The Opioid Epidemic
2017 Nov. 30 Reference Link: http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-opioid-hearing-20171127-story.html With the opioid epidemic becoming a national crisis, the government is taking measures to step in and aid with prevention and treatment. According to the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “drug overdoses killed some 64,000 people last year… a 20 percent increase from the year before” largely […]
Why Big Tech Should Subsidize Real Journalism
https://www.wired.com/story/dont-stop-the-presses-why-big-tech-should-subsidize-real-journalism/ The article tells a compelling narrative on the impact that tech companies such as Google and Facebook have on local press. It’s no news that the presence of these tech companies threatens the well-being of the traditional media. Gendreau describes an incidence that Bay Area News Group has to fire its copy editors and […]
An Epidemic Model for Bats
Bats are reservoirs of coronaviruses (viruses that shut down our immune response). In fact, bats co-exist with over 200 different viruses, the most of any mammal (even rodents), and exhibit no signs of disease. Sometimes, these coronaviruses jump species, from bats to humans, and wreak havoc on our population since we are not nearly as suited to handle […]
Bitcoin as the Result of Network Effects
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/02/credit-suisse-ceo-banks-staying-away-from-bitcoin-bubble.html Ever since the price of bitcoin, the most influential digital currency, began to swell, many notable people started to disclose their opinions on the phenomenon. One such person, the chief executive of Credit Suisse, recently deemed bitcoin to be “the very definition of a bubble”, and further stated that those who invest in bitcoin […]
Twitter and Tipping Points
Network Effects: Waiting for the Tipping Point This article comments on the various ways in which information spreads through networks and how they can culminate to a tipping point. The authors looks at information dissemination through twitter specifically. Mainly, he identifies a few trends—the strength of weak ties, the long tail phenomenon, and homogenization—in how […]
The Cascading Effect of Speaking Out About Sexual Misconduct
http://www.ktvb.com/news/local/cascading-effect-as-women-speak-out-about-sexual-misconduct/495687971 This article analogizes the recent slew of sexual misconduct victims publicly speaking out against their perpetrators with the cascading behavior we’ve studied in class. “From Hollywood to the media to politics, America is witnessing an almost daily barrage of allegations of sexual harassment, assault, and inappropriate behavior,”Boydston writes. The catalyst? Harvey Weinstein’s victims.”It absolutely blew […]
Network Effects: Why the Ice Bucket Challenge Went Viral
The Ice Bucket Challenge that raised $115 million dollars for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (A.L.S.) research back in 2014 was the result of network effects. According to an article from New York Times, one reason that the challenge became viral was due to the use of social media. Participants of the challenge post videos of them […]
The Fidget Spinner Craze Explained Through Cascades
In spring of 2017, a “spinning piece of plastic” took the country’s toy industry by storm. Retailers such as Walmart and Target could hardly keep up with the skyrocketing demands for it. Social media was flooded with countless of Youtube videos and Instagram posts dedicated to it. Schools across the nation have taken measures to […]
Behavior Propagation in Cognitive Radio Networks
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=6697930 This paper examines the interesting behaviors of cognitive radios in networks acting as intelligent agents that are able to communicate with one another and recommend or improve on channels. It also examines the phenomenon of different cliques of cognitive radios that form as a result of these differing recommendations and (what they refer to […]
Spreading Memes
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-fake-news-goes-viral-mdash-heres-the-math/ This Scientific American article tackles the question of how so many memes go viral. The author, Madhusree Mukerjee, sites different models for how memes may spread. One model claims that memes follows a power law, so “a meme is 4x less likely to be tweeted twice than once” (Mukerjee, 2017). However, if this were […]
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