Wednesday, March 15, 2006
TRN Research News Roundup March 6, 2006:
"Motion models how we meet
What does math have to do with friendship and sex? Quite a bit, these days. Mathematical models are emerging as a useful tool for studying and monitoring social networks.
Networks have three principal characteristics: a structure that indicates the average degrees of separation between nodes, a clustering coefficient that indicates the sizes and distribution of subgroups, and a dynamical evolution that indicates the rate at which links and clusters are formed and broken.
Scientists from the University of Stuttgart in Germany, Federal University of Ceará in Brazil, and the Center for Theoretical and Computational Physics in Portugal have developed a model that captures all three characteristics using a single behavior -- motion. The model contains mobile agents that move randomly and collide with each other, with collisions representing acquaintanceships.
The researchers' model accurately represented the characteristics of several networks: friendships among some 90,000 students at 84 schools in the U.S, and sexual contacts among a network of 250 people.
The model could be used to map many types of networks, including those that inform disease tracking and treatment, sociological studies, and law enforcement.
(System of Mobile Agents to Model Social Networks, Physical Review Letters, March 3, 2006) "
"Motion models how we meet
What does math have to do with friendship and sex? Quite a bit, these days. Mathematical models are emerging as a useful tool for studying and monitoring social networks.
Networks have three principal characteristics: a structure that indicates the average degrees of separation between nodes, a clustering coefficient that indicates the sizes and distribution of subgroups, and a dynamical evolution that indicates the rate at which links and clusters are formed and broken.
Scientists from the University of Stuttgart in Germany, Federal University of Ceará in Brazil, and the Center for Theoretical and Computational Physics in Portugal have developed a model that captures all three characteristics using a single behavior -- motion. The model contains mobile agents that move randomly and collide with each other, with collisions representing acquaintanceships.
The researchers' model accurately represented the characteristics of several networks: friendships among some 90,000 students at 84 schools in the U.S, and sexual contacts among a network of 250 people.
The model could be used to map many types of networks, including those that inform disease tracking and treatment, sociological studies, and law enforcement.
(System of Mobile Agents to Model Social Networks, Physical Review Letters, March 3, 2006) "
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