Lambiotte, R & Schaub, M

Complex networks are typically not homogeneous, as they tend to display an array of structures at different scales. A feature that has attracted a lot of research is their modular organisation, i.e., networks may often be considered as being composed of certain building blocks, or modules. In this book, we discuss a number of ways in which this idea of modularity can be conceptualised, focusing specifically on the interplay between modular network structure and dynamics taking place on a network. We discuss, in particular, how modular structure and symmetries may impact on network dynamics and, vice versa, how observations of such dynamics may be used to infer the modular structure. We also revisit several other notions of modularity that have been proposed for complex networks and show how these can be related to and interpreted from the point of view of dynamical processes on networks. Several references and pointers for further discussion and future work should inform practitioners and researchers, and may motivate further studies in this area at the core of Network Science.

Download the book at: ora.ox.ac.uk

People often feel that they can intuitively recognize whether something is alive, but nature is filled with entities that flout easy categorization as life or non-life — and the challenge may intensify as other planets and moons open up to exploration. In this excerpt from his new book, Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive, published today, the science writer Carl Zimmer discusses scientists’ frustrated efforts to develop a universal definition of life.

Read the full article at: www.quantamagazine.org

How we became so burdened by red tape and unnecessary paperwork, and why we must do better.

We’ve all had to fight our way through administrative sludge–filling out complicated online forms, mailing in paperwork, standing in line at the motor vehicle registry. This kind of red tape is a nuisance, but, as Cass Sunstein shows in Sludge, it can also also impair health, reduce growth, entrench poverty, and exacerbate inequality. Confronted by sludge, people just give up–and lose a promised outcome: a visa, a job, a permit, an educational opportunity, necessary medical help. In this lively and entertaining look at the terribleness of sludge, Sunstein explains what we can do to reduce it.
Because of sludge, Sunstein, explains, too many people don’t receive benefits to which they are entitled. Sludge even prevents many people from exercising their constitutional rights–when, for example, barriers to voting in an election are too high. (A Sludge Reduction Act would be a Voting Rights Act.) Sunstein takes readers on a tour of the not-so-wonderful world of sludge, describes justifications for certain kinds of sludge, and proposes “Sludge Audits” as a way to measure effects of sludge. On balance, Sunstein argues, sludge infringes on human dignity, making people feel that their time and even their lives don’t matter. We must do better.

Preorder at: www.amazon.com

Read the full two volume proceedings at: complexnetworks.org

Scriptinformatics, in other words, scriptological informatics or computational scriptology, as a branch of applied computer science (informatics), deals with the investigation concerning the evolution of graphemes in various scripts and with the exploration of relationships between scripts, where the scripts could be any sequence of symbols of cultural origin, such as historical writing systems or urban graffiti. In a scriptinformatic research, the machine learning, artificial intelligence and bioinformatics tools are used (Hosszú 2010a; Hosszú 2017). It deals with phylogenetic (phyletic) modelling, developing the necessary algorithms and the phenetic, evolutionary and statistical analyses of features of the studied scripts (Hosszú 2014b; Hosszú 2019: 120).

Read the full book at: real.mtak.hu