This paper explores the different social structures coexisting within a biology laboratory. This work draws upon an empirical study and the results are analysed using the social network analysis toolbox. We evidence that actors form links between them in order to carry out cognitive activities. Depending on the content of this activity, resulting networks can take different shapes. When dealing...

Stochastic actor-based models are models for network dynamics that can represent a wide variety of influences on network change, and allow to estimate parameters expressing such influences, and test corresponding hypotheses. The nodes in the network represent social actors, and the collection of ties represents a social relation. The assumptions posit that the network evolves as a stochastic pr...

There is an increasing demand for a new paradigm to improve flood mitigation decision processes that calls for risk reduction strategies at several levels. This demand may gain ground only if dialogue is encouraged among different perspectives, disciplines and knowledge types. The aim of this paper is to explore new routes to improve flood mitigation decision processes. A growing body of eviden...

In a dynamic social or biological environment, the interactions between the underlying actors can undergo large and systematic changes. The latent roles or membership of the actors as determined by these dynamic links will also exhibit rich temporal phenomena, assuming a distinct role at one point while leaning more towards a second role at an another point. To capture this dynamic mixed member...

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Background Detection of influential actors in social media such as Twitter or Facebook plays an important role for improving the quality and efficiency of work and services in many fields such as education and marketing. Methods The work described here aims to introduce a new approach that characterizes the influence of actors by the strength of attracting new active members into a networked ...

ABSTRACT Community structure is a common attribute of many social networks, which would give us a better understanding of the networks. However, as the social networks grow lager and lager nowadays, the Pareto Principle becomes more and more notable which makes traditional community discovery algorithms no longer suitable for them. This principle explains the unbalanced existence of two differe...

The application of information technology can have positive and negative impacts on social capital. In this paper we discuss technologies which have the potential to foster social capital by matching human actors. The matching algorithms are based on the personal data describing the actors' behavior, background, qualification, or interests. Consequently, actors who are little known or even unkn...

We are developing a methodology, called Tropos, for building agent-oriented software systems. The methodology covers five software development phases: early requirements analysis, late requirements analysis, architectural design, detailed design, and implementation. Throughout, the concepts offered by i* are used to model both the stakeholders in the system’s environment, and the system itself....

Two important factors influencing the communication in construction projects are the interests of the people involved and the language spoken by the people involved. The objective of the paper is to analyse these factors by using recent insights in the information richness theory. The critical social theory is used to study the communication richness in computer mediated communication in constr...