Inequality is one of the main drivers of social tension. We show striking similarities between patterns of inequality between species abundances in nature and wealth in society. We demonstrate that in the absence of equalizing forces, such large inequality will arise from chance alone. While natural enemies have an equalizing effect in nature, inequality in societies can be suppressed by wealth-equalizing institutions. However, over the past millennium, such institutions have been weakened during periods of societal upscaling. Our analysis suggests that due to the very same mathematical principle that rules natural communities (indeed, a “law of nature”) extreme wealth inequality is inevitable in a globalizing world unless effective wealth-equalizing institutions are installed on a global scale.

 

Inequality in nature and society
Marten Scheffer, Bas van Bavel, Ingrid A. van de Leemput, and Egbert H. van Nes

PNAS

Source: www.pnas.org

In network systems, a local perturbation can amplify as it propagates, potentially leading to a large-scale cascading failure. Here we derive a continuous model to advance our understanding of cascading failures in power-grid networks. The model accounts for both the failure of transmission lines and the desynchronization of power generators and incorporates the transient dynamics between successive steps of the cascade. In this framework, we show that a cascade event is a phase-space transition from an equilibrium state with high energy to an equilibrium state with lower energy, which can be suitably described in a closed form using a global Hamiltonian-like function. From this function, we show that a perturbed system cannot always reach the equilibrium state predicted by quasi-steady-state cascade models, which would correspond to a reduced number of failures, and may instead undergo a larger cascade. We also show that, in the presence of two or more perturbations, the outcome depends strongly on the order and timing of the individual perturbations. These results offer new insights into the current understanding of cascading dynamics, with potential implications for control interventions.

 

Cascading Failures as Continuous Phase-Space Transitions
Yang Yang and Adilson E. Motter
Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 248302

Source: journals.aps.org

Information has been a matter of intense study and discussion for the last century. The very nature of information, not a physical object, not an entirely abstract entity, has fostered this endless discussion which had some of its first episodes back in the 40’s with the arguments between Wiener and Shannon.

Whether information is the effect produced by the received pattern of signals or the pattern of signals itself, the truth is that these patterns exist and we are devoted to deep into them to find a model for their structures and to establish useful comparisons among them.

Source: sciencetrends.com

A day in the life of a person involves a broad range of activities which are common across many people. Going beyond diurnal cycles, a central question is: to what extent do individuals act according to patterns shared across an entire population? Here we investigate the interplay between different activity types, namely communication, motion, and physical proximity by analyzing data collected from smartphones distributed among 638 individuals. We explore two central questions: Which underlying principles govern the formation of the activity patterns? Are the patterns specific to each individual or shared across the entire population? We find that statistics of the entire population allows us to successfully predict 71% of the activity and 85% of the inactivity involved in communication, mobility, and physical proximity. Surprisingly, individual level statistics only result in marginally better predictions, indicating that a majority of activity patterns are shared across our sample population. Finally, we predict short-term activity patterns using a generalized linear model, which suggests that a simple linear description might be sufficient to explain a wide range of actions, whether they be of social or of physical character.

 

Mollgaard A, Lehmann S, Mathiesen J (2017) Correlations between human mobility and social interaction reveal general activity patterns. PLoS ONE 12(12): e0188973. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188973

Source: journals.plos.org