19,060 research outputs found
Potential Networks, Contagious Communities, and Understanding Social Network Structure
In this paper we study how the network of agents adopting a particular
technology relates to the structure of the underlying network over which the
technology adoption spreads. We develop a model and show that the network of
agents adopting a particular technology may have characteristics that differ
significantly from the social network of agents over which the technology
spreads. For example, the network induced by a cascade may have a heavy-tailed
degree distribution even if the original network does not.
This provides evidence that online social networks created by technology
adoption over an underlying social network may look fundamentally different
from social networks and indicates that using data from many online social
networks may mislead us if we try to use it to directly infer the structure of
social networks. Our results provide an alternate explanation for certain
properties repeatedly observed in data sets, for example: heavy-tailed degree
distribution, network densification, shrinking diameter, and network community
profile. These properties could be caused by a sort of `sampling bias' rather
than by attributes of the underlying social structure. By generating networks
using cascades over traditional network models that do not themselves contain
these properties, we can nevertheless reliably produce networks that contain
all these properties.
An opportunity for interesting future research is developing new methods that
correctly infer underlying network structure from data about a network that is
generated via a cascade spread over the underlying network.Comment: To Appear in Proceedings of the 22nd International World Wide Web
Conference(WWW 2013
Community Lynching and the US Asthma Epidemic
We explore the implications of IR Cohen's work on immune cognition for understanding rising rates of asthma morbidity and mortality in the US. Immune cognition is inherently linked with central nervous system cognition, and with the cognitive function of the embedding sociocultural networks by which individuals are acculturated and through which they work with others to meet challenges of threat and opportunity. Externally-imposed patterns of 'structured stress' can, through their effect on a child's socioculture, become synergistic with the development of immune cognition, triggering the persistence of an atopic Th2 phenotype, a necessary precursor to asthma and other immune diseases. Structured stress in the US particularly includes the cross sectional and longitudinal effects of a systematic destruction of minority urban communities occurring since the end of World War II which we characterize as community lynching. Reversal of the rising tide of asthma and related chronic diseases in the US thus seems unlikely without a 21st Century version of the earlier Great Urban Reforms which ended the scourge of infectious diseases, in particular an end to the de-facto ethnic cleansing of minority neighborhoo
Immune cognition, social justice and asthma: structured stress and the developing immune system
We explore the implications of IR Cohen's work on immune
cognition for understanding rising rates of asthma morbidity
and mortality in the US. Immune cognition is conjoined with
central nervous system cognition, and with the cognitive
function of the embedding sociocultural networks by which
individuals are acculturated and through which they work with others to meet challenges of threat and opportunity.
Using a mathematical model, we find that externally-
imposed patterns of 'structured stress' can, through their
effect on a child's socioculture, become synergistic with
the development of immune cognition, triggering the persistence of an atopic Th2 phenotype, a necessary precursor to asthma and other immune disease. Reversal of the rising tide of asthma and related chronic diseases in the US thus seems unlikely without a 21st Century version of the earlier Great Urban Reforms which ended the scourge of infectious diseases
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