This book focuses on the theoretical side of temporal network research and gives an overview of the state of the art in the field. Curated by two pioneers in the field who have helped to shape it, the book contains contributions from many leading researchers. Temporal networks fill the border area between network science and time-series analysis and are relevant for the modeling of epidemics, optimization of transportation and logistics, as well as understanding biological phenomena.

Network theory has proven, over the past 20 years to be one of the most powerful tools for the study and analysis of complex systems. Temporal network theory is perhaps the most recent significant development in the field in recent years, with direct applications to many of the "big data" sets. This monograph will appeal to students, researchers and professionals alike interested in theory and temporal networks, a field that has grown tremendously over the last decade.

 

Temporal Network Theory
Editors: Holme, Petter, Saramäki, Jari 

Source: www.springer.com

Ever since its origin in post-war research, AI has been subject to profound hyperbole, rapturous prognostications, and projected nightmares. In 2019, things have once again reached fever pitch in what Science Board co-chair and External Professor Melanie Mitchell wryly notes is a hype cycle that routinely ripples through her fellow computer scientists and those who fund them. Her illuminating new book, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, lays bare the inner workings of these potent tools, exposing their realistic limits and patiently detailing our deployment errors. It is a solid history of how we got from pocket calculators to facial recognition and self-driving cars, a lucid tour of how these systems operate, and a tempered read on just how far we have to go before we’re obsolete.

Source: www.santafe.edu

R Wrangham. The goodness paradox: How evolution made us both more and less violent. London, England: Profile Books, 2019, 400 pp., ISBN: 9781781255834 (hbk), £25.

In comparison to other species, humans are both surprisingly peaceful in their day-to-day interactions with unrelated conspecifics and unprecedently violent toward them when the situation requires it. A goodness paradox, as Wrangham (2019) dubs this strange relationship of humankind to violence, is the theme of his latest book attempting to comprise decades of research into a coherent theory of aggressive behavior focused on humans. Drawing on his expertise in primatology, Wrangham presents an evolutionary theory that not only expands contemporary thinking about human behavior but also challenges and refines several crucial notions of human evolution.

 

Self-domesticated by violence to be peaceful. And violent
Dan Řezníček

Adaptive Behavior

Source: journals.sagepub.com

Human Current, the complexity podcast, emerged from the belief that the world will be a better place if more people learn about complexity—as a scientific theory and way of understanding the world. Our Human Current is a story of listening and learning, and of the power of mentorship, inspired by our own mentor, Douglas Drane.

We conducted more than 125 thoughtful interviews with scientists, influencers, and practitioners in the fields of complexity science and systems thinking. Let us take you on a 365-day journey through the stories, research, anecdotes, and advice from Doug and our conversations with guests including: Stephen Wolfram, a founding father of complexity science; Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute; Jean Boulton, co-author of Embracing Complexity; Melanie Mitchell, professor at the Santa Fe Institute; Margaret Wheatley, best-selling author; Dean Radin, chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences; Albert-László Barabási, author; and so many more!

 

Our Human Current: Stories about Complexity, Systems, and Mentorship
By Angela Cross & Haley Campbell-Gross

Source: www.lulu.com

This thesis summarises my scientific contributions in the domain of network science, human dynamics and computational social science. These contributions are associated to computer science, physics, statistics, and applied mathematics. The goal of this thesis is twofold, on one hand to write a concise summary of my most interesting scientific contributions, and on the other hand to provide an up-to-date view and perspective about my field. I start my dissertation with an introduction to position the reader on the landscape of my field and to put in perspective my contributions. In the second chapter I concentrate on my works on bursty human dynamics, addressing heterogeneous temporal characters of human actions and interactions. Next, I discuss my contributions to the field of temporal networks and give a synthesises of my works on various methods of the representation, characterisation, and modelling of time-varying structures. Finally, I discuss my works on the data-driven observations and modelling of collective social phenomena. There, I summarise studies on the static observations of emergent patterns of socioeconomic inequalities and their correlations with social-communication networks, and with linguistic patterns. I also discuss dynamic observations and modelling of social contagion processes.

 

Computational Human Dynamics
Márton Karsai

Source: arxiv.org