Inspired by empirical studies of networked systems such as the Internet, social networks, and biological networks, researchers have in recent years developed a variety of techniques and models to help us understand or predict the behavior of these systems. Here we review developments in this field, including such concepts as the small-world effect, degree distributions, clustering, network correlations, random graph models, models of network growth and preferential attachment, and dynamical processes taking place on networks.

We review the recent fast progress in statistical physics of evolving networks. Interest has focused mainly on the structural properties of random complex networks in communications, biology, social sciences and economics. A number of giant artificial networks of such a kind came into existence recently. This opens a wide field for the study of their topology, evolution, and complex processes occurring in them. Such networks possess a rich set of scaling properties. A number of them are scale-free and show striking resilience against random breakdowns. In spite of large sizes of these networks, the distances between most their vertices are short — a feature known as the “smallworld” effect. We discuss how growing networks self-organize into scale-free structures and the role of the mechanism of preferential linking. We consider the topological and structural properties of evolving networks, and percolation in these networks. We present a number of models demonstrating the main features of evolving networks and discuss current approaches for their simulation and analytical study. Applications of the general results to particular networks in Nature are discussed. We demonstrate the generic connections of the network growth processes with the general problems

Abstract. In recent years, the gossip-based communication model in large-scale distributed systems has become a general paradigm with important applications which include information dissemination, aggregation, overlay topology management and synchronization. At the heart of all of these protocols lies a fundamental distributed abstraction: the peer sampling service. In short, the aim of this service is to provide every node with peers to exchange information with. Analytical studies reveal a high reliability and efficiency of gossip-based protocols, under the (often implicit) assumption that the peers to send gossip messages to are selected uniformly at random from the set of all nodes. In practice—instead of requiring all nodes to know all the peer nodes so that a random sample could be drawn—a scalable and efficient way to implement the peer sampling service is by constructing and maintaining dynamic unstructured overlays through gossiping membership information itself. This paper presents a generic framework to implement reliable and efficient peer sampling services. The framework generalizes existing approaches and makes it easy to introduce new ones. We use this framework to explore and compare several implementations of our abstract scheme. Through extensive experimental analysis, we show that all of them lead to different peer sampling services none of which is uniformly random. This clearly renders traditional theoretical approaches invalid, when the underlying peer sampling service is based on a gossip-based scheme. Our observations also help explain important differences between design choices of peer sampling algorithms, and how these impact the reliability of the corresponding service. 1

Abstract How will a virus propagate in a real network?Does an epidemic threshold exist for a finite powerlaw graph, or any finite graph? How long does ittake to disinfect a network given particular values of infection rate and virus death rate? We answer the first question by providing equa-tions that accurately model virus propagation in any network including real and synthesized networkgraphs. We propose a general epidemic threshold condition that applies to arbitrary graphs: weprove that, under reasonable approximations, the epidemic threshold for a network is closely relatedto the largest eigenvalue of its adjacency matrix. Finally, for the last question, we show that infec-tions tend to zero exponentially below the epidemic threshold. We show that our epidemic threshold modelsubsumes many known thresholds for special-case graphs (e.g., Erd"os-R'enyi, BA power-law, homoge-neous); we show that the threshold tends to zero for infinite power-law graphs. Finally, we illustrate thepredictive power of our model with extensive experiments on real and synthesized graphs. We show thatour threshold condition holds for arbitrary graphs.

How does the Web look? How could we tell an abnormal social network from a normal one? These and similar questions are important in many fields where the data can intuitively be cast as a graph; examples range from computer networks to sociology to biology and many more. Indeed, any M : N relation in database terminology can be represented as a graph. A lot of these questions boil down to the following: "How can we generate synthetic but realistic graphs?" To answer this, we must first understand what patterns are common in real-world graphs and can thus be considered a mark of normality/realism. This survey give an overview of the incredible variety of work that has been done on these problems. One of our main contributions is the integration of points of view from physics, mathematics, sociology, and computer science. Further, we briefly describe recent advances on some related and interesting graph problems.

How will a virus propagate in a real network? How long does it take to disinfect a network given particular values of infection rate and virus death rate? What is the single best node to immunize? Answering these questions is essential for devising network-wide strategies to counter viruses. In addition, viral propagation is very similar in principle to the spread of rumors, information, and “fads, ” implying that the solutions for viral propagation would also offer insights into these other problem settings. We answer these questions by developing a nonlinear dynamical system (NLDS) that accurately models viral propagation in any arbitrary network, including real and synthesized network graphs. We propose a general epidemic threshold condition for the NLDS system: we prove that the epidemic threshold for a network is exactly the inverse of the largest eigenvalue of its adjacency matrix. Finally, we show that below the epidemic threshold, infections die out at an exponential rate. Our epidemic threshold model subsumes many known thresholds for special-case graphs (e.g., Erdös–Rényi, BA powerlaw, homogeneous). We demonstrate the predictive power of our model with extensive experiments on real and synthesized graphs, and show that our threshold condition holds for arbitrary graphs. Finally, we show how to utilize our threshold condition for practical uses: It can dictate which nodes to immunize; it can assess the effects of a throttling

We review the behavior of epidemic spreading on complex networks in which there are explicit correlations among the degrees of connected vertices. 1

In many real growing networks the mean number of connections per vertex increases with time. The Internet, the Word Wide Web, collaborations networks, and many others display this behavior. Such a growth can be called accelerated. We show that this acceleration influences distribution of connections and may determine the structure of a network. We discuss general consequences of the acceleration and demonstrate its features applying simple illustrating examples. In particular, we show that the accelerated growth fairly well explains the structure of the Word Web (the network of interacting words of human language). Also, we use the models of the accelerated growth of networks to describe a wealth condensation transition in evolving societies.

Using a simulation approach based on the Metropolis algorithm, we contrast broad global features of network structure -- in particular, small world properties -- with the local patterning that could generate the network. It is not difficult to infer local structures emerging from certain simple social processes but, as these localized patterns agglomerate, the global outcomes are often not apparent. In such cases, computational techniques are necessary because analytic solutions are simply not available. In this paper, we show how to simulate a distribution of Markov random graphs based on assumptions about simple local social processes. We examine the resulting global structures by comparison with an appropriate Bernoulli distribution of graphs and provide examples of various stochastic global "worlds" that may result, including small worlds, long path worlds and dense non-clustered worlds with many four-cycles. In the light of these results we suggest a locally-specified social process that may result in small-world global properties. In examining the movement from structure to randomness, we show how parameter scaling relates to a phase transition occurring at a certain scaling ("temperature") so that a non-stochastic structure "melts" into a stochastic counterpart. We provide examples of "frozen" deterministic structures, including highly clustered "caveman" graphs, bipartite structures, and global cyclic structures involving structurally equivalent groups.

Sexually-Transmitted Diseases (STDs) constitute a major public health concern. Mathematical models for the transmission dynamics of STDs indicate that heterogeneity in sexual activity level allow them to persist even when the typical behavior of the population would not support endemicity. This insight focuses attention on the distribution of sexual activity level in a population. In this paper, we develop several stochastic process models for the f'ormation of sexual partnership networks. Using likelihood-based model selection procedures, we assess the fit of the different models to three large distributions of sexual partner counts: (1) Rakai, Uganda, (2) Sweden, and (3) the USA. Five of' the six single-sex networks were fit best by the negative binomial model. The American women's network was best fit by a power-law model, the Yule. For most networks, several competing models fit approximately equally well. These results sug- gest three conclusions: (1) no single unitary process clearly underlies the formation of these sexual networks, (2) behavioral heterogeneity plays an essential role in network structure, (3) substantial model uncertainty exists for sexual network degree distributions. Behavioral research focused on the mechanisms of partnership f'ormation will play an essential role in specifying the best model for empirical degree distributions. We discuss the limitations of inferences f'rom such data, and the utility of degree-based epidemiological models more generally.