Sociology and Social Theory in Agent Based Social Simulation: A Symposium

A lengthy and intensive debate about the role of sociology in agent based social simulation dominated the email list simsoc@jiscmail.ac.uk during the autumn of 2000. The debate turned on the importance of models being devised to capture the properties of whole social systems and whether those properties should determine agent behaviour or, conversely, whether the properties of social systems should emerge from the behaviour and interaction of the agents and, if so, how that emergence should be represented. The positions of four of the main protagonists concerned specifically with the modelling issues are reprised and extended in this symposium.     

On the Finite Base Property for Semigroup Varieties

No algorithm determines from an arbitrary recursive system of semigroup identities whether the variety defined by this system is finitely based.     

Commutativity of rings with polynomial constraints

Let p, q and r be fixed non-negative integers. In this note, it is shown that if R is left (right) s-unital ring satisfying , respectively) where , then R is commutative. Moreover, commutativity of R is also obtained under different sets of constraints on integral exponents. Also, we provide some counterexamples which show that the hypotheses are not altogether superfluous. Thus, many well-known commutativity theorems become corollaries of our results.     

Intra-organizational Networks and Performance: A Review

Intra-organizational network research had its first heyday during the empirical revolution in social sciences before World War II when it discovered the informal group within the formal organization. These studies comment on the classic sociological idea of bureaucracy being the optimal organization. Later relational interest within organizational studies gave way to comparative studies on the quantifiable formal features of organizations. There has been a resurgence in intra-organizational networks studies recently as the conviction grows that they are critical to organizational and individual performance. Along with methodological improvements, the theoretical emphasis has shifted from networks as a constraining force to a conceptualization that sees them as providing opportunities and finally, as social capital. Because of this shift it has become necessary not only to explain the differences between networks but also their outcomes, that is, their performance. It also implies that internal and external networks should no longer be treated separately.Research on differences between intra-organizational networks centers on the influence of the formal organization, organizational demography, technology and environment. Studies on outcomes deal with diffusion and adaptation of innovation; the utilization of human capital; recruitment, absenteeism and turnover; work stress and job satisfaction; equity; power; information efficiency; collective decision making; mobilization for and outcomes of conflicts; social control; profit and survival of firms and individual performance.Of all the difficulties that are associated with intra-organizational network research, problems of access to organizations and incomparability of research findings seem to be the most serious. Nevertheless, future research should concentrate on mechanisms that make networks productive, while taking into account the difficulties of measuring performance within organizations, such as the performance paradox and the halo-effect.     

Gossip in Organizations

Three hypotheses about the effects of different informal social network structures on gossip behavior are developed and tested. Gossip is defined as a conversation about a third person who is not participating in the conversation. Having analyzed the costs and benefits of gossip, we prefer the coalition hypothesis.~It states that gossip will flourish in social networks that have a relatively large number of coalition triads, that is ego and alter having a good relationship amongst themselves and both having a bad relationship with tertius, the object of gossip. Two rivalling hypotheses are developed. The constraint hypothesis predicts that the inclination towards gossip is greater, the larger the number of structural holes in the personal network of the gossipmonger.~The closure hypothesis predicts that more gossip will be found in networks with a large number of closed triads, that is where both gossipmonger and listener have a good relationship with the absent third person. The hypotheses are tested using a newly developed instrument to measure gossip behavior and network data from six work organizations and six school classes. The data support the coalition hypothesis and do not support the two rivalling hypotheses.     

资源共享方式若干问题的研讨

社会公用服务系统和工程技术系统，存在共同的资源共享问题。本文通过典例就资源共享方式的若干问题加以探究：讨论广义的多用户系统中人工资源共享方式的分类；阐述常用的共享方式的特点、优缺点；分析系统时间性能及其改进与共享方式的关系等。文章还提出在系统工程范畴里，应对社会公用服务和工程技术两类系统的资源共享方式予以综合研究，并相互借鉴和移植。     

基于社会网络的舆情传播模型构建与分析

本文考虑个体间的相互作用,提出了一个基于社会网络分析的舆情传播模型.模型假设网络中每个个体的初始状态只有两种情况,并且在单位时间步内只选择一个邻居进行交流,并以概率λ接受该邻居的意见.解析结果显示存在概率λc使得网络中持某种观点人数比例的期望值是一个常数,而其它状态下系统中所有个体的意见都会达成一致.本模型有助于衡量某给定社会网络中舆论传播的快慢程度.     

Powers of Euler's Product and Related Identities

Ramanujan's partition congruences can be proved by first showing that the coefficients in the expansions of (q; q) ^r satisfy certain divisibility properties when r = 4, 6 and 10. We show that much more is true. For these and other values of r, the coefficients in the expansions of (q; q) ^r satisfy arithmetic relations, and these arithmetic relations imply the divisibility properties referred to above. We also obtain arithmetic relations for the coefficients in the expansions of (q; q) ^r (q ^t; q ^t) ^s , for t = 2, 3, 4 and various values of r and s. Our proofs are explicit and elementary, and make use of the Macdonald identities of ranks 1 and 2 (which include the Jacobi triple product, quintuple product and Winquist's identities). The paper concludes with a list of conjectures.     

A note on a paper “A regularization method for the proximal point algorithm”

In this note, a small gap is corrected in the proof of H.K. Xu [Theorem 3.3, A regularization method for the proximal point algorithm, J. Glob. Optim. 36, 115–125 (2006)], and some strict restriction is removed also.