Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research

Back to NaN

Channel 13 video

A report on the popularity of Twitter at IU (which ranks among the top 10 universities on a number of metrics) has sparked some interest in the local media about work CNetS researchers are going on Twitter usage. An interview with Filippo Menczer, associate director of CNetS, appeared on the front page of the Herald-Times on Oct 16, 2009. Indianapolis NBC affiliate Channel 13 interviewed Menczer and CNetS postdoc Bruno Gonçalves for their news program that night. The story was also picked up by the Chicago Tribune, US News & World Report, The Republic, Indianapolis Star, NewsDay, Courier-Journal, Indianapolis Business Journal, News-Sentinel, WIBC, The Indy Channel, WHAS, Journal & Courier, Palladium-Item, Star Press, and IDS.

Similarity Cloud for 'mac' vs 'pc'

Alessandro Flammini and Filippo Menczer, along with M. Ángeles Serrano from the University of Barcelona, have authored a paper entitled “Modeling Statistical Properties of Written Text” that has been published in the PLoS One. The paper introduces and validates a generative model that explains from simple rules the simultaneous emergence of patterns of written text observed in many languages. The paper focuses on the well-known Zipf’s law of word frequencies, as well as additional patterns such as Heaps’ law of word diversity, the bursty nature of rare words, and similarity among documents. Through their model, the researchers found a connection between word burstiness and the topicality of text. In addition, they identify dynamic word ranking and memory across documents as key mechanisms to explain the organization of written text. The semantic similarity between topics, which is one of the features that the model aims to explain, is visualized by the Similarity Cloud, an online tool developed by computer science graduate student Mark Meiss. The model developed by the researchers and the findings of this paper could lead to improved techniques for identifying key terms that capture the topics of a Web page, which is crucial for matching search queries to relevant results and ads. More…

Research and Creativity Activity profiles research by CNetS faculty Filippo Menczer and Alessandro Vespignani and their groups in a special issue on networks. More…

Fil Menczer recently received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate the Social Integration of Semantic Annotation Networks for Web Applications. The project brings together complex networks and Web mining techniques to develop a new generation of search engines and collaborative Web applications such as GiveALink.org. The researchers will leverage existing annotations from users (such as the bookmarks they already maintain on their browsers) and elicit new ones through useful tools and games. The research will lead to a framework for building and maintaining socio-semantic networks of relationships between, and among, users, tags, and Web sites. In the end, these networks will improve social Web applications such as search, recommendation, spam detection, and exploratory navigation interfaces. More…

Katrina Panovich

Katrina Panovich was selected for Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association’s Outstanding Undergraduate Award competition for 2008. Congratulations!

Our study on social phishing in Comm. of the ACM 50(10):94-100, 2007 was one of the most downloaded CACM papers in 2007. It was reported by the Associated Press (picked up by over 100 news sources including Washington Post, LA Times, MSNBC, BusinessWeek, USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, Fox News, Forbes, Seattle Post Intelligencer, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Ottawa Recorder, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Daily News, etc.), Sole 24 Ore (Italy), Herald-Times, Reporter-Times, Cox News (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dayton Daily News, Austin American-Statesman etc.), PhysOrg, Inside INdiana Business, IDS, ACM TechNews, and Digg. Early reports of the experiment sparked a debate in local and online media (first page of the IDS 26 April 2005 and again April 28, one editorial April 27, WTIU news forum, and Slahdot).

Building Better Search Engines by Pam Frost Gorder in Computing in Science and Engineering, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 7-11, Jul/Aug 2007

Whether scientific or business, structured or unstructured, streaming or static, the need to effectively search for and use data is paramount. That need will be fulfilled at the Data and Search Institute at the Indiana University School of Informatics. Funded by a planning grant from the National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperation Center program, the institute will speed the flow of data and search into industry and provide a framework where scientists can engage in industry-relevant research. More…

Search engines are not biased towards well-known Web sites. In fact, they actually produce an egalitarian effect as to where traffic is directed, say researchers at the Indiana University School of Informatics. Their study, Topical interests and the mitigation of search engine bias, appears in the Aug. 7-11 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and challenges the “Googlearchy” theory – the perception that search engines push Web traffic toward popular sites, thus creating a monopoly over lesser-known sites.

The study was cited by New Scientist, MIT Technology Review, Scientific American MIND, New Scientist Online, UPI, VNUnet, Forskning & Framsteg (Sweden), Sole 24 Ore (Italy), Ars Technica, and Slashdot. Interviews aired on BBC World Service (MP3), Deutschlandradio (MP3), WFHB (MP3), and WFIU. Earlier, preliminary reports of our findings appeared in The Economist, Slashdot, PhysicsWeb, IDS, Le Scienze (Italian Edition of Scientific American), and IEEE Spectrum Online (see also our piece in IEEE Spectrum). Radio interviews were broadcast by Italian Radio (MP3 in Italian) and Swiss Radio (MP3 in Italian). Other news sources that picked up the story include Monsters and Critics, PhysOrg, TechNews Daily, Political Gateway, Daily India, ACM TechNews (Aug 9, Aug 28 2006), IT Week, Science Daily, EurekAlert, computing, LaboratoryTalk, PC World, SDA Asia, What PC, BrightSurf, PC Authority, TRN, and hundreds of blogs.

CenSEARCHip received intense coverage including in Slashdot, Network World, PhysOrg, IDS, ACM TechNews, Technology News Daily, Computer World, CCNews, ePrairie, PC World, LaboratoryTalk, Search Engine Journal, USA Today, dozens of new sources around the world (including France, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Russia, Italy, Mexico, etc.), and many blogs around the world (list from technorati or google). A radio interview aired on WFIU, WIBC and other NPR affiliates (20 March 2006).