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Carl Nordlund

Publications and source records attributed to Carl Nordlund.

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Threadle: A Memory-Efficient Network Storage and Query Engine for Large, Multilayer, and Mixed-mode Networks

We present Threadle, an open-source, high-performance, and memory-efficient network storage and query engine written in C#. Designed for working with full-population networks derived from administrative register data, which represent very large, multilayer, mixed-mode networks with millions of nodes and billions of edges, Threadle addresses a fundamental limitation of existing network libraries: the inability to efficiently handle two-mode (bipartite) data at scale. Threadle's core innovation is a pseudo-projection approach that allows two-mode layers to be queried as if they were projected into one-mode form, without ever materializing the memory-prohibitive projection. We demonstrate that a network with 20 million nodes containing layers equivalent to 8 trillion projected edges can be stored in approximately 20 GB of RAM -- a compression ratio exceeding 2000:1 compared to materialized projection. Additionally, Threadle provides native support for multilayer mixed-mode networks, an integrated node attribute manager, and a CLI frontend with 50+ commands for the construction, processing, file handling, and management of very large heterogeneous networks. Threadle is freely available at https://www.threadle.dev and can either be obtained as precompiled binaries for Win, macOS and Linux, or compiled directly from source. Supplementing Threadle is threadleR, an R frontend that enables advanced sampling- and traversal-based analyses on very large, heterogeneous, multilayer, mixed-mode population-scale networks.

cs.NI

Direct blockmodeling of valued and binary networks: a dichotomization-free approach

A long-standing open problem with direct blockmodeling is that it is explicitly intended for binary, not valued, networks. The underlying dilemma is how empirical valued blocks can be compared with ideal binary blocks, an intrinsic problem in the direct approach where partitions are solely determined through such comparisons. Addressing this dilemma, valued networks have either been dichotomized into binary versions, or novel types of ideal valued blocks have been introduced. Both these workarounds are problematic in terms of interpretability, unwanted data reduction, and the often arbitrary setting of model parameters. This paper proposes a direct blockmodeling approach that effectively bypasses the dilemma with blockmodeling of valued networks. By introducing an adaptive weighted correlation-based criteria function, the proposed approach is directly applicable to both binary and valued networks, without any form of dichotomization or transformation of the valued (or binary) data at any point in the analysis, while still using the conventional set of ideal binary blocks from structural, regular and generalized blockmodeling. The approach is demonstrated by structural, regular and generalized blockmodeling applications of six classical binary and valued networks. Finding feasible and intuitive optimal solutions in both the binary and valued examples, the approach is proposed not only as a practical, dichotomization-free heuristic for blockmodeling of valued networks but also, through its additional benefits, as an alternative to the conventional direct approach to blockmodeling.

cs.SI

Dis-embedded Openness: Inequalities in European Economic Integration at the Sectoral Level

The process of European integration resulted in a marked increase in transnational economic flows, yet regional inequalities along many developmental indicators remain. We analyze the unevenness of European economies with respect to the embedding of export sectors in upstream domestic flows, and their dependency on dominant export partners. We use the WIOD data set of sectoral flows for the period of 1995-2011 for 24 European countries. We found that East European economies were significantly more likely to experience increasing unevenness and dependency with increasing openness, while core countries of Europe managed to decrease their unevenness while increasing their openness. Nevertheless, by analyzing the trajectories of changes for each country, we see that East European countries are also experiencing a turning point, either switching to a path similar to the core, or to a retrograde path with decreasing openness. We analyze our data using pooled time series models and case studies of country trajectories.

econ.GN