Category: Books

The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World, by Tim Palmer

Learn how the tools that enabled us to overcome the uncertainty of the weather will enable us to find new answers to modern science’s most pressing questions.

Why does your weather app say “There’s a 10% chance of rain” instead of “It will be sunny tomorrow”? In large part this is due to the insight of Tim Palmer, who made uncertainty essential to the study of weather and climate. Now he wants to apply it to how we study everything else.

In The Primacy of Doubt, Palmer argues that embracing the mathematics of uncertainty is vital to understanding ourselves and the universe around us. Whether we want to predict climate change or market crashes, understand how the brain is able to outpace supercomputers, or find a theory that links quantum and cosmological physics, Palmer shows how his vision of mathematical uncertainty provides new insights into some of the deepest problems in science. The result is a revolution—one that shows that power begins by embracing what we don’t know.

More at: www.basicbooks.com

Early Detection of Mental Health Disorders by Social Media Monitoring: The First Five Years of the eRisk Project

Editors: Fabio Crestani, David E. Losada, Javier Parapar
Presents techniques for the early Detection of Mental Health Disorders by Social Media Monitoring

Recent research on eRisk which stands for Early Risk Prediction on the Internet

Presents the best results of the first five years of the eRisk project

Read the full article at: link.springer.com

Repair

This book propagates a new way of thinking about managing our resources by integrating the perspectives of complex systems theory and social psychology. By resources, the authors mean objects, such as cell phones and cars, and human resources, such as family members, friends, and the small and large communities they belong to. As we all face the “replace or repair” dichotomy, readers will understand how to repair themselves, their relationships, and communities, accept the “new normal,” and contribute to repairing the world. The book is offered to Zoomers, growing up in a world where it seems everything is falling apart; people in their 30s and 40s, who are thinking about how to live a fulfilling life; people from the Boomers generation, who are thinking back on life and how to repair relationships. The Reader will enjoy the intellectual adventure of connecting the natural and social worlds and understanding the transition’s pathways from a “throwaway society” to a “repair society.

More at: link.springer.com

The big idea: why relationships are the key to existence

from Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli

From subatomic particles to human beings, interaction is what shapes reality (…)

Perhaps this is precisely what “properties” are: the effects of interactions. A good scientific theory, then, should not be about how things “are”, or what they “do”: it should be about how they affect one another. (…)

Reality is not a collection of things, it’s a network of processes. If this is correct, I think it comes with a lesson. We understand reality better if we think of it in terms of interactions, not individuals. 

Read the full article at: www.theguardian.com

Multilayer Network Science

Oriol Artime, Barbara Benigni, Giulia Bertagnolli, Valeria d’Andrea, Riccardo Gallotti, Arsham Ghavasieh, Sebastian Raimondo, and Manlio De Domenico

Networks are convenient mathematical models to represent the structure of complex systems, from cells to societies. In the last decade, multilayer network science – the branch of the field dealing with units interacting in multiple distinct ways, simultaneously – was demonstrated to be an effective modeling and analytical framework for a wide spectrum of empirical systems, from biopolymers networks (such as interactome and metabolomes) to neuronal networks (such as connectomes), from social networks to urban and transportation networks. In this Element, a decade after one of the most seminal papers on this topic, the authors review the most salient features of multilayer network science, covering both theoretical aspects and direct applications to real-world coupled/interdependent systems, from the point of view of multilayer structure, dynamics and function. The authors discuss potential frontiers for this topic and the corresponding challenges in the field for the next future.

More at: www.cambridge.org