Investigating dynamics of democratic elections using physics theory
Feb 2020, phys.org
Sometimes, physics theories and models can be used to study seemingly unrelated phenomena, such as social behaviors or social dynamics.
While human beings are not exactly similar to individual physical particles, theories or techniques that physicists use to analyze "behavioral patterns" in atoms or electrons may aid the general understanding of large-scale social behaviors, as long as these behaviors do not depend on small-scale details.
Based on this idea, some researchers use physics theories to investigate social behaviors that take place during democratic elections, for example.
The very idea of a quantifiable social network was unknown to the average person prior to the year 2000. (Check out Barabasi's Links for a reminder of what the world was like at that time.) Now, the idea is clear as day, with the trademark "nodes-and-links" emblazoned into the retina of any 21st century citizen. We all understand what a social network is, and being that a social network is the marriage of sociology and network science, we can all understand these models and their implications.
Below is a list of articles related to sociothermodynamics, although I tend to use this term as a synonym for predictive analytics as well, so there are other articles about using all kinds of big data (like semantic analysis) to make sense out of the sloppy sociobiological mess that we spread all over the planet. And speaking of spreading all over, the last article uses biological data from slime molds to describe human social behavior.
The physics that drives periodic economic downturns
Mar 2020, phys.org
There exist universal mechanisms that give rise to laws governing the growth of economics.
The way spilled milk spreads across the floor can explain why economic downturns regularly occur, as a natural feature of physics, rooted in the time-dependent movement of spreading over an area. Growth of the innumerable spreading phenomena over time follows the shape of an "S curve" otherwise known as the sigmoid function.
A bottle of milk spilled on the floor will have a small initial footprint, followed by a rapid finger-shaped expansion across the kitchen's tiles, followed by a final phase of slow creep.
This same history of slow, fast, slow can be seen in chemical reactions, population growth, the adoption of new technology and even the spreading of new ideas.
-Adrian Bejan et al, Energy theory of periodic economic growth, International Journal of Energy Research (2020). DOI: 10.1002/er.5267
Secularism and tolerance of minority groups predicts future prosperity of countries
Feb 2020, phys.org
Changes in culture generally come before any improvements in wealth, education and democracy, rather than the other way around.
Promoting democracy, whether through economic exchange or regime change, will only succeed if combined with promoting openness and tolerance of minority groups.
(In the 20th Century) places which had the greatest improvement also tended to have pre-existing secular and tolerant cultures.
Study of 62 countries finds people react similarly to everyday situations
June 2020, phys.org
The world is a much more similar and unified place than we once thought.
[Because at the right scale, we are all just particles banging around on the surface of the planet.]
This project is unprecedented. Very few international studies look at relationships between more than two countries, let alone 62," Lee, a doctoral researcher in the lab of UCR Distinguished Professor David Funder, and the lead author of the paper.
Facebook users change their language before an emergency hospital visit - study
Mar 2020, phys.org
Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Stony Brook University's Computer Science Department compared patients' Facebook posts to their medical records, which showed that a shift to more formal language and/or descriptions of physical pain, among other changes, reliably preceded hospital visits.
Wikipedia visits to disease outbreak pages show impact of news media on public attention
Mar 2020, phys.org
During the 2016 Zika outbreak, news exposure appears to have had a far bigger impact than local disease risk on the number of times people visited Zika-related Wikipedia pages in the U.S.
Previous research has explored how public opinion responds to media exposure during an emerging outbreak, but has mostly relied on surveys rather than observational data.
The analysis showed that Zika-related Wikipedia page view counts during the outbreak were highly synchronized with mentions of the virus in web and national TV news at both the national and state level.
What do 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' 'Macbeth,' and a list of Facebook friends all have in common?
June 2020, phys.org
I almost forgot to mention -- network science is rapidly evolving into a useful tool for understanding our world, and there's a possibility that it can go even further than physics in modeling human dynamics; I saw earlier this year a that network science could do a better job than physics of describing what happens inside the sun. [The link to that study is probably on this weblog somewhere].
New research published in Nature Physics uses tools from network science to explain how complex communication networks can efficiently convey large amounts of information to the human brain. Conducted by postdoc Christopher Lynn, graduate students Ari Kahn and Lia Papadopoulos, and professor Danielle S. Bassett, the study found that different types of networks, including those found in works of literature, musical pieces, and social connections, have a similar underlying structure that allows them to share information rapidly and efficiently.
The researchers evaluated 40 real-world communication networks to see what features were crucial for communicating information. They looked at works of English literature, including the canon of Shakespeare and Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," along with musical pieces such as Mozart's Sonata No 11 and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." They also studied networks of social relationships, including co-authorship networks in science and Facebook friend connections.
After looking at this diverse group of networks, the researchers found that the large-scale structure of a network was essential to that network's ability to convey information. What was surprising was just how similar this structure was across the different networks, whether the network was representing noun transitions in a work of literature or melodic progressions in a piece of music.
What makes these networks both information-rich and efficient is a balance between two key network features known as "community" structure and "heterogeneous" structure. Community structure occurs when nodes clump together and form clusters that evoke related concepts. Saying the word "dog" might bring to mind "ball," "Frisbee," or "bone," for example. Such community structure helps make networks more efficient because a person can anticipate what word or idea might come next.
But if a person can anticipate what comes next, there won't be much information conveyed because information is directly related to surprise. To provide information, networks have to have a "heterogeneous" mixture of both well-connected and sparsely connected nodes. Take the works of Shakespeare as an example. While "the" and "and" are used 28,944 and 27,317 times, respectively, there are also 12,493 word forms that only occur once. "At a hub like, 'the,' you can't anticipate where you are about to go," says Lynn. "It turns out that these hub nodes are really important for generating surprisal or, equivalently, information."
Evolution selects for 'loners' that hang back from collective behavior-at least in slime molds
Mar 2020, phys.org
Testing whether loners are random or a predictable quantity, possibly subject to natural or cultural selection:
Target system: cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum
Evolution could indeed select for loner behavior in slime molds. Loners are both an ecological and an evolutionary insurance plan, a way to diversify a genetic portfolio to ensure the survival of the social, collective behavior:
Slime molds, when they are threatened by starvation, the tiny amoebae coalesce into slug-like creatures that then aggregate into a large, swaying tower that grows upward with a burgeoning slimy top—until that top sticks to an unwitting passing insect, the starvation-resistant spores hitchhiking out into the world, while all the individuals making up the base and stalk die.
But what caught Tarnita's eye were the slime mold loners, the amoebae that resist the biochemical call to form the tower.
Here and there, some scattered cells on the plate just didn't seem to react at all to this aggregation process.
They tested the loners to see if they were flawed in some way, but they couldn't find anything wrong with them.
It could make sense for some fraction of the slime mold population to remain behind in order to take advantage of any resources that might return in the environment while the rest of the cells are aggregating.
30% chose the loner life over collective action.
The proportion of solitary cells in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum is not simply determined by each cell individually tossing a coin. It results instead from interactions between the [organism] and the environment.
The decision not to become part of the collective is, in fact, taken collectively. All the cells kind of talk to each other chemically: 'Oh, you're going? I guess I'm staying.' There's communication involved in becoming a loner.
-"Eco-evolutionary significance of 'loners'" by Fernando W. Rossine, Ricardo Martinez-Garcia, Allyson E. Sgro, Thomas Gregor and Corina E. Tarnita, appears in the Mar. 18 issue of the journal PLoS Biology.
Image source: Fernando Fornies Gracia, infrared photography
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