Rumor Diffusion in an Interests-Based Dynamic Social Network

The Scientific World Journal
Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 824505, 10 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/824505

Mingsheng Tang [1], Xinjun Mao [1], Zahia Guessoum [2], and Huiping Zhou [1]

[1] College of Computer, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China
[2] LIP 6, Université Pierre et Marie Curie Paris, 75006 Paris, France

Received 12 July 2013; Accepted 3 November 2013

Academic Editors: H. M. Chamberlin and Y. Zhang

Copyright © 2013 Mingsheng Tang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

To research rumor diffusion in social friend network, based on interests, a dynamic friend network is proposed, which has the characteristics of clustering and community, and a diffusion model is also proposed. With this friend network and rumor diffusion model, based on the zombie-city model, some simulation experiments to analyze the characteristics of rumor diffusion in social friend networks have been conducted. The results show some interesting observations: (1) positive information may evolve to become a rumor through the diffusion process that people may modify the information by word of mouth; (2) with the same average degree, a random social network has a smaller clustering coefficient and is more beneficial for rumor diffusion than the dynamic friend network; (3) a rumor is spread more widely in a social network with a smaller global clustering coefficient than in a social network with a larger global clustering coefficient; and (4) a network with a smaller clustering coefficient has a larger efficiency.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2013/824505/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3881697/

Reduced cognitive control in passionate lovers

Motivation and Emotion
November 2013
Published online: 02 November 2013
DOI 10.1007/s11031-013-9380-3

Henk van Steenbergen (1,2), Sandra J. E. Langeslag (3), Guido P. H. Band (1,2), Bernhard Hommel (1,2)

1. Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK, Leiden, The Netherlands
2. Leiden University Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK, Leiden, The Netherlands
3. Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

RUNNING HEAD: Love and control

Abstract

Passionate love is associated with intense changes in emotion and attention which are thought to play an important role in the early stages of romantic relationship formation. Although passionate love usually involves enhanced, near-obsessive attention to the beloved, anecdotal evidence suggest that the lover’s concentration for daily tasks like study and work may actually be impaired, suggesting reduced cognitive control. Affect might also contribute to changes in cognitive control. We examined the link between passionate love and cognitive control in a sample of students who had recently become involved in a romantic relationship. Intensity of passionate love as measured by the Passionate Love Scale was shown to correlate with decreased individual efficiency in cognitive control as measured in Stroop and flanker task performance. There was no evidence that affective changes mediate this effect. This study provides the first empirical evidence that passionate love in the early stages of romantic relationship is characterized by impaired cognitive control.

Keywords

Passionate love, Cognitive control, Flanker task, Stroop task, Passionate Love Scale (PLS)

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11031-013-9380-3

Chasing maximal performance: a cautionary tale from the celebrated jumping frogs of Calaveras County

J Exp Biol 216, 3947-3953
November 1, 2013
doi: 10.1242/​jeb.090357

H. C. Astley [1*], E. M. Abbott [**], E. Azizi [**], R. L. Marsh [2] and T. J. Roberts [1]

[1] Brown University, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Providence, RI 02912, USA
[2] Northeastern University, Department of Biology, Boston, MA 02115, USA
[*] Author for correspondence at present address: Department of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
[**] Present address: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA

Summary

Maximal performance is an essential metric for understanding many aspects of an organism's biology, but it can be difficult to determine because a measured maximum may reflect only a peak level of effort, not a physiological limit. We used a unique opportunity provided by a frog jumping contest to evaluate the validity of existing laboratory estimates of maximum jumping performance in bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana). We recorded video of 3124 bullfrog jumps over the course of the 4-day contest at the Calaveras County Jumping Frog Jubilee, and determined jump distance from these images and a calibration of the jump arena. Frogs were divided into two groups: ‘rental’ frogs collected by fair organizers and jumped by the general public, and frogs collected and jumped by experienced, ‘professional’ teams. A total of 58% of recorded jumps surpassed the maximum jump distance in the literature (1.295 m), and the longest jump was 2.2 m. Compared with rental frogs, professionally jumped frogs jumped farther, and the distribution of jump distances for this group was skewed towards long jumps. Calculated muscular work, historical records and the skewed distribution of jump distances all suggest that the longest jumps represent the true performance limit for this species. Using resampling, we estimated the probability of observing a given jump distance for various sample sizes, showing that large sample sizes are required to detect rare maximal jumps. These results show the importance of sample size, animal motivation and physiological conditions for accurate maximal performance estimates.

http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/21/3947

Infertility in Star Trek

World Future Review
November, Winter 2012 vol. 4 no. 4 19-27
doi: 10.1177/194675671200400405

Victor Grech

Abstract

It is fair to say that Star Trek comprises a selfcontained subgenre within science fiction (SF). Over nearly 50 years, through six distinct television series, and eleven feature length films, the “Star Trek universe” envisioned by Gene Roddenberry has become arguably the world's most elaborate and widely recognized depiction of life in future times (covering roughly the twenty-second through the twenty-ninth centuries). In this article, situations involving infertility occurring in episodes from different Star Trek series are examined and some general conclusions offered concerning the perception of this problem and the variety of responses proposed.

STAR TREK; INFERTILITY; MEDICINE IN SCIENCE FICTION

http://wfr.sagepub.com/content/4/4/19.abstract