Professor of Physics
Levich Institute and
Physics Department
City College of New York
Steinman Hall, T1M-12
140th Street and Convent Avenue
New York, NY 10031-9198
(212) 650-6847, (212) 650-6835 (fax)
This is the lab of Hernán Makse at
the
Levich Institute
and
Department of Physics of
City College of New York in New York City.
We are interested in the theoretical understanding of complexity. We
are working towards the development of new arquitectural laws
for complex networks, from biological systems, to the
Internet, the web, to social networks and cities. We also
focus on the study of jammed matter, spanning from granular
materials, colloidal suspensions, dense emulsions to glasses
in search of unifying theoretical frameworks. We explore this
variety of out of equilibrium systems in terms of their
behavior as they experience structural arrest or jamming. The
group focuses on the theoretical and computational approaches
in parallel with experiments.
Our research is related to "emergent properties", i.e., "properties
not contained in the simple laws of physics, although they are
a consequence of them".
For the latest research, see a feature article in the Journal of Student Research, and the
presentations on
granular matter,
colloidal glasses and emulsions,
jamming transition,
effective temperature in granular matter,
Edwards statistical mechanics of jammed matter, random
close packing (RCP), polydisperse, non-spherical packing and
cavity methods for force propagation,
nonlinear elasticity of granular matter,
fractal complex networks and renormalization group, protein and
social networks, and
urban economics and cities, and big
data. To download data and computer codes for: (a) Molecular
Dynamics (DEM) of granular matter, (b) fractal analysis of complex
networks, (c) Clustering Analysis of cities, (d) experimental data on
colloids and glasses, (e) generating sequences with long-range
correlations, (f) calculating all minima and transition states of the
energy landscape in small clusters of LJ and Hertz particles, (g) hard
sphere packing from RLP to FCC, (h) fMRI brain data, and (i) obesity
and cancer spreading, visit SOFTWARE AND
DATA.
Science Blog:
Novel
insights into the evolution of protein networks.
March 21, 2013. Paper in PLOS ONE. System-wide networks of
proteins are indispensable for organisms. Function and evolution of
these networks are among the most fascinating research questions in
biology. Bioinformatician Thomas Rattei, University of Vienna, and
physicist Hernan Makse, City University New York (CUNY), have
reconstructed ancestral protein networks. The results are of high
interest not only for evolutionary research but also for the
interpretation of genome sequence data. Read more at:
Phys.org. Full dataset of reconstructed ancestral protein
interaction networks available here.
Environmental factors may affect the spread of
obesity.
Paper in Scientific Reports. Press release: An international team
of researchers' study of the spatial patterns of the spread of obesity
suggests America's bulging waistlines may have more to do with
collective behavior than genetics or individual choices. The team, led
by City College of New York physicist Hernaán Makse, found correlations
between the epidemic's geography and food marketing and distribution
patterns.
Talk at the Wolfram Data Summit 2012. Press
Releases:
CCNY. NSF
Highlights.
Science
Daily.
Medicalxpress.
Science
Blog. Supermarket or not Supermarket
(Care2.com). The
visible embryo.
The
Atlantic
cities. Jeff Nesbit's "On the Edge" blog in
US News. Dataset available here.
The conundrum of brain networks: small-world or fractal
modularity?
Paper. Dataset of brain
networks and computer codes for network analysis
available here. Published
in
PNAS, Feb. 20 (2012).
Definition of random close packing of granular matter in the
Edwards thermodynamic framework.
Physica A
2010.
The codes to generate hard spheres packing from random loose
packing to FCC can be downloaded
here.
Fractal babies:
We investigate the network of human cell
differentiation from the fertilized egg up to a crying baby. PNAS, 2010. Dataset of cell types. The full network
is published in the
Supporting Information in PNAS.
Zipf's Law for all cities, large and small.
The City
Clustering Algorithm, CCA, allows for a test of Zipf's law for
cities of all sizes. We find (ta,tan,ta,tan..) that Zipf's
law is surprisingly valid up to small cities of a few hundred
inhabitants. Collaboration with Xavier Gabaix, Stern, NYU. Paper on Zipf's law for all
cities. Published in
American Economic Review, August 2011. Below is an image
of all the population clusters identified by the CCA in the
USA and the CCA cluster around London superimposed with a
Google maps.
Statistical patterns in human
communication and growth of cities.
We find scaling laws
in human communication patterns (PNAS).
A recent paper
presents a new way to define cities based on clustering
algorithms from percolation theory. We find that the growth
rate of cities and its standard deviation follow (surprise,
surprise..) power-laws with the city size, in contradiction to
Gibrat's law.
Renormalization Group analysis in fractal complex networks
The small world-fractal transition and
information flow. See recent paper in
Phys. Rev. Lett. 2010.
The following follow up papers are in Physica A and in cond-mat: Jamming I: A Hamiltonian for jammed matter.
Jamming II:
A phase diagram for jammed matter.
Jamming III: Characterizing Randomness via the Entropy of Jammed Matter.
Jamming IV:
A distribution of volumes and coordination number in jammed matter: mesoscopic approximation.
Jamming V: Jamming in two dimensions.
with the Mayor's Award for
Excellence in Science and Technology to Young Investigator for
playing with sand [press
release of the New York Academy of Science,
newspaper, pdf, faculty spotlight].
How to calculate the fractal dimension of a complex
network: the box covering
algorithm.
Can you improve the box-covering of a network?
Download the algorithms and Databases
of complex networks used in our studies to calculate the fractal
dimension of a complex network. Including our PNAS paper on Scaling
Theory of Transport in Complex Biological Networks in the May 2007
issue (pdf, supplementary
information).
A set of papers from Onsager
virial theory of thin rods (1949) to Edwards thermodynamics of grains
(1989). Selection of papers from
Hales on the solution of the Kepler conjecture.
Comparison of CCA for cities and Google Earth for London. Databases for USA, UK and Africa from PNAS paper.
Lost in the Woods. A clay animation movie by Milena (.wmv) when she was 4 years old after taking a class on Animation at the Children's Museum of the Arts in New York.
Rock
stratification from Petra. How to build the stratification cell. A nice
activity for school teachers. Collaboration with the SEED project at
Schlumberger.
Paper: "Granular Packings I: Nonlinear elasticity,
sound propagation, and slow relaxation dynamics", by
Makse, Gland, Johnson,
and Schwartz. Download: postscript or
pdf .
La donna e mobile,
Qual piuma al vento,
Muta d'accento - e di pensiero.
Sempre un amabile,
Leggiadro viso,
In pianto o in riso, - e menzognero.
La donna e mobil,
qual piuma al vento,
Muta d'accento e di pensier!
e di pensier!
e di pensier!
E sempre misero,
Chi a lei s'affida,
Chi le confida - mal cauto il cuore!
Pur mai non sentesi,
Felice appieno,
Chi su quel seno - non liba amore!
Volver, Carlos Gardel
Yo adivino el parpadeo,
De las luces que a lo lejos,
Van marcando mi retorno...
Son las mismas que alumbraron,
Con sus palidos reflejos,
Hondas horas de dolor..
Y aunque no quise el regreso,
Siempre se vuelve al primer amor..
La vieja calle donde el eco dijo.
Tuya es su vida, tuyo es su querer,
Bajo el burlon mirar de las estrellas.
Que con indiferencia hoy me ven volver...
Volver... con la frente marchita,
Las nieves del tiempo platearon mi sien...
Sentir... que es un soplo la vida,
Que veinte años no es nada,
Que febril la mirada, errante en las sombras,
Te busca y te nombra.
Vivir... con el alma aferrada.
A un dulce recuerdo.
Que lloro otra vez...
Tengo miedo del encuentro.
Con el pasado que vuelve.
A enfrentarse con mi vida...
Tengo miedo de las noches.
Que pobladas de recuerdos.
Encadenan mi soñar...
Pero el viajero que huye.
Tarde o temprano detiene su andar...
Y aunque el olvido, que todo destruye,
Haya matado mi vieja ilusion,
Guardo escondida una esperanza humilde.
Que es toda la fortuna de mi corazón.
Volver... con la frente marchita,
Las nieves del tiempo platearon mi sien...
Sentir... que es un soplo la vida,
Que veinte años no es nada,
Que febril la mirada, errante en las sombras,
Te busca y te nombra.
Vivir... con el alma aferrada.
A un dulce recuerdo.
Que lloro otra vez...