'the structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. so far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. we present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. we find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. this core can be seen as an economic "super-entity" that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.'

"[...] a method for finding overlapping communities based on a principled statistical approach using generative network models." / "[...] can be implemented using a fast, closed-form expectation-maximization algorithm that allows us to analyze networks of millions of nodes in reasonable running times."

"this article examines how china tackled the technological differences between itself and the west in the process of acquiring steam technology."

"I postulate that the organization required for [space] exploration is utterly anathema to the ideology of the space cadets, because the political roots of the space colonization movement in the united states rise from taproots of nostalgia for the open frontier [...]. in particular, the fetishization of autonomy, self-reliance, and progress through mechanical engineering — echoing the desire to escape the suffocating social conditions back east by simply running away — utterly undermine the program itself and are incompatible with life in a space colony [...]"

"the purpose of this book is to present a version of multivariate statistical theory in which vector space and invariance methods replace, to a large extent, more traditional multivariate methods."

dolphins trap fish by stirring up mud rings; when those fish, in panic, try to jump out, the dolphins just have to open their mouth ... instant lunch.

"it is shown that in many cases, the spectrum of eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix of a network with community structure gives a clear indication of the number of communities in the network. in particular, for a network with n nodes and nc communities, there will typically be nc eigenvalues that are significantly larger than the magnitudes of all the other (n−nc) eigenvalues. we discuss this property as well as its use and limitations for determining nc."

cshalizi: "since this is more or less the conclusion I reached years ago, it's obviously correct."

"[our results] imply that the output of any modularity maximization procedure should be interpreted cautiously in scientific contexts."

"[...] our truncated, thresholded, nearest-neighbor classifier enjoys the same classification boundary as more conventional, nonrobust approaches [...]" / cshalizi: "sounds impossible, from the abstract, so clearly I need to read it."

"we offer a solution to a long-standing problem in the physics of networks, the creation of a plausible, solvable model of a network that displays clustering or transitivity [...]"

"[...] a draft of an incomplete first-year ph.d. econometrics textbook."

"in the assignment, students created a computational model of the heat flow involved in heating an iron rod in a blacksmith's forge. after creating the simulation, students took a blacksmithing seminar and had a chance to work with iron and take data on the heating of iron in a coke forge. on their return to campus, students revised their computational models in light of their experimental data."

by wolfgang härdle (xplore) et al.; applied multivariate statistical analysis, applied nonparametric regression, applied quantitative finance &c.

requoting from cshalizi: "there are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: the lord of the rings and atlas shrugged. one is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. the other, of course, involves orcs."

while recommender systems [often] increase the individual experience of diversity, they [often] reduce global heterogeneity. think: you can see a lot of things as "recommender systems" (~ awareness generators), not only systems billed as such; from aggregators (reddit & friends) to all kinds of (esp. mass) media. something in my head kept saying: central limit ... / plus: a fascinating comment on stenotopy/eurotopy in amazon forests/polar tundra, respectively.

qotd: "physicists not only know everything, they also know everything better." -- dietrich stauffer

"for a specific rate decay, we show that the lasso selects all the variables that should enter the model with probability tending to one exponentially fast, while it selects all other variables with strictly positive probability. we show that this property implies that if we run the lasso for several bootstrapped replications of a given sample, then intersecting the supports of the lasso bootstrap estimates leads to consistent model selection." -- one day, when I'm much smarter, I might find out if/how this connects to kleinberg's stochastic discrimination.

"[...] given the opportunity, and a good reason, most people will claim some handicap." / "the burn of embarrassment is, in some sense, the pilot light of motivation."

"think of any smart person you know well, and I bet there is some circumstance, some confluence of emotion and social pressure, where they dropped their reasoning and made a stupid, but easily aviodable, choice." -- you could start by just thinking of yourself ...

"the idea behind lrme is to measure the quality of a mapping from a source domain (e.g., the solar system) to a target domain (e.g., the rutherford-bohr model of the atom) by the sum of relational similarity measures for all of the proportional analogies that it implies (e.g., sun:planet::nucleus:electron, sun:mass::nucleus:charge, planet:revolves::electron:revolves, etc.). this simple idea works surprisingly well."

"[...] intended as a guide to the growing literature which approaches the phenomena of cell biology from a more theoretical point of view."

"[...] individual diversity is different from overall diversity." (!) / "recommender systems will displace the filtering role of both reviewers and of publishers. but while bad reviewers and publishers would not be missed, good reviewers and publishers are not only filters; they are also an active part of cultural creation."

theme issue: ‘cultural transmission and the evolution of human behaviour’

"the np package implements a variety of nonparametric and semiparametric kernel-based estimators that are popular among econometricians. "

phillip bonacich: "it is the best available textbook on network models, containing well-thought-out and demanding problems at the end of every chapter."

"during the final weeks of world war II in europe, the allies — convinced that the germans were close to creating an atomic bomb — sent a special american unit of secret agents, scientists, and soldiers into nazi germany. their mission: find the german scientific team before they could provide hitler with nuclear weapons. [...] first published in 1947, this first-hand account retains all the elements that make for great reading: It is part high-voltage spy drama, part bittersweet memoir, part historical drama — and it's all true."