Data Mining Techniques for Communities’ Detection in Dynamic Social Networks

Author(s):  
Céline Robardet

Social network analysis studies relationships between individuals and aims at identifying interesting substructures such as communities. This type of network structure is intuitively defined as a subset of nodes more densely linked, when compared with the rest of the network. Such dense subgraphs gather individuals sharing similar property depending on the type of relation encoded in the graph. In this chapter we tackle the problem of identifying communities in dynamic networks where relationships among entities evolve over time. Meaningful patterns in such structured data must capture the strong interactions between individuals but also their temporal relationships. We propose a pattern discovery method to identify evolving patterns defined by constraints. In this paradigm, constraints are parameterized by the user to drive the discovery process towards potentially interesting patterns, with the positive side effect of achieving a more efficient computation. In the proposed approach, dense and isolated subgraphs, defined by two user-parameterized constraints, are first computed in the dynamic network restricted at a given time stamp. Second, the temporal evolution of such patterns is captured by associating a temporal event types to each subgraph. We consider five basic temporal events: the formation, dissolution, growth, diminution and stability of subgraphs from one time stamp to the next one. We propose an algorithm that finds such subgraphs in a time series of graphs processed incrementally. The extraction is feasible thanks to efficient pruning patterns strategies. Experimental results on real-world data confirm the practical feasibility of our approach. We evaluate the added-value of the method, both in terms of the relevancy of the extracted evolving patterns and in terms of scalability, on two dynamic sensor networks and on a dynamic mobility network.

Data Mining ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 719-733
Author(s):  
Céline Robardet

Social network analysis studies relationships between individuals and aims at identifying interesting substructures such as communities. This type of network structure is intuitively defined as a subset of nodes more densely linked, when compared with the rest of the network. Such dense subgraphs gather individuals sharing similar property depending on the type of relation encoded in the graph. In this chapter we tackle the problem of identifying communities in dynamic networks where relationships among entities evolve over time. Meaningful patterns in such structured data must capture the strong interactions between individuals but also their temporal relationships. We propose a pattern discovery method to identify evolving patterns defined by constraints. In this paradigm, constraints are parameterized by the user to drive the discovery process towards potentially interesting patterns, with the positive side effect of achieving a more efficient computation. In the proposed approach, dense and isolated subgraphs, defined by two user-parameterized constraints, are first computed in the dynamic network restricted at a given time stamp. Second, the temporal evolution of such patterns is captured by associating a temporal event types to each subgraph. We consider five basic temporal events: the formation, dissolution, growth, diminution and stability of subgraphs from one time stamp to the next one. We propose an algorithm that finds such subgraphs in a time series of graphs processed incrementally. The extraction is feasible thanks to efficient pruning patterns strategies. Experimental results on real-world data confirm the practical feasibility of our approach. We evaluate the added-value of the method, both in terms of the relevancy of the extracted evolving patterns and in terms of scalability, on two dynamic sensor networks and on a dynamic mobility network.


2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (16) ◽  
pp. 1650092 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tingting Wang ◽  
Weidi Dai ◽  
Pengfei Jiao ◽  
Wenjun Wang

Many real-world data can be represented as dynamic networks which are the evolutionary networks with timestamps. Analyzing dynamic attributes is important to understanding the structures and functions of these complex networks. Especially, studying the influential nodes is significant to exploring and analyzing networks. In this paper, we propose a method to identify influential nodes in dynamic social networks based on identifying such nodes in the temporal communities which make up the dynamic networks. Firstly, we detect the community structures of all the snapshot networks based on the degree-corrected stochastic block model (DCBM). After getting the community structures, we capture the evolution of every community in the dynamic network by the extended Jaccard’s coefficient which is defined to map communities among all the snapshot networks. Then we obtain the initial influential nodes of the dynamic network and aggregate them based on three widely used centrality metrics. Experiments on real-world and synthetic datasets demonstrate that our method can identify influential nodes in dynamic networks accurately, at the same time, we also find some interesting phenomena and conclusions for those that have been validated in complex network or social science.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (15) ◽  
pp. 5473-5483
Author(s):  
Zhixin Zhou ◽  
Jianbang Wang ◽  
R. D. Levine ◽  
Francoise Remacle ◽  
Itamar Willner

A nucleic acid-based constitutional dynamic network (CDN) provides a single functional computational module for diverse input-guided logic operations and computing circuits.


Author(s):  
Hannah Sievers ◽  
Angelika Joos ◽  
Mickaël Hiligsmann

Abstract Objective This study aims to assess stakeholder perceptions on the challenges and value of real-world evidence (RWE) post approval, the differences in regulatory and health technology assessment (HTA) real-world data (RWD) collection requirements under the German regulation for more safety in drug supply (GSAV), and future alignment opportunities to create a complementary framework for postapproval RWE requirements. Methods Eleven semistructured interviews were conducted purposively with pharmaceutical industry experts, regulatory authorities, health technology assessment bodies (HTAbs), and academia. The interview questions focused on the role of RWE post approval, the added value and challenges of RWE, the most important requirements for RWD collection, experience with registries as a source of RWD, perceptions on the GSAV law, RWE requirements in other countries, and the differences between regulatory and HTA requirements and alignment opportunities. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and translated for coding in Nvivo to summarize the findings. Results All experts agree that RWE could close evidence gaps by showing the actual value of medicines in patients under real-world conditions. However, experts acknowledged certain challenges such as: (i) heterogeneous perspectives and differences in outcome measures for RWE generation and (ii) missing practical experience with RWD collected through mandatory registries within the German benefit assessment due to an unclear implementation of the GSAV. Conclusions This study revealed that all stakeholder groups recognize the added value of RWE but experience conflicting demands for RWD collection. Harmonizing requirements can be achieved through common postlicensing evidence generation (PLEG) plans and joint scientific advice to address uncertainties regarding evidence needs and to optimize drug development.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
I Alaoui ◽  
C Izambert ◽  
A Toullier

Abstract Issue Innovative contracting models are developed to ease price-setting negotiations in case an extremely expensive drug has not proven sufficient efficiency in clinical trials. As disruptive HIV treatments are expected in the near future, French patient organizations evaluated the ability of these innovative contracts to ensure accessible medicines at a fair price. Description Performance-based schemes condition prices paid by the State to the efficiency of the medicine observed through real-world data. In France, thirteen performance-based contracts have been concluded between 2008 and 2015. They are presented as a triple solution: innovative treatments are available to patients, manufacturers access markets, and states ensure healthcare within limited budgets. Establishing the added value of these models implies determining if they allow rapid access to treatments with substantial savings for payers, while ensuring rigorous price and cost transparency. Results Performance-based contracts indeed ensure patient access to treatments, but other mechanisms (such as temporary use authorizations) already serve this purpose. Regarding expenditure reduction however, these schemes have not proven their worth. The Court of Auditors' evaluation showed they do not generate substantial savings, as final prices correspond to those that would have applied with the European price guarantee. Lastly, as contracts are protected by business secrecy, the public cannot access neither to actual prices negotiated by payers, nor the amount of public investment that have been used for the research and development of the drug. Lessons The derogatory nature of performance contracts invites us to consider them on a case-by-case basis if ensuring access to a specific innovation is necessary. These contracts are certainly innovative, but they cannot be presented as technologies providing access at a fair price. Finally, their contractual and derogatory nature raises serious transparency issues. Key messages Performance-based contracts should be considered as alternatives to existing administrative channels provided that they lead to substantial savings and are drawn up in full transparency. Patient organizations need to assess innovative schemes such as performance-based contracting to ensure access to treatments without undermining historical struggles for fair and transparent pricing.


2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Bellos ◽  
Mark Basham ◽  
Tony Pridmore ◽  
Andrew P. French

AbstractOver recent years, many approaches have been proposed for the denoising or semantic segmentation of X-ray computed tomography (CT) scans. In most cases, high-quality CT reconstructions are used; however, such reconstructions are not always available. When the X-ray exposure time has to be limited, undersampled tomograms (in terms of their component projections) are attained. This low number of projections offers low-quality reconstructions that are difficult to segment. Here, we consider CT time-series (i.e. 4D data), where the limited time for capturing fast-occurring temporal events results in the time-series tomograms being necessarily undersampled. Fortunately, in these collections, it is common practice to obtain representative highly sampled tomograms before or after the time-critical portion of the experiment. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end network that can learn to denoise and segment the time-series’ undersampled CTs, by training with the earlier highly sampled representative CTs. Our single network can offer two desired outputs while only training once, with the denoised output improving the accuracy of the final segmentation. Our method is able to outperform state-of-the-art methods in the task of semantic segmentation and offer comparable results in regard to denoising. Additionally, we propose a knowledge transfer scheme using synthetic tomograms. This not only allows accurate segmentation and denoising using less real-world data, but also increases segmentation accuracy. Finally, we make our datasets, as well as the code, publicly available.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 2127-2140
Author(s):  
Mengxuan Zhang ◽  
Lei Li ◽  
Xiaofang Zhou

Shortest path computation is a building block of various network applications. Since real-life networks evolve as time passes, the Dynamic Shortest Path (DSP) problem has drawn lots of attention in recent years. However, as DSP has many factors related to network topology, update patterns, and query characteristics, existing works only test their algorithms on limited situations without sufficient comparisons with other approaches. Thus, it is still hard to choose the most suitable method in practice. To this end, we first identify the determinant dimensions and constraint dimensions of the DSP problem and create a complete problem space to cover all possible situations. Then we evaluate the state-of-the-art DSP methods under the same implementation standard and test them systematically under a set of synthetic dynamic networks. Furthermore, we propose the concept of dynamic degree to classify the dynamic environments and use throughput to evaluate their performance. These results can serve as a guideline to find the best solution for each situation during system implementation and also identify research opportunities. Finally, we validate our findings on real-life dynamic networks.


Information ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 212
Author(s):  
Zhiwei Yang ◽  
Weigang Wu

A dynamic network is the abstraction of distributed systems with frequent network topology changes. With such dynamic network models, fundamental distributed computing problems can be formally studied with rigorous correctness. Although quite a number of models have been proposed and studied for dynamic networks, the existing models are usually defined from the point of view of connectivity properties. In this paper, instead, we examine the dynamicity of network topology according to the procedure of changes, i.e., how the topology or links change. Following such an approach, we propose the notion of the “instant path” and define two dynamic network models based on the instant path. Based on these two models, we design distributed algorithms for the problem of information dissemination respectively, one of the fundamental distributing computing problems. The correctness of our algorithms is formally proved and their performance in time cost and communication cost is analyzed. Compared with existing connectivity based dynamic network models and algorithms, our procedure based ones are definitely easier to be instantiated in the practical design and deployment of dynamic networks.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 574-595
Author(s):  
Ravi Goyal ◽  
Victor De Gruttola

AbstractWe present a statistical framework for generating predicted dynamic networks based on the observed evolution of social relationships in a population. The framework includes a novel and flexible procedure to sample dynamic networks given a probability distribution on evolving network properties; it permits the use of a broad class of approaches to model trends, seasonal variability, uncertainty, and changes in population composition. Current methods do not account for the variability in the observed historical networks when predicting the network structure; the proposed method provides a principled approach to incorporate uncertainty in prediction. This advance aids in the designing of network-based interventions, as development of such interventions often requires prediction of the network structure in the presence and absence of the intervention. Two simulation studies are conducted to demonstrate the usefulness of generating predicted networks when designing network-based interventions. The framework is also illustrated by investigating results of potential interventions on bill passage rates using a dynamic network that represents the sponsor/co-sponsor relationships among senators derived from bills introduced in the U.S. Senate from 2003 to 2016.


Author(s):  
S. Ananth ◽  
A. M. Kalpana ◽  
R. Vijayarajeswari

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is the interconnection between things or objects embedded with hardware and software. In WSN, small end devices (like sensors) and high end devices (like servers) are connected to the Internet. For WSN enabled in Software-Defined Network (SDN), the routers are controlled using a controller server node. It is a dynamic network due to the presence of mobile nodes and energy constrained nodes. The routing is the process of detecting route from source to target. In dynamic networks like WSN, routing is a challengeable task. This paper is to provide a routing solution for backboneless SDN-enabled WSN. The proposed work enhances routing Quality of Service (QoS) in WSN. The paths are dynamically reallocated to reduce the packet loss.


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