138 research outputs found
Search strategies of Wikipedia readers
The quest for information is one of the most common activity of human beings. Despite the the impressive progress of search engines, not to miss the needed piece of information could be still very tough, as well as to acquire specific competences and knowledge by shaping and following the proper learning paths. Indeed, the need to find sensible paths in information networks is one of the biggest challenges of our societies and, to effectively address it, it is important to investigate the strategies adopted by human users to cope with the cognitive bottleneck of finding their way in a growing sea of information. Here we focus on the case of Wikipedia and investigate a recently released dataset about users’ click on the English Wikipedia, namely the English Wikipedia Clickstream. We perform a semantically charged analysis to uncover the general patterns followed by information seekers in the multi-dimensional space of Wikipedia topics/categories. We discover the existence of well defined strategies in which users tend to start from very general, i.e., semantically broad, pages and progressively narrow down the scope of their navigation, while keeping a growing semantic coherence. This is unlike strategies associated to tasks with predefined search goals, namely the case of the Wikispeedia game. In this case users first move from the ‘particular’ to the ‘universal’ before focusing down again to the required target. The clear picture offered here represents a very important stepping stone towards a better design of information networks and recommendation strategies, as well as the construction of radically new learning paths
Social stress and glucocorticoids alter PERIOD2 rhythmicity in the liver, but not in the suprachiasmatic nucleus
Circadian (~24 h) rhythms in behavior and physiological functions are under control of an endogenous circadian pacemaker in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus. The SCN directly drives some of these rhythms or serves as a coordinator of peripheral oscillators residing in other tissues and organs. Disruption of the circadian organization may contribute to disease, including stress-related disorders. Previous research indicates that the master clock in the SCN is resistant to stress, although it is unclear whether stress affects rhythmicity in other tissues, possibly mediated by glucocorticoids, released in stressful situations. In the present study, we examined the effect of uncontrollable social defeat stress and glucocorticoid hormones on the central and peripheral clocks, respectively in the SCN and liver. Transgenic PERIOD2::LUCIFERASE knock-in mice were used to assess the rhythm of the clock protein PERIOD2 (PER2) in SCN slices and liver tissue collected after 10 consecutive days of social defeat stress. The rhythmicity of PER2 expression in the SCN was not affected by stress exposure, whereas in the liver the expression showed a delayed phase in defeated compared to non-defeated control mice. In a second experiment, brain slices and liver samples were collected from transgenic mice and exposed to different doses of corticosterone. Corticosterone did not affect PER2 rhythm of the SCN samples, but caused a phase shift in PER2 expression in liver samples. This study confirms earlier findings that the SCN is resistant to stress and shows that clocks in the liver are affected by social stress, which might be due to the direct influence of glucocorticoids released from the adrenal gland
Irreducibility of multilayer network dynamics: the case of the voter model
10 pages, 6 figuresThis work has been supported by the Spanish MINECO and FEDER under projects INTENSE@COSYP (FIS2012-30634), and by the EU Commission through the project LASAGNE (FP7-ICT-318132). VL also acknowledges support from EPSRC project GALE (EP/K020633/1
Consensus formation on coevolving networks: groups' formation and structure
We study the effect of adaptivity on a social model of opinion dynamics and
consensus formation. We analyze how the adaptivity of the network of contacts
between agents to the underlying social dynamics affects the size and
topological properties of groups and the convergence time to the stable final
state. We find that, while on static networks these properties are determined
by percolation phenomena, on adaptive networks the rewiring process leads to
different behaviors: Adaptive rewiring fosters group formation by enhancing
communication between agents of similar opinion, though it also makes possible
the division of clusters. We show how the convergence time is determined by the
characteristic time of link rearrangement. We finally investigate how the
adaptivity yields nontrivial correlations between the internal topology and the
size of the groups of agreeing agents.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures,to appear in a special proceedings issue of J.
Phys. A covering the "Complex Networks: from Biology to Information
Technology" conference (Pula, Italy, 2007
Lack of consensus in social systems
We propose an exactly solvable model for the dynamics of voters in a
two-party system. The opinion formation process is modeled on a random network
of agents. The dynamical nature of interpersonal relations is also reflected in
the model, as the connections in the network evolve with the dynamics of the
voters. In the infinite time limit, an exact solution predicts the emergence of
consensus, for arbitrary initial conditions. However, before consensus is
reached, two different metastable states can persist for exponentially long
times. One state reflects a perfect balancing of opinions, the other reflects a
completely static situation. An estimate of the associated lifetimes suggests
that lack of consensus is typical for large systems.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
A simple mean field model for social interactions: dynamics, fluctuations, criticality
We study the dynamics of a spin-flip model with a mean field interaction. The
system is non reversible, spacially inhomogeneous, and it is designed to model
social interactions. We obtain the limiting behavior of the empirical averages
in the limit of infinitely many interacting individuals, and show that phase
transition occurs. Then, after having obtained the dynamics of normal
fluctuations around this limit, we analize long time fluctuations for critical
values of the parameters. We show that random inhomogeneities produce critical
fluctuations at a shorter time scale compared to the homogeneous system.Comment: 37 pages, 2 figure
Application of next-generation sequencing technology to study genetic diversity and identify unique SNP markers in bread wheat from Kazakhstan
BACKGROUND: New SNP marker platforms offer the opportunity to investigate the relationships between wheat cultivars from different regions and assess the mechanism and processes that have led to adaptation to particular production environments. Wheat breeding has a long history in Kazakhstan and the aim of this study was to explore the relationship between key varieties from Kazakhstan and germplasm from breeding programs for other regions. RESULTS: The study revealed 5,898 polymorphic markers amongst ten cultivars, of which 2,730 were mapped in the consensus genetic map. Mapped SNP markers were distributed almost equally across the A and B genomes, with between 279 and 484 markers assigned to each chromosome. Marker coverage was approximately 10-fold lower in the D genome. There were 863 SNP markers identified as unique to specific cultivars, and clusters of these markers (regions containing more than three closely mapped unique SNPs) showed specific patterns on the consensus genetic map for each cultivar. Significant intra-varietal genetic polymorphism was identified in three cultivars (Tzelinnaya 3C, Kazakhstanskaya rannespelaya and Kazakhstanskaya 15). Phylogenetic analysis based on inter-varietal polymorphism showed that the very old cultivar Erythrospermum 841 was the most genetically distinct from the other nine cultivars from Kazakhstan, falling in a clade together with the American cultivar Sonora and genotypes from Central and South Asia. The modern cultivar Kazakhstanskaya 19 also fell into a separate clade, together with the American cultivar Thatcher. The remaining eight cultivars shared a single sub-clade but were categorised into four clusters. CONCLUSION: The accumulated data for SNP marker polymorphisms amongst bread wheat genotypes from Kazakhstan may be used for studying genetic diversity in bread wheat, with potential application for marker-assisted selection and the preparation of a set of genotype-specific markers.Yuri Shavrukov, Radoslaw Suchecki, Serik Eliby, Aigul Abugalieva, Serik Kenebayev and Peter Langridg
Ordering in voter models on networks: Exact reduction to a single-coordinate diffusion
We study the voter model and related random-copying processes on arbitrarily
complex network structures. Through a representation of the dynamics as a
particle reaction process, we show that a quantity measuring the degree of
order in a finite system is, under certain conditions, exactly governed by a
universal diffusion equation. Whenever this reduction occurs, the details of
the network structure and random-copying process affect only a single parameter
in the diffusion equation. The validity of the reduction can be established
with considerably less information than one might expect: it suffices to know
just two characteristic timescales within the dynamics of a single pair of
reacting particles. We develop methods to identify these timescales, and apply
them to deterministic and random network structures. We focus in particular on
how the ordering time is affected by degree correlations, since such effects
are hard to access by existing theoretical approaches.Comment: 37 pages, 10 figures. Revised version with additional discussion and
simulation results to appear in J Phys
Mean-field analysis of the q-voter model on networks
We present a detailed investigation of the behavior of the nonlinear q-voter
model for opinion dynamics. At the mean-field level we derive analytically, for
any value of the number q of agents involved in the elementary update, the
phase diagram, the exit probability and the consensus time at the transition
point. The mean-field formalism is extended to the case that the interaction
pattern is given by generic heterogeneous networks. We finally discuss the case
of random regular networks and compare analytical results with simulations.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure
Timing interactions in social simulations: The voter model
The recent availability of huge high resolution datasets on human activities
has revealed the heavy-tailed nature of the interevent time distributions. In
social simulations of interacting agents the standard approach has been to use
Poisson processes to update the state of the agents, which gives rise to very
homogeneous activity patterns with a well defined characteristic interevent
time. As a paradigmatic opinion model we investigate the voter model and review
the standard update rules and propose two new update rules which are able to
account for heterogeneous activity patterns. For the new update rules each node
gets updated with a probability that depends on the time since the last event
of the node, where an event can be an update attempt (exogenous update) or a
change of state (endogenous update). We find that both update rules can give
rise to power law interevent time distributions, although the endogenous one
more robustly. Apart from that for the exogenous update rule and the standard
update rules the voter model does not reach consensus in the infinite size
limit, while for the endogenous update there exist a coarsening process that
drives the system toward consensus configurations.Comment: Book Chapter, 23 pages, 9 figures, 5 table
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