the emergence of opinion controversies

Understanding the emergence of strong controversial issues in modern societies is a key issue in opinion studies. A commonly diffused idea is the fact that the increasing of homophily in social networks, due to the modern ICT, can be a driving force for opinion polariation. In this paper we address the problem with a modelling approach following three basic steps. We first introduce a network morphogenesis model to reconstruct network structures where homophily can be tuned with a parameter. We show that as homophily increases the emergence of marked topological community structures in the networks raises. Secondly, we perform an opinion dynamics process on homophily dependent networks and we show that, contrary to the common idea, homophily helps consensus formation. Finally, we introduce a tunable external media pressure and we show that, actually, the combination of homophily and media makes the media effect less effective and leads to strongly polarized opinion clusters.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figure

Binocular fusion and invariant category learning due to predictive remapping during scanning of a depthful scene with eye movements

How does the brain maintain stable fusion of 3D scenes when the eyes move? Every eye movement causes each retinal position to process a different set of scenic features, and thus the brain needs to binocularly fuse new combinations of features at each position after an eye movement. Despite these breaks in retinotopic fusion due to each movement, previously fused representations of a scene in depth often appear stable. The 3D ARTSCAN neural model proposes how the brain does this by unifying concepts about how multiple cortical areas in the What and Where cortical streams interact to coordinate processes of 3D boundary and surface perception, spatial attention, invariant object category learning, predictive remapping, eye movement control, and learned coordinate transformations. The model explains data from single neuron and psychophysical studies of covert visual attention shifts prior to eye movements. The model further clarifies how perceptual, attentional, and cognitive interactions among multiple brain regions (LGN, V1, V2, V3A, V4, MT, MST, PPC, LIP, ITp, ITa, SC) may accomplish predictive remapping as part of the process whereby view-invariant object categories are learned. These results build upon earlier neural models of 3D vision and figure-ground separation and the learning of invariant object categories as the eyes freely scan a scene. A key process concerns how an object's surface representation generates a form-fitting distribution of spatial attention, or attentional shroud, in parietal cortex that helps maintain the stability of multiple perceptual and cognitive processes. Predictive eye movement signals maintain the stability of the shroud, as well as of binocularly fused perceptual boundaries and surface representations.Published versio

Питання чехословацької кризи 1938 року(за матеріалами періодики Підкарпатської Русі)

The aim of the research is to analyze materials of the periodicals of Subcarpathian Rus’, which contain information and interpretations of the essence of the Czechoslovak crisis of 1938, with regard to the peculiarities of interstate and international relations, and the formation of new political realities in Eastern Europe. The research methodology is based on a combination of principles (historicism and objectivity) and methods (general scientific and specially-historical) of scientific work. The scientific novelty of the article consists in an attempt to interpret the factors that influenced the unfolding of the Czechoslovak crisis and the position of the public and informal policies of European states in action and their contribution to the formation of Carpathian Ukraine as an autonomous part of Czechoslovakia. Conclusions. The public assessment of the political events of the autumn of 1938 is best demonstrated by the press which is the subject of research of this article. Based on some periodicals of Subcarpathian Rus’ (Ruthenia), the development of international relations is shown for key world powers which played a diplomatic game with each other, seeking to turn a political vector in a direction that would be safe for them. During August-November 1938 in the newspapers Slovo (Word), Ukrainske Slovo (Ukrainian Word), Svoboda (Freedom), Nova Svoboda (New Freedom), Vpered (Forward), Karpato-Russkoye Slovo (Carpathian-Russian Word), Nash Put’ (Our Way), Karpatorusskiy Golos (Carpathian-Russian Voice) and Rusyn (Ruthenian) reported about different aspects of international relations. In early September 1938, the newspapers noted that Germany was suggesting that the support of Czechoslovakia by the United Kingdom and France could lead to a military conflict. The public concern of Subcarpathian Rus’ regarding Germany’s aggressive plans was revealed by the press as was the appeasement of the world powers. The crisis showed visions of Great Britain and France, which virtually agreed with every next aggressive step of Hitler. Public despair is demonstrated by the title of one article of Vpered – “New borders or national death”. The headline about the second Czechoslovak crisis carried the slogan “The great Success of World Politics” and led to a conference in Munich on September 29 – 30, 1938. Analyzing materials of the press of Subcarpathian Rus’, covering international relations in the autumn of 1938, we found out that the publications under review had wide access to information regarding diplomatic negotiations, a political game of world powers, gave an estimation of events and analyzed their cause-and-effect relations.Метою дослідження є аналіз матеріалів періодичних видань Підкарпатської Русі, які містять інформацію та інтерпретації сутності чехословацької кризи 1938 року, що стосується специфіки міждержавних та міжнародних відносин та формування нових політичних реалій у Східній Європі. Методологія дослідження базується на поєднанні принципів історизму й об’єктивізму та методів (загальнонаукових і спеціально-історичних) наукової роботи. Наукова новизна статті полягає в спробі інтерпретувати фактори, що впливають на розгортання чехословацької кризи та позицію публічної та неформальної політики європейських держав у дії та їх внесок у формування Карпатської України як автономної частини Чехословаччини. Висновки. Публічна оцінка політичних подій восени 1938 року найкраще демонструється пресою, що є предметом дослідження цієї статті. Виходячи з інформації періодичних видань Підкарпатської Русі (Русі), розвиток міжнародних відносин залежав від дій ключових світових держав, які грали між собою дипломатичну гру, прагнучи скерувати політичний вектор у безпечному для себе напрямі. У серпні-листопаді 1938 р. газети “Слово”, “Українське слово”, “Свобода”, “Нова Свобода”, “Вперед”, “Карпато-Русское слово”, “Наш путь”, “Карпаторусский голос”, “Русинъ” розповіли про різні аспекти міжнародних відносин. На початку вересня 1938 року газети зазначали, що Німеччина, приховуючи власні агресивні плани, звинувачує Великобританію і Францію у підтримці Чехословаччини, через що може статися військовий конфлікт. Преса виявила суспільну стурбованість Підкарпатської Русі щодо зазіхань Німеччини на частину Чехословацької території. Чехословацька криза показала позиції Великобританії і Франції, які практично погоджувалися з кожним наступним кроком Гітлера. Громадський відчай демонструється назвою однієї статті газети “Вперед” – “Нові кордони або національна смерть”. Заголовок наступної публікації мав гасло “Великий успіх світової політики”, що акцентував увагу громадськості на проведенні конференції в Мюнхені 29 – 30 вересня 1938 року. Аналізуючи матеріали преси Підкарпатської Русі, що охоплюють міжнародні відносини восени 1938 року, ми з’ясували, що оглядові публікації мали широкий доступ до інформації про дипломатичні переговори, політичну гру світових держав, давали оцінку подій та аналізували їх причинно-наслідкові зв’язки

Exploiting Opponent Modeling For Learning In Multi-agent Adversarial Games

An issue with learning effective policies in multi-agent adversarial games is that the size of the search space can be prohibitively large when the actions of both teammates and opponents are considered simultaneously. Opponent modeling, predicting an opponent’s actions in advance of execution, is one approach for selecting actions in adversarial settings, but it is often performed in an ad hoc way. In this dissertation, we introduce several methods for using opponent modeling, in the form of predictions about the players’ physical movements, to learn team policies. To explore the problem of decision-making in multi-agent adversarial scenarios, we use our approach for both offline play generation and real-time team response in the Rush 2008 American football simulator. Simultaneously predicting the movement trajectories, future reward, and play strategies of multiple players in real-time is a daunting task but we illustrate how it is possible to divide and conquer this problem with an assortment of data-driven models. By leveraging spatio-temporal traces of player movements, we learn discriminative models of defensive play for opponent modeling. With the reward information from previous play matchups, we use a modified version of UCT (Upper Conference Bounds applied to Trees) to create new offensive plays and to learn play repairs to counter predicted opponent actions. iii In team games, players must coordinate effectively to accomplish tasks while foiling their opponents either in a preplanned or emergent manner. An effective team policy must generate the necessary coordination, yet considering all possibilities for creating coordinating subgroups is computationally infeasible. Automatically identifying and preserving the coordination between key subgroups of teammates can make search more productive by pruning policies that disrupt these relationships. We demonstrate that combining opponent modeling with automatic subgroup identification can be used to create team policies with a higher average yardage than either the baseline game or domain-specific heuristics