McFarland used two different datasets (one looking at classroom level and one looking at school level friendships) to analyze the network ecology of tie formation. His team found that larger school size and greater freedom to choose activities resulted in more homophily, while small school size and a more prescriptive curriculum resulted in greater integration.

However, they point out that student bodies rarely fall into just one camp – instead, both types of systems may exist within the same institution.  Rabinovitz-Stanford explains: “A bigger and more diverse student population may well foster self-segregation, but a smaller and more elite school is almost inherently more segregated in the first place.” In the words of McFarland: “The truth is that we are not sure which kind of adolescent society is best for youth social development…There likely isn’t a simple answer.”

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Using Wolfram technologies, Dr Marco Thiel from Aberdeen University created a computer model to predict which countries are most likely to suffer an Ebola outbreak next.

He said: “The US would be less at risk than the European countries, that is, it would get significant numbers of infected later. All of that seems to be qualitatively quite correct. Australia and Greenland would get the disease very late, or not at all, again in agreement with our model.”

Read more here. For a more in-depth look, see Dr. Thiel’s discussion on the Wolfram forum here.

This article sheds some light on a new game that the SONIC Lab will be looking at as part of the Virtual Worlds Exploratorium.

“Travian is the 7th-most popular site in Iran, 9th-most in Libya, 11th-most in Kuwait, and 12th-most in Palestine, and 25th in Iraq.”

“…the key to being successful in Travian is the ability to build a strong network with other users to reach the goal of endgame.”

“Nearly all social networking sites facilitate interactions between people, and massive multiplayer games can often act as social networks.”

Read more here:

http://www.strategicsocial.com/tag/travian/

Companies worldwide now have access to the Facebook’s user information database, and can use this information to target ads towards users in mobile applications outside of the Facebook network. This transfer of information across networks will likely have a profound impact on the world of digital advertising.

In April, the social network announced it would begin tapping its enormous vault of personal information on users to show them ads on mobile apps outside of Facebook. At the time, the ads were available only to a small number of advertisers and mobile apps. Now, they can be purchased by any of Facebook’s 1.5 million advertisers, and can appear on any app.

Read more here:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/10/07/facebooks-ad-network-opens-to-everyone/

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2014/10/07/facebooks-audience-network-now-available-worldwide/

For LinkedIn Members, their network and relationships are a rich source of insights and opportunity. In short, these relationships matter. Our members are also increasingly mobile – over 50% of them will use LinkedIn from a mobile device by the end of this year. Mobile devices enable us to better understand a member’s context, opening up some interesting ways for us to deliver LinkedIn’s value to them. This post focuses on the engineering behind LinkedIn Connected, our brand new iOS app that is replacing LinkedIn Contacts. LinkedIn Connected is designed to give members relevant, and timely, reasons to reach out and keep in touch with the people in their network. Connected also includes LinkedIn’s first anticipatory computing feature, and this post will discuss the platform we are building to enable more and more of these. http://engineering.linkedin.com/building-linkedin-connected

Media outlets everywhere shouted news that the 3-year-old ride-sharing service Uber charted an eye-popping valuation of up to $18.2 billion, after closing its venture capital round that raised $1.2 billion. In fact, by Forbes’ numbers, Uber is now worth more than Avis and Hyatt combined. For those who have been sequestered with monks somewhere up in the Himalayas, here’s what’s behind all the fuss. With Uber, customers can send a text message on a mobile app through the service to reserve a car. Uber charges for the ride based on distance traveled, or time, or demand, or a combination of all three. Uber is also the latest case study of how the “Internet of Things” is driving both innovation and disruption, if you’ll excuse the pun. The IoT is a phenomenon that is both real and here today. Just ask Uber and their customers. It not only means better, more personalized service, it means billions of connected devices resulting in billions and billions of dollars. http://bit.ly/1m2sULF