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Authors: José Luis Iribarren, Esteban Moro Journal: Preprint 0706.0641 arXiv Abstract: The dynamics of information dissemination in social networks is of paramount importance in processes such as rumors or fads propagation, spread of product innovations or “word-of-mouth” communications. Due to the difficulty in tracking a specific information when it is transmitted by people, most understanding of information spreading in social networks comes from models or indirect measurements. Here we present an integrated experimental and theoretical framework to understand and quantitatively predict how and when information spreads over social networks. ...

Authors: Gabriella Vaglica, Fabrizio Lillo, Esteban Moro y Rosario N. Mantegna Journal: Physical Review E 77, 036110 (2008). LINK | arXiv Abstract: The dynamics of many socioeconomic systems is determined by the decision making process of agents. The decision process depends on agent’s characteristics, such as preferences, risk aversion, behavioral biases, etc. In addition, in some systems the size of agents can be highly heterogeneous leading to very different impacts of agents on the system dynamics. ...

Hola a todos. Este es mi primer post en español en este blog (aunque incluyo la traducción al inglés más abajo). Y lo hago para anunciar que soy el editor desde el número de Diciembre de la sección “Física y Computación” de la revista de la Real Sociedad Española de Física. Para seguir las novedades y noticias de dicha sección he montado un blog (distinto a este) en el que podeis ver los nuevos artículos de la sección, así como el archivo de los artículos ya publicados. ...

It is always amazing to browse through YouTube, specially if you are looking for science material. Here is an example of superconductivity: take a superconductor and a magnet at room temperature. Nothing happens. Now cool down the superconductor using liquid nitrogen. The superconductor starts “superconducting” and boom! here comes in the Meissner effect. As always, a picture (movie) is better than a page of equations to show how wonderful physics is. ...

Two New York newspapers (The New York Times and the New Yorker) are running stories about whether string theory is a theory of anything or not. Specifically, both articles are reviews of a couple of very critic books on string theory:  * NOT EVEN WRONG : The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law. By Peter Woit. * THE TROUBLE WITH PHYSICS The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. ...

Apparently, a company in Ireland named Steorn has found the killer marketing campaign for their products: 1. Get a law of physics: the first law of thermodynamics, for example, and claim you have a technology that can break it. Cool! 2. Get a good flashy marketing campaign by publishing in The Economist a "show us wrong" announcement to the scientific community. 3. Hide the details of your technology and delay its public announcement by creating a "challenge" to the scientific community. ...