物理与社会

Extreme heat and hurricane-induced blackouts could occur simultaneously in the summer, posing great challenges to community health and well-being. Cooling centers serve as a key adaptation strategy to alleviate heat stress, especially among…

A pedestrian model's computation speed impacts the model applicability. However, little attention has been given to this model property in the field of pedestrian dynamics modelling. As such, no framework exists to guide the systematic…

This study proposes a new approach to the interpretation of Greek Doric-style temples, based on the integration of its tangible and intangible dimensions as a cultural heritage asset. Rooted on the Greek concept of techne, the work…

Current research funding systems are subject to structural imbalances, where formal criteria such as the H-index and the number of publications dominate over the potential and actual scientific prospects of researchers. This leads to the…

Rivers exhibit fractal-like properties that are associated with scaling laws linking geometry and size. The optimal channel network (OCN) model, which is a mathematically tractable representation of river networks often used in theoretical…

We consider the Persistent Voter model (PVM), a variant of the Voter model (VM) that includes transient, dynamically-induced zealots. Due to peer reinforcement, the internal confidence $\eta_i$ of a normal voter increases by steps of size…

A plethora of methods have been developed in the past two decades to infer the underlying network structure of an interconnected system from its collective dynamics. However, methods capable of inferring nonpairwise interactions are only…

In distributed systems, knowledge of the network structure of the connections among the unitary components is often a requirement for an accurate prediction of the emerging collective dynamics. However, in many real-world situations, one…

Real-world growth processes and scalings have been broadly categorized into three growth regimes with distinctly different properties and driving forces. The first two are characterized by a positive and constant feedback between growth and…

In recent years, a series of high-profile retractions and fraud cases have arisen in physics, sparking a conversation about research integrity and replicability. Here, we discuss how the practice of science is shaped by the social and…

The ability of groups to make accurate collective decisions depends on a complex interplay of various factors, such as prior information, biases, social influence, and the structure of the interaction network. Here, we investigate a spin…

Empirical contact networks or interaction networks demonstrate peculiar characteristics stemming from the fundamental social, psychological, physical mechanisms governing human interactions. Although these mechanisms are complex, we test…

This study examines the roles of public and private sector actors in the development of mRNA vaccines, a breakthrough innovation in modern medicine. Using a dataset of 151 core patent families and 2,416 antecedent (cited) patents, we…

Measuring inequalities in a multidimensional framework is a challenging problem which is common to most field of science and engineering. Nevertheless, despite the enormous amount of researches illustrating the fields of application of…

Opinion dynamics is an important and very active area of research that delves into the complex processes through which individuals form and modify their opinions within a social context. The ability to comprehend and unravel the mechanisms…

The use of hypothetical instead of real decision-making incentives remains under debate after decades of economic experiments. Standard incentivized experiments involve substantial monetary costs due to participants' earnings and often…

We initiate the study of simple games from the point of view of combinatorial topology. The starting premise is that the losing coalitions of a simple game can be identified with a simplicial complex. Various topological constructions and…

This article explores the potential divides from emerging quantum technologies (QT) on society, covering impacts on science, technology, geopolitics, and societal structures. We aim to challenge the concept of a single "quantum divide" by…

Being able to identify service slowdowns is crucial to many operational problems. We study how to use observational congestion data to learn service slowdown in a multi-server system that uses adaptive congestion control mechanisms. We show…

Capturing the structure of a population and characterising contacts within the population are key to reliable projections of infectious disease. Two main elements of population structure -- contact heterogeneity and age -- have been…