91,028 research outputs found
Evolution of opinions on social networks in the presence of competing committed groups
Public opinion is often affected by the presence of committed groups of
individuals dedicated to competing points of view. Using a model of pairwise
social influence, we study how the presence of such groups within social
networks affects the outcome and the speed of evolution of the overall opinion
on the network. Earlier work indicated that a single committed group within a
dense social network can cause the entire network to quickly adopt the group's
opinion (in times scaling logarithmically with the network size), so long as
the committed group constitutes more than about 10% of the population (with the
findings being qualitatively similar for sparse networks as well). Here we
study the more general case of opinion evolution when two groups committed to
distinct, competing opinions and , and constituting fractions and
of the total population respectively, are present in the network. We show
for stylized social networks (including Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi random graphs and
Barab\'asi-Albert scale-free networks) that the phase diagram of this system in
parameter space consists of two regions, one where two stable
steady-states coexist, and the remaining where only a single stable
steady-state exists. These two regions are separated by two fold-bifurcation
(spinodal) lines which meet tangentially and terminate at a cusp (critical
point). We provide further insights to the phase diagram and to the nature of
the underlying phase transitions by investigating the model on infinite
(mean-field limit), finite complete graphs and finite sparse networks. For the
latter case, we also derive the scaling exponent associated with the
exponential growth of switching times as a function of the distance from the
critical point.Comment: 23 pages: 15 pages + 7 figures (main text), 8 pages + 1 figure + 1
table (supplementary info
Statistical clustering of temporal networks through a dynamic stochastic block model
Statistical node clustering in discrete time dynamic networks is an emerging
field that raises many challenges. Here, we explore statistical properties and
frequentist inference in a model that combines a stochastic block model (SBM)
for its static part with independent Markov chains for the evolution of the
nodes groups through time. We model binary data as well as weighted dynamic
random graphs (with discrete or continuous edges values). Our approach,
motivated by the importance of controlling for label switching issues across
the different time steps, focuses on detecting groups characterized by a stable
within group connectivity behavior. We study identifiability of the model
parameters, propose an inference procedure based on a variational expectation
maximization algorithm as well as a model selection criterion to select for the
number of groups. We carefully discuss our initialization strategy which plays
an important role in the method and compare our procedure with existing ones on
synthetic datasets. We also illustrate our approach on dynamic contact
networks, one of encounters among high school students and two others on animal
interactions. An implementation of the method is available as a R package
called dynsbm
Switching Reconstruction of Digraphs
Switching about a vertex in a digraph means to reverse the direction of every
edge incident with that vertex. Bondy and Mercier introduced the problem of
whether a digraph can be reconstructed up to isomorphism from the multiset of
isomorphism types of digraphs obtained by switching about each vertex. Since
the largest known non-reconstructible oriented graphs have 8 vertices, it is
natural to ask whether there are any larger non-reconstructible graphs. In this
paper we continue the investigation of this question. We find that there are
exactly 44 non-reconstructible oriented graphs whose underlying undirected
graphs have maximum degree at most 2. We also determine the full set of
switching-stable oriented graphs, which are those graphs for which all
switchings return a digraph isomorphic to the original
Homogeneous and Scalable Gene Expression Regulatory Networks with Random Layouts of Switching Parameters
We consider a model of large regulatory gene expression networks where the
thresholds activating the sigmoidal interactions between genes and the signs of
these interactions are shuffled randomly. Such an approach allows for a
qualitative understanding of network dynamics in a lack of empirical data
concerning the large genomes of living organisms. Local dynamics of network
nodes exhibits the multistationarity and oscillations and depends crucially
upon the global topology of a "maximal" graph (comprising of all possible
interactions between genes in the network). The long time behavior observed in
the network defined on the homogeneous "maximal" graphs is featured by the
fraction of positive interactions () allowed between genes.
There exists a critical value such that if , the
oscillations persist in the system, otherwise, when it tends to
a fixed point (which position in the phase space is determined by the initial
conditions and the certain layout of switching parameters). In networks defined
on the inhomogeneous directed graphs depleted in cycles, no oscillations arise
in the system even if the negative interactions in between genes present
therein in abundance (). For such networks, the bidirectional edges
(if occur) influence on the dynamics essentially. In particular, if a number of
edges in the "maximal" graph is bidirectional, oscillations can arise and
persist in the system at any low rate of negative interactions between genes
(). Local dynamics observed in the inhomogeneous scalable regulatory
networks is less sensitive to the choice of initial conditions. The scale free
networks demonstrate their high error tolerance.Comment: LaTeX, 30 pages, 20 picture
An elementary chromatic reduction for gain graphs and special hyperplane arrangements
A gain graph is a graph whose edges are labelled invertibly by "gains" from a
group. "Switching" is a transformation of gain graphs that generalizes
conjugation in a group. A "weak chromatic function" of gain graphs with gains
in a fixed group satisfies three laws: deletion-contraction for links with
neutral gain, invariance under switching, and nullity on graphs with a neutral
loop. The laws lead to the "weak chromatic group" of gain graphs, which is the
universal domain for weak chromatic functions. We find expressions, valid in
that group, for a gain graph in terms of minors without neutral-gain edges, or
with added complete neutral-gain subgraphs, that generalize the expression of
an ordinary chromatic polynomial in terms of monomials or falling factorials.
These expressions imply relations for chromatic functions of gain graphs.
We apply our relations to some special integral gain graphs including those
that correspond to the Shi, Linial, and Catalan arrangements, thereby obtaining
new evaluations of and new ways to calculate the zero-free chromatic polynomial
and the integral and modular chromatic functions of these gain graphs, hence
the characteristic polynomials and hypercubical lattice-point counting
functions of the arrangements. We also calculate the total chromatic polynomial
of any gain graph and especially of the Catalan, Shi, and Linial gain graphs.Comment: 31 page
Consensus problems in networks of agents with switching topology and time-delays
In this paper, we discuss consensus problems for networks of dynamic agents with fixed and switching topologies. We analyze three cases: 1) directed networks with fixed topology; 2) directed networks with switching topology; and 3) undirected networks with communication time-delays and fixed topology. We introduce two consensus protocols for networks with and without time-delays and provide a convergence analysis in all three cases. We establish a direct connection between the algebraic connectivity (or Fiedler eigenvalue) of the network and the performance (or negotiation speed) of a linear consensus protocol. This required the generalization of the notion of algebraic connectivity of undirected graphs to digraphs. It turns out that balanced digraphs play a key role in addressing average-consensus problems. We introduce disagreement functions for convergence analysis of consensus protocols. A disagreement function is a Lyapunov function for the disagreement network dynamics. We proposed a simple disagreement function that is a common Lyapunov function for the disagreement dynamics of a directed network with switching topology. A distinctive feature of this work is to address consensus problems for networks with directed information flow. We provide analytical tools that rely on algebraic graph theory, matrix theory, and control theory. Simulations are provided that demonstrate the effectiveness of our theoretical results
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