NetScience
@netscience.bsky.social
Reader in Applied Mathematics at Queen Mary University working on Network Science, Data Science, and digital Epidemiology. Website: www.nicolaperra.com
Predictability of Human Movements across Industry Sectors using Multilayer Networks arxiv.org/abs/2607.28494
Predictability of Human Movements across Industry Sectors using Multilayer Networks
Understanding the spatiotemporal patterns of human movement is important across diverse applications including urban design, disease control, social and cognitive science, and emergency response plann...
arxiv.org
High-fidelity inference of power grid frequency distributions arxiv.org/abs/2607.28232
High-fidelity inference of power grid frequency distributions
Precision measurements of power grid frequency track energy supply-demand imbalances, with persistent fluctuations indicating strain that can lead to outages. Characterizing the statistical properties...
arxiv.org
Vector field theory in motion: Revealing latent potentials in soccer dynamics arxiv.org/abs/2607.27838
Vector field theory in motion: Revealing latent potentials in soccer dynamics
Team sports offer a natural laboratory for studying collective motion in competitive environments. While recent tracking technologies enabled detailed analysis of player and ball trajectories, most ex...
arxiv.org
Statistics of correlations in nonlinear recurrent neural networks link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/...
Statistics of correlations in nonlinear recurrent neural networks
The statistics of correlations are central quantities characterizing the collective dynamics of recurrent neural networks. We derive exact expressions for the statistics of correlations of nonlinear r...
link.aps.org
Charting higher-order models of brain function beyond pairwise interactions idp.nature.com/authorize?re...
Charting higher-order models of brain function beyond pairwise interactions - Nature Communications
This study benchmarks ten higher-order interaction metrics on fMRI data, revealing distinct patterns of brain functional organization. Higher-order models outperform pairwise methods in fingerprinting...
idp.nature.com
The past and future impact of climate change on childhood malaria in Africa idp.nature.com/authorize?re...
The past and future impact of climate change on childhood malaria in Africa - Nature
Climate and econometric modelling reveal that human-induced climate change is shifting the burden of childhood malaria in Africa.
idp.nature.com
Pulses, waves, and cascades in collective migration dynamics arxiv.org/abs/2606.30604
Pulses, waves, and cascades in collective migration dynamics
Decisions to migrate depend on others' decisions. Dependence can produce nontrivial dynamics. We propose a minimal migration model that accounts for social influence alongside individual heterogeneity...
arxiv.org
How large should academic departments be? arxiv.org/abs/2607.22189
How large should academic departments be?
Academic departments are the primary unit of scholarship and education at universities, and they vary vastly in their sizes. However, the consequences and natural dynamics of department size are poorl...
arxiv.org
Nonlinear Model Reduction of Complex Networks via Spectral Submanifolds arxiv.org/abs/2607.24121
Nonlinear Model Reduction of Complex Networks via Spectral Submanifolds
Complex networked systems are prevalent in biology, engineering, and the social sciences, yet their high-dimensional, nonlinear dynamics pose major challenges for analysis and prediction. A mathematic...
arxiv.org
Nonmonotonic percolation threshold in correlated networks and hypergraphs arxiv.org/abs/2604.14065
Nonmonotonic percolation threshold in correlated networks and hypergraphs
We study the effect of assortative and disassortative mixing on the robustness of networks under random node failures. For ordinary (dyadic) networks, by using the generating function technique and st...
arxiv.org
Emergent contagion complexity: Disentangling mechanistic complexity from correlated heterogeneity arxiv.org/abs/2607.25139
Emergent contagion complexity: Disentangling mechanistic complexity from correlated heterogeneity
Simple and complex contagions differ mechanistically; multiple exposures act synergistically in the latter but independently in the former. Yet correlated mixtures of simple contagions may appear comp...
arxiv.org
A Bayesian approach to out-of-sample network reconstruction arxiv.org/abs/2602.21869
A Bayesian approach to out-of-sample network reconstruction
Networks underpin systems that range from finance to biology, yet their structure is often only partially observed. Current reconstruction methods typically fit the parameters of a model anew to each ...
arxiv.org
Mobility and Contact Networks Shape Epidemic Outcomes: A Large-Scale Agent-Based Modeling Study arxiv.org/abs/2607.26217
Mobility and Contact Networks Shape Epidemic Outcomes: A Large-Scale Agent-Based Modeling Study
Human mobility plays a central role in shaping contact patterns that drive infectious disease transmission, yet mobility is often simplified in agent-based models (ABMs) due to data and computational ...
arxiv.org
The Attention-Directing Ability of Teams arxiv.org/abs/2607.26109
The Attention-Directing Ability of Teams
Why do some teams consistently mobilize collective effort and achieve superior performance while others struggle to coordinate action? We introduce Attention-Directing Ability (ADA), a latent team cap...
arxiv.org
Unbiased randomization of weighted bipartite networks with exact degree and strength sequences link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/...
Unbiased randomization of weighted bipartite networks with exact degree and strength sequences
In the context of complex networks, designing a null model that preserves certain properties of the original network is a fundamental problem. While for binary bipartite networks, the problem has been...
link.aps.org
Algorithms for generating planar networks simulating hierarchical patterns of cracks formed during film drying link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/...
Algorithms for generating planar networks simulating hierarchical patterns of cracks formed during film drying
Hierarchical crack patterns that arise during the drying of thin films of colloidal dispersions or polymer solutions on a solid substrate are of interest both from a fundamental standpoint and in the ...
link.aps.org
Limits of Inference in Complex Systems: When Stochastic Models Become Indistinguishable link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/...
Limits of Inference in Complex Systems: When Stochastic Models Become Indistinguishable
A path-inference framework quantifies data resolution limits that render distinct stochastic models empirically indistinguishable and offers guidelines for designing experimental measurements that max...
link.aps.org
Whose fears count? Legitimacy, trust and viral outbreak responses after COVID-19 journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...
Whose fears count? Legitimacy, trust and viral outbreak responses after COVID-19
In this Editorial, Rebecca Grais outlines how COVID-19 transformed viral outbreak responses from a predominantly public health challenge into a political and security concern, highlighting the challen...
journals.plos.org
Mapping drivers of life expectancy change in Asia from 1990 to 2023 idp.nature.com/authorize?re...
Mapping drivers of life expectancy change in Asia from 1990 to 2023 - Nature
Using the Global Burden of Disease Study data across Asian countries and territories, life expectancy trends and the effects of cause-specific mortality and risk factors on changes in these trends are...
idp.nature.com
Non-Gaussian statistics of the order parameter across a phase transition idp.nature.com/authorize?re...
Non-Gaussian statistics of the order parameter across a phase transition - Nature
Single-atom measurements show non-Gaussian order-parameter fluctuations and critical scaling across a continuous phase transition, highlighting the importance of full statistical distributions in unde...
idp.nature.com
Localization transitions of diffusion dynamics in physical networks arxiv.org/abs/2607.19486
Localization transitions of diffusion dynamics in physical networks
Network diffusion underlies many transport phenomena, with Laplacian modes setting how information spreads and relaxes. In physical networks, however, connectivity alone is not enough: node volumes in...
arxiv.org
Cultural Evolution of Perfumes since 1900 arxiv.org/abs/2607.19520
Cultural Evolution of Perfumes since 1900
Perfumes are cultural artifacts and works of sensory art, composed from a finite, recombinable palette of notes that together evoke a distinctive scent impression. Here, we assemble the largest perfum...
arxiv.org
Coordinative structures as scale-free networks: Cascade and percolation dynamics in motor learning with empirical validation journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
Coordinative structures as scale-free networks: Cascade and percolation dynamics in motor learning with empirical validation
Author summary Learning a new motor skill requires coordinating hundreds of muscles into smooth, purposeful movement. The body organizes muscles into functional groups called coordinative structures, ...
journals.plos.org
Modeling network evolution by multi-agent reinforcement learning idp.nature.com/authorize?re...
Modeling network evolution by multi-agent reinforcement learning - Nature Communications
This paper introduces NEMARL, a multi-agent reinforcement learning framework for network evolution that models node-level decision making and coordination. The approach reproduces key network properti...
idp.nature.com
Efficient Gillespie algorithms for spreading phenomena in large and heterogeneous higher-order networks arxiv.org/abs/2509.20174
Efficient Gillespie algorithms for spreading phenomena in large and heterogeneous higher-order networks
Higher-order interactions, where groups of nodes interact collectively rather than pairwisely, are central to many complex systems, from neural and ecological networks to social contagion. However, si...
arxiv.org
Growing Hypergraphs with Homophily arxiv.org/abs/2607.16046
Growing Hypergraphs with Homophily
There are many extant models of hypergraphs with interactions governed by attribute-based homophily between nodes, but most assume independence between edges conditional on node parameters. Relaxing t...
arxiv.org
Dynamics-induced activity patterns of active-inactive clusters in complex networks link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/...
Dynamics-induced activity patterns of active-inactive clusters in complex networks
Synchrony patterns describe network states in which nodes of a coupled dynamical system are grouped into clusters based on synchronization between nodes. Beyond simple synchrony, synchronized clusters...
link.aps.org
Evolutionary modelling reveals melodic and harmonic constraints on global scale structure arxiv.org/abs/2408.12633
Evolutionary modelling reveals melodic and harmonic constraints on global scale structure
Since antiquity, musical scales have been explained by harmony rather than melody. This view relies on the mathematically designed scales of a few traditions, and was never directly tested. Testing it...
arxiv.org
Re-emergence of vaccine-preventable diseases in the post-elimination era journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...
Re-emergence of vaccine-preventable diseases in the post-elimination era
Measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases are re-emerging worldwide in locations where they were once eliminated. In this Perspective, Chirag Kumar and Nathan Lo outline how and why targeted poli...
journals.plos.org
Nested hyperedges promote the onset of collective transitions but suppress explosive behavior arxiv.org/abs/2601.10522
Nested hyperedges promote the onset of collective transitions but suppress explosive behavior
Higher-order interactions can induce abrupt collective transitions, yet the microscopic mechanisms controlling macroscopic critical behavior remain unclear. Here we show that nested hyperedges generat...
arxiv.org