Social learning with bounded confidence and heterogeneous agents

This paper investigates an opinion formation model in social networks with bounded confidence and heterogeneous agents. The network topologies are shaped by the homophily of beliefs, which means any pair of agents are neighbors only if their belief difference is not larger than a positive constant called the bound of confidence. We consider a model with both informed agents and uninformed agents, the essential difference between which is the informed agents have access to outside signals which are function of the underlying true state of the social event concerned. More precisely, the informed agents update their beliefs by combining the Bayesian posterior beliefs based on their private observations and weighted averages of the beliefs of their neighbors. The uninformed agents update their beliefs simply by linearly combining the beliefs of their neighbors. We find that the whole group can learn the true state only if the bound of confidence is larger than a positive threshold which is related to the population density. Furthermore, simulations show that the proportion of informed agents required for collective learning decreases as the population density increases. By tuning the learning speed of informed agents, we find the following: the higher the speed, the shorter the time needed for the whole group to achieve a steady state, and on the other hand, the higher the speed, the lower the proportion of agents with successful learning — there is a trade-off.     

Neural networks: A biased overview

An overview of recent activity in the field of neural networks is presented. The long-range aim of this research is to understand how the brain works. First some of the problems are stated and terminology defined; then an attempt is made to explain why physicists are drawn to the field, and their main potential contribution. In particular, in recent years some interesting models have been introduced by physicists. A small subset of these models is described, with particular emphasis on those that are analytically soluble. Finally a brief review of the history and recent developments of single- and multilayer perceptrons is given, bringing the situation up to date regarding the central immediate problem of the field: search for a learning algorithm that has an associated convergence theorem.     

Dynamics of bounded confidence opinion in heterogeneous social networks: Concord against partial antagonism

Bounded confidence models of opinion dynamics in social networks have been actively studied in recent years, in particular, opinion formation and extremism propagation along with other aspects of social dynamics. In this work, after an analysis of limitations of the Deffuant-Weisbuch (DW) bounded confidence, relative agreement model, we propose the mixed model that takes into account two psychological types of individuals. Concord agents (C-agents) are friendly people; they interact in a way that their opinions always get closer. Agents of the other psychological type show partial antagonism in their interaction (PA-agents). Opinion dynamics in heterogeneous social groups, consisting of agents of the two types, was studied on different social networks: Erdös-Rényi random graphs, small-world networks and complete graphs. Limit cases of the mixed model, pure C- and PA-societies, were also studied. We found that group opinion formation is, qualitatively, almost independent of the topology of networks used in this work. Opinion fragmentation, polarization and consensus are observed in the mixed model at different proportions of PA- and C-agents, depending on the value of initial opinion tolerance of agents. As for the opinion formation and arising of “dissidents”, the opinion dynamics of the C-agents society was found to be similar to that of the DW model, except for the rate of opinion convergence. Nevertheless, mixed societies showed dynamics and bifurcation patterns notably different to those of the DW model. The influence of biased initial conditions over opinion formation in heterogeneous social groups was also studied versus the initial value of opinion uncertainty, varying the proportion of the PA- to C-agents. Bifurcation diagrams showed an impressive evolution of collective opinion, in particular, radical changes of left to right consensus or vice versa at an opinion uncertainty value equal to 0.7 in the model with the PA/C mixture of population near 50/50.     

Topology and dynamics of attractor neural networks: The role of loopiness

We derive an exact representation of the topological effect on the dynamics of sequence processing neural networks within signal-to-noise analysis. A new network structure parameter, loopiness coefficient, is introduced to quantitatively study the loop effect on network dynamics. A large loopiness coefficient means a high probability of finding loops in the networks. We develop recursive equations for the overlap parameters of neural networks in terms of their loopiness. It was found that a large loopiness increases the correlation among the network states at different times and eventually reduces the performance of neural networks. The theory is applied to several network topological structures, including fully-connected, densely-connected random, densely-connected regular and densely-connected small-world, where encouraging results are obtained.     

Neural networks for prediction of acoustical properties of polyurethane foams

This paper presents a study of neural networks for prediction of acoustical properties of polyurethane foams. The proposed neural network model of the foam uses easily measured parameters such as frequency, airflow resistivity and density to predict multiple acoustical properties including the sound absorption coefficient and the surface impedance. Such a model is quite robust in the sense that it can be used to develop models for many different classes of materials with different sets of input and output parameters. The current neural network model of the foam is empirical and provides a useful complement to the existing analytical and numerical approaches.     

Neural networks for the dimensionality reduction of GOME measurement vector in the estimation of ozone profiles

Dimensionality reduction can be of crucial importance in the application of inversion schemes to atmospheric remote sensing data. In this study the problem of dimensionality reduction in the retrieval of ozone concentration profiles from the radiance measurements provided by the instrument Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) on board of ESA satellite ERS-2 is considered. By means of radiative transfer modelling, neural networks and pruning algorithms, a complete procedure has been designed to extract the GOME spectral ranges most crucial for the inversion. The quality of the resulting retrieval algorithm has been evaluated by comparing its performance to that yielded by other schemes and co-located profiles obtained with lidar measurements.     

A multineuron interaction model for neural networks

A multineuron interaction model (RS model) with an energy function given by the product of the squared distances in phase space between the state of the net and the stored patterns is studied in detail within a mean-field approach. Two limits are considered: when the patterns and antipatterns are stored (as in the Hopfield model), PAS case, and when only the patterns are taken into account, OPS case. TheT=0 solutions for the proper memories are exactly obtained for all finite values of, as a consequence of the energy function: whenever one of the overlaps is exactly one the corresponding equations decouple and no configuration average is required. Special interest is focused on the OPS situation, which presents a peculiar phase space topology. On the other hand, the PAS configuration recovers the Hopfield model in the appropriate limit, while keeping associative memory abilities far beyond the critical values of other models when the full Hamiltonian is considered.     

Quantum Prisoner’s Dilemma game on hypergraph networks

We study the possible advantages of adopting quantum strategies in multi-player evolutionary games. We base our study on the three-player Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game. In order to model the simultaneous interaction between three agents we use hypergraphs and hypergraph networks. In particular, we study two types of networks: a random network and a SF-like network. The obtained results show that in the case of a three-player game on a hypergraph network, quantum strategies are not necessarily stochastically stable strategies. In some cases, the defection strategy can be as good as a quantum one.     

Diversity of contribution promotes cooperation in public goods games

In most previous studies of public goods game, individuals conventionally donate their contributions equally to the games they participate in. We develop an extended public goods game model, in which individuals distribute their contributions based on the groups’ qualities. Namely, the individuals are allowed to increase their investment to the superior groups at the expense of the nasty ones. The quality of a group is positively correlated with its cooperation level. In numerical simulations, synchronized stochastic strategy updating rule based on pairwise comparison for a fixed noise level is adopted. The results show that the high-quality group preference mechanism can greatly improve cooperation, compared with conventional models. Besides, the system with stronger preference toward high-quality groups performs better. Investigation of wealth distribution at equilibrium reveals that cooperators’ wealth appreciates with the increase of preference degree when cooperators take up the same fraction of the population.     

Chaotic dynamics of high-order neural networks

The dynamics of an extremely diluted neural network with high-order synapses acting as corrections to the Hopfield model is investigated. The learning rules for the high-order connections contain mixing of memories, different from all the previous generalizations of the Hopfield model. The dynamics may display fixed points or periodic and chaotic orbits, depending on the weight of the high-order connections , the noise levelT, and the network load, defined as the ratio between the number of stored patterns and the mean connectivity per neuron, =P/C. As in the related fully connected case, there is an optimal value of the weight that improves the storage capacity of the system (the capacity diverges).     

Designing neural networks that process mean values of random variables

We develop a class of neural networks derived from probabilistic models posed in the form of Bayesian networks. Making biologically and technically plausible assumptions about the nature of the probabilistic models to be represented in the networks, we derive neural networks exhibiting standard dynamics that require no training to determine the synaptic weights, that perform accurate calculation of the mean values of the relevant random variables, that can pool multiple sources of evidence, and that deal appropriately with ambivalent, inconsistent, or contradictory evidence.     

A game theory model of urban public traffic networks

We have studied urban public traffic networks from the viewpoint of complex networks and game theory. Firstly, we have empirically investigated an urban public traffic network in Beijing in 2003, and obtained its statistical properties. Then a simplified game theory model is proposed for simulating the evolution of the traffic network. The basic idea is that three network manipulators, passengers, an urban public traffic company, and a government traffic management agency, play games in a network evolution process. Each manipulator tries to build the traffic lines to magnify its “benefit”. Simulation results show a good qualitative agreement with the empirical results.     

基于深度卷积网络的多传感器信号故障诊断方法研究

针对传统故障诊断方法中多传感器数据融合技术难度大、特征提取困难等问题,提出了一种基于深度卷积网络的多传感器信号故障诊断方法,通过构建测量数据帧进行卷积计算实现多通道数据的自然融合,利用深度网络结构实现高层特征的自动提取和分类,从而高效地实现了故障分类诊断;经分别采用小规模数据集REF和大规模故障数据集BI02进行实验验证,均取得了较高的故障识别准确率,具有很强的工程应用价值。     

Continuous opinion model in small-world directed networks

In the compromise model of continuous opinions proposed by Deffuant et al., the states of two agents in a network can start to converge if they are neighbors and if their opinions are sufficiently close to each other, below a given threshold of tolerance ?. In directed networks, if agent i is a neighbor of agent j,j need not be a neighbor of i. In Watts-Strogatz networks we performed simulations to find the averaged number of final opinions 〈F〉 and their distribution as a function of ? and of the network structural disorder. In directed networks 〈F〉 exhibits a rich structure, being larger than in undirected networks for higher values of ?, and smaller for lower values of ?.     

Neural network modeling of emotion

This article reviews the history and development of computational neural network modeling of cognitive and behavioral processes that involve emotion. The exposition starts with models of classical conditioning dating from the early 1970s. Then it proceeds toward models of interactions between emotion and attention. Then models of emotional influences on decision making are reviewed, including some speculative (not and not yet simulated) models of the evolution of decision rules. Through the late 1980s, the neural networks developed to model emotional processes were mainly embodiments of significant functional principles motivated by psychological data. In the last two decades, network models of these processes have become much more detailed in their incorporation of known physiological properties of specific brain regions, while preserving many of the psychological principles from the earlier models.Most network models of emotional processes so far have dealt with positive and negative emotion in general, rather than specific emotions such as fear, joy, sadness, and anger. But a later section of this article reviews a few models relevant to specific emotions: one family of models of auditory fear conditioning in rats, and one model of induced pleasure enhancing creativity in humans. Then models of emotional disorders are reviewed. The article concludes with philosophical statements about the essential contributions of emotion to intelligent behavior and the importance of quantitative theories and models to the interdisciplinary enterprise of understanding the interactions of emotion, cognition, and behavior.     

A game theoretic algorithm to detect overlapping community structure in networks

Community detection can be used as an important technique for product and personalized service recommendation. A game theory based approach to detect overlapping community structure is introduced in this paper. The process of the community formation is converted into a game, when all agents (nodes) cannot improve their own utility, the game process will be terminated. The utility function is composed of a gain and a loss function and we present a new gain function in this paper. In addition, different from choosing action randomly among join, quit and switch for each agent to get new label, two new strategies for each agent to update its label are designed during the game, and the strategies are also evaluated and compared for each agent in order to find its best result. The overlapping community structure is naturally presented when the stop criterion is satisfied. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms other similar algorithms for detecting overlapping communities in networks.     

X射线光谱与神经网络中单组分型神经群结构研究

研究、比较了神经群结构与常规神经网络算法的预测性能,考察了过拟合与最佳拟合态等的关系。结果表明,在多元体系中,将神经网络单组分预测模型应用于Ｘ射线荧光光谱分析时,在预测准确度、模型稳定性和外推预测能力方面,神经群结构优于常规神经网络模型。     

Nonlinear neural networks. I. General theory

A neural network is called nonlinear if the introduction of new data into the synaptic efficacies has to be performed through anonlinear operation. The original Hopfield model is linear, whereas, for instance, clipped synapses constitute a nonlinear model. Here a general theory is presented to obtain the statistical mechanics of a neural network with finitely many patterns and arbitrary (symmetric) nonlinearity. The problem is reduced to minimizing a free energy functional over all solutions of a fixed-point equation with synaptic kernelQ. The case of clipped synapses with bimodal and Gaussian probability distribution is analyzed in detail. To this end, a simple theory is developed that gives the spectrum ofQ and thereby all the solutions that bifurcate from the high-temperature phase.     

Artificial Neural Networks for Resonant Frequency Calculation of Rectangular Microstrip Antennas with Thin and Thick Substrates

Neural models based on multilayered perceptrons for computing the resonant frequency of rectangular microstrip antennas with thin and thick substrates are presented. Eleven learning algorithms, Levenberg-Marquardt, conjugate gradient of Fletcher-Reeves, conjugate gradient of Powell-Beale, bayesian regularization, scaled conjugate gradient, Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno, resilient backpropagation, conjugate of Polak-Ribiére, backpropagation with adaptive learning rate, one-step secant, and backpropagation with momentum, are used to train the multilayered perceptrons. The resonant frequency results obtained by using neural models are in very good agreement with the experimental results available in the literature. When the performances of neural models are compared with each other, the best result is obtained from the multilayered perceptrons trained by Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm.     

Macroscopic Lyapunov functions for separable stochastic neural networks with detailed balance

We derive macroscopic Lyapunov functions for large, long-range, Ising-spin neural networks with separable symmetric interactions, which evolve in time according to local field alignment. We generalize existing constructions, which correspond todeterministic (zero-temperature) evolution and to specific choices of the interaction structure, to the case ofstochastic evolution and arbitrary separable interaction matrices, for both parallel and sequential spin updating. We find a direct relation between the form of the Lyapunov functions (which describe dynamical processes) and the saddle-point integration that results from performing equilibrium statistical mechanical studies of the present type of model.