Information, disease, and influence diffuse over networks of entities in both natural systems and human society. Analyzing these transmission networks plays an important role in understanding the diffusion processes and predicting future events. However, the underlying transmission networks are often hidden and incomplete, and we observe only the time stamps when cascades of events happen. In t...

This work studies the problem of inferring whether an agent is directly influenced by another agent over an adaptive diffusion network. Agent i influences agent j if they are connected (according to the network topology), and if agent j uses the data from agent i to update its online statistic. The solution of this inference task is challenging for two main reasons. First, only the output of th...

Cascading processes, such as disease contagion, viral marketing, and information diffusion, are a pervasive phenomenon in many types of networks. The problem of devising intervention strategies to facilitate or inhibit such processes has recently received considerable attention. However, a major challenge is that the underlying network is often unknown. In this paper, we revisit the problem of ...

by Lewis Yablonsky, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Criminology, California State University-Northridge (Published in the American Sociological Association, "Sociological Practice Newsletter" 8/2000 on my acceptance of THE WILLIAM FOOTE WHYTE CAREER AWARD FOR SOCIOLOGICAL PRACTICE at the ASA Meetings 8/2000 in Washington, D.C.; and was the basis for a lecture on 1/25/01 presented at Grand V...

Along with the traditional primitives of economic development (material preferences, technology, and endowments), there is a growing interest in exploring how psychological and sociological factors (e.g., bounded rationality, norms, or social preferences) also influence economic decisions, the evolution of institutions, and outcomes. Simultaneously, a vast literature has arisen arguing that eco...

■ Abstract Sociologists often model social processes as interactions among variables. We review an alternative approach that models social life as interactions among adaptive agents who influence one another in response to the influence they receive. These agent-based models (ABMs) show how simple and predictable local interactions can generate familiar but enigmatic global patterns, such as th...

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Many different methods for assessing injury severity have appeared in the literature. This paper discusses the commonly used measures, many of which are subjective and depend on clinical practice or sociological factors. Even if apparently objective measures are used their appropriateness for use in children is questionable. Particular problems occur with scoring or categorising events such as ...