Christopher Baker Email became an integral part of my life in 1998. Like many people, I have archived all of my email with the hope of someday revisiting my past. I am interested in revealing the innumerable relationships between me, my schoolmates, work-mates, friends and family. This could not readily be accomplished by reading each of my 60,000 emails one-by-one. Instead, I created My Map, a relational map and alternative self portrait. Math algorithm tracks crime, rumours, epidemics to source (Phys.org) -- A team of EPFL scientists has developed an algorithm that can identify the source of an epidemic or information circulating within a network, a method that could also be used to help with criminal investigations. Investigators are well aware of how difficult it is to trace an unlawful act to its source. The job was arguably easier with old, Mafia-style criminal organizations, as their hierarchical structures more or less resembled predictable family trees. In the Internet age, however, the networks used by organized criminals have changed. Innumerable nodes and connections escalate the complexity of these networks, making it ever more difficult to root out the guilty party. EPFL researcher Pedro Pinto of the Audiovisual Communications Laboratory and his colleagues have developed an algorithm that could become a valuable ally for investigators, criminal or otherwise, as long as a network is involved.
visualizing.org: a New Shared and Free Resource on Data Visualization Visualizing [visualizing.org] has just been released as the latest online player in the ever-increasing blogosphere about the topic of data visualization. But Visualizing is different in many ways. For one, the man behind the Visualizing initiative is Adam Bly, founder and Editor-in-Chief of Seed and one of the people behind the impressive Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition at MoMA. Together with the fact that Visualizing is also supported by a wide range of highly reputable design institutions, the website positions itself as the most serious media player in the field of data visualization, enjoying an unseen amount of credibility and financial funding. While Visualizing.org's mission is to help make data visualization figure more prominently across the web as a way of understanding complex world issues as they unfold, it is not a weblog in the classic sense.
New research to uncover nuances of networks Feb. 20, 2013 9:01 a.m. When a species disappears from a region, the rest of the ecosystem may flourish or collapse, depending on the role that species played. When a storm rolls across the coast, the power grid might reconfigure itself quickly or leave cities dark for days. A snowstorm might mean business as usual in a hardy city and a severe food shortage in another, depending on the distribution strategies of residents. Each of these systems is a kind of network, with thousands of members and relationships linking them.
15 Effective Tools for Visual Knowledge Management Since I started my quest a few years ago searching for the ultimate knowledge management tool, I’ve discovered a number of interesting applications that help people efficiently organize information. There certainly is no shortage of solutions for this problem domain. Many tools exist that offer the ability to discover, save, organize, search, and retrieve information. However, I’ve noticed a trend in recent years, and some newer applications are focusing more on the visual representation and relationship of knowledge. I believe this is in part due to the wider adoption of mind mapping (and concept mapping), and leveraging concepts and advances in the semantic web community. Most traditional personal knowledge management (PKM) or personal information management (PIM) applications offer the same basic set of features:
US Military Scientists Solve the Fundamental Problem of Viral Marketing Viral messages begin life by infecting a few individuals and then start to spread across a network. The most infectious end up contaminating more or less everybody. Just how and why this happens is the subject of much study and debate. Network scientists know that key factors are the rate at which people become infected, the “connectedness” of the network and how the seed group of individuals, who first become infected, are linked to the rest. The battle of Stalingrad More about the battle of Stalingrad The battle of Stalingrad began on the 19th August 1942. Taking Stalingrad would have given Germany access to key oilfields, however the dogged resistance of the Red Army forced them to fight house-to-house. The Germans were defeated in 1943 when the Soviet troops encircled their frontlines and counter-attacked from outside the city – illustrated here. More from Cities in History If Ancient Alexandria was found at…
Small world experiment The "six degrees of separation" model The small-world experiment comprised several experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and other researchers examining the average path length for social networks of people in the United States. The research was groundbreaking in that it suggested that human society is a small-world-type network characterized by short path-lengths. The experiments are often associated with the phrase "six degrees of separation", although Milgram did not use this term himself. Historical context of the small-world problem[edit] CCT General Information General InformationMapping Great Debates: Can Computers Think? Maps | General information (large file!) | Details and features | Specifications | Issue areas | Press release Methodology | Background paper | The cartographic metaphor | Criteria | How the maps work (large file!)For Instructors and Students | Importance of Turing debate | For instructors | For students | Protagonist index | FAQS Commentary and Reviews | Commentary and reviews | Errata and corrections Action Items | Buy the set of maps | How you can participate in this debate Examples | View the maps. | Map 1 | Map 2 | Map 3 | Map 4 | Map 5 | Map 6 | Map 7 | (large files!)MacroVU home page | Send us a message | Project Director's Home Page
How to Burst the "Filter Bubble" that Protects Us from Opposing Views The term “filter bubble” entered the public domain back in 2011when the internet activist Eli Pariser coined it to refer to the way recommendation engines shield people from certain aspects of the real world. Pariser used the example of two people who googled the term “BP”. One received links to investment news about BP while the other received links to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, presumably as a result of some recommendation algorithm. This is an insidious problem. Much social research shows that people prefer to receive information that they agree with instead of information that challenges their beliefs. Products: Google Browser Use this free Java application to explore the connections between related websites. Try it now! Enter keywords or a URL, and click 'Graph it!' See Getting Started below for more details.
The Global Brain Institute The GBI uses scientific methods to better understand the global evolution towards ever-stronger connectivity between people, software and machines. By developing concrete models of this development, we can anticipate both its promises and its perils. That would help us to steer a course towards the best possible outcome for humanity. Objectives (for more details, check our strategic objectives and activities) Assumptions
yEd - Graph Editor The following diagrams were created and submitted by happy yEd users. Click on any image to launch the interactive gallery, where you can zoom, print, and read about each submission. Or use the respective links below to download each diagram in GraphML file format. Recently Added Features Enhanced Pathways and Presentation Tools VUE’s unique pathways tool now supports the construction of interactive presentations. The pathways tool allows the presenter and audience to focus in on specific content while at the same time maintaining a sense of its overall context within a VUE map. VUE authors may also navigate their pathways in a linear or non-linear fashion, allowing for “just-in-time teaching” and more in-depth exploration of a topic. Creating Pathways (Video running time: 48 sec.) Adding a node to a pathway now produces a slide where node content can be arranged for presentation purposes.