Friday, March 01, 2013

modeling social network topologies in elementary schools


Plosone | Complex networks are widely applied in disciplines as varied as economics [1], biology [2], information technology [3] and sociology [4], [5]. Further development of complex networks theory is therefore a vital research area, with recent efforts focusing on measurements [6], topologies [7], [8] and the way data is disseminated through them [9].

Complex networks are a tool for modeling systems in which elements interrelate. Social networks are systems that describe phenomena in which individuals interact within a society (e.g. people, companies, etc.); nodes represent individuals and links represent the social relationships between them. Recent research has focused on the patterns of face-to-face interaction dynamics. In one study, radio frequency identification devices were used to calculate the proximity and duration of interpersonal interactions, and thus create social networks to understand community behavior and apply diffusion processes for infectious diseases and information [10]. Using the same technology, studies have been done in high schools [11] and elementary schools [12] of the mixing patterns of students in a school environment that describe social network’s temporal evolution and apply infectious disease diffusion processes to identify high-risk situations and establish vaccination strategies.

When studying data dissemination within a social system, an understanding is needed of the network topology that models the interactions produced within it. To this end, the present study objective was to evaluate the properties of friendship and enmity networks representing interactions between elementary school students and develop models that reproduce them. This will facilitate future research into problems such as scholastic performance, disease transmission and evolution of the cultural environment, among other important phenomena occurring in schools which could benefit from the formalism of complex networks [13][15].

We describe the methodology used to collect the data and generate the databases used in developing the networks. These data have certain characteristics that are not reproduced by classic models of complex network theory. The tests used to analyze friendship networks are described in section ‘Friendship Networks Analysis’ and implementation of the proposed model is described in section ‘Friendship Network Model’, while the enmity networks are addressed in section ‘Enmity Network Analysis’ and the proposed descriptive model in section ‘Enmity Network Model’. Promising future research emphases are proposed.

11 comments:

umbrarchist said...

What do social networks say about quality of information?


Can they work to keep information suppressed? If so, what good are they?

CNu said...

It's the prevailing method for both threat assessment and social control. Combine the increasingly prevalent application of scientific/quantitative social network modeling with the Internet of things, and this human livestock management is beginning to take on levels of completeness that no one I'm aware of ever previously imagined or speculatively entertained us about.

SabrinaBee said...

OT: What do you make of all of this Chinese hacking? I feel like it is a mutual activity yet, it being reported on an awful lot lately. Has there been a rise in the frequency and effectiveness of the Chinese, do you think?

CNu said...

We've peeped that topic from time to time;

http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2011/08/chinese-military-clowns-lot-like-us.html
http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2011/08/operation-shady-rat.html
http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2009/11/is-china-aggressive-foe-in-cyberspace.html

Considered in the context of what American elites have been investing in;
http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2012/10/counter-electronics-high-power.html
http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2012/04/growing-state-surveillance.html
http://subrealism.blogspot.com/search?q=stuxnet
http://subrealism.blogspot.com/search?q=drone


The Chinese are taking baby steps.



While there has certainly been a rise in the frequency of Internet mischief out of China, they can't even hold a candle to the levels of perpetration that the U.S. has developed and deployed over generations.

SabrinaBee said...

Now see, I feel like China is simply mining for information being up and coming in the manufacturing game which, in a free market, would be par for the course in terms of competition. I could be wrong but, I don't envision a Stuxnet type attack from the Chinese. I think their main concern/goal is pushing ahead of America in technology and economically. Yet, our government, ever the protector of corporate concerns seems to be a.) expending resources to build a system of protection FOR corporation (because the real free market is hardly free) and b.) conditioning/programming minds for a possible war with China. If nothing else it will be the prefect excuse as to why we can renege on our monetary debt to the country. Too weird?

CNu said...

Oh, the Han elites are FAR from innocent and far from well intended, so you shouldn't put anything past their hard jockeying with the anglosphereic elites for long-term global supremacy http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2012/06/is-chinese-kleptocracy-like-nothing-in.html

It's just that they're about 40 years behind the curve in terms of their tactical and strategic capabilities in response to the doctrine of full spectrum domination which is in its second decade of implementation by the anglosphere.

b.) is quite right in terms of what minds are being prepared for on multiple levels and on multiple fronts http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2012/09/china-and-japan-heading-toward-war.html
http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2012/05/us-japan-backing-philippines-and.html
http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-is-china-stockpiling-rice-and-other.html

SabrinaBee said...

My goodness! LOL @ Han elites. I guess I am underestimating them. But, I also know that our system of government cannot not allow another system of government to co-exist and possibly thrive. China is the last "communist" (as much at that can be described) country left standing that has not been defeated, at least not from outside, and we've made a deal with the devil to defeat communism by any means necessary, even if it bankrupts us. And considering we have the ongoing "holy" war with Islam, it may just. Unless, of course, we break out the nukes again. Then, Iran and N. Korea may join the fray. Who knows what Russia might do. Looks like we are headed to World War 3. How is it that Rome fell again?

SabrinaBee said...

Funny we nuked Japan in WWII in alliance with China. Wrote into their Constitution that they could not commit an act of war, then, we back them in what was their primary goal all along. The message? You cannot seek imperialism unless it is under us.

CNu said...

I believe WW-III an economic inevitability, much as WW-II was the inevitable global financial reorganization required to pull the developed world out of the great depression. That whole communism business is a great narrative cover for the real underlying jockeying among various old-order elites for hegemonic domination. Kurman was on about that Rome business the other day http://johnkurman.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-pope-smokes-dope.html So, if you look a map of ancient Rome and you wonder about the geopolitical boundaries, you really, to get the real picture, need a series of resource maps, for geology, ecology, trade routes, etc. Logistics and human trafficking is what it is all about, babies. Question: what was the oil of ancient Rome? Answer: Grain.

Question: What
is the oil of the modern world? Answer: Still grain. Why? Well, because despite the fact that we may have built up what some call an extended phenotype of technology, driven in one form or another by fossil carbon and oxygen, despite the fact that so many laborious tasks have been commodified and automated and robot-assisted, despite the fact that automation and a great deal of skills and thinking have been commodified and robotized, and the mental effort involved in that commodified as well, the fact of the matter is it all still runs right back to toil - labor and ingenuity on the part of these self-replicating, generally intelligent heuristic robots we call humans.A thousand or so nuclear weapons will be exchanged in the fray, but I don't consider either Iran or N. Korea as anything more substantive than narrative pawns, with Iran being in a much more perilous position because it sits on 120 billion barrels of Mr. Charlie's oil. India and Pakistan will take huge hits in their inevitable nuclear exchange, which exchange will decide once and for all who controls Central Asia and solves the underlying conflict between those two countries which has made Afghanistan volatile.

The message? You cannot seek imperialism unless it is under us.


lol, in the end, there can be only one...,

CNu said...

Continuing that toil and grain trope....,

SabrinaBee said...

Wow! Interesting what we are isolated from and simply don't know. I don't know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that we essentially live in a cocoon and are practically immune from the concerns of the rest of the world. I'm leaning towards bad because if we were affected in similar fashion we might, like they take a more active interest in what is being done in our name and the threat of climate change. Something like an increase in wheat prices may be noticed in a loaf of bread but not to the point that it makes us revolt. But then, it is not the bulk of our diet.

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