MTA TK PTI (1014 Budapest, Országház utca 30.)
Patchiness of the environment is a common challenge to all living organisms. Essential resources, e.g. water or food, are heterogeneously distributed in space, and can change over time. The task is to maximize resource uptake under two constraints...

We are pleased to welcome the new senior researchers Tamás Keller and Jeromos Vukov have recently joined our research team.

An introduction course had taken place Between 3rd and  5th of December  the topic of the static and dynamic analysis of social networks were led by András Vörös, research assistant at Scientific Section of Network Research of  the Institute of Sociology and graduated Phd student  at Oxford University (Nuffield College). András is an expert user of the network specified package RSiena  in R. He also contribute to the edition of the RSieana user guide book with his doctoral supervisor Tom Snijders.

This paper argues that grades cannot be interpreted only as a reward for a given academic achievement, but they also reflect teachers’ ratingsof pupils. Relative within-classroom differences in grades therefore contain valuable information about pupils’ own – usually unknown – ability, and could have an effect on subsequent academic achievement.

The presentation concerns social science dynamics. Recently, a new international publication trend has been emerging among – mathematically oriented – sociologist: they have begun publishing their sociological results in physics outlets. As a preceding event, natural scientists, most prominently statistical physicists, had been evading certain social science domains. 

Information systems (IS) may not improve organizational and/or companies’ performance if they are not used by stakeholders. Understanding why people continue or discontinue use of IS is crucial in increasing users’ acceptance. This article aims to analyze what is needed to perpetuate use of Facebook as a social media channel. 

Signed graphs contain different types of relations towards actors in SNA. The assignment of a positive or negative relationship finds its roots in structural balance theory. The mathematical formalization of this concept was later added by Harary (1953) and Cartwright ( 1956, 1979). The generalisation specify subgroups with similar characteristics related to their links to other actors in the network. Subdividing actors into prespecified homogeneous blocks provides for the analysis of such network data related to internal and external characteristics. 

Esther Duflo, the winner of the 2013 John von Neumann Award hold a lecture about povertiy in Eötvös Loránd University, Gólyavár, Múzeum Körút 8, Budapest, HU, on 2nd of December, 2014. 

On October 14-15, our research group hosted an international workshop with the title “New Frontiers of Peer Review". The workshop took place at the Corvinus University of Budapest.

In the framework of the collaboration with the Sociology Doctoral School at the Corvinus University of Budapest, two new PhD students start their work at the MTA TK "Lendület" Research Center for Educational and Network Studies by 1 September, 2014. Tímea Szőke and Ákos Bocskor will participate in our project.