Book: The New Science of Networks

Amazon.com: Linked: The New Science of Networks

From a review on Amazon:

He explains the basic history of network theory, and then shows how his own work has turned it into a closer model of reality, a model that most of us will recognize. Networks are all around us, and they are simply not random. Some of our friends, for instance, are loners, while others seem to know everyone in town. Some websites, like Google and Amazon, we just cannot avoid clicking on or being referred to, but many others are obscure and you could only find them if someone sent you their addresses. Barabási calls these ‘nodes’ with such an extraordinary number of links ‘hubs,’ and he and his students have found laws of networks with hubs, showing such things as how they can continue to function if random nodes are eliminated but they fragment if the hubs are hit. Barabási is currently doing research to show what intracellular proteins interact with other proteins, and true to form, some of them are hubs of reactions with lots of others. Finding the hubs of cancerous cells, for instance, and developing ways of taking them out, show enormous promise in the fight against cancer.

Looks good. Yes one of many on the same theme, but each adding a new slant. Hubs and nodes – reminds me a little of the classic article: The Strength of Weak Ties ?

Jim Kent & the Genome Data

O’Reilly Network: Keeping Genome Data Open [Apr. 05, 2002]

“Jim Kent was a graduate student in biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), when he wrote the program that allowed the public human genome team to assemble its fragments just before Celera’s private, commercial effort. His program ensured that the human genome data would remain in the public domain. Kent wrote the 10,000-line program in a month, because he didn’t want to see the genome data locked up by commercial patents.”

A hero indeed! One of the spin-offs from now using GNU/Linux is that it is easier to see how locking away human knowledge for the benefit of the rich is just evil!