Week 3 Discu

Overview

Week 3 Discussion – Scale-Free Networks

This special topic looks at the concept of scale-free networks by starting with an excellent overview reading. Graph theory has been of interest to mathematicians and practitioners for a long time. The applications of graph theory are broad. Logistics, power distribution systems, transportation (roads and airline routes), cell biology, epidemics, as well as communication networks all can be studied from a graph theoretic perspective. There has been a resurgence in applied graph theory around the concept of scale-free networks, which is fostering a lot of innovative research. This special topic introduces some of this research in the hopes that you might find applications in the future.

For your first post, summarize the reading and add your thoughts. Feel free to include external sources, experiences from your work, etc. into the discussion

Readings The main reading for this special topic is the Barabasi and Bonabeau article "Scale-Free Networks" (Scientific Amercian 2003): Barabasi_SciAm2003ScaleFree.pdf Download Barabasi_SciAm2003ScaleFree.pdf. There is a good earlier article, but this provides a very readable overview with some additional research citations. The second (but very brief) reading is the Jeong et al. (Nature 2001) article "Lethality and Centrality in Protein Networks" which focuses on more medically-relevant applications of scale-free networks: Jeong_Nature2001ProteinNets.pdf Download Jeong_Nature2001ProteinNets.pdf. Further Readings (Optional) As further reading, there is the long (more than 50 pages) review by the group that really started the current research stream on scale-free networks. This review includes all the mathematics for applying many of the concepts. If you are interested in pursuing research in this area, this review will help provide the foundation: Albert_RevModPhys2002ComplexNets.pdfDownload Albert_RevModPhys2002ComplexNets.pdf Several short papers and letters from Nature provide some perspectives on complex protein networks. "Protein Function in the Post-Genomic Era": Eisenberg_Nature2000ProteinFunction.pdfDownload Eisenberg_Nature2000ProteinFunction.pdf "The Large-Scale Organization of Metabolic Networks": Jeong_Nature2000MetabolicNets.pdfDownload Jeong_Nature2000MetabolicNets.pdf "Error and Attack Tolerance of Complex Networks": Albert_Nature2000AttackTolerance.pdfDownload Albert_Nature2000AttackTolerance.pdf

One primary post (minimum 300 words