No Arabic abstract
We propose a network metric, edge proximity, ${cal P}_e$, which demonstrates the importance of specific edges in a network, hitherto not captured by existing network metrics. The effects of removing edges with high ${cal P}_e$ might initially seem inconspicuous but are eventually shown to be very harmful for networks. Compared to existing strategies, the removal of edges by ${cal P}_e$ leads to a remarkable increase in the diameter and average shortest path length in undirected real and random networks till the first disconnection and well beyond. ${cal P}_e$ can be consistently used to rupture the network into two nearly equal parts, thus presenting a very potent strategy to greatly harm a network. Targeting by ${cal P}_e$ causes notable efficiency loss in U.S. and European power grid networks. ${cal P}_e$ identifies proteins with essential cellular functions in protein-protein interaction networks. It pinpoints regulatory neural connections and important portions of the neural and brain networks, respectively. Energy flow interactions identified by ${cal P}_e$ form the backbone of long food web chains. Finally, we scrutinize the potential of ${cal P}_e$ in edge controllability dynamics of directed networks.
Proximity networks are time-varying graphs representing the closeness among humans moving in a physical space. Their properties have been extensively studied in the past decade as they critically affect the behavior of spreading phenomena and the performance of routing algorithms. Yet, the mechanisms responsible for their observed characteristics remain elusive. Here, we show that many of the observed properties of proximity networks emerge naturally and simultaneously in a simple latent space network model, called dynamic-$mathbb{S}^{1}$. The dynamic-$mathbb{S}^{1}$ does not model node mobility directly, but captures the connectivity in each snapshot---each snapshot in the model is a realization of the $mathbb{S}^{1}$ model of traditional complex networks, which is isomorphic to hyperbolic geometric graphs. By forgoing the motion component the model facilitates mathematical analysis, allowing us to prove the contact, inter-contact and weight distributions. We show that these distributions are power laws in the thermodynamic limit with exponents lying within the ranges observed in real systems. Interestingly, we find that network temperature plays a central role in network dynamics, dictating the exponents of these distributions, the time-aggregated agent degrees, and the formation of unique and recurrent components. Further, we show that paradigmatic epidemic and rumor spreading processes perform similarly in real and modeled networks. The dynamic-$mathbb{S}^{1}$ or extensions of it may apply to other types of time-varying networks and constitute the basis of maximum likelihood estimation methods that infer the node coordinates and their evolution in the latent spaces of real systems.
Multilayer networks represent systems in which there are several topological levels each one representing one kind of interaction or interdependency between the systems elements. These networks have attracted a lot of attention recently because their study allows considering different dynamical modes concurrently. Here, we revise the main concepts and tools developed up to date. Specifically, we focus on several metrics for multilayer network characterization as well as on the spectral properties of the system, which ultimately enable for the dynamical characterization of several critical phenomena. The theoretical framework is also applied for description of real-world multilayer systems.
We introduce the concept of control centrality to quantify the ability of a single node to control a directed weighted network. We calculate the distribution of control centrality for several real networks and find that it is mainly determined by the networks degree distribution. We rigorously prove that in a directed network without loops the control centrality of a node is uniquely determined by its layer index or topological position in the underlying hierarchical structure of the network. Inspired by the deep relation between control centrality and hierarchical structure in a general directed network, we design an efficient attack strategy against the controllability of malicious networks.
We study the effect of heterogeneous temporal activations on epidemic spreading in temporal networks. We focus on the susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) model on activity-driven networks with burstiness. By using an activity-based mean-field approach, we derive a closed analytical form for the epidemic threshold for arbitrary activity and inter-event time distributions. We show that, as expected, burstiness lowers the epidemic threshold while its effect on prevalence is twofold. In low-infective systems burstiness raises the average infection probability, while it weakens epidemic spreading for high infectivity. Our results can help clarify the conflicting effects of burstiness reported in the literature. We also discuss the scaling properties at the transition, showing that they are not affected by burstiness.
Community structure is one of the most relevant features encountered in numerous real-world applications of networked systems. Despite the tremendous effort of scientists working on this subject over the past few decades to characterize, model, and analyze communities, more investigations are needed to better understand the impact of community structure and its dynamics on networked systems. Here, we first focus on generative models of communities in complex networks and their role in developing strong foundation for community detection algorithms. We discuss modularity and the use of modularity maximization as the basis for community detection. Then, we overview the Stochastic Block Model, its different variants, and inference of community structures from such models. Next, we focus on time evolving networks, where existing nodes and links can disappear and/or new nodes and links may be introduced. The extraction of communities under such circumstances poses an interesting and non-trivial problem that has gained considerable interest over the last decade. We briefly discuss considerable advances made in this field recently. Finally, we focus on immunization strategies essential for targeting the influential spreaders of epidemics in modular networks. Their main goal is to select and immunize a small proportion of individuals from the whole network to control the diffusion process. Various strategies have emerged over the years suggesting different ways to immunize nodes in networks with overlapping and non-overlapping community structure. We first discuss stochastic strategies that require little or no information about the network topology at the expense of their performance. Then, we introduce deterministic strategies that have proven to be very efficient in controlling the epidemic outbreaks, but require complete knowledge of the network.