The network concept is increasingly used for the description of complex systems. Here, we summarize key aspects of the evolvability and robustness of the hierarchical network set of macromolecules, cells, organisms and ecosystems. Listing the costs and benefits of cooperation as a necessary behaviour to build this network hierarchy, we outline the major hypothesis of the paper: the emergence of...

Transnational crime, sometimes called international crime or multinational systemic crime, is more than an extension of domestic crime. In the context of globalization, transnational organized crime groups respond to market incentives and operate with cooperative relationships, which makes the multinational criminal systems become more efficient and powerful. As a result, no single country has ...

Current studies argue that through building the virtual organization breeding environment one can quickly find partners and create a virtual enterprise. The creation of the virtual organization breeding environment requires its own social capital to satisfy some social requirements, but such researches are few This paper, based on complex network theory, proposes a new method to identify the vi...

Animal cooperation has puzzled biologists for a long time as its existence seems to contravene the basic notion of evolutionary biology that natural selection favours 'selfish' genes that promote only their own well-being. Evolutionary game theory has shown that cooperators can prosper in populations of selfish individuals if they occur in clusters, interacting more frequently with each other t...

Next generation wireless networks are bound to go beyond the classical point-to-point or point-to-multipoint communication paradigms of traditional networks such as cellular networks. For instance, next generation networks will witness a highly complex and dynamic environment whereby the nodes can interact and cooperate for improving their performance. In this context, cooperation has emerged a...

Introduction: The Army’s social networks often involve cooperation – entities working together to achieve a common goal. What are the metrics for such a network? What is cooperation and what makes cooperative networks effective? Can network structures and processes enhance cooperation and optimize networks? This presentation uses the emerging mathematical framework of subset team games (Arney &...

The iTrust search and retrieval network aims to provide trustworthy access to information on the Web by making it difficult to censor or filter information. The declustering algorithm, presented in this paper, randomizes the network in a manner that reduces the clustering, or cliquishness, of the network. This randomization also reduces the necessary amount of cooperation between nodes by ensur...

In this paper the design of the service network in intermodal barge transport is studied. The network of inland barge terminals is modeled to demonstrate potential cooperations in a corridor network. Cooperation between inland terminals leads to bundling of freight flows in the hinterland of major ports. A service network design methodology for intermodal barge transport is developed and applie...

Performance characteristics of an organizational structure with single-level single-mediator and cooperation of multiple agents are computed of terms of queueing network of three-like topology with cooperation of the servers. This network is analytically investigated by means of the matrix analytic methods. Results can be used for the logical and technical design and optimal resources sharing i...

This paper proposes a network coded cooperation protocol for the uplink transmission of relay enhanced cellular networks, which is intended to multiple source-multiple relay cooperative clusters. Two variants of the network coded protocol are proposed, one employing XOR-based erasure codes, which operates on the cluster cooperation graph, and one employing Reed Solomon codes. The two protocol v...