Viruses can Network Also?
This summer was filled with big budget Hollywood flicks staring idolized heroes ranging from Thor to the Green Lantern to Jack Sparrow fighting evil forces threatening humanity. However, the summer is officially over and to kick start the somber Hollywood Season of fall is the film Contagion. The premise of this movie is a virus […]
Privacy Concerns With an Exanding Network
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704912004575252723109845974.html Facebook is a social network that manages connections between hundreds of millions of users and it customizes its connections based on the information given by each member that creates a profile. It gathers data on individual users ranging from their biographic information to their personal interests and goals. Over the past year, Facebook […]
The Politics of the Public Opinion
http://mashable.com/2011/09/11/week-in-digital-politics-18/ It is not difficult to prove that Facebook has revolutionized the modern friendship and has completely transformed the way information is spread. Although this is more often seen in social situations, now that businesses and companies can make Facebooks as well, this transformation is continuing to affect even more aspects of modern society. Facebook […]
The Game behind Parking Auctions
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/08/app-lets-drivers-auction-public-parking-spaces/ Recently a new app has been launched for iPhone users to auction parking spaces using their cell phones. Although still beta-testing the app, the developers believed that it has the potential to gain a global market in the near future. The app is currently being used primarily on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and here’s […]
Braess’s Paradox and Carmageddon
Earlier in July, there was a plan to widen a certain stretch of highway located in Los Angeles in order to reduce traffic congestion. If you’ve ever tried driving in Los Angeles during rush hour, you would know just how awful the problem is. It was not mere coincidence that the first “Rush Hour” film […]
Using Networks to Characterize Biological Behavior
In the first few lectures of this course we’ve discussed the relevance of concepts such as strong triadic closure, auctions and game theory, and how these concepts are applied primarily to social networks. Although analyzing social networks is very important and a good example for some of these core concepts, I’d like to pump the […]
Social discovery: the next step in online social networks
A recent article by Geoff Cook, the co-founder of myYearbook.com, highlights one of the recent issues at the forefront of online social networking: the declining success of Google+. Prior to its release weeks ago, many internet users (including myself) thought that Google+ would become the “next generation of social networking”, but that doesn’t seem to […]
Scale Invariance in Real World Networks
Source:http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/9910/9910332v1.pdf In “Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks”, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and Reka Albert show that a class of networks called “random networks” exhibits a phenomenon well-known to physicists and mathematicians: scale invariance. Scale invariance simply means that the overall features of our network look the same (at least statistically) under dilatations. Most of us are […]
Game Theory in The Dark Knight (Warning Spoilers!)
The Dark Knight: Awesome movie. What makes it so great? Well maybe it’s Christopher Nolan’s blue-black imagery and talent for suspense. Or perhaps it’s Christian Bale’s ability to incapacitate Gotham City’s entire SWAT team while nursing the world’s worst sore throat. Who knows for sure? But I think (and I’m sure many people would agree) what […]
To spore, or not to spore?
http://www.physorg.com/news179521562.html Surviving harsh environmental conditions is one of the principle barriers to optimizing fitness, or the ability to “pass on” genetic information to the next generation, that bacteria face. Bacteria constantly face “decisions” regarding how to deal with prolonged exposure to extreme (high or low) temperatures, concentration of oxygen, pressure, and pH. One common method […]
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