This code can be used to analyze the sensitivity of the Deffuant model to different measurement errors. Specifically to:
- Intrinsic stochastic error
- Binning of the measurement scale
- Random measurement noise
- Psychometric distortions

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Like many developing countries, Nigeria is faced with a number of tradeoffs that pit rapid economic development against environmental preservation. Environmentally sustainable, “green” economic development is slower, more costly, and more difficult than unrestricted, unregulated economic growth. The mathematical model that we develop in this code suggests that widespread public awareness of environmental issues is insufficient to prevent the tendency towards sacrificing the environment for the sake of growth. Even if people have an understanding of negative impacts and always choose to act in their own self-interest, they may still act collectively in such a way as to bring down the quality of life for the entire society. We conclude that additional actions must be taken besides raising public awareness of the environmental problem.

EMMIT is an end-user developed agent-based simulation of malaria transmission. The simulation’s development is a case study demonstrating an approach for non-technical investigators to easily develop useful simulations of complex public health problems. We focused on malaria transmission, a major global public health problem, and insecticide resistance (IR), a major problem affecting malaria control. Insecticides are used to reduce transmission of malaria caused by the Plasmodium parasite that is spread by the Anopheles mosquito. However, the emergence and spread of IR in a mosquito population can diminish the insecticide’s effectiveness. IR results from mutations that produce behavioral changes or biochemical changes (such as detoxification enhancement, target site alterations) in the mosquito population that provide resistance to the insecticide. Evolutionary selection for the IR traits reduces the effectiveness of an insecticide favoring the resistant mosquito population. It has been suggested that biopesticides, and specifically those that are Late Life Acting (LLA), could address this problem. LLA insecticides exploit Plasmodium’s approximate 10-day extrinsic incubation period in the mosquito vector, a delay that limits malaria transmission to older infected mosquitoes. Since the proposed LLA insecticide delays mosquito death until after the exposed mosquito has a chance to produce several broods of offspring, reducing the selective pressure for resistance, it delays IR development and gives the insecticide longer effectivity. Such insecticides are designed to slow the evolution of IR thus maintaining their effectiveness for malaria control. For the IR problem, EMMIT shows that an LLA insecticide could work as intended, but its operational characteristics are critical, primarily the mean-time-to-death after exposure and the associated standard deviation. We also demonstrate the simulation’s extensibility to other malaria control measures, including larval source control and policies to mitigate the spread of IR. The simulation was developed using NetLogo as a case study of a simple but useful approach to public health research.

This model is designed to address the following research question: How does the amount and topology of intergroup cultural transmission modulate the effect of local group extinction on selectively neutral cultural diversity in a geographically structured population? The experimental design varies group extinction rate, the amount of intergroup cultural transmission, and the topology of intergroup cultural transmission while measuring the effects of local group extinction on long-term cultural change and regional cultural differentiation in a constant-size, spatially structured population. The results show that for most of the intergroup social network topologies tested here, increasing the amount of intergroup cultural transmission (similar to increasing gene flow in a genetic model) erases the negative effect of local group extinction on selectively neutral cultural diversity. The stochastic (i.e., preference attachment) network seems to stand out as an exception.

This is an agent-based model of a population of scientists alternatively authoring or reviewing manuscripts submitted to a scholarly journal for peer review. Peer-review evaluation can be either ‘confidential’, i.e. the identity of authors and reviewers is not disclosed, or ‘open’, i.e. authors’ identity is disclosed to reviewers. The quality of the submitted manuscripts vary according to their authors’ resources, which vary according to the number of publications. Reviewers can assess the assigned manuscript’s quality either reliably of unreliably according to varying behavioural assumptions, i.e. direct/indirect reciprocation of past outcome as authors, or deference towards higher-status authors.

The teamCognition model investigates team decision processes by using an agent-based model to conceptualize team decisions as an emergent property. It uses a mixed-method research design with a laboratory experiment providing qualitative and quantitative input for the model’s construction, as well as data for an output validation of the model. The agent-based model is used as a computational testbed to contrast several processes of team decision making, representing potential, simplified mechanisms of how a team decision emerges. The increasing overall fit of the simulation and empirical results indicates that the modeled decision processes can at least partly explain the observed team decisions.

Knowledge Based Economy (KBE) is an artificial economy where firms placed in geographical space develop original knowledge, imitate one another and eventually recombine pieces of knowledge. In KBE, consumer value arises from the capability of certain pieces of knowledge to bridge between existing items (e.g., Steve Jobs illustrated the first smartphone explaining that you could make a call with it, but also listen to music and navigate the Internet). Since KBE includes a mechanism for the generation of value, it works without utility functions and does not need to model market exchanges.

This is an opinion dynamics model which extends the model found in (Martins 2009). The previous model had an unshared uncertainty assumption in agent-to-agent interaction this model relaxes that assumption. The model only supports a fully connect network where every agent has an equal likelihood of interacting with every other agent at any given time step. The model is highly modular so different social network paradigm can easier be implemented.

The three-day participatory workshop organized by the TISSS Lab had 20 participants who were academics in different career stages ranging from university student to professor. For each of the five games, the participants had to move between tables according to some pre-specified rules. After the workshop both the participant’s perception of the games’ complexities and the participants’ satisfaction with the games were recorded.

In order to obtain additional objective measures for the games’ complexities, these games were also simulated using this simulation model here. Therefore, the simulation model is an as-accurate-as-possible reproduction of the workshop games: it has 20 participants moving between 5 different tables. The rules that specify who moves when vary from game to game. Just to get an idea, Game 3 has the rule: “move if you’re sitting next to someone who is waring white or no socks”.

An exact description of the workshop games and the associated simulation models can be found in the paper “The relation between perceived complexity and happiness with decision situations: searching for objective measures in social simulation games”.

Studies on the fundamental role of diverse media in the evolution of public opinion can protect us from the spreading brainwashing, extremism, and terrorism. Many fear the information cocoon may result in polarization of the public opinion. The model of opinion dynamics that considers different influences and horizons for every individual, and the simulations are based on a real-world social network.