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selected abstracts
Barry Wellman
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FRSC NetLab Network INSNA Founder
Dept of Communication & New Media National University of Singapore
University of Toronto Toronto Canada
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman twitter: @barrywellman
NETWORKED:The New Social Operating System. Lee Rainie & Barry Wellman
MIT Press http://amzn.to/zXZg39 Print $15 Kindle $9
Old/NewCyberTimes http://bit.ly/c8N9V8
Happy Year of the Horned Hairy Fluffy Ruminant
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Settlement scaling and increasing returns in an ancient society
A key property of modern cities is increasing returns to scale˙˙the
finding that many socioeconomic outputs increase more rapidly than their
population size. Recent theoretical work proposes that this phenomenon is
the result of general network effects typical of human social networks
embedded in space and, thus, is not necessarily limited to modern
settlements. We examine the extent to which increasing returns are
apparent in archaeological settlement data from the pre-Hispanic Basin of
Mexico. We review previous work on the quantitative relationship between
population size and average settled area in this society and then present
a general analysis of their patterns of monument construction and house
sizes. Estimated scaling parameter values and residual statistics support
the hypothesis that increasing returns to scale characterized various
forms of socioeconomic production available in the archaeological record
and are found to be consistent with key expectations from settlement
scaling theory. As a consequence, these results provide evidence that the
essential processes that lead to increasing returns in contemporary cities
may have characterized human settlements throughout history, and
demonstrate that increasing returns do not require modern forms of
political or economic organization.
Settlement scaling and increasing returns in an ancient society
Scott G. Ortman, Andrew H. F. Cabaniss, Jennie O. Sturm, Luís M. A. Bettencourt
Science Advances 01 Feb 2015: Vol. 1 no. 1 e1400066 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1400066 ;
See it on Scoop.it (http://www.scoop.it/t/papers/p/4037873662/2015/02/28/settlement-scaling-and-increasing-returns-in-an-ancient-society) , via Papers (http://www.scoop.it/t/papers)
Sex redefined
The idea of two sexes is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that.
http://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943
See it on Scoop.it (http://www.scoop.it/t/papers/p/4038090385/2015/02/26/sex-redefined) , via Papers (http://www.scoop.it/t/papers)
The Heterogeneous Dynamics of Economic Complexity
What will be the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or the
competitiveness of China, United States, and Vietnam in the next 3, 5 or
10 years? Despite this kind of questions has a large societal impact and
an extreme value for economic policy making, providing a scientific basis
for economic predictability is still a very challenging problem. Recent
results of a new branch˙˙Economic Complexity˙˙have set the basis for a
framework to approach such a challenge and to provide new perspectives to
cast economic prediction into the conceptual scheme of forecasting the
evolution of a dynamical system as in the case of weather dynamics. We
argue that a recently introduced non-monetary metrics for country
competitiveness (fitness) allows for quantifying the hidden growth
potential of countries by the means of the comparison of this measure for
intangible assets with monetary figures, such as GDP per capita . This
comparison defines the fitness-income plane where we observe that country
dynamics presents strongly heterogeneous patterns of evolution. The flow
in some zones is found to be laminar while in others a chaotic behavior is
instead observed. These two regimes correspond to very different
predictability features for the evolution of countries: in the former
regime, we find strong predictable pattern while the latter scenario
exhibits a very low predictability. In such a framework, regressions, the
usual tool used in economics, are no more the appropriate strategy to deal
with such a heterogeneous scenario and new concepts, borrowed from
dynamical systems theory, are mandatory. We therefore propose a
data-driven method˙˙ the selective predictability scheme ˙˙in which we
adopt a strategy similar to the methods of analogues , firstly introduced
by Lorenz, to assess future evolution of countries.
by
Matthieu Cristelli , Andrea Tacchella, Luciano Pietronero
See it on Scoop.it (http://www.scoop.it/t/papers/p/4037877877/2015/02/24/the-heterogeneous-dynamics-of-economic-complexity) , via Papers (http://www.scoop.it/t/papers)
Link removal for the control of stochastically evolving epidemics over networks: A comparison of approaches
For many communicable diseases, knowledge of the underlying contact
network through which the disease spreads is essential to determining
appropriate control measures. When behavior change is the primary
intervention for disease prevention, it is important to understand how to
best modify network connectivity using the limited resources available to
control disease spread. We describe and compare four algorithms for
selecting a limited number of links to remove from a network
See it on Scoop.it (http://www.scoop.it/t/papers/p/4037456978/2015/02/24/link-removal-for-the-control-of-stochastically-evolving-epidemics-over-networks-a-comparison-of-approaches) , via Papers (http://www.scoop.it/t/papers)
Indirect reciprocity with optional interactions
Indirect reciprocity means that my behavior towards you also depends on
what you have done to others. Indirect reciprocity is associated with the
evolution of social intelligence and human language. Most approaches to
indirect reciprocity assume obligatory interactions, but here we explore
optional interactions.
See it on Scoop.it (http://www.scoop.it/t/papers/p/4037456827/2015/02/23/indirect-reciprocity-with-optional-interactions) , via Papers (http://www.scoop.it/t/papers)
A Course on Cooperative Game Theory (by Satya R. Chakravarty et al.)
Cooperative game theory deals with situations where objectives of participants of the game are partially cooperative and partially conflicting. It is in the interest of participants to cooperate in the sense of making binding agreements to achieve the maximum possible benefit. When it comes to distribution of benefit/payoffs, participants have conflicting interests. Such situations are usually modelled as cooperative games. While the book mainly discusses transferable utility games, there is also a brief analysis of non-transferable utility games. Alternative solution concepts to cooperative game theoretic problems are presented in chapters 1-9 and the next four chapters present issues related to computations of solutions discussed in the earlier chapters. The proofs of all results presented in the book are quite explicit. Additionally the mathematical techniques employed in demonstrating the results will be helpful to those who wish to learn application of mathematics for
solving problems in game theory.
See it on Scoop.it (http://www.scoop.it/t/cxbooks/p/4037338185/2015/02/23/a-course-on-cooperative-game-theory-by-satya-r-chakravarty-et-al) , via CxBooks (http://www.scoop.it/t/cxbooks)
Network structure beyond food webs: mapping non-trophic and trophic interactions on Chilean rocky shores
Chilean Marine Ecological Network
See it on Scoop.it (http://www.scoop.it/t/papers/p/4037684756/2015/02/23/network-structure-beyond-food-webs-mapping-non-trophic-and-trophic-interactions-on-chilean-rocky-shores) , via Papers (http://www.scoop.it/t/papers)
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