Diffusion geometry unravels the emergence of functional clusters in collective phenomena

Collective phenomena emerge from the interaction of natural or artificial units with a complex organization. The interplay between structural patterns and dynamics might induce functional clusters that, in general, are different from topological ones. In biological systems, like the human brain, the overall functionality is often favored by the interplay between connectivity and synchronization dynamics, with functional clusters that do not coincide with anatomical modules in most cases. In social, socio-technical and engineering systems, the quest for consensus favors the emergence of clusters. Despite the unquestionable evidence for mesoscale organization of many complex systems and the heterogeneity of their inter-connectivity, a way to predict and identify the emergence of functional modules in collective phenomena continues to elude us. Here, we propose an approach based on random walk dynamics to define the diffusion distance between any pair of units in a networked system. Such a metric allows to exploit the underlying diffusion geometry to provide a unifying framework for the intimate relationship between metastable synchronization, consensus and random search dynamics in complex networks, pinpointing the functional mesoscale organization of synthetic and biological systems.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Distance entropy cartography characterises centrality in complex networks

We introduce distance entropy as a measure of homogeneity in the distribution of path lengths between a given node and its neighbours in a complex network. Distance entropy defines a new centrality measure whose properties are investigated for a variety of synthetic network models. By coupling distance entropy information with closeness centrality, we introduce a network cartography which allows one to reduce the degeneracy of ranking based on closeness alone. We apply this methodology to the empirical multiplex lexical network encoding the linguistic relationships known to English speaking toddlers. We show that the distance entropy cartography better predicts how children learn words compared to closeness centrality. Our results highlight the importance of distance entropy for gaining insights from distance patterns in complex networks.Comment: 11 page

The fragility of decentralised trustless socio-technical systems

The blockchain technology promises to transform finance, money and even governments. However, analyses of blockchain applicability and robustness typically focus on isolated systems whose actors contribute mainly by running the consensus algorithm. Here, we highlight the importance of considering trustless platforms within the broader ecosystem that includes social and communication networks. As an example, we analyse the flash-crash observed on 21st June 2017 in the Ethereum platform and show that a major phenomenon of social coordination led to a catastrophic cascade of events across several interconnected systems. We propose the concept of “emergent centralisation” to describe situations where a single system becomes critically important for the functioning of the whole ecosystem, and argue that such situations are likely to become more and more frequent in interconnected socio-technical systems. We anticipate that the systemic approach we propose will have implications for future assessments of trustless systems and call for the attention of policy-makers on the fragility of our interconnected and rapidly changing world

Fast detection of nonlinearity and nonstationarity in short and noisy time series

We introduce a statistical method to detect nonlinearity and nonstationarity in time series, that works even for short sequences and in presence of noise. The method has a discrimination power similar to that of the most advanced estimators on the market, yet it depends only on one parameter, is easier to implement and faster. Applications to real data sets reject the null hypothesis of an underlying stationary linear stochastic process with a higher confidence interval than the best known nonlinear discriminators up to date.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Modeling Structure and Resilience of the Dark Network

While the statistical and resilience properties of the Internet are no more changing significantly across time, the Darknet, a network devoted to keep anonymous its traffic, still experiences rapid changes to improve the security of its users. Here, we study the structure of the Darknet and we find that its topology is rather peculiar, being characterized by non-homogenous distribution of connections -- typical of scale-free networks --, very short path lengths and high clustering -- typical of small-world networks -- and lack of a core of highly connected nodes. We propose a model to reproduce such features, demonstrating that the mechanisms used to improve cyber-security are responsible for the observed topology. Unexpectedly, we reveal that its peculiar structure makes the Darknet much more resilient than the Internet -- used as a benchmark for comparison at a descriptive level -- to random failures, targeted attacks and cascade failures, as a result of adaptive changes in response to the attempts of dismantling the network across time.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events

The advent of the digital era provided a fertile ground for the development of virtual societies, complex systems influencing real-world dynamics. Understanding online human behavior and its relevance beyond the digital boundaries is still an open challenge. Here we show that online social interactions during a massive voting event can be used to build an accurate map of real-world political parties and electoral ranks. We provide evidence that information flow and collective attention are often driven by a special class of highly influential users, that we name "augmented humans", who exploit thousands of automated agents, also known as bots, for enhancing their online influence. We show that augmented humans generate deep information cascades, to the same extent of news media and other broadcasters, while they uniformly infiltrate across the full range of identified groups. Digital augmentation represents the cyber-physical counterpart of the human desire to acquire power within social systems.Comment: 11 page

Modeling and Analysis of HetNets with mm-Wave Multi-RAT Small Cells Deployed Along Roads

We characterize a multi tier network with classical macro cells, and multi radio access technology (RAT) small cells, which are able to operate in microwave and millimeter-wave (mm-wave) bands. The small cells are assumed to be deployed along roads modeled as a Poisson line process. This characterization is more realistic as compared to the classical Poisson point processes typically used in literature. In this context, we derive the association and RAT selection probabilities of the typical user under various system parameters such as the small cell deployment density and mm-wave antenna gain, and with varying street densities. Finally, we calculate the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) coverage probability for the typical user considering a tractable dominant interference based model for mm-wave interference. Our analysis reveals the need of deploying more small cells per street in cities with more streets to maintain coverage, and highlights that mm-wave RAT in small cells can help to improve the SINR performance of the users.Comment: A 7-page version is submitted to IEEE GLOBECOM 201