Computational social science PhD fellowship opportunity for fall 2008, George Mason University

The PhD program in computational social science at George Mason, for a student to begin studies in fall 2008.  



-Network structures in International Relations - network-based  

imperialism, structural properties of international agreements and alliances, economic interdependence networks, agent-based models of evolving relations;

- Evolution of social networks - dynamic network models, cascades and avalanche processes in networks;



More information about the program and center is available at:

http://socialcomplexity.gmu.edu/



For specific questions related to the graduate program, contact Dawn Parker, acting director for the CSS PhD program, at cssgrad@gmu.edu.



Full application instructions are available at:

http://socialcomplexity.gmu.edu/phd.php

Multi-Agent Simulation Suite (MASS)

Multi-Agent Simulation Suite (MASS), the agent-based modeling toolset developed at AITIA International.



MASS contains a dedicated programming language for agent-based simulations (FABLES), which is compiled to RePast 3.1. (So, you can continue editing it and add advanced features, or you can directly develop your model in Repast and use the other components of MASS). FABLES has an integrated development environment (called FABLES IME) built on top of the Eclipse

platform. The MASS suite contains further modules as well, like a

graphing/visualization package with wizards, a tool for running and processing batch experiments (the Model Exploration Module or MEME), and a web interface to web-enable your simulation (also useful for doing lab experiments with human subjects -- ie. mixing them with your artificial agents). Unfortunately, this last module (the Participatory Extension or PET) is not yet available in the public release.



The public release of MASS is free, but not open source. It does not contain all the latest features, but we believe it is generally usable.



The suite is available at

http://www.aitia.ai/services_and_products/simulation_systems

Public Opinion Pros: An online magazine for survey researchers

心理學和經濟學界在其專業期刊之外亦發行大眾導向的雜誌，政治學界除了Foreign Affairs之外，比較少看到這樣的雜誌。免費的線上版Public Opinion Pros讓人眼睛一亮。

Gspace: another reason you should try Firefox

把2Gb容量的Gmail空間當作網路硬碟來使用，這真是太神奇了。http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/04/10/198249

XnView: A nice tool to capture screens

XnView is a nice free tool for viewing pictures and capturing screeens. Most importantly, it supports both Windows and Linux (Fedora)!

先學做人，再學做一個好的學者

弟子規並不八股。很多其中的道理只是我們不知道而已。

且看這些道理如何運用在擇偶和經營幸福家庭這件事上。

wma -> wav

Q: In linux, how to convert an wma file to K3b burner?

A: use mplayer and decode it to wav. then burn it. something like:

mplayer -ao pcm /tmp/$file



the converted file is named "audiodump.wav"

Freeware for Social Network Analysis!

To those who are interested in analyzing social networks, this will be of interest: Libsna.

How to install bst files in Lyx?

Quoted from Dr. Paul Johnson's post:

To make the biblio work, you need a bibliography style file (a file
with a name like apsa2.bst).  You need to copy the bst file you want
into your LaTeX installation.  The bst file can
be copied under your system's bibtex configuration, which in my system
is

/usr/share/texmf/bibtex/bst/natbib

The shortcoming with that is that you might lose your customizations if
you upgrade your TeX installation. To prevent that, I maintain a
parallel customized directory here:

/usr/local/share/texmf/bibtex/bst/natbib

Assuming that your TeTeX is configured in the normal way, when you run
the command

 > texhash

the system will scan all of the configuration files and it will notice
you have added a bst file.  

American Politics: American Election Public Opinion Tool

American Election Public Opinion Tool
http://www.publicopiniontool.org

Web-available application presenting multiple visual rendering options and an alternate scenario calculator for every U.S. presidential election ever held. The application allows users to view outcomes of actual elections, as well as hypothetical elections based on relevant issues of the time.