An article from NewScientist that was published several years ago (May 2004) suggests that a small-world type of network arrangement may be present in the connections between neurons in the areas of the prefrontal cortex that are responsible for short-term memory. The article explains that recent research has suggested that these areas have bistable states […]

I chose to review a paper by Milo, Itzkovitz, Kashtan, Reuven, Levitt, Shen-Orr, Ayzenshtat, Sheffer, and Alon titled “Superfamilies of Evolved and Designed Networks.” This paper tackles the problem of how to characterize networks despite vast differences in scale. It accomplishes this by identifying “network motifs” within the structure of various networks. Here a […]

So I should start with a disclaimer, since it’s not very popular right now to defy the idea that global warming is ruining our planet. DISCLAIMER: I am a strong supporter of protecting the environment. I think finding an alternative source for energy is should be one of our nation’s top priorities. […]

Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?
This weekend’s New York Times Magazine has an article from Duncan Watts on the topic of network effects. The article covers many of the topics that we have covered in class, including the “rich get richer” effect and the MusicLab experiment. Watts draws from examples such as Harry […]

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2004/05/cascading_syste.html
The article, “Cascading System Failure,” by John Robb, pulls social networking theory and information cascading ideas from harmless social networks into today’s terrorist groups. Its main points are about modern nations’ fragility in losing key nodes and how it affects their distribution […]

Reference: “Innovations and Technological Spillovers” by M. Ishaq Nadiri – pdf at http://ideas.repec.org/p/cvs/starer/93-31.html
Recently in class we began discussing the idea of diffusion in networks. This notion of diffusion can be useful for modeling many things including the spread of information or rumors, the epidemiological problem of disease outbreaks, or (as mentioned in class) the […]

Future of Web Searching
The link will lead you to an interesting artucle on the future of web search engines.
It outlines the latest trends that Search engines are doing to improve their engines, and generate more user traffic (So that they can make more money with advertising)
Three main categories that are improving are:
- […]

In class, we’ve started to study network effects and externalities.
In this post, I’m primarily looking to explore two questions. Firstly, how can we better describe network effects in terms of quantifying them? Secondly, what would it look like to filter the first question through a web lens?
It turns out that the process of quantifying the […]

Asch Conformity Experiments
Social Conformity was briefly mentioned in class on its connection to information cascades. A famous experiment was done by Solomon Asch in 1951. Participants were faced with this situation. They signed up for a visual experiment and were seated in a room with seven other participants. Unknown to the participant, the seven others […]

From the various examples cited in class, we have seen that information cascades are a very real, and in some cases dangerous, phenomenon. The danger, of course, comes from the fact that in a cascade, people willfully ignore any signal that the choice they are about to make may be incorrect. This conformism, although beneficial […]