Edmilson Roque

Author(s): Daniel Jung and Stefan Kettemann

This paper analyzes the behavior of electricity grids in response to perturbations. The authors specifically consider the case of the addition of one extra edge and study the long-range response of the system, focusing on the power-law decay of the disturbance. They apply their findings to a real power grid and observe comparable behavior, although specific details such as the connectivity and the topology of the network might play a relevant role.

[Phys. Rev. E 94, 012307] Published Fri Jul 15, 2016

We introduce multiforce, a force-directed layout for multiplex networks, where the nodes of the network are organized into multiple layers and both in-layer and inter-layer relationships among nodes are used to compute node coordinates. The proposed approach generalizes existing work, providing a range of intermediate layouts in-between the ones produced by known methods. Our experiments on real data show that multiforce can keep nodes reasonably aligned across different layers without significantly affecting the internal layout of each layer.

Author(s): M. A. Lopes, E. M. Lopes, S. Yoon, J. F. F. Mendes, and A. V. Goltsev

We study the impact of random pinning fields on the emergence of synchrony in the Kuramoto model on complete graphs and uncorrelated random complex networks. We consider random fields with uniformly distributed directions and homogeneous and heterogeneous (Gaussian) field magnitude distribution. In …

[Phys. Rev. E 94, 012308] Published Fri Jul 15, 2016

Author(s): Yu Terada and Toshio Aoyagi

A large variety of rhythms are observed in nature. Rhythms such as electroencephalogram signals in the brain can often be regarded as interacting. In this study, we investigate the dynamical properties of rhythmic systems in two populations of phase oscillators with different frequency distributions…

[Phys. Rev. E 94, 012213] Published Wed Jul 13, 2016

Author(s): Miguel A. Rodríguez

We obtain graphicality conditions for general types of scale-free networks. The same conditions obtained for uncorrelated networks are obtained in the general case. Then an upper bound relating \gamma, the exponent of the degree distribution, with the cutoff exponent \kappa, as \kappa

[Phys. Rev. E] Published Tue Jul 12, 2016

The notion of a part of phase space containing desired (or allowed) states of a dynamical system is important in a wide range of complex systems research. It has been called the safe operating space, the viability kernel or the sunny region. In this paper we define the notion of survivability: Given a random initial condition, what is the likelihood that the transient behaviour of a deterministic system does not leave a region of desirable states. We demonstrate the utility of this novel stability measure by considering models from climate science, neuronal networks and power grids. We also show that a semi-analytic lower bound for the survivability of linear systems allows a numerically very efficient survivability analysis in realistic models of power grids. Our numerical and semi-analytic work underlines that the type of stability measured by survivability is not captured by common asymptotic stability measures.

Despite the large number of studies on synchronization, the hypothesis that interactions bear a cost for involved individuals has been considered seldom. The introduction of costly interactions leads, instead, to the formulation of a dichotomous scenario in which an individual may decide to cooperate and pay the cost in order to get synchronized with the rest of the population. Alternatively, the same individual can decide to free ride, without incurring in any cost, waiting that others get synchronized to her state. The emergence of synchronization may thus be seen as the byproduct of an evolutionary game in which individuals decide their behavior according to the benefit/cost ratio they accrue in the past. We study the onset of cooperation/synchronization in networked populations of Kuramoto oscillators and report how topology is essential in order for cooperation to thrive. We display also how different classes of topology foster differently synchronization both at a microscopic and macroscopic level.

In this paper we present "citation success index", a metric for comparing the citation capacity of pairs of journals. Citation success index is the probability that a random paper in one journal has more citations than a random paper in another journal (50% means the two journals do equally well). Unlike the journal impact factor (IF), the citation success index depends on the broadness and the shape of citation distributions. Also, it is insensitive to sporadic highly-cited papers that skew the IF. Nevertheless, we show, based on 16,000 journals containing ~2.4 million articles, that the citation success index is a relatively tight function of the ratio of IFs of journals being compared, due to the fact that journals with same IF have quite similar citation distributions. The citation success index grows slowly as a function of IF ratio. It is substantial (>90%) only when the ratio of IFs exceeds ~6, whereas a factor of two difference in IF values translates into a modest advantage for the journal with higher IF (index of ~70%). We facilitate the wider adoption of this metric by providing an online calculator that takes as input parameters only the IFs of the pair of journals.

Despite the large number of studies on synchronization, the hypothesis that interactions bear a cost for involved individuals has been considered seldom. The introduction of costly interactions leads, instead, to the formulation of a dichotomous scenario in which an individual may decide to cooperate and pay the cost in order to get synchronized with the rest of the population. Alternatively, the same individual can decide to free ride, without incurring in any cost, waiting that others get synchronized to her state. The emergence of synchronization may thus be seen as the byproduct of an evolutionary game in which individuals decide their behavior according to the benefit/cost ratio they accrue in the past. We study the onset of cooperation/synchronization in networked populations of Kuramoto oscillators and report how topology is essential in order for cooperation to thrive. We display also how different classes of topology foster differently synchronization both at a microscopic and macroscopic level.

Development of a synthetic gene network to modulate gene expression by mechanical forces

Scientific Reports, Published online: 12 July 2016; doi:10.1038/srep29643

In this paper, we are analyzing the interactivity time, defined as the duration between two consecutive tasks such as sending emails, collecting friends and followers and writing comments in online social networks (OSNs). The distributions of these times are heavy tailed and often described by a power-law distribution. However, power-law distributions usually only fit the heavy tail of empirical data and ignore the information in the smaller value range. Here, we argue that the durations between writing emails or comments, adding friends and receiving followers are likely to follow a lognormal distribution.

We discuss the similarities between power-law and lognormal distributions, show that binning of data can deform a lognormal to a power-law distribution and propose an explanation for the appearance of lognormal interactivity times. The historical debate of similarities between lognormal and power-law distributions is reviewed by illustrating the resemblance of measurements in this paper with the historical problem of income and city size distributions.

This paper describes the use of smartphone’s gyroscope sensor to analyse a hollow cylinder rolling down an inclined plane. The smartphone (iPhone 4s) was attached to the end of hollow cylinder and was equipped with the Sensorlog application (Sensorlog app) to record the angular speed of rolling down an inclined plane. The experimental results agree with the theoretical model that is familiar to students for the rolling motion on an inclined plane. Moreover, the coefficients of static friction and kinetic friction were determined to be 0.205 ± 0.011 and 0.178 ± 0.003 from the measurements, respectively. This experiment demonstrated an alternative way to teach the rolling motion in a physics laboratory.

We introduce the construction of a new framework for probing discrete emergent geometry and boundary-boundary observables based on a fundamentally a-dimensional underlying network structure. Using a gravitationally motivated action with Forman weighted combinatorial curvatures and simplicial volumes relying on a decomposition of an abstract simplicial complex into realized embeddings of proper skeletons, we demonstrate properties such as a minimal volume-scale cutoff, the necessity of a positive-definite cosmological constant-like term as a regulator for non-degenerate geometries, and naturally emergent simplicial structures from Metropolis network evolution simulations with no restrictions on attachment rules or regular building blocks. We see emergent properties which echo results from both the spinfoam formalism and causal dynamical triangulations in quantum gravity, and provide analytical and numerical results to support the analogy. We conclude with a summary of open questions and intent for future work in developing the program.

Author(s): R. J. Requejo and A. Díaz-Guilera

In this study we present an extension of the dynamics of diffusion in multiplex graphs which makes the equations compatible with the replicator equation with mutations. We derive an exact formula for the diffusion term, which shows that, while diffusion is linear for numbers of agents, it is necessa…

[Phys. Rev. E] Published Fri Jul 08, 2016

Author(s): J. Chávez-Carlos, M. A. Bastarrachea-Magnani, S. Lerma-Hernández, and J. G. Hirsch

The relation between the onset of chaos and critical phenomena, like Quantum Phase Transitions (QPT) and Excited-State Quantum Phase transitions (ESQPT), is analyzed for atom-field systems. While it has been speculated that the onset of hard chaos is associated with ESQPT based in the resonant case,…

[Phys. Rev. E] Published Fri Jul 08, 2016

Author(s): Spase Petkoski, Andreas Spiegler, Timothée Proix, Parham Aram, Jean-Jacques Temprado, and Viktor K. Jirsa

Network couplings of oscillatory large-scale systems, such as the brain, have a space-time structure composed of connection strengths and signal transmission delays. We provide a theoretical framework, which allows treating the spatial distribution of time delays with regard to synchronization, by d…

[Phys. Rev. E 94, 012209] Published Mon Jul 11, 2016

Bipartite networks are currently regarded as providing a major insight into the organization of many real-world systems, unveiling the mechanisms driving the interactions occurring between distinct groups of nodes. One of the most important issues encountered when modeling bipartite networks is devising a way to obtain a (monopartite) projection on the layer of interest, which preserves as much as possible the information encoded into the original bipartite structure. In the present paper we propose an algorithm to obtain statistically-validated projections of bipartite networks, according to which any two nodes sharing a statistically-significant number of neighbors are linked. Since assessing the statistical significance of nodes similarity requires a proper statistical benchmark, here we consider a set of four null models, defined within the exponential random graph framework. Our algorithm outputs a matrix of link-specific p-values, from which a validated projection is straightforwardly obtainable, upon running a multiple hypothesis testing procedure. Finally, we test our method on an economic network (i.e. the countries-products World Trade Web representation) and a social network (i.e. MovieLens, collecting the users' ratings of a list of movies). In both cases non-trivial communities are detected: while projecting the World Trade Web on the countries layer reveals modules of similarly-industrialized nations, projecting it on the products layer allows communities characterized by an increasing level of complexity to be detected; in the second case, projecting MovieLens on the films layer allows clusters of movies whose affinity cannot be fully accounted for by genre similarity to be individuated.

We consider a multi-group microscopic model for pedestrian flow describing the behaviour of large groups. It is based on an interacting particle system coupled to an eikonal equation. Hydrodynamic multi-group models are derived from the underlying particle system as well as scalar multi-group models. The eikonal equation is used to compute optimal paths for the pedestrians. Particle methods are used to solve the equations on all levels of the hierarchy. Numerical test cases are investigated and the models and, in particular, the resulting evacuation times are compared for a wide range of different parameters.

In this work, we aim to contribute to the understanding of the human pro-social behavior by studying the influence that a particular form of social pressure "being watched" has on the evolution of cooperative behavior. We study how cooperation emerge in multiplex complex topologies by analyzing a particular bidirectionally-coupled dynamics on top of a two-layers multiplex network (duplex). The coupled dynamics appears between the Prisoner's Dilemma game in a network, and a threshold cascade model in the other. The threshold model is intended to abstract the behavior of a network of vigilant nodes, that impose pressure of being observed altering hence the temptation to defect of the dilemma. Cooperation or defection in the game also affects the state of a node of being vigilant. We analyze these processes on different duplex networks structures and assess the influence of the topology, average degree and correlated multiplexity, on the outcome of cooperation. Interestingly, we find that the social pressure of vigilance may impact cooperation positively or negatively, depending on the duplex structure, specifically the degree correlations between layers is determinant. Our results give further quantitative insights in the promotion of cooperation under social pressure.

An important open problem in Human Behaviour is to understand how coordination emerges in human ensembles. This problem has been seldom studied quantitatively in the existing literature, in contrast to situations involving dual interaction. Here we study motor coordination (or synchronisation) in a group of individuals where participants are asked to visually coordinate an oscillatory hand motion. We separately tested two groups of seven participants. We observed that the coordination level of the ensemble depends on group homogeneity, as well as on the pattern of visual couplings (who looked at whom). Despite the complexity of social interactions, we show that networks of coupled heterogeneous oscillators with different structures capture well the group dynamics. Our findings are relevant to any activity requiring the coordination of several people, as in music, sport or at work, and can be extended to account for other perceptual forms of interaction such as sound or feel.

We develop a numerical test of hyperbolicity of chaotic dynamics in time-delay systems. The test is based on the angle criterion and includes computation of angle distributions between expanding, contracting and neutral manifolds of trajectories on the attractor. Three examples are tested. For two of them previously predicted hyperbolicity is confirmed. The third one provides an example of a time-delay system with nonhyperbolic chaos.

In physics, Planck’s constant is a fundamental physical constant accounting for the energy-quantization phenomenon in the microscopic world. The value of Planck’s constant also determines in which length scale the quantum phenomenon will become conspicuous. Some students think that if Planck’s constant were to have a larger value than it has now, the quantum effect would only become observable in a world with a larger size, whereas the macroscopic world might remain almost unchanged. After reasoning from some basic physical principles and theories, we found that doubling Planck’s constant might result in a radical change on the geometric sizes and apparent colors of macroscopic objects, the solar spectrum and luminosity, the climate and gravity on Earth, as well as energy conversion between light and materials such as the efficiency of solar cells and light-emitting diodes. From the discussions in this paper, students can appreciate how Planck’s constant affects various aspects ...

We give an elementary illustration of symmetry reduction for central force problems, drawing phase portraits of the reduced dynamics as the intersection of Casimir and energy level sets in three dimensions. These systems form a classic example of symplectic reduction which can usefully be compared to the more commonly seen case of the free rigid body.

Author(s): V. K. Chandrasekar, R. Gopal, D. V. Senthilkumar, and M. Lakshmanan

We report the emergence of a collective dynamical state, namely, the phase-flip chimera, from an ensemble of identical nonlinear oscillators that are coupled indirectly via the dynamical variables from a common environment, which in turn are nonlocally coupled. The phase-flip chimera is characterize…

[Phys. Rev. E 94, 012208] Published Thu Jul 07, 2016

Author(s): Shuchao Cao, Jun Zhang, Daniel Salden, Jian Ma, Chang’an Shi, and Ruifang Zhang

An aging population is bringing new challenges to the management of escape routes and facility design in many countries. This paper investigates pedestrian movement properties of crowd with different age compositions. Three pedestrian groups are considered: young student group, old people group and …

[Phys. Rev. E] Published Tue Jul 05, 2016

Networks are a fundamental tool for understanding and modeling complex systems in physics, biology, neuroscience, engineering, and social science. Many networks are known to exhibit rich, lower-order connectivity patterns that can be captured at the level of individual nodes and edges. However, higher-order organization of complex networks—at the level of small network subgraphs—remains largely unknown. Here, we develop a generalized framework for clustering networks on the basis of higher-order connectivity patterns. This framework provides mathematical guarantees on the optimality of obtained clusters and scales to networks with billions of edges. The framework reveals higher-order organization in a number of networks, including information propagation units in neuronal networks and hub structure in transportation networks. Results show that networks exhibit rich higher-order organizational structures that are exposed by clustering based on higher-order connectivity patterns. Authors: Austin R. Benson, David F. Gleich, Jure Leskovec

What’s the point of the PhD thesis?

Nature 535, 7610 (2016). http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/535026a

Author: Julie Gould

Doctoral courses are slowly being modernized. Now the thesis and viva need to catch up.

A neuronal network often involves time delay caused by the finite signal propagation time in a given biological network. This time delay is not a homogenous fluctuation in a biological system. The heterogeneous delay-induced asynchrony and resonance in a noisy small-world neuronal network system are numerically studied in this work by calculating synchronization measure and spike interval distribution. We focus on three different delay conditions: double-values delay, triple-values delay, and Gaussian-distributed delay. Our results show the following: 1) the heterogeneity in delay results in asynchronous firing in the neuronal network, and 2) maximum synchronization could be achieved through resonance given that the delay values are integer or half-integer times of each other.