Visualising the dynamics of character networks

The character network of a given narrative (novel, play, film, graphic novel, etc.) models the structure formed by the relations in its character-system (Woloch, 2003). A relation between two characters symbolises their co-presence in parts of the narrative; the entire set of relations between all characters constitutes a formal model of this character-system and lends itself to display and analysis. For example, Moretti (2011) used network modelling to compare the importance of protagonists from Shakespeare's Hamlet, while Trilcke et al. (2015) created character networks for 465 German plays and used them to initiate a wider study of German Theatre. Most applications of character network analysis have disregarded temporality, possibly because of its representational complexity. Consequently, all relations in the system are considered as happening at the same time: one cannot distinguish if a given edge symbolises a relation at the start, at the end, or in several parts of the work under study. Furthermore, because temporality is not being accounted for, there is usually no way of relating the network visualisation with the unfolding of the source narrative. While prototypes such as those discussed in Roberts-Smith et al. (2013) offer sophisticate ways of dynamically visualising the text of theatre plays, they do so in a way that is unrelated to character network modelling. Based on these observations, we set out to develop an open source web application which models the character-system of theatre plays as a sequence of network states synchronised with the actual narrative content (https://github.com/maladesimaginaires/intnetviz). This paper proposes a high-level overview of our application , successively focusing on the underlying structure extraction process, the conception of the graphical interface, and the range of uses envisioned for it. In the conclusion, we evoke the ways in which we intend to develop it and reflect on the potential significance of this development at a more epistemological level

The naked truth: metaphors of space, complexity and communication

In this paper what I wish to explore is the question of sustainability as a viable goal in that realm of human activity broadly labelled ‘design’. I will put forward the argument that the peculiarly human activity of designing is one that has led us to accelerate the process of change in our locality; that this accelerated process of change is an attempt to enhance the intensity and meaningfulness of life; and that this generates an increasingly complex spatio-temporal environment organised by communicative constructs and actions. In design, therefore, the idea of sustainability is not primarily about physical realities: it is about humanity. The question I ask is, is sustainability a viable goal in design

Edge usage, motifs and regulatory logic for cell cycling genetic networks

The cell cycle is a tightly controlled process, yet its underlying genetic network shows marked differences across species. Which of the associated structural features follow solely from the ability to impose the appropriate gene expression patterns? We tackle this question in silico by examining the ensemble of all regulatory networks which satisfy the constraint of producing a given sequence of gene expressions. We focus on three cell cycle profiles coming from baker's yeast, fission yeast and mammals. First, we show that the networks in each of the ensembles use just a few interactions that are repeatedly reused as building blocks. Second, we find an enrichment in network motifs that is similar in the two yeast cell cycle systems investigated. These motifs do not have autonomous functions, but nevertheless they reveal a regulatory logic for cell cycling based on a feed-forward cascade of activating interactions.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Model of Coordination Flow in Remote Collaborative Interaction

© 2015 IEEEWe present an information-theoretic approach for modelling coordination in human-human interaction and measuring coordination flows in a remote collaborative tracking task. Building on Shannon's mutual information, coordination flow measures, for stochastic collaborative systems, how much influence, the environment has on the joint control of collaborating parties. We demonstrate the application of the approach on interactive human data recorded in a user study and reveal the amount of effort required for creating rigorous models. Our initial results suggest the potential coordination flow has - as an objective, task-independent measure - in supporting designers of human collaborative systems and in providing better theoretical foundations for the science of Human-Computer Interaction

A self-consistent approach to measure preferential attachment in networks and its application to an inherent structure network

Preferential attachment is one possible way to obtain a scale-free network. We develop a self-consistent method to determine whether preferential attachment occurs during the growth of a network, and to extract the preferential attachment rule using time-dependent data. Model networks are grown with known preferential attachment rules to test the method, which is seen to be robust. The method is then applied to a scale-free inherent structure network, which represents the connections between minima via transition states on a potential energy landscape. Even though this network is static, we can examine the growth of the network as a function of a threshold energy (rather than time), where only those transition states with energies lower than the threshold energy contribute to the network.For these networks we are able to detect the presence of preferential attachment, and this helps to explain the ubiquity of funnels on energy landscapes. However, the scale-free degree distribution shows some differences from that of a model network grown using the obtained preferential attachment rules, implying that other factors are also important in the growth process.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

When resources collide: Towards a theory of coincidence in information spaces

This paper is an attempt to lay out foundations for a general theory of coincidence in information spaces such as the World Wide Web, expanding on existing work on bursty structures in document streams and information cascades. We elaborate on the hypothesis that every resource that is published in an information space, enters a temporary interaction with another resource once a unique explicit or implicit reference between the two is found. This thought is motivated by Erwin Shroedingers notion of entanglement between quantum systems. We present a generic information cascade model that exploits only the temporal order of information sharing activities, combined with inherent properties of the shared information resources. The approach was applied to data from the world's largest online citizen science platform Zooniverse and we report about findings of this case study

Fine-grained traffic state estimation and visualisation

Tools for visualising the current traffic state are used by local authorities for strategic monitoring of the traffic network and by everyday users for planning their journey. Popular visualisations include those provided by Google Maps and by Inrix. Both employ a traffic lights colour-coding system, where roads on a map are coloured green if traffic is flowing normally and red or black if there is congestion. New sensor technology, especially from wireless sources, is allowing resolution down to lane level. A case study is reported in which a traffic micro-simulation test bed is used to generate high-resolution estimates. An interactive visualisation of the fine-grained traffic state is presented. The visualisation is demonstrated using Google Earth and affords the user a detailed three-dimensional view of the traffic state down to lane level in real time