Applications In Sociology Research Articles

Efficiently enumerating all maximal cliques with bit-parallelism

The maximal clique enumeration (MCE) problem has numerous applications in biology, chemistry, sociology, and graph modeling. Though this problem is well studied, most current research focuses on finding solutions in large sparse graphs or very dense graphs, while sacrificing efficiency on the most difficult medium-density benchmark instances that are representative of data sets often encountered in practice. We show that techniques that have been successfully applied to the maximum clique problem give significant speed gains over the state-of-the-art MCE algorithms on these instances. Specifically, we show that a simple greedy pivot selection based on a fixed maximum-degree first ordering of vertices, when combined with bit-parallelism, performs consistently better than the theoretical worst-case optimal pivoting of the state-of-the-art algorithms of Tomita et al. [Theoretical Computer Science, 2006] and Naudé [Theoretical Computer Science, 2016].Experiments show that our algorithm is faster than the worst-case optimal algorithm of Tomita et al. on 60 out of 74 standard structured and random benchmark instances: we solve 48 instances 1.2 to 2.2 times faster, and solve the remaining 12 instances 3.6 to 47.6 times faster. We also see consistent speed improvements over the algorithm of Naudé: solving 61 instances 1.2 to 2.4 times faster. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to achieve such speed-ups compared to these state-of-the-art algorithms on these standard benchmarks.

Community detection in social networks

Online social networks have become a fundamental part of the global online experience. They facilitate different modes of communication and social interactions, enabling individuals to play social roles that they regularly undertake in real social settings. In spite of the heterogeneity of the users and interactions, these networks exhibit common properties. For instance, individuals tend to associate with others who share similar interests, a tendency often known as homophily, leading to the formation of communities. This entry aims to provide an overview of the definitions for an online community and review different community detection methods in social networks. Finding communities are beneficial since they provide summarization of network structure, highlighting the main properties of the network. Moreover, it has applications in sociology, biology, marketing and computer science which help scientists identify and extract actionable insight.

Challenges and Prospects of Applying Scientific Methods in Sociological and Policy Investigation

The paper examines sociological and policy investigations, in terms of its method of inquiry and the possibility of applying scientific methods. Major tools, techniques and methods of science were highlighted and discussed showing their extent of application in Sociology and Policy Studies. The paper maintains the stand that both disciplines as Social Sciences utilized scientific methods and identified measurement difficulties, subjectivity and methodological crises as their major limitations as sciences. It concluded that though theory building and experimentation are not possible in social sciences, the adaptation of observation, quantification, identification of problem, hypothesis formulation and testing, position both Sociology and Policy Study as sciences. It is expected that with the passage of time, Sociology and Policy Studies will reveal their full scientific attributes. It was recommended that scientific methods should be explored and utilized in all social sciences extensively.

A non-local bistable reaction-diffusion equation with a gap

Non-local reaction-diffusion equations arise naturally to account for diffusions involving jumps rather than local diffusions related to Brownian motion. In ecology, long distance dispersal require such frameworks. In this work we study a one-dimensional non-local reaction-diffusion equation with bistable type reaction. The heterogeneity here is due to a gap, some finite region where there is decay. Outside this gap region the equation is a classical homogeneous (space independent) non-local reaction-diffusion equation. This type of problem is motivated by applications in ecology, sociology, and physiology. We first establish the existence of a generalized traveling front that approaches a traveling wave solution as t-∞, propagating in a heterogeneous environment. We then study the problem of obstruction of solutions. In particular, we study the propagation properties of the generalized traveling front with significant use of the work of Bates, Fife, Ren and Wang in [ 5 ]. As in the local diffusion case, we prove that obstruction is possible if the gap is sufficiently large. An interesting difference between the local dispersal and the non-local dispersal is that in the latter the obstructing steady states are discontinuous. We characterize these jump discontinuities and discuss the scaling between the range of the dispersal and the critical length of the gap observed numerically. We further explore other differences between the local and the non-local dispersal cases. In this paper, we illustrate these properties by numerical simulations and we state a series of open problems.

Zealotry promotes coexistence in the rock-paper-scissors model of cyclic dominance.

Cyclic dominance models, such as the classic rock-paper-scissors (RPS) game, have found real-world applications in biology, ecology, and sociology. A key quantity of interest in such models is the coexistence time, i.e., the time until at least one population type goes extinct. Much recent research has considered conditions that lengthen coexistence times in an RPS model. A general finding is that coexistence is promoted by localized spatial interactions (low mobility), while extinction is fostered by global interactions (high mobility). That is, there exists a mobility threshold which separates a regime of long coexistence from a regime of rapid collapse of coexistence. The key finding of our paper is that if zealots (i.e., nodes able to defeat others while themselves being immune to defeat) of even a single type exist, then system coexistence time can be significantly prolonged, even in the presence of global interactions. This work thus highlights a crucial determinant of system survival time in cyclic dominance models.

Experimental Game Theory and Its Application in Sociology and Political Science

This is an open access special issue distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Toward a new “Fractals-General Science”

A recent study has shown that everywhere real systems follow common “fractals-general stacking behavior” during their change pathways (or evolutionary life cycles). This fact leads to the emergence of the new discipline “Fractals-General Science” as a mother-discipline (and acting as upper umbrella) of existing natural and applied sciences to commonly handle their fractals-general change behavior. It is, therefore, the main targets of this short communication are to present the motives, objectives, relations with other existing sciences, and the development map of such new science. It is discussed that there are many foreseen illustrative applications in geology, archeology, astronomy, life sciences, ecology, environmental science, hydrology, agronomy, engineering, materials sciences, chemistry, nanotechnology, biology, medicine, psychiatry, sociology, humanities, education, and arts that could effectively lead the implementation and experimentation of such new science. It is highlighted that the new “Fractals-General Science” could provide through multi-stacking representations the necessary platforms for investigating interactions and mutual changes between real life systems belonging to several sciences and disciplines. Examples are handling problems of the processing of basic formation and changes of matter and substances, propagation of combined corrosion, creep, fatigue and sedimentation of engineering and industrial systems, and the progressing of humans’ evolutionary life cycles.

Application of Cloud Technology in Social Science Research

America science thought sociology is measurable, can be observed by the statistical method of the computer, which may change the human will can not be measured on the social thoughts. As the frontier of computer science, cloud computing can measure play an important role in the society. This article from the concept to calculate starting, development of cloud computing has made the detailed introduction to the influence of sociology, and a prediction of cloud computing application in sociology.

Latency-bounded target set selection in social networks

Motivated by applications in sociology, economy and medicine, we study variants of the Target Set Selection problem, first proposed by Kempe, Kleinberg and Tardos. In our scenario one is given a graph G=(V,E), integer values t(v) for each vertex v (thresholds), and the objective is to determine a small set of vertices (target set) that activates a given number (or a given subset) of vertices of G within a prescribed number of rounds. The activation process in G proceeds as follows: initially, at round 0, all vertices in the target set are activated; subsequently at each round r⩾1 every vertex of G becomes activated if at least t(v) of its neighbors are already active by round r−1. It is known that the problem of finding a minimum cardinality Target Set that eventually activates the whole graph G is hard to approximate to a factor better than O(2log1−ϵ|V|). In this paper we give exact polynomial time algorithms to find minimum cardinality Target Sets in graphs of bounded clique-width, and exact linear time algorithms for trees.

Co-occurrence correlations of heavy metals in sediments revealed using network analysis

In this study, the correlation-based study was used to identify the co-occurrence correlations among metals in marine sediment of Hong Kong, based on the long-term (from 1991 to 2011) temporal and spatial monitoring data. 14 stations out of the total 45 marine sediment monitoring stations were selected from three representative areas, including Deep Bay, Victoria Harbour and Mirs Bay. Firstly, Spearman’s rank correlation-based network analysis was conducted as the first step to identify the co-occurrence correlations of metals from raw metadata, and then for further analysis using the normalized metadata. The correlations patterns obtained by network were consistent with those obtained by the other statistic normalization methods, including annual ratios, R-squared coefficient and Pearson correlation coefficient. Both Deep Bay and Victoria Harbour have been polluted by heavy metals, especially for Pb and Cu, which showed strong co-occurrence with other heavy metals (e.g. Cr, Ni, Zn and etc.) and little correlations with the reference parameters (Fe or Al). For Mirs Bay, which has better marine sediment quality compared with Deep Bay and Victoria Harbour, the co-occurrence patterns revealed by network analysis indicated that the metals in sediment dominantly followed the natural geography process. Besides the wide applications in biology, sociology and informatics, it is the first time to apply network analysis in the researches of environment pollutions. This study demonstrated its powerful application for revealing the co-occurrence correlations among heavy metals in marine sediments, which could be further applied for other pollutants in various environment systems.

The Principles of Experimental Design and Their Application in Sociology

In light of an increasing interest in experimental work, we provide a review of some of the general issues involved in the design of experiments and illustrate their relevance to sociology and to other areas of social science of interest to sociologists. We provide both an introduction to the principles of experimental design and examples of influential applications of design for different types of social science research. Our aim is twofold: to provide a foundation in the principles of design that may be useful to those planning experiments and to provide a critical overview of the range of applications of experimental design across the social sciences.

Unequal Distribution of Educational Outcomes between Social Categories: ‘Children at Risk’ from a Sociological Perspective

This paper discusses the concept of ‘children at risk’ for poor educational outcomes from a sociological perspective. The broader concept of social inequality with its determinants and dimensions is introduced as a conceptual basis. The concept of ‘children at risk’ for adverse educational outcomes can be located within this framework: They are defined as children with an above-average risk of unfavourable educational outcomes because of their affiliation to a social category. The unequal distribution of educational outcomes between different social categories is a well-established research topic in sociology which is usually simply referred to as ‘educational inequality’. Its description and especially its explanation are the major tasks for sociologists in this field. The paper provides some selected examples for educational inequalities and introduces one exemplary theoretical explanation from a sociological perspective for this phenomenon. Furthermore, the concept of ‘children at risk’ is critically discussed in light of the usefulness as well as the complex of problems that may be associated with its application in sociology.

Micro‐Level Interpretation of Exponential Random Graph Models with Application to Estuary Networks

The exponential random graph model (ERGM) is an increasingly popular method for the statistical analysis of networks that can be used to flexibly analyze the processes by which policy actors organize into a network. Often times, interpretation of ERGM results is conducted at the network level, such that effects are related to overall frequencies of network structures (e.g., the number of closed triangles in a network). This limits the utility of the ERGM because there is often interest, particularly in political and policy sciences, in network dynamics at the actor or relationship levels. Micro‐level interpretation of the ERGM has been employed in varied applications in sociology and statistics. We present a comprehensive framework for interpretation of the ERGM at all levels of analysis, which casts network formation as block‐wise updating of a network. These blocks can represent, for example, each potential link, each dyad, the out‐ or in‐going ties of each actor, or the entire network. We contrast this interpretive framework with the stochastic actor‐based model (SABM) of network dynamics. We present the theoretical differences between the ERGM and the SABM and introduce an approach to comparing the models when theory is not sufficiently strong to make the selection a priori. The alternative models we discuss and the interpretation methods we propose are illustrated on previously published data on estuary policy and governance networks.

Еволюція соціологічних підходів до вивчення спорту

The evolution of sociological approaches to sports studying is considered in the article. It is shown that the theories by T.Veblen, M.Weber, H.Ortega-y-Gasset, J.Huizinga, K.Jaspers, N.Elias, P.Bourdie has rendered essential influence on formation and development of sociology of sports. It is noticed that scientists an lazed sports as a social phenomenon with the help of different theories: the theory of game, structural functionalism, existentialism,structuralism, the theory of conflict,phenomenology, the figurational theory, symbolical interactionism. It is underlined that postmodern sociology has wide application in modern sociology in sports studying.

Social network analysis: developments, advances, and prospects

This paper reviews the development of social network analysis and examines its major areas of application in sociology. Current developments, including those from outside the social sciences, are examined and their prospects for advances in substantive knowledge are considered. A concluding section looks at the implications of data mining techniques and highlights the need for interdisciplinary cooperation if significant work is to ensue.

Modeling Non-Equilibrium Dynamics of a Discrete Probability Distribution: General Rate Equation for Maximal Entropy Generation in a Maximum-Entropy Landscape with Time-Dependent Constraints

A rate equation for a discrete probability distribution is discussed as a route to describe smooth relaxation towards the maximum entropy distribution compatible at all times with one or more linear constraints. The resulting dynamics follows the path of steepest entropy ascent compatible with the constraints. The rate equation is consistent with the Onsager theorem of reciprocity and the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. The mathematical formalism was originally developed to obtain a quantum theoretical unification of mechanics and thermodinamics. It is presented here in a general, non-quantal formulation as a part of an effort to develop tools for the phenomenological treatment of non-equilibrium problems with applications in engineering, biology, sociology, and economics. The rate equation is also extended to include the case of assigned time-dependences of the constraints and the entropy, such as for modeling non-equilibrium energy and entropy exchanges.

Book Review Symposium: Managing Network Resources, by Ranjay Gulati. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.Network Resources: Toward a New Social Network Perspective, by LavieDovev, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, and The University of Texas at Austin

Academy of Management ReviewVol. 33, No. 2 Book ReviewsBook Review Symposium: Managing Network Resources, by Ranjay Gulati. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.Ajay MehraAjay MehraBook Review EditorPublished Online:1 Apr 2008https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2008.31193585AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail View articleREFERENCES Dyer J. H. , Singh H. 1998. The relational view: Cooperative strategies and sources of interorganizational competitive advantage. Academy of Management Review, 23: 660–679.Abstract , Google Scholar Granovetter M. 1985. Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91: 481–510. Google Scholar Gulati R. 1999. Network location and learning: The influence of network resources and firm capabilities on alliance formation. Strategic Management Journal, 20: 397–420. Google Scholar Kale P. , Singh H. , Perlmutter H. 2000. Learning and protection of proprietary assets in strategic alliances: Building relational capital. Strategic Management Journal, 21: 217–237. Google Scholar Kogut B. 2000. The network as knowledge: Generative rules and the emergence of structure. Strategic Management Journal, 21: 405–425. Google Scholar Lavie D. 2006. The competitive advantage of interconnected firms: An extension of the resourceBased view. Academy of Management Review, 31: 638–658.Abstract , Google Scholar Lavie D. 2007. Alliance portfolios and firm performance: A study of value creation and appropriation in the U.S. software industry. Strategic Management Journal, 28: 1187–1212. Google Scholar Lee G. K. 2007. The significance of network resources in the race to enter emerging product markets: The convergence of telephony communications and computer networking, 1989–2001. Strategic Management Journal, 28: 17–37. Google Scholar Portes A. 1998. Social capital: Its origins and applications in modern sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 24: 1–24. Google Scholar Rothaermel F. T. 2001. Incumbent's advantage through exploiting complementary assets via interfirm cooperation. Strategic Management Journal, 22: 687–699. Google Scholar Saxton T. 1997. The effects of partner and relationship characteristics on alliance outcomes. Academy of Management Journal, 40: 443–461.Link , Google Scholar Stuart T. E. 2000. Interorganizational alliances and the performance of firms: A study of growth and innovation rates in a high-technology industry. Strategic Management Journal, 21: 719–811. Google Scholar Stuart T. E. , Hoang H. , Hybels R. 1999. Interorganizational endorsements and the performance of entrepreneurial ventures. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44: 315–349. Google ScholarFiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 33, No. 2 Permissions Metrics in the past 12 months History Published online 1 April 2008 Published in print 1 April 2008 Information© Academy of Management ReviewKeywordsBOOKS -- ReviewsINTERORGANIZATIONAL networksNONFICTIONDownload PDF

Theory of imagery in studies of the change process

This article aims to demonstrate the analytical power of the imagery concept for an organizational analysis. The gaps in organizational studies justify building new reference pictures in the organizational culture, with imagery as a starting point, considering subjectivity as an object of the phenomenology investigation and imagery as an object of anthropology and sociology. The analytical perspective follows the sociology of the knowledge and, in this context, applications of anthropology, general sociology, analytical and social psychologies are presented. The result is an organizational imagery accessed by the objectivity of the subjects, through the language, where the images attributed to the reality emerge.

Medium as a basic concept of sociology: contributions from systems theory

The main purpose of this article is to present the fundamental concepts of a theory of social systems, with special reference to the concepts of medium and form, and their application in sociology. By challenging the indifference and opposition shown by most contemporary sociologists to the ontological and theoretical questions of social theory (e.g. in the case of micro-sociologists’ aversion to Parsons), systems theory has, from the beginning, represented an attempt at an analysis focusing on the fundamental concepts (and on their coherent relations) of a general theory of society. Ignoring the elaboration of these concepts may be tantamount to reducing sociology to countless collections of facts of a limited informative value. Indeed, only an adequate conceptual framework will suffice. Certain recent developments in systems theory offer useful tools. Some of these developments are illustrated in this article, which marshals a network of concepts, each dealing with specific aspects relating to sociological analysis.

"Regional Differences among Student Scholars: A Sociological Analysis "

One of the oldest applications of sociology has been in the field of rural society, as more and more sociologists devoted their attention to the study of regional differences from the sociological point of view. The problem of education in modern societies cannot be over¬estimated. Hence, crucial need for the education of the rural masses is strongly felt. It is very fascinating to probe into the intricate realities pertaining to the background, aspirations and achievements of the students coming from rural and urban background in the field of higher education. In all 300 research scholars of Bangalore University drawn from rural and urban areas were studied by employing an interview schedule. Surprisingly, the data consist of 197 student scholars coming from rural areas. The findings seem to negate the much debated and lamented poor levels of representation, aspirations and achievements of rural students in the field of higher education. Further, the findings indicate that the identity of student scholars with rural background has significant and positive implications for gender, faculty, social origin and orientations.