This event, hosted by the Institute of Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University and organized by the Center of Complex Network Research at Northeastern University on June 17th, brings together social scientists, computer scientists, economists, physicists and mathematicians to discuss the quantitative laws and patterns behind success.  SpeakersPierre Azoulay James A. EvansSanto Fortunato Gautam MukundaAlexander M. Petersen Camille SweeneyArnout van de Rijt Brian UzziChristoph...

It is conventional in labor economics to treat all workers who are seeking new jobs as belonging to a labor pool, and all firms that have job vacancies as an employer pool, and then match workers to jobs. Here we develop a new approach to study labor and firm dynamics. By combining the emerging science of networks with newly available employment micro-data, comprehensive at the level of whole countries, we are able to broadly characterize the process through which workers move between firms....

Flies are among the most agile flying creatures on Earth. To mimic this aerial prowess in a similarly sized robot requires tiny, high-efficiency mechanical components that pose miniaturization challenges governed by force-scaling laws, suggesting unconventional solutions for propulsion, actuation, and manufacturing. To this end, we developed high-power-density piezoelectric flight muscles and a manufacturing methodology capable of rapidly prototyping articulated, flexure-based sub-millimeter...

Logic gates evoke images of circuit boards, but cells are arguably equally good in relying on logic computations. A classic example is the Lac operon, which activates itself upon the condition “lactose AND NOT glucose” (1). In recent years, there have been multiple reports on rationally designed, genetically encoded logic gates and circuits in living cells (2). Just like the Lac operon, these gates receive two or more molecular signals (inputs) and generate a product (output) whose...

The cosmological natural selection (CNS) hypothesis holds that the fundamental constants of nature have been fine-tuned by an evolutionary process in which universes produce daughter universes via the formation of black holes. Here, we formulate the CNS hypothesis using standard mathematical tools of evolutionary biology. Specifically, we capture the dynamics of CNS using Price's equation, and we capture the adaptive purpose of the universe using an optimization program. We establish...

The study of scientific models has become an active and important focus in history and philosophy of science, and to a lesser extent in sociology of science. Such attention acknowledges that models are central to scientific practice and that they are distinct from both theory and data, but there is a growing realization that modeling practices differ between and within disciplines. This special issue uses this realization to extend the discussion on models into new areas and different uses in...

In socially foraging species resource information can be shared between individuals, increasing foraging success. In ant colonies, nestmate recruitment allows high exploitation rates at known resources however, to maximise foraging efficiency this must be balanced with searching for new resources.See it on Scoop.it, via Papers

Task-partitioning is an important organisational principle in insect colonies and is thought to increase colony efficiency. In task-partitioning, tasks such as the collection of resources are divided into subtasks in which the material is passed from one worker to another. We used an agent-based simulation model to explore how non-random interactions during task-partitioning with direct transfer affect colony work efficiency.See it on Scoop.it, via Papers

This paper proposes a control framework for biological systems subject to dynamics that exhibit adaptive behavior under evolutionary pressures. The control framework was formulated based on evolutionary game based modeling, which integrates both the internal dynamics and the population dynamics.See it on Scoop.it, via Papers

The fixation of cooperation among unrelated individuals is one of the fundamental problems in biology and social sciences. It is investigated by means of public goods games, the generalization of the prisoner's dilemma to more than two players. In compulsory public goods games, defect is the dominant strategy, while voluntary participation overcomes the social dilemma by allowing a cyclic coexistence of cooperators, defectors, and non-participants. [...] a milder punishing mechanism, where...