Fall 2006 Talk Series on

Networks and Complex Systems

Every Monday 6-7p, Wells Library 001 ~ Optional Dinner at at Lennie's Afterwards

Description
This talk series is open to all Indiana University faculty and students interested in network analysis, modeling, visualization, and complex systems research.

A major intent is to cross-fertilize between research done in the social and behavioral sciences, research in natural sciences such as biology or physics, but also research on Internet technologies.

Links to people, projects, groups, students, courses and news related to complex systems and networks research at Indiana University are also available via the CSN web site.

Organizer
Katy Börner <katy@indiana.edu> Associate Professor of Information Science, SLIS, IUB.

Time & Place
Every Monday 6:00-7:00pm in the Wells Library (formerly Main Library) at Indiana University, Bloomington, Room 001. Right after the Cognitive Science Colloquium Series. There is an optional dinner afterwards 7-9p at Lennie's.

Credit
Students interested to attend the talks for credit need to register for L600 (1 credit) with Katy Börner. Proposal form is here. Grading will be based on the attendance of 8 talks (sign-up sheets will be provided) and a 4-5 page write-up that synergizes/aggregates major points made by a subset of the speakers to be submitted at the end of the semester.

Previous Talks
Fall 2004 | Spring 2005 | Fall 2005 | Spring 2006

Evolving list of recommended readings. See also the Wikipedia entries on graph theory, small world networks, power law, and complex networks, and self organizing systems.

Related series
Cambridge Colloquium on Complexity and Social Networks organized by Davin Lazer at Harvard.
The Age of Networks speaker series organized by Noshir Contractor, UIUC & NCSA.

09/04 Faculty at Indiana University, Bloomington (IUB)

materials icon Overview of Network and Complex Systems Courses at IUB

S651 Network Analysis by Stan Wasserman, Statistics, Sociology, Psychological and Brain Sciences
I400/I590 (cross-listed in Cognitive Science) Seek and Find: Search Strategies in Space and Time by Peter M. Todd, Informatics& Psychological and Brain Sciences
P582 Biological and Artificial Neural Networks by John Beggs , Physics
L597 (Section 22299) The Semantic Web by John Paolillo, SLIS & Informatics
I601 Introduction to Complexity by Alessandro Vespignani & Alessandro Flammini, Informatics
I690 Mathematical Methods for Informatics by Santiago Schnell, Informatics
COGS-Q580 An Introduction to Dynamical Systems in Cognitive Science by Randall Beer, Cognitive Science, Computer Science, and Informatics at IU
L600 Networks & Complex Systems talks Katy Börner, SLIS

09/11 Manju K. Ahuja, Information Systems, Kelly School of Business at IUB

materials iconmaterials iconRevisiting the Role of Trust and Communication in Globally-Distributed Teams: A Social Network Analysis Perspective

Abstract: Few would disagree that trust is one of the key themes in organizational/behavioral research today. McEvily, Perrone, and Zaheer (2003, p. 1), for example, contend that while "trust has long figured prominently in scholarly and lay discourse alike;" it is only recently that organizational researchers have started devoting substantial attention to understanding the significance of trust. This is due to two simultaneous developments related an emphasis on collaboration, and changes in technology "that have reconfigured exchange and the coordination of work across distance and time." In this study, we tested three proposed models (additive, moderation, and mediation) to determine the role of trust in its relationship with communication and performance. Using the SNA perspespective, we conceptualize trustworthiness and communication in terms of centrality with respect to these factors. Our results indicate that the mediating model best explains the role of trust centrality but considering all three models presents a more complex picture. The strong support for the mediation model indicates that trust centrality generally acts as a mediator between communication centrality and performance. That is, the path through which communication leads to performance is through trust. The moderation model adds some nuances to the above general finding. It suggests that for trustworthy individuals, communication can enhance their performance. But, for those who are perceived as less trustworthy, high levels of communication can backfire. Their communication is perceived can be a source of annoyance, and unproductive use of the recipient's time.

09/18 Connie Porter, University of Notre Dame

materials iconmaterials iconAdvances in Relationship Marketing Thought and Practice: The Influence of Social Network Theory

Abstract: Social network theory was developed to help conceptualize the complexities social relations, and modern marketing strategies focus on the complexities of managing relationships with customers. During this talk, I review three dominant perspectives of social network theory that marketing scholars have applied to advance relationship marketing thought and practice. As part of this review, I summarize key findings from the past 25 years of marketing literature that incorporates social network theory and/or analysis. I conclude by presenting recent trends that suggest that social network theory will become increasingly relevant and important to marketing researchers and practitioners that operate in an interactive marketing environment.

09/25 Mark Meiss, Advanced Network Management Lab at IUB

materials iconUncovering functional networks in Internet Traffic

Abstract: The Internet is a complex system in which hundreds of millions of users form transient social networks as they communicate using thousands of applications. In some cases these applications are well-known--email and the Web, for example--and identifiable through their use of publicly advertised ports. In other cases, users conceal their interactions by using nonstandard ports, covert channels, and encryption. Law enforcement officials and network administrators have little power to detect these hidden networks as they attempt to curb illegal file sharing and other criminal activities online. We present a simple technique to detect functional subnetworks based purely on their topological features. User privacy is safeguarded as there is no need to inspect packet contents or track individual Internet addresses. A test involving traffic data collected in a typical day on the Internet2 backbone, involving 15 million distinct hosts, shows that our technique can accurately cluster applications into functional categories. A collection of unknown applications are correctly identified with this method, as confirmed by further analysis.

10/02 Divesh Srivastava, AT&T Labs-Research

materials iconRecord Linkage: Concepts and Techniques

Abstract: Poor quality data is prevalent in databases due to a variety of reasons, including transcription errors, lack of standards for recording database fields, etc. To be able to effectively query and integrate such data, a key problem is to efficiently identify pairs of entities (represented as individual records, e.g., persons, or groups of records, e.g., households) in two sets of entities that are approximately the same. This operation has been studied through the years and it is known under various names, including record linkage, entity identification, and approximate join, to name a few. The objective of this talk is to provide an overview of key research results and algorithmic techniques used in this area.

10/09 Keith V. Nesbitt, School of Information Technology, Charles Sturt University, Australia & New England Complex Systems Institute

materials iconmaterials icon Designing Multi-sensory Displays of Abstract Data - with Stock Market Trading Examples

Abstract: This talk will describe a general approach for designing multi-sensory (visual, auditory and touch) displays of abstract data. One aim of designing such displays is to create tools that help people understand large amounts of data and find useful patterns in the data. This activity can be described as "Perceptual Data Mining".
While the motivation is simple enough, actually designing appropriate mappings between the abstract information and the human sensory channels is complex and must consider a broad range of human perceptual capabilities and also account for sensory interactions.
This talk will discuss a number of relevant design issues, including; the multi-sensory design space, the design process, using design guidelines and how to evaluate designs. The concepts will be described in the context of a real world case study that aims to find useful trading patterns in stock market data.  

10/16 Shin-kap Han, Sociology, University of Illinois

materials iconmaterials icon The Other Ride of Paul Revere: Brokerage Role in the Making of the American Revolution

Abstract: The celebrated tale of his "Midnight Ride" notwithstanding, Paul Revere's role in the events leading up to the American Revolution remains rather obscure.   Joseph Warren, known as the man who sent Revere on that ride, presents a similar quandary.   What was the nature of the roles they played in the mobilization process?   I address the question from a social structural perspective, reassessing the evidence and reconsidering the key concept of brokerage. The analysis shows that they were bridges par excellence, spanning the various social chasms and connecting disparate organizational elements of the movement, thus, bringing together "men of all orders" to forge an emerging movement. Shin-Kap Han (Ph.D., Columbia University) is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.   His areas of interest are Social Networks, Economic Sociology, Organizations and Institutions, Korean Society (Historical/Contemporary), Careers, and Quantitative Methods.   He is currently working on, among others, Korean Chaebol ("Family Business: The Marriage Network of Chaebol Families in Korea") and large scale social movement and networks ("To Harness an Outbreak: A Microstructural Account of Mobilization for the March First Movement").

10/23 Luis M. Rocha, Informatics, Cognitive Science & Biocomplexity, IUB

materials iconmaterials iconAgent-Based Model of Genotype Editing

Abstract: Evolutionary algorithms rarely deal with ontogenetic, non-inherited alteration of genetic information because they are based on a direct genotype-phenotype mapping. In contrast, in Nature several processes have been discovered which alter genetic information encoded in DNA before it is translated into amino-acid chains. Ontogenetically altered genetic information is not inherited but extensively used in regulation and development of phenotypes, giving organisms the ability to, in a sense, re-program their genotypes according to environmental clues. An example of post-transcriptional alteration of gene-encoding sequences is the process of RNA Editing. Here we introduce a novel Agent-based model of genotype editing and a computational study of its evolutionary performance in static and dynamic environments. This model builds on our previous Genetic Algorithm with Edition, but presents a fundamentally novel architecture in which coding and non-coding genetic components are allowed to coevolve. Our goal is twofold: (1) to study the role of RNA Editing regulation in the evolutionary process, and (2) to investigate the conditions under which genotype edition improves the optimization performance of evolutionary algorithms. We show that genotype edition allows evolving agents to perform better in several classes of fitness functions, both in static and dynamic environments. We also present evidence that the indirect genotype/phenotype mapping resulting from genotype editing leads to a better exploration/exploitation compromise of the search process. Therefore, we show that our biologically-inspired model of genotype edition can be used to both facilitate understanding of the evolutionary role of RNA regulation based on genotype editing in biology, and advance the current state of research in Evolutionary Computation.

10/30 Faculty and Students at IUB

Open House

Abstract: Open your laptops and demo your software. Bring posters to introduce your research questions and results. So far, the following posters and demo's are planned:

11/06 Edward Castronova, Telecommunications at IUB

materials iconThe Fun Revolution: How the New Science of Videogames Will Transform the Real World

Abstract: What if we could all live in a fantasy game instead of the real world? That's not just a philosophical question any more. Though living in a fantasy, the gamers seem happy enough. And if they're happy, maybe others would be happier there as well. Maybe millions and millions of others. Indeed, given the choice between a fantasy world designed to be completely fun all the time, and the real world with its myriad problems, how many would choose reality? Very few, and in all likelihood, not enough to allow daily life in the real world to continue unchanged.
The Fun Revolution uses hard-headed economic and social analysis to reveal how video games, toys no longer, will force reality to become more fun.

11/13 Filippo Menczer, Computer Science and Informatics at IUB

materials iconmaterials icon Social Web Search

Abstract: This talk will present two research projects under way in the Network  and agents Network (NaN), which study ways of leveraging online  social behavior for better Web search. GiveALink.org is a social  bookmarking site where users donate their personal bookmarks. A  search and recommendation engine is built from a similarity network  derived from the hierarchical structure of bookmarks, aggregated  across users.  6S is a distributed Web search engine based on an  adaptive peer network. By learning about each other, peers can route  queries through the network to efficiently reach knowledgeable nodes.  The resulting peer network structures itself as a small world that  uncovers semantic communities and outperforms centralized search  engines.

11/20 Randall D. Beer, Cognitive Science, Computer Science, and Informatics at IUB

materials iconmaterials iconFrictionless Brains: Evolution and Analysis of Brain-Body-Environment Systems

Abstract: Unraveling the neural basis of behavior is a daunting task.  Beyond the obvious experimental difficulties, there are significant  theoretical challenges that are typical of all biological systems. These challenges include (1) the dynamical complexity and dense  interconnectivity of the underlying elements, (2) the often  counterintuitive designs produced by evolution, and (3) the fact that  nervous systems co-evolved with the bodies and environments in which  they are embedded, and can only really be understood within this  larger context. One approach to these difficulties is the careful  study of idealized models of complete brain-body-environment systems.  Like Galileo's frictionless planes, such frictionless brains (and  bodies, and environments) can help us to build intuition and, ultimately, the conceptual framework and mathematical and  computational tools necessary for understanding the mechanisms of  behavior.
In this talk, I will provide a broad overview of a systematic attempt  to engage these issues through the evolution and analysis of  dynamical “nervous systems” for model agents. Along the way, I will  briefly survey a variety of projects, including the general dynamical  behavior of recurrent neural circuits, the impact of circuit  architecture on dynamics, the structure of fitness space and its  influence on evolutionary processes, the interaction between neural  and peripheral dynamics in evolved model pattern generators, the  interplay of developmental bias and selection during evolution, and  the evolution and analysis of learning and such minimally cognitive  behaviors as categorical perception, short-term memory and selective  attention.

11/27 Jim Kennedy, US Department of Labor, Washington, DC

materials iconmaterials iconThe Particle Swarm: Theme and Variations on Computational Social Learning

Abstract: The particle swarm algorithm is implemented in computer programs that solve hard problems by simulating social processes.  Like human beings, "particles" in a population interact, sharing their successes, and over time the entire population settles on optimal patterns of parameters.  The performance of the algorithm depends on a number of things, including population size and communication structure, the nature of the rules for interactions among particles, the method by which they are propelled, and the values of coefficients that are used to control convergence and explosion.  As the paradigm has evolved since the first papers were presented in 1995, the basic particle swarm has become both more effective and more concise.  In this talk I will discuss the philosophy and history of the method, compare some basic versions, discuss issues in implementation, and present some important topics for future research.

12/04 Stevan Harnad: IUScholarWorks: Maximizing and Measuring Research Impact Through Open Access Mandates and Metrics materials icon materials icon

12/04 Stevan Harnad, Université du Québec à Montréal & University of Southampton & American Scientist Open Access Forum

materials iconmaterials icon Scientometrics in the Open Access Era

Abstract: The "Open Access (OA) Advantage" in citations consists of: Early Advantage (early self-archiving produces both earlier and more citations), Usage Advantage (more downloads for OA articles, correlated with later citations), Competitive Advantage (relative citation advantage of OA over non-OA articles: disappears at 100% OA), Quality Advantage (OA advantage is higher, the higher the quality of the article) and Quality Bias (authors selectively self-archiving their higher quality articles - a non-causal component: disappears at 100% OA). We are currently comparing the OA advantage for mandated and spontaneous (self-selected) self-archiving. The growing webwide database of Open Access (OA) articles, the proposed US Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) and the UK Research Assessment Exercise's recent transition to metrics will make it possible to: (1) motivate more researchers to provide OA by self-archiving; (2) map the growth of OA across disciplines, countries and languages; (3) navigate the OA literature using citation-linking and impact ranking; (4) measure, extrapolate and predict the research impact of individuals, groups, institutions, disciplines, languages and countries; (5) measure research performance and productivity, (6) assess candidates for research funding; (7) assess the outcome of research funding, (8) map the course of prior research lines, in terms of individuals, institutions, journals, fields, nations; (9) analyze and predict the direction of current and future research trajectories; and (10) provide teaching and learning resources that guide students (via impact navigation) through the large and growing OA research literature in a way that navigating the web via google alone cannot come close to doing.
Shadbolt, N., Brody, T., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2006) The Open Research Web: A Preview of the Optimal and the Inevitable, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, Chandos. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12453/
Berners-Lee, T., De Roure, D., Harnad, S. and Shadbolt, N. (2005)  Journal publishing and author self-archiving: Peaceful Co-Existence and Fruitful Collaboration.  http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11160/

10/31Stevan Harnad: Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech materials icon

12/11 Weixia (Bonnie) Huang, Bruce Herr, and Ben Makines at IUB

materials iconmaterials iconNetwork Workbench

Abstract: This talk will present and demonstrate the Network Workbench (NWB) Tool, the Community Wiki, and the Cyberinfrastructure Shell developed in the NSF funded Network Workbench project.

The talk will present the overall structure, implementation, as well as a demo for potential developers and users.
We would like to acknowledge the NWB team members that made major contributions to the NWB tool and/or Community Wiki: Santo Fortunato, Katy Börner, Alex Vespignani, Soma Sanyal, Ramya Sabbineni, Vivek S. Thakre, Elisha Hardy, and Shashikant Penumarthy.

Interested to present in Spring 2007 (Katy will be on sabbatical)
Richard Schweickert <swike@psyclops.psych.purdue.edu>

Interested to present in Fall 2007:
Oct 8-9, Daniel A. Reed, Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute & Chancellor's Eminent Professor and Vice-Chancellor for Information Technology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (via Margaret Buedel)
Oct 15, 4-6p Annual Open House
Oct 22, Marco Janssen, School of Human Evolution and Social Change and School of Computing and Informatics, Arizona State University
Tony Beavers, Philosopher and  Director of the Cognitive Science program at the University of  Evansville (via Colin Allen)
Michael Macy, Cornell University
Mike Smoot (via Trey Ideker), Cytoscape http://chianti.ucsd.edu/idekerlab/
Pat Hanrahan, Stanford University
Joe Futrelle, NCSA
David Lazer, Harvard University
Yves Gingras, gingras.yves@uqam.ca, Centrality of Physicists
Valdis Krebs, InFlow, Cleveland.
Lokman Meho, SLIS, IU
Mike Pollard, DiscoveryLogic