http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:ia3K8y8XtsMJ:globalwarming-factorfiction.com/2007/04/02/pump-games-fill-up-with-ethanol-one-obstacle-is-big-oil/+Pump+Games:+Fill+Up+With+Ethanol%3F+One+Obstacle+Is+Big+Oil&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Article in Wall Street Journal 2 April 2007
“Pump Games: Fill Up With Ethanol? One Obstacle is Big Oil”
The author of this article describes the current situation of the ethanol-based fuel E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) to replace the use of gasoline in transportation in the United States. Many believe that ethanol fuel is one […]

New Study Looks at Peer Pressure and Implications for Preventing

The above article is from HealthNewsDigest.com. The article points out that “friends’ substance use is one of the most powerful influences that lead adolescents to use themselves.” However a three-year Weill Cornell Medical College study found that students with “competence skills had a long-term […]

Presumably, many of us have been to other parts of the country and heard things that sounded weird to our ears, other than just an accent. There are many normal differences we are often aware of, such as the name for a sweet carbonated beverage. In fact, people often rally on this debate, […]

http://freesoftware.mit.edu/papers/crowstonhowison.pdf
In this paper, The Social Structure of Free and Open Source Software Development, by Kevin Crowston and James Howison of Syracuse University, the social organization of these development communities is studied from the perspective of social network analysis. In so doing, the authors contest conventional notions […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6506027.stm
As we have been discussing in class operating systems are one of the products that shows positive network effects with expanding user base. This makes sense because with a larger user base reduceds concerns of interoperability which is a concern for business users. Also once there is a larger user base then more […]

Stock Markets are ideal places to track fads and information cascades because Stock Markets quantifiably merge emotion and information. From the first Tulip bubble in the Dutch Golden ages to the recent Internet stock market bubble, information cascades provide a framework when markets react in non-rational ways. Stock market corrections prior to the Great Depression […]

Imagine a network in which one person has several contacts. These contacts, for the sake of argument, are not connected despite the likely influence of triadic closure, and thus stem from the person in question like spokes from a wheel. The people at the end of these spokes have their own friends who may or […]

There is a balance between personal signals and decisions of past users for most people in a decision making process. However, I question what can be said for the initial individual to accept or reject something.
Theory has it that the first individual makes a decision based on their personal signal. So thereafter the other individuals […]

A wonderful, recent example of the fragility of an information cascade is the demise of the Atkins Diet craze that occurred earlier this decade. Its official website is www.atkins.com, but I have used its Wikipedia article – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_Nutritional_Approach – as my main source of clarification. As the article explains, the diet was first created in […]

 http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
Classroom discussion has brought up the linking between weblogs (one of which I am linking myself in this post) as an example of a network governed by a power law distribution. The above article describes how this power law distribution arises, attributing the development of a seemingly more connected “community” within the larger network to […]