Networking - A Statistical Physics Perspective

Efficient networking has a substantial economic and societal impact in a broad range of areas including transportation systems, wired and wireless communications and a range of Internet applications. As transportation and communication networks become increasingly more complex, the ever increasing demand for congestion control, higher traffic capacity, quality of service, robustness and reduced energy consumption require new tools and methods to meet these conflicting requirements. The new methodology should serve for gaining better understanding of the properties of networking systems at the macroscopic level, as well as for the development of new principled optimization and management algorithms at the microscopic level. Methods of statistical physics seem best placed to provide new approaches as they have been developed specifically to deal with non-linear large scale systems. This paper aims at presenting an overview of tools and methods that have been developed within the statistical physics community and that can be readily applied to address the emerging problems in networking. These include diffusion processes, methods from disordered systems and polymer physics, probabilistic inference, which have direct relevance to network routing, file and frequency distribution, the exploration of network structures and vulnerability, and various other practical networking applications.Comment: (Review article) 71 pages, 14 figure

Engaged Online: Social Media and Youth Civic Engagement in Kenya

Historically, new technologies have led to major political, social and economic transformations. Social Networking Sites have become very popular, especially among youth. They have created new, exciting and convenient platforms for people to exchange information freely with little or no filters. They have altered people’s interactions, giving a larger base of people greater lateral and horizontal communication capabilities. Declining enthusiasm, growing apathy and high levels of cynicism among young people in civic and political sphere is major concern. However, young people spend more time online and social media platforms can be used to engage them. This study is based on the growing popularity of social media and their utilization in civic spaces. It relies on a survey of 600 university students in Kenya, aged between 18 and 35 and focus group discussions. The study found low levels of civic participation among young people in Kenya which points to a detached and disengaged youth. However, the findings indicate that social media have been utilized as effective platforms of social mobilization for citizens. The boundless nature of social media provides unlimited space to voice opinions, positions and political agenda to an expansive audience and helps in mainstreaming peripheral Issues and problems. The power of social media lies in their power to facilitate interactivity, sharing of uncensored information, creating online movements, bridging connections around a common cause, dissemination of information, and bypassing mainstream media and government restrictions. The study concludes that though social media do not directly influence offline engagement, online engagement can be used to supplement and support offline efforts