Showing papers by "Peter Sheridan Dodds published in 2012"
University of Western Australia1, Georgia Institute of Technology2, University of California, Los Angeles3, Santa Fe Institute4, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory5, British Antarctic Survey6, University of Cambridge7, University of Vermont8, University of Groningen9, Kenyon College10, Oregon State University11, Cornell University12, Michigan State University13
TL;DR: It is suggested that greater effort be focused on evaluating MTE's underlying theory and simplifying assumptions to help delineate the scope of MTE, generate new theory and shed light on fundamental aspects of biological form and function.
Abstract: The metabolic theory of ecology (MTE) predicts the effects of body size and temperature on metabolism through considerations of vascular distribution networks and biochemical kinetics. MTE has also been extended to characterise processes from cellular to global levels. MTE has generated both enthusiasm and controversy across a broad range of research areas. However, most efforts that claim to validate or invalidate MTE have focused on testing predictions. We argue that critical evaluation of MTE also requires strong tests of both its theoretical foundations and simplifying assumptions. To this end, we synthesise available information and find that MTE's original derivations require additional assumptions to obtain the full scope of attendant predictions. Moreover, although some of MTE's simplifying assumptions are well supported by data, others are inconsistent with empirical tests and even more remain untested. Further, although many predictions are empirically supported on average, work remains to explain the often large variability in data. We suggest that greater effort be focused on evaluating MTE's underlying theory and simplifying assumptions to help delineate the scope of MTE, generate new theory and shed light on fundamental aspects of biological form and function.
180 citations
TL;DR: This work constructs and examines the revealed social network structure and dynamics within Twitter over the time scales of days, weeks, and months, and finds users’ average happiness scores to be positively and significantly correlated with those of users one, two, and three links away.
130 citations
TL;DR: It is reported that the human-perceived positivity of over 10,000 of the most frequently used English words exhibits a clear positive bias.
Abstract: Over the last million years, human language has emerged and evolved as a fundamental instrument of social communication and semiotic representation. People use language in part to convey emotional information, leading to the central and contingent questions: (1) What is the emotional spectrum of natural language? and (2) Are natural languages neutrally, positively, or negatively biased? Here, we report that the human-perceived positivity of over 10,000 of the most frequently used English words exhibits a clear positive bias. More deeply, we characterize and quantify distributions of word positivity for four large and distinct corpora, demonstrating that their form is broadly invariant with respect to frequency of word use.
115 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: It is shown that period doubling arises as the authors increase the average node degree, and that the universality class of this well-known route to chaos depends on the interaction structure of random networks rather than the microscopic behavior of individual nodes.
Abstract: We study a family of binary state, socially-inspired contagion models which incorporate imitation limited by an aversion to complete conformity. We uncover rich behavior in our models whether operating with either probabilistic or deterministic individual response functions on both dynamic and fixed random networks. In particular, we find significant variation in the limiting behavior of a population's infected fraction, ranging from steady-state to chaotic. We show that period doubling arises as we increase the average node degree, and that the universality class of this well known route to chaos depends on the interaction structure of random networks rather than the microscopic behavior of individual nodes. We find that increasing the fixedness of the system tends to stabilize the infected fraction, yet disjoint, multiple equilibria are possible depending solely on the choice of the initially infected node.
2 citations