Dynamics underlying Box-office: Movie Competition on Recommender Systems

We introduce a simple model to study movie competition in the recommender systems. Movies of heterogeneous quality compete against each other through viewers' reviews and generate interesting dynamics of box-office. By assuming mean-field interactions between the competing movies, we show that run-away effect of popularity spreading is triggered by defeating the average review score, leading to hits in box-office. The average review score thus characterizes the critical movie quality necessary for transition from box-office bombs to blockbusters. The major factors affecting the critical review score are examined. By iterating the mean-field dynamical equations, we obtain qualitative agreements with simulations and real systems in the dynamical forms of box-office, revealing the significant role of competition in understanding box-office dynamics.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

How the interbank market becomes systemically dangerous: an agent-based network model of financial distress propagation

Assessing the stability of economic systems is a fundamental research focus in economics, that has become increasingly interdisciplinary in the currently troubled economic situation. In particular, much attention has been devoted to the interbank lending market as an important diffusion channel for financial distress during the recent crisis. In this work we study the stability of the interbank market to exogenous shocks using an agent-based network framework. Our model encompasses several ingredients that have been recognized in the literature as pro-cyclical triggers of financial distress in the banking system: credit and liquidity shocks through bilateral exposures, liquidity hoarding due to counterparty creditworthiness deterioration, target leveraging policies and fire-sales spillovers. But we exclude the possibility of central authorities intervention. We implement this framework on a dataset of 183 European banks that were publicly traded between 2004 and 2013. We document the extreme fragility of the interbank lending market up to 2008, when a systemic crisis leads to total depletion of market equity with an increasing speed of market collapse. After the crisis instead the system is more resilient to systemic events in terms of residual market equity. However, the speed at which the crisis breaks out reaches a new maximum in 2011, and never goes back to values observed before 2007. Our analysis points to the key role of the crisis outbreak speed, which sets the maximum delay for central authorities intervention to be effective

Calretinin distribution in the octopus brain: an immunohistochemical and in situ hybridization histochemical analysis

The distribution of calretinin containing neurons examined by in situ hybridization mapping was compared with that obtained by immunocytochemistry in the brain of octopus. Results revealed a close correspondence between the two types of investigations. Western blot analysis disclosed a 29 kDa protein immunostained with anti-calretinin antibody. Calretinin containing neurons were localized mainly in the cortex of octopus lobes, including the vertical, frontal, basal, buccal, palliovisceral, pedal and branchial, with variations of staining intensity and density of immunoreactive cells. The amacrine cells surrounding calretinin containing neuronal bodies of the cortex were also labeled unlike the glial cells. The close correspondence of blotting analysis, immunocytochemistry and in situ hybridization indicates with no doubt that calretinin, like other calcium-binding proteins previously studied, is also present in the nervous system of cephalopods. Furthermore, although recent findings localize calretinin also in endocrine glands, the presence of this calcium-binding protein in the brain of octopus indicates that calretinin appeared early in the phylogeny as a neuronal protein already in invertebrates

Deep structure of peninsular Italy from seismic tomography and subcrustal seismicity

The upper mantle structure beneath peninsular Italy is investigated through tomographic reconstruction of the P- wave velocity field down to 600 km and spatial distribution of subcrustal earthquakes. The tomographic images are computer using a non-linear technique to invert an improved dataset of teleseismic arrival times recorded by the Italian National seismic network in the last fifteen years. For the deep seismicity analysis, we selected 445 events from the database of subcrustal earthquakes that occurred in the period 1988-2004 (1191 events). A subset of 30 earthquakes including most of the deepest foci were relocated using the Hypoellispe location program and an upper mantle velocity structure based on the spherical ak135 global model. The velocity maps show a remarkable complexity of the lithosphere-asthenosphere system of the region, depicting different styles of lithospheric sinking along peninsular Italy from the Northern Apennines to the Calabrian Arc. The subducting slabs include most of the upper mantle events, but only in part they are seismically active

Meta-validation of bipartite network projections

Monopartite projections of bipartite networks are useful tools for modeling indirect interactions in complex systems. The standard approach to identify significant links is statistical validation using a suitable null network model, such as the popular configuration model (CM) that constrains node degrees and randomizes everything else. However different CM formulations exist, depending on how the constraints are imposed and for which sets of nodes. Here we systematically investigate the application of these formulations in validating the same network, showing that they lead to different results even when the same significance threshold is used. Instead a much better agreement is obtained for the same density of validated links. We thus propose a meta-validation approach that allows to identify model-specific significance thresholds for which the signal is strongest, and at the same time to obtain results independent of the way in which the null hypothesis is formulated. We illustrate this procedure using data on scientific production of world countries.The configuration model, in its various formulations, is a widely used null model for statistical validation of bipartite network projections. Here, the authors show that different formulations might bring to very different results, and propose a meta-validation approach that allows to identify model-specific significance thresholds while remaining null-model independent

Passive seismology in southern Italy: the SAPTEX array

Abstract In this paper we describe the Southern APennines Tomography EXperiment (SAPTEX) temporary array deployed in southern Italy from June 2001 to December 2003. Five to twelve three-components seismic stations, all equipped with RefTek 72A07 digitizers in continuous mode recording and Lennartz 3D/5s sensors, were operating in the region during the three-year project. Many local, regional and teleseismic events have been recorded at 26 different recording sites, providing an invaluable data set for high-resolution seismological studies. Moreover, by the second half of 2002, two stations were installed in the Aeolian Islands with the main objective to record and better constrain the spatial distribution of the deep seismicity of the southern Tyrrhenian subduction zone. The preliminary analysis of the waveforms collected in the first two years includes phase identification and body wave arrival time estimation, local earthquakes (re)location and focal mechanisms computation, P -wave traveltime residuals, and resolution of crustal and upper mantle structure derived by teleseismic ray sampling

Multiparameter quantum estimation of noisy phase shifts

Phase estimation is the most investigated protocol in quantum metrology, but its performance is affected by the presence of noise, also in the form of imperfect state preparation. Here we discuss how to address this scenario by using a multiparameter approach, in which noise is associated to a parameter to be measured at the same time as the phase. We present an experiment using two-photon states, and apply our setup to investigating optical activity of fructose solutions. Finally, we illustrate the scaling laws of the attainable precisions with the number of photons in the probe state

A statistical study of the Stromboli volcano explosion quakes before and during 2002-2003 eruptive crisis

We study the seismic wavefield and the statistical properties of the Stromboli volcano explosions preceding and during the 2002–2003 crisis. We analyze the recordings of a three‐component seismometer operating since 23 May 2002 to 30 January 2003, including the first 34 days of the crisis. Before the crisis, we recognize three bell‐shaped classes of spectra with maxima falling in the range 1–5 Hz. Spectral content has two main changes, the most prominent one occurring at the crisis onset when the frequency peak at ∼0.3 Hz increases in amplitude. Independent component analysis extracts three time‐stable independent oscillations that peaked at 1.1, 1.8, and 2.5 Hz, with radial and shallow polarization indicating a stable source mechanism. Energy of the explosions is lognormally distributed, except during a 2 month time interval before the crisis when it also shows a higher mean value. The interoccurrence time distributions display an homogeneous Poissonian behavior with a mean intertime of 250 s, without changes at the crisis onset. Only swarms of explosions are not ruled by a Poisson process and display higher occurrence rates and higher energies. Finally, we depict a scheme of the crisis. A modification of the equilibrium is induced by rising magma that produces a change in the boundary conditions of the plumbing system. The escape from the equilibrium produces, at first, variations in the usual statistics of the explosions, then it leads to the lava effusion and to a pressure drop in the plumbing system that induces a deep gas slug nucleation and the excitation of low frequencies

Systemic liquidity contagion in the European interbank market

Systemic liquidity risk, defined by the International Monetary Fund as "the risk of simultaneous liquidity difficulties at multiple financial institutions," is a key topic in financial stability studies and macroprudential policy-making. In this context, the complex web of interconnections of the interbank market plays the crucial role of allowing funding liquidity shortages to propagate between financial institutions. Here, we introduce a simple yet effective model of the interbank market in which liquidity shortages propagate through an epidemic-like contagion mechanism on the network of interbank loans. The model is defined by using aggregate balance sheet information of European banks, and it exploits country and bank-specific risk features to account for the heterogeneity of financial institutions. Moreover, in order to obtain the European-wide topology of the interbank network, we define a block reconstruction method based on the exchange flows between the various countries. We show that the proposed contagion model is able to estimate systemic liquidity risk across different years and countries. Results suggest that our effective contagion approach can be successfully used as a viable alternative to more realistic but complicated models, which not only require more specific balance sheet variables with high time resolution but also need assumptions on how banks respond to liquidity shocks

Which communication strategies for the next influenza pandemic?

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