Analyzing Network Reliability Using Structural Motifs
  This paper uses the reliability polynomial, introduced by Moore and Shannon in 1956, to analyze the effect of network structure on diffusive dynamics such as the spread of infectious disease. We exhibit a representation for the reliability polynomial in terms of what we call {\em structural motifs} that is well suited for reasoning about the effect of a network's structural properties on diffusion across the network. We illustrate by deriving several general results relating graph structure to dynamical phenomena. 
Yasamin Khorramzadeh, Mina Youssef and Stephen Eubank and Shahir   Mowlaei
cs.SI cond-mat.stat-mech math.CO physics.soc-ph q-bio.PE