No Arabic abstract
We model a social-encounter network where linked nodes match for reproduction in a manner depending probabilistically on each node`s attractiveness. The developed model reveals that increasing either the network`s mean degree or the ``choosiness`` exercised during pair-formation increases the strength of positive assortative mating. That is, we note that attractiveness is correlated among mated nodes. Their total number also increases with mean degree and selectivity during pair-formation. By iterating over model mapping of parents onto offspring across generations, we study the evolution of attractiveness. Selection mediated by exclusion from reproduction increases mean attractiveness, but is rapidly balanced by skew in the offspring distribution of highly attractive mated pairs.
In this paper, we investigate the effect of heterogeneity of link weight, heterogeneity of the frequency or amount of interactions among individuals, on the evolution of cooperation. Based on an analysis of the evolutionary prisoners dilemma game on a weighted one-dimensional lattice network with intra-individual heterogeneity, we confirm that moderate level of link-weight heterogeneity can facilitate cooperation. Furthermore, we identify two key mechanisms by which link-weight heterogeneity promotes the evolution of cooperation: mechanisms for spread and maintenance of cooperation. We also derive the corresponding conditions under which the mechanisms can work through evolutionary dynamics.
We present a novel method to reconstruct complex network from partial information. We assume to know the links only for a subset of the nodes and to know some non-topological quantity (fitness) characterising every node. The missing links are generated on the basis of the latter quan- tity according to a fitness model calibrated on the subset of nodes for which links are known. We measure the quality of the reconstruction of several topological properties, such as the network density and the degree distri- bution as a function of the size of the initial subset of nodes. Moreover, we also study the resilience of the network to distress propagation. We first test the method on ensembles of synthetic networks generated with the Exponential Random Graph model which allows to apply common tools from statistical mechanics. We then test it on the empirical case of the World Trade Web. In both cases, we find that a subset of 10 % of nodes is enough to reconstruct the main features of the network along with its resilience with an error of 5%.
It is generally accepted that neighboring nodes in financial networks are negatively assorted with respect to the correlation between their degrees. This feature would play an important damping role in the market during downturns (periods of distress) since this connectivity pattern between firms lowers the chances of auto-amplifying (the propagation of) distress. In this paper we explore a trade-network of industrial firms where the nodes are suppliers or buyers, and the links are those invoices that the suppliers send out to their buyers and then go on to present to their bank for discounting. The network was collected by a large Italian bank in 2007, from their intermediation of the sales on credit made by their clients. The network also shows dissortative behavior as seen in other studies on financial networks. However, when looking at the credit rating of the firms, an important attribute internal to each node, we find that firms that trade with one another share overwhelming similarity. We know that much data is missing from our data set. However, we can quantify the amount of missing data using information exposure, a variable that connects social structure and behavior. This variable is a ratio of the sales invoices that a supplier presents to their bank over their total sales. Results reveal a non-trivial and robust relationship between the information exposure and credit rating of a firm, indicating the influence of the neighbors on a firms rating. This methodology provides a new insight into how to reconstruct a network suffering from incomplete information.
The maintenance of cooperation in the presence of spatial restrictions has been studied extensively. It is well-established that the underlying graph topology can significantly influence the outcome of games on graphs. Maintenance of cooperation could be difficult, especially in the absence of spatial restrictions. The evolution of cooperation would naturally depend on payoffs. However, payoffs are generally considered to be invariant in a given game. A natural yet unexplored question is whether the topology of the underlying structures on which the games are played, possesses no role whatsoever in the determination of payoffs. Herein, we introduce the notion of cooperator graphs and defector graphs as well as a new form of game payoff, which is weakly dependent on the underlying network topology. These concepts are inspired by the well-known microbial phenomenon of quorum sensing. We demonstrate that even with such a weak dependence, the fundamental game dynamics and indeed the very nature of the game may be altered. Such changes in the nature of a game have been well-reported in theoretical and experimental studies.
The compartmental models used to study epidemic spreading often assume the same susceptibility for all individuals, and are therefore, agnostic about the effects that differences in susceptibility can have on epidemic spreading. Here we show that--for the SIS model--differential susceptibility can make networks more vulnerable to the spread of diseases when the correlation between a nodes degree and susceptibility are positive, and less vulnerable when this correlation is negative. Moreover, we show that networks become more likely to contain a pocket of infection when individuals are more likely to connect with others that have similar susceptibility (the network is segregated). These results show that the failure to include differential susceptibility to epidemic models can lead to a systematic over/under estimation of fundamental epidemic parameters when the structure of the networks is not independent from the susceptibility of the nodes or when there are correlations between the susceptibility of connected individuals.