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Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

The Web of Human Sexual Contacts

TLDR
In this article, the authors analyze data on the sexual behavior of a random sample of individuals, and find that the cumulative distributions of the number of sexual partners during the twelve months prior to the survey decays as a power law with similar exponents for females and males.
Abstract
Many ``real-world'' networks are clearly defined while most ``social'' networks are to some extent subjective. Indeed, the accuracy of empirically-determined social networks is a question of some concern because individuals may have distinct perceptions of what constitutes a social link. One unambiguous type of connection is sexual contact. Here we analyze data on the sexual behavior of a random sample of individuals, and find that the cumulative distributions of the number of sexual partners during the twelve months prior to the survey decays as a power law with similar exponents $\alpha \approx 2.4$ for females and males. The scale-free nature of the web of human sexual contacts suggests that strategic interventions aimed at preventing the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases may be the most efficient approach.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Clusters of poverty and disease emerge from feedbacks on an epidemiological network.

TL;DR: A novel framework that integrates epidemiological and economic growth theory on an individual-based hierarchically structured network is provided that indicates that, under certain parameter regimes, feedbacks between disease ecology and economics create clusters of low income and high disease that can stably persist in populations that become otherwise predominantly rich and free of disease.
Proceedings ArticleDOI

A Complex Neighborhood based Particle Swarm Optimization

TL;DR: The use of a scale-free topology instead of the usual regular or global neighborhoods is intended to bring to the search procedure a better capability of exploring promising regions without a premature convergence, which would result in the procedure being easily trapped in a local optimum.
Book ChapterDOI

The Role of Nonlinear Relapse on Contagion Amongst Drinking Communities

TL;DR: It is concluded that the systematic removal of individuals from high risk environments, or the development of programs that limit access or reduce the residence times in such environments (or both approaches combined) may reduce the levels of alcohol abuse.
Journal ArticleDOI

Phylogenies from dynamic networks.

TL;DR: The effects of mis-specification of the underlying network and its parameters have a strong adverse effect on the ability to estimate the transmission parameter, and the results point to the importance of correctly estimating and modelling contact networks with dynamics when using phylodynamic tools to estimate epidemiological parameters.
Journal ArticleDOI

How Physical Proximity Shapes Complex Social Networks.

TL;DR: This work quantitatively measures how the specific definition of the proximity network – short-range versus long-range – impacts the resulting network structure as well as spreading dynamics in epidemic simulations and finds that the short- range network is characterized by densely-connected neighborhoods bridged by weak ties.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Collective dynamics of small-world networks

TL;DR: Simple models of networks that can be tuned through this middle ground: regular networks ‘rewired’ to introduce increasing amounts of disorder are explored, finding that these systems can be highly clustered, like regular lattices, yet have small characteristic path lengths, like random graphs.
Journal ArticleDOI

Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks

TL;DR: A model based on these two ingredients reproduces the observed stationary scale-free distributions, which indicates that the development of large networks is governed by robust self-organizing phenomena that go beyond the particulars of the individual systems.
Journal ArticleDOI

Statistical mechanics of complex networks

TL;DR: In this paper, a simple model based on the power-law degree distribution of real networks was proposed, which was able to reproduce the power law degree distribution in real networks and to capture the evolution of networks, not just their static topology.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Structure and Function of Complex Networks

Mark Newman
- 01 Jan 2003 - 
TL;DR: Developments in this field are reviewed, including such concepts as the small-world effect, degree distributions, clustering, network correlations, random graph models, models of network growth and preferential attachment, and dynamical processes taking place on networks.
Journal ArticleDOI

Complex networks: Structure and dynamics

TL;DR: The major concepts and results recently achieved in the study of the structure and dynamics of complex networks are reviewed, and the relevant applications of these ideas in many different disciplines are summarized, ranging from nonlinear science to biology, from statistical mechanics to medicine and engineering.
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