scispace - formally typeset
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.

read more

Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

Scaling properties of childhood infectious diseases epidemics before and after mass vaccination in Canada.

TL;DR: It is found that the rubella epidemic size distribution and that of measles in highly vaccinated periods follow an IPL, and the topology of the network of infectious contacts depends on the disease type and its infection rate.
Dissertation

Vers une modélisation plus réaliste de la diffusion d’innovations à l’aide de la simulation multi-agents

TL;DR: La diffusion d'innovations est definie comme le processus de communication par lequel une idee, pratique, ou produit percu comme nouveau se propage dans une population, dans l'ergonomie novatrice.
Journal ArticleDOI

Competition between Lévy jumps and continuous drift

TL;DR: In this paper, a level-crossing problem for a random process being a superposition of a continuous drift to the left and jumps to the right is considered and the lengths of corresponding jumps follow a one-sided extreme Levy-law of index α.
Journal ArticleDOI

Structure and Evolution of Scientific Collaboration Networks in a Modern Research Collaboratory

TL;DR: Findings indicate that CENS collaboration networks have fluid, non-cliquish, small-world topologies, and are free of prestige-based mechanisms.
Journal Article

Complex Network Metrology

TL;DR: It is shown how some natural models of the exploration process give very different views of a given network, which proves that the way one explores a complex network has a strong influence of the properties of the obtained view.
References
More filters
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.
Related Papers (5)