Individual biases, cultural evolution, and the statistical nature of language universals: The case of colour naming systems
Language universals have long been attributed to an innate Universal Grammar. An alternative explanation states that linguistic universals emerged independently in every language in response to shared cognitive or perceptual biases. A computational model has recently shown how this could be the case, focusing on the paradigmatic example of the universal properties of colour naming […]
Evaluation of centralized and distributed microgrid topologies and comparison to Open Energy Systems (OES)
In this study we examine microgrid topologies that combine solar panels and batteries for a community of 20 residential houses: In the first case we consider a system with centralized PV panels and batteries that distributes the energy to the 20 homes. In the second case we consider 20 standalone home systems with roof-top PV […]
Local Optimization Strategies in Urban Vehicular Mobility
The comprehension of vehicular traffic in urban environments is crucial to achieve a good management of the complex processes arising from people collective motion. Even allowing for the great complexity of human beings, human behavior turns out to be subject to strong constraints – physical, environmental, social, economical – that induce the emergence of common […]
The adoption of linguistic rules in native and non-native speakers: Evidence from a Wug task
Several recent theories have suggested that an increase in the number of non-native speakers in a language can lead to changes in morphological rules. We examine this experimentally by contrasting the performance of native and non-native English speakers in a simple Wug-task, showing that non-native speakers are significantly more likely to provide non -ed (i.e., […]
General three-state model with biased population replacement: Analytical solution and application to language dynamics
Empirical evidence shows that the rate of irregular usage of English verbs exhibits discontinuity as a function of their frequency: the most frequent verbs tend to be totally irregular. We aim to qualitatively understand the origin of this feature by studying simple agent-based models of language dynamics, where each agent adopts an inflectional state for […]
Modeling the Emergence of Contact Languages
Contact languages are born out of the non-trivial interaction of two (or more) parent languages. Nowadays, the enhanced possibility of mobility and communication allows for a strong mixing of languages and cultures, thus raising the issue of whether there are any pure languages or cultures that are unaffected by contact with others. As with bacteria […]
Maximum entropy model for melodic patterns
We introduce a model for music generation where melodies are seen as a network of interacting notes. Starting from the principle of maximum entropy we assign to this network a probability distribution, which is learned from an existing musical corpus. We use this model to generate novel musical sequences that mimic the style of the […]
Optimal learning paths in information networks
Each sphere of knowledge and information could be depicted as a complex mesh of correlated items. By properly exploiting these connections, innovative and more efficient navigation strategies could be defined, possibly leading to a faster learning process and an enduring retention of information. In this work we investigate how the topological structure embedding the items […]
Congestion transition in air traffic networks
Air Transportation represents a very interesting example of a complex techno-social system whose importance has considerably grown in time and whose management requires a careful understanding of the subtle interplay between technological infrastructure and human behavior. Despite the competition with other transportation systems, a growth of air traffic is still foreseen in Europe for the […]
Approximating Covering and Minimum Enclosing Balls in Hyperbolic Geometry
Geometric Science of Information, edited by:Nielsen, Frank and Barbaresco, Fr{‘e}d{‘e}ric, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2015. pp.586–594.