On the universality of the scaling of fluctuations in traffic on complex networks

We study the scaling of fluctuations with the mean of traffic in complex networks using a model where the arrival and departure of "packets" follow exponential distributions, and the processing capability of nodes is either unlimited or finite. The model presents a wide variety of exponents between 1/2 and 1 for this scaling, revealing their dependence on the few parameters considered, and questioning the existence of universality classes. We also report the experimental scaling of the fluctuations in the Internet for the Abilene backbone network. We found scaling exponents between 0.71 and 0.86 that do not fit with the exponent 1/2 reported in the literature.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Odebrecht S.A.: The rise, fall and the future of Latin America’s construction and petrochemical giant

Odebrecht S.A. is a Brazilian multinational conglomerate that operates in the engineering and construction, petrochemical, agroindustrial, oil and gas, infrastructure, transportation and real estate sectors. The Odebrecht group currently employs 47,000 people in 7 business units, operating in 14 countries, with a gross revenue of 22.3 billion USD. This represents a steep decrease when compared to its 2013 numbers, when it boasted a revenue of 41.3 billion USD with 181,000 collaborators in 15 business units spread across 23 countries. The leading construction and petrochemical company in Latin America, Odebrecht S.A. became heavily involved in the corruption scheme investigated by Brazilian Federal Police’s Operation Car Wash. According to the authorities, the company used various illicit practices to secure roughly 100 projects in 12 countries, paying off USD 3.3 billion in bribes to important political and business figures in the countries in which they operated. As the company tries to restructure itself, both in terms of performance and in terms of image, questions arise if the measures taken will be enough to keep the company alive. How has Odebrecht handled the transformation of its name from a successful case study into a synonym with corruption and illicit relations with officials? What can be expected of Odebrecht in the future

Community detection in complex networks using Extremal Optimization

We propose a novel method to find the community structure in complex networks based on an extremal optimization of the value of modularity. The method outperforms the optimal modularity found by the existing algorithms in the literature. We present the results of the algorithm for computer simulated and real networks and compare them with other approaches. The efficiency and accuracy of the method make it feasible to be used for the accurate identification of community structure in large complex networks.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Transforming Sustainable Value in the Construction Industry – The role of Social Movements

Projects pursuing the balance of economic, ecological, and social aspects are being increasingly implemented by the construction industry. This shift represents a paradigm change and evidences new values being acknowledged within the sector. Concurrently, construction scholars tend to emphasize the creation, retention and addition of value, focusing mostly on costs and client deliverables. However, less attention is paid to the process of value change, specifically one that focuses on alternative stakeholders, such as Social Movements. We employ Social Movement theory to comprehend how these organizations affect the notion of value and value change in this industry. Their role is accentuated as a source for a value paradigm change in the form of institutional pressures that shape the values of other stakeholders of the construction industry. These pressures elicit a response in the form of a broader incorporation of sustainable practices amongst construction projects, which effectively alters the industry’s notion of value. Additionally, we showcase a theoretical model that describes the pressure channels originated by Social Movements and their process mechanism affecting the construction industry

The Possible Role of Resource Requirements and Academic Career-Choice Risk on Gender Differences in Publication Rate and Impact

Many studies demonstrate that there is still a significant gender bias, especially at higher career levels, in many areas including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We investigated field-dependent, gender-specific effects of the selective pressures individuals experience as they pursue a career in academia within seven STEM disciplines. We built a unique database that comprises 437,787 publications authored by 4,292 faculty members at top United States research universities. Our analyses reveal that gender differences in publication rate and impact are discipline-specific. Our results also support two hypotheses. First, the widely-reported lower publication rates of female faculty are correlated with the amount of research resources typically needed in the discipline considered, and thus may be explained by the lower level of institutional support historically received by females. Second, in disciplines where pursuing an academic position incurs greater career risk, female faculty tend to have a greater fraction of higher impact publications than males. Our findings have significant, field-specific, policy implications for achieving diversity at the faculty level within the STEM disciplines.Comment: 9 figures and 3 table

Increasing the electrolyte capacity of alkaline Zn-air fuel cells by scavenging zincate with Ca(OH)2

The use of calcium hydroxide for scavenging zincate species is demonstrated to be a highly effective approach for increasing the electrolyte capacity and improving the performance of the zinc-air fuel cell system. A fundamental approach is established in this study to quantify the formation of calcium zincate as the product of scavenging and the amount of water compensation necessary for optimal performance. The good agreement between predicted and experimental results proves the validity of the proposed theoretical approach. By applying the results of theoretical predictions, both the electrolyte capacity and the cell longevity have been increased by more than 40%. It is also found that, using Ca(OH)2 to scavenge zincate species in concentrated KOH solutions, affects mostly the removal of zincate, rather than ZnO, from the electrolyte, whereas the presence of excess, free, mobile H2O plays a key role in dissolving ZnO and forming zincate. The results obtained in this study demonstrate that the proposed approach can widely and effectively be applied to all zinc-air cell systems during their discharge cycle

A novel Border Identification algorithm based on an “Anti-Bayesian” paradigm

Border Identification (BI) algorithms, a subset of Prototype Reduction Schemes (PRS) aim to reduce the number of training vectors so that the reduced set (the border set) contains only those patterns which lie near the border of the classes, and have sufficient information to perform a meaningful classification. However, one can see that the true border patterns (“near” border) are not able to perform the task independently as they are not able to always distinguish the testing samples. Thus, researchers have worked on this issue so as to find a way to strengthen the “border” set. A recent development in this field tries to add more border patterns, i.e., the “far” borders, to the border set, and this process continues until it reaches a stage at which the classification accuracy no longer increases. In this case, the cardinality of the border set is relatively high. In this paper, we aim to design a novel BI algorithm based on a new definition for the term “border”. We opt to select the patterns which lie at the border of the alternate class as the border patterns. Thus, those patterns which are neither on the true discriminant nor too close to the central position of the distributions, are added to the “border” set. The border patterns, which are very small in number (for example, five from both classes), selected in this manner, have the potential to perform a classification which is comparable to that obtained by well-known traditional classifiers like the SVM, and very close to the optimal Bayes’ bound

Commensurate and Non-Commensurate Fractional-Order Discrete Models of an Electric Individual-Wheel Drive on an Autonomous Platform

This paper presents integer and linear time-invariant fractional order (FO) models of a closed-loop electric individual-wheel drive implemented on an autonomous platform. Two discrete-time FO models are tested: non-commensurate and commensurate. A classical model described by the second-order linear difference equation is used as the reference. According to the sum of the squared error criterion (SSE), we compare a two-parameter integer order model with four-parameter non-commensurate and three-parameter commensurate FO descriptions. The computer simulation results are compared with the measured velocity of a real autonomous platform powered by a closed-loop electric individual-wheel drivehe research was supported by the Polish National Science Center in 2013-2015 as a research project (DEC-2012/05/B/ST 6/03647).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Synchronization and modularity in complex networks

We investigate the connection between the dynamics of synchronization and the modularity on complex networks. Simulating the Kuramoto's model in complex networks we determine patterns of meta-stability and calculate the modularity of the partition these patterns provide. The results indicate that the more stable the patterns are, the larger tends to be the modularity of the partition defined by them. This correlation works pretty well in homogeneous networks (all nodes have similar connectivity) but fails when networks contain hubs, mainly because the modularity is never improved where isolated nodes appear, whereas in the synchronization process the characteristic of hubs is to have a large stability when forming its own community.Comment: To appear in the Proceedings of Workshop on Complex Systems: New Trends and Expectations, Santander, Spain, 5-9 June 200