Oscillatory critical amplitudes in hierarchical models

We study the oscillatory critical amplitudes of theq-states Potts model on a diamond hierarchical lattice. We consider an example of the generic case (finite critical index), as well as the degenerate case (essential singularity). In both cases, we compare the magnitude of the oscillations with geometrical characteristics of the Julia set of zeroes of the partition function.     

Communication in networks with hierarchical branching

We present a simple model of communication in networks with hierarchical branching. We analyze the behavior of the model from the viewpoint of critical systems under different situations. For certain values of the parameters, a continuous phase transition between a sparse and a congested regime is observed and accurately described by an order parameter and the power spectra. At the critical point the behavior of the model is totally independent of the number of hierarchical levels. Also scaling properties are observed when the size of the system varies. The presence of noise in the communication is shown to break the transition. The analytical results are a useful guide to forecasting the main features of real networks.     

Detect overlapping and hierarchical community structure in networks

Clustering and community structure is crucial for many network systems and the related dynamic processes. It has been shown that communities are usually overlapping and hierarchical. However, previous methods investigate these two properties of community structure separately. This paper proposes an algorithm (EAGLE) to detect both the overlapping and hierarchical properties of complex community structure together. This algorithm deals with the set of maximal cliques and adopts an agglomerative framework. The quality function of modularity is extended to evaluate the goodness of a cover. The examples of application to real world networks give excellent results.     

The hierarchical backbone of complex networks

Given any complex directed network, a set of acyclic subgraphs can be extracted that will provide valuable information about its hierarchical structure. This Letter presents how the interpretation of the network weight matrix as a transition matrix allows the hierarchical backbone to be identified and characterized in terms of the concepts of hierarchical degree, which expresses the total weights of virtual edges established along successive transitions. The potential of the proposed approach is illustrated with respect to simulated random and preferential-attachment networks as well as real data related to word associations and gene sequencing.     

Modular and hierarchical structure of social contact networks

Social contact networks exhibit overlapping qualities of communities, hierarchical structure and spatial-correlated nature. We propose a mixing pattern of modular and growing hierarchical structures to reconstruct social contact networks by using an individual’s geospatial distribution information in the real world. The hierarchical structure of social contact networks is defined based on the spatial distance between individuals, and edges among individuals are added in turn from the modular layer to the highest layer. It is a gradual process to construct the hierarchical structure: from the basic modular model up to the global network. The proposed model not only shows hierarchically increasing degree distribution and large clustering coefficients in communities, but also exhibits spatial clustering features of individual distributions. As an evaluation of the method, we reconstruct a hierarchical contact network based on the investigation data of a university. Transmission experiments of influenza H1N1 are carried out on the generated social contact networks, and results show that the constructed network is efficient to reproduce the dynamic process of an outbreak and evaluate interventions. The reproduced spread process exhibits that the spatial clustering of infection is accordant with the clustering of network topology. Moreover, the effect of individual topological character on the spread of influenza is analyzed, and the experiment results indicate that the spread is limited by individual daily contact patterns and local clustering topology rather than individual degree.     

Velocity and hierarchical spread of epidemic outbreaks in scale-free networks

We study the effect of the connectivity pattern of complex networks on the propagation dynamics of epidemics. The growth time scale of outbreaks is inversely proportional to the network degree fluctuations, signaling that epidemics spread almost instantaneously in networks with scale-free degree distributions. This feature is associated with an epidemic propagation that follows a precise hierarchical dynamics. Once the highly connected hubs are reached, the infection pervades the network in a progressive cascade across smaller degree classes. The present results are relevant for the development of adaptive containment strategies.     

Self-organized critical drainage networks

We introduce time-dependent boundary conditions in a model of drainage network evolution based on local erosion rules. The changing boundary conditions prevent the model from becoming stationary; it approaches a state where fluctuations of all sizes occur. The fluctuations in the sizes of the drainage areas show power law behavior with an exponent that differs significantly from that of the static distribution of the drainage areas. Thus, the model exhibits self-organized criticality and proposes a novel concept for predicting fractal properties of drainage networks.     

Biased trapping issue on weighted hierarchical networks

In this paper, we present trapping issues of weight-dependent walks on weighted hierarchical networks which are based on the classic scale-free hierarchical networks. Assuming that edge’s weight is used as local information by a random walker, we introduce a biased walk. The biased walk is that a walker, at each step, chooses one of its neighbours with a probability proportional to the weight of the edge. We focus on a particular case with the immobile trap positioned at the hub node which has the largest degree in the weighted hierarchical networks. Using a method based on generating functions, we determine explicitly the mean first-passage time (MFPT) for the trapping issue. Let parameter a (0 < a < 1) be the weight factor. We show that the efficiency of the trapping process depends on the parameter a; the smaller the value of a, the more efficient is the trapping process.     

Local preferential attachment model for hierarchical networks

In real-life networks, incomers may only connect to a few others in a local area for their limited information, and individuals in a local area are likely to have close relations. Accordingly, we propose a local preferential attachment model. Here, a local-area-network stands for a node and all its neighbors, and the new nodes perform nonlinear preferential attachment, , in local areas. The stable degree distribution and clustering-degree correlations are analytically obtained. With the increasing of α, the clustering coefficient increases, while assortativity decreases from positive to negative. In addition, by adjusting the parameter α, the model can generate different kinds of degree distribution, from exponential to power-law. The hierarchical organization, independent of α, is the most significant character of this model.     

Potts ferromagnet: Transformations and critical exponents in planar hierarchical lattices

We prove that the duality transformation for a Potts ferromagnet on two-rooted planar hierarchical lattices (HL) preserves the thermal eigenvalue. This leads to a relation between the correlation length critical exponents of a HL and its corresponding dual lattice. Using hyperscaling, we show that their specific heat critical exponents coincide. For a smaller class of HL—namely of diamond and tress types—we prove that another transformation also preserves and .     

The information transmission in community networks

The community structure has been empirically found in many real networks. This paper proposes an efficient Double Shortest Path routing strategy trying to avoid the modules of traffic congestion, which means that we adopt the shortest routing strategy both in the inter-modules and in the intra-module. Simulations show that this routing algorithm is superior to the traditional shortest path routing protocol with appropriate selection of the tunable parameters. In addition, this algorithm can also be improved by integrating it with several alternative routing strategies.     

Scaling in ordered and critical random boolean networks

Random Boolean networks, originally invented as models of genetic regulatory networks, are simple models for a broad class of complex systems that show rich dynamical structures. From a biological perspective, the most interesting networks lie at or near a critical point in parameter space that divides "ordered" from "chaotic" attractor dynamics. We study the scaling of the average number of dynamically relevant nodes and the median number of distinct attractors in such networks. Our calculations indicate that the correct asymptotic scalings emerge only for very large systems.     

Density-based shrinkage for revealing hierarchical and overlapping community structure in networks

The investigation of community structure in networks is an important issue in many disciplines, which still remains a challenging task. First, complex networks often show a hierarchical structure with communities embedded within other communities. Moreover, communities in the network may overlap and have noise, e.g., some nodes belonging to multiple communities and some nodes marginally connected with the communities, which are called hub and outlier, respectively. Therefore, a good algorithm is desirable to be able to not only detect hierarchical communities, but also to identify hubs and outliers. In this paper, we propose a parameter-free hierarchical network clustering algorithm DenShrink. By combining the advantages of density-based clustering and modularity optimization methods, our algorithm can reveal the embedded hierarchical community structure efficiently in large-scale weighted undirected networks, and identify hubs and outliers as well. Moreover, it overcomes the resolution limit possessed by other modularity-based methods. Our experiments on the real-world and synthetic datasets show that DenShrink generates more accurate results than the baseline methods.     

Stochastic resonance for information flows on hierarchical networks

A simple model of information flows represented by package delivery on networks with hierarchical structures is considered. The packages should be transferred from one network node to another and the delivery process is influenced by two types of noise. The first type of noise is related to a partially false knowledge of network topology (topological noise), i.e. membership of nodes in communities in a shipping algorithm include a number of errors corresponding to a random rewiring of a fraction of network links. The second type of noise (dynamical noise) is related to a diffusive part in packet dynamics, i.e. package paths do not follow from completely deterministic rules. In the case of a pure topological noise and in the case of combination of both types of noises, we observe a resonance-like phenomenon for communication efficiency. The system performance measured as a fraction of packages that are delivered in a certain time period or as an inverse of time of a package delivery is maximal for intermediate levels of noise. This effect resembles the phenomenon of stochastic resonance that exists in many complex systems where a noise can enhance the information transfer.     

Universal scaling behaviour in weighted trade networks

Identifying universal patterns in complex economic systems can reveal the dynamics and organizing principles underlying the process of system evolution. We investigate the scaling behaviours that have emerged in the international trade system by describing them as a series of evolving weighted trade networks. The maximum-flow spanning trees (constructed by maximizing the total weight of the edges) of these networks exhibit two universal scaling exponents: (1) topological scaling exponent η = 1.30 and (2) flow scaling exponent ζ = 1.03.     

Topology-induced critical current enhancement in Josephson networks

We investigate the properties of Josephson junction networks with inhomogeneous architecture. The networks are shaped as “square comb” planar lattices on which Josephson junctions link superconducting islands arranged in the plane to generate the pertinent topology. Compared to the behavior of reference linear arrays, the temperature dependencies of the Josephson currents of the branches of the network exhibit relevant differences. The observed phenomena evidence new and surprising behavior of superconducting Josephson arrays.     

Epidemic variability in hierarchical geographical networks with human activity patterns

Recently, some studies have revealed that non-Poissonian statistics of human behaviors stem from the hierarchical geographical network structure. On this view, we focus on epidemic spreading in the hierarchical geographical networks and study how two distinct contact patterns (i.e., homogeneous time delay (HOTD) and heterogeneous time delay (HETD) associated with geographical distance) influence the spreading speed and the variability of outbreaks. We find that, compared with HOTD and null model, correlations between time delay and network hierarchy in HETD remarkably slow down epidemic spreading and result in an upward cascading multi-modal phenomenon. Proportionately, the variability of outbreaks in HETD has the lower value, but several comparable peaks for a long time, which makes the long-term prediction of epidemic spreading hard. When a seed (i.e., the initial infected node) is from the high layers of networks, epidemic spreading is remarkably promoted. Interestingly, distinct trends of variabilities in two contact patterns emerge: high-layer seeds in HOTD result in the lower variabilities, the case of HETD is opposite. More importantly, the variabilities of high-layer seeds in HETD are much greater than that in HOTD, which implies the unpredictability of epidemic spreading in hierarchical geographical networks.