CIP Online Social Networks: week 5 - social capital

Lecture slides for the Curriculum Innovation module Online Social Networks on the topic of social capital.

Bayesian Networks with Infer.NET

Presentation at AIC away day 2014

Data-Driven Text Generation using Neural Networks & Provenance is Complicated and Boring — Is there a solution?

Title: Data-Driven Text Generation using Neural Networks Speaker: Pavlos Vougiouklis, University of Southampton Abstract: Recent work on neural networks shows their great potential at tackling a wide variety of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. This talk will focus on the Natural Language Generation (NLG) problem and, more specifically, on the extend to which neural network language models could be employed for context-sensitive and data-driven text generation. In addition, a neural network architecture for response generation in social media along with the training methods that enable it to capture contextual information and effectively participate in public conversations will be discussed. Speaker Bio: Pavlos Vougiouklis obtained his 5-year Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2013. He was awarded an MSc degree in Software Engineering from the University of Southampton in 2014. In 2015, he joined the Web and Internet Science (WAIS) research group of the University of Southampton and he is currently working towards the acquisition of his PhD degree in the field of Neural Network Approaches for Natural Language Processing. Title: Provenance is Complicated and Boring — Is there a solution? Speaker: Darren Richardson, University of Southampton Abstract: Paper trails, auditing, and accountability — arguably not the sexiest terms in computer science. But then you discover that you've possibly been eating horse-meat, and the importance of provenance becomes almost palpable. Having accepted that we should be creating provenance-enabled systems, the challenge of then communicating that provenance to casual users is not trivial: users should not have to have a detailed working knowledge of your system, and they certainly shouldn't be expected to understand the data model. So how, then, do you give users an insight into the provenance, without having to build a bespoke system for each and every different provenance installation? Speaker Bio: Darren is a final year Computer Science PhD student. He completed his undergraduate degree in Electronic Engineering at Southampton in 2012.

Neural networks of human nature and nurture

Neural network methods have facilitated the unification of several unfortunate splits in psychology, including nature versus nurture. We review the contributions of this methodology and then discuss tentative network theories of caring behavior, of uncaring behavior, and of how the frontal lobes are involved in the choices between them. The implications of our theory are optimistic about the prospects of society to encourage the human potential for caring. 

Networks and RegionalCompetitiveness: Towards a Transaction Cost Approach of Small-Scale Cooperation

A preoccupation with competition often dominates the study of governance. A focus on competition often unnecessarily precludes the possibility that regional institutions can suspend competition in certain areas and facilitate cooperation among potential rivals, thereby potentially contributing to their mutual success. In many ways companies cooperating through these types of networks have a greater degree of flexibility than firms which are forced to rely solely on hierarchies or markets for solutions to their problems. In order to fully understand how such networks work, this article first parses out differences in definitions of networks in order to understand how the type of network mentioned above actually differs from other uses of this term. Then it develops a theory of governance that goes beyond hierarchies and markets by demonstrating how this type of network can lead to reductions in transaction costs. This claim is illustrated on hand from examples of alternative forms of organization in Germany and Italy.

Allocation rules on networks

When allocating a resource, geographical and infrastructural constraints have to be taken into account. We study the problem of distributing a resource through a network from sources endowed with the resource to citizens with claims. A link between a source and an agent depicts the possibility of a transfer from the source to the agent. Given the supplies at each source, the claims of citizens, and the network, the question is how to allocate the available resources among the citizens. We consider a simple allocation problem that is free of network constraints, where the total amount can be freely distributed. The simple allocation problem is a claims problem where the total amount of claims is greater than what is available. We focus on consistent and resource monotonic rules in claims problems that satisfy equal treatment of equals. We call these rules fairness principles and we extend fairness principles to allocation rules on networks. We require that for each pair of citizens in the network, the extension is robust with respect to the fairness principle. We call this condition pairwise robustness with respect to the fairness principle. We provide an algorithm and show that each fairness principle has a unique extension which is pairwise robust with respect to the fairness principle. We give applications of the algorithm for three fairness principles: egalitarianism, proportionality and equal sacrifice.

University intelligentsia in the making of maps : post-university networks and political change in Slovenia and Poland.

Resumen basado en el del autor

Academic networks and knowledge construction. 'Redes académicas y construcción de conocimiento'.

Monográfico con el título: 'Aportaciones de las nuevas tecnologías a la investigación educativa'. Resumen basado en el de la publicación

La riqueza de las redes en la educación universitaria : 'traducción entre iguales basada en el procomún' de The Wealth of Networks.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

PhD Students’ Research Group Networks: a Qualitative Approach

This article examines the networks within the research groups where Spanish PhD students are pursuing their doctorate. Capó et al. (2007) used quantitative data to predict PhD students’ publishing performance from their background, attitudes, supervisors’ performance and research group networks. Variables related to the research group network had a negligible explanatory power on student performance once the remaining variables had been accounted for. In this article, a qualitative follow up of the same students is carried out using extreme case sampling and indepth interviews. The qualitative research shows networking as important for students. Out of the 115 aspects that students mention in the interviews as relevant to publishing in the qualitative research, 92 have to do with their supervisors, their research group or their network as a whole. Similarly, out of the 50 hindrances mentioned, 20 have to do with the networks or relations. The most commonly mentioned network-related topics are research group members pushing PhD students to publish, meeting researchers outside the research group, existence of other PhD students in the group, help with the PhD from group members, supervisor’s interest in the thesis, the possibility of discussing with experts on the PhD’s topic and frequent contact with the supervisor and research group members. Some of these characteristics were not, however, measured in the conventional quantitative social network survey

Admission control schemes for TCP elastic traffic in class-based networks

En aquesta tesi proposem dos esquemes de xarxa amb control d'admissió per al trànsit elàstic TCP amb mecanismes senzills. Ambdós esquemes són capaços de proporcionar throughputs diferents i aïllament entre fluxos, on un "flux" es defineix com una seqüència de paquets relacionats dins d'una connexió TCP. Quant a l'arquitectura, ambdós fan servir classes de paquets amb diferents prioritats de descart, i un control d'admissió implícit, edge-to-edge i basat en mesures. En el primer esquema, les mesures són per flux, mentre que en el segon, les mesures són per agregat. El primer esquema aconsegueix un bon rendiment fent servir una modificació especial de les fonts TCP, mentre que el segon aconsegueix un bon rendiment amb fonts TCP estàndard. Ambdós esquemes han estat avaluats satisfactòriament a través de simulació en diferents topologies de xarxa i càrregues de trànsit.

Label space reduction in GMPLs and All-Optical Label Swapping networks

All-Optical Label Swapping (AOLS) es una tecnología clave para la implementación de nodos de conmutación completamente óptica de paquetes. Sin embargo, el costo de su desarrollo es proporcional al tamaño del espacio de etiquetas (label space). Debido a que los principios de funcionamiento de AOLS son casos particulares de los del MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS), esta tesis estudia métodos generales, aplicables a ambos, con el propósito de reducir el espacio de etiquetas tanto como sea posible. Modelos de programación lineal entera y heurísticas son propuestos para el caso en el que se permite apilar una etiqueta extra. Encontramos que cerca del 50% del espacio de etiquetas puede ser reducido, si se permite colocar una etiqueta extra en la pila. Además, particularmente para AOLS, encontramos que se puede reducir el espacio de etiquetas cerca al 25% si se duplica la capacidad de los enlaces y se permite re-encaminar el tráfico.

Robustness against large-scale failures in communications networks

This thesis studies robustness against large-scale failures in communications networks. If failures are isolated, they usually go unnoticed by users thanks to recovery mechanisms. However, such mechanisms are not effective against large-scale multiple failures. Large-scale failures may cause huge economic loss. A key requirement towards devising mechanisms to lessen their impact is the ability to evaluate network robustness. This thesis focuses on multilayer networks featuring separated control and data planes. The majority of the existing measures of robustness are unable to capture the true service degradation in such a setting, because they rely on purely topological features. One of the major contributions of this thesis is a new measure of functional robustness. The failure dynamics is modeled from the perspective of epidemic spreading, for which a new epidemic model is proposed. Another contribution is a taxonomy of multiple, large-scale failures, adapted to the needs and usage of the field of networking.

Social networks and performance in knowledge creation. An application and a methodological proposal

El objetivo de esta tesis es predecir el rendimiento de los estudiantes de doctorado en la Universidad de Girona según características personales (background), actitudinales y de redes sociales de los estudiantes. La población estudiada son estudiantes de tercer y cuarto curso de doctorado y sus directores de tesis doctoral. Para obtener los datos se ha diseño un cuestionario web especificando sus ventajas y teniendo en cuenta algunos problemas tradicionales de no cobertura o no respuesta. El cuestionario web se hizo debido a la complejidad que comportan de las preguntas de red social. El cuestionario electrónico permite, mediante una serie de instrucciones, reducir el tiempo para responder y hacerlo menos cargado. Este cuestionario web, además es auto administrado, lo cual nos permite, según la literatura, unas respuestas mas honestas que cuestionario con encuestador. Se analiza la calidad de las preguntas de red social en cuestionario web para datos egocéntricos. Para eso se calcula la fiabilidad y la validez de este tipo de preguntas, por primera vez a través del modelo Multirasgo Multimétodo (Multitrait Multimethod). Al ser datos egocéntricos, se pueden considerar jerárquicos, y por primera vez se una un modelo Multirasgo Multimétodo Multinivel (multilevel Multitrait Multimethod). Las la fiabilidad y validez se pueden obtener a nivel individual (within group component) o a nivel de grupo (between group component) y se usan para llevar a cabo un meta-análisis con otras universidades europeas para analizar ciertas características de diseño del cuestionario. Estas características analizan si para preguntas de red social hechas en cuestionarios web son más fiables y validas hechas "by questions" o "by alters", si son presentes todas las etiquetas de frecuencia para los ítems o solo la del inicio y final, o si es mejor que el diseño del cuestionario esté en con color o blanco y negro. También se analiza la calidad de la red social en conjunto, en este caso específico son los grupos de investigación de la universidad. Se tratan los problemas de los datos ausentes en las redes completas. Se propone una nueva alternativa a la solución típica de la red egocéntrica o los respondientes proxies. Esta nueva alternativa la hemos nombrado "Nosduocentered Network" (red Nosduocentrada), se basa en dos actores centrales en una red. Estimando modelos de regresión, esta "Nosduocentered network" tiene mas poder predictivo para el rendimiento de los estudiantes de doctorado que la red egocéntrica. Además se corrigen las correlaciones de las variables actitudinales por atenuación debido al pequeño tamaño muestral. Finalmente, se hacen regresiones de los tres tipos de variables (background, actitudinales y de red social) y luego se combinan para analizar cual para predice mejor el rendimiento (según publicaciones académicas) de los estudiantes de doctorado. Los resultados nos llevan a predecir el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes de doctorado depende de variables personales (background) i actitudinales. Asimismo, se comparan los resultados obtenidos con otros estudios publicados.

Entrepreneurship, ties and relational networks: the case of a public-private cross-border tourism product

The thesis aims to understand the processes of entrepreneurship that try to create businesses or products with a high degree of complexity. This complexity comes from the fact that these products or initiatives can only be viable with the concurrence of a large number of heterogeneous actors (public, private, from different regions, etc..) which interact in a relational context. A case with these characteristics is the Camí dels Bons Homes. The thesis analyzes the evolution of the relational network from the point of view of its structure and content of its links. The results show and explain the observed changes in the network structure and the changes in the ties content. This analysis of the content of ties contributes to a new systematization and operationalization of ties’ content. Moreover this analysis takes in account negative ties, a less discussed issue in literature.