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    Communication activity in a social network: Relation between long-term correlations and inter-event clustering
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2012) Rybski, D.; Buldyrev, S.V.; Havlin, S.; Liljeros, F.; Makse, H.A.
    Human communication in social networks is dominated by emergent statistical laws such as non-trivial correlations and temporal clustering. Recently, we found long-term correlations in the user's activity in social communities. Here, we extend this work to study the collective behavior of the whole community with the goal of understanding the origin of clustering and long-term persistence. At the individual level, we find that the correlations in activity are a byproduct of the clustering expressed in the power-law distribution of inter-event times of single users, i.e. short periods of many events are separated by long periods of no events. On the contrary, the activity of the whole community presents long-term correlations that are a true emergent property of the system, i.e. they are not related to the distribution of inter-event times. This result suggests the existence of collective behavior, possibly arising from nontrivial communication patterns through the embedding social network.
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    Correlating the ancient Maya and modern european calendars with high-precision AMS 14C dating
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2013) Kennett, D.J.; Hajdas, I.; Culleton, B.J.; Belmecheri, S.; Martin, S.; Neff, H.; Awe, J.; Graham, H.V.; Freeman, K.H.; Newsom, L.; Lentz, D.L.; Anselmetti, F.S.; Robinson, M.; Marwan, N.; Southon, J.; Hodell, D.A.; Haug, G.H.
    The reasons for the development and collapse of Maya civilization remain controversial and historical events carved on stone monuments throughout this region provide a remarkable source of data about the rise and fall of these complex polities. Use of these records depends on correlating the Maya and European calendars so that they can be compared with climate and environmental datasets. Correlation constants can vary up to 1000 years and remain controversial.Wereport a series of high-resolution AMS14C dates on a wooden lintel collected from the Classic Period city of Tikal bearing Maya calendar dates. The radiocarbon dates were calibrated using a Bayesian statistical model and indicate that the dates were carved on the lintel betweenAD 658-696. This strongly supports the Goodman-Mart?nez-Thompson (GMT) correlation and the hypothesis that climate change played an important role in the development and demise of this complex civilization.