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

Degree distributions in sexual networks: a framework for evaluating evidence.

TL;DR: Better models are needed to represent the behavioral basis of sexual networks and the structures that result, if these data are to be used for disease transmission modeling, as well as the fit of power-law and alternative social process models for the degree distribution.
Journal ArticleDOI

Phylogenetic and epidemic modeling of rapidly evolving infectious diseases.

TL;DR: The Bayesian phylogenetic approach to epidemic modeling of infection diseases is surveyed and the contrasts it provides to mathematical epidemiology is described as well as the significance of the future unification of these two fields is emphasized.
Journal ArticleDOI

Talking and Learning Physics: Predicting Future Grades from Network Measures and Force Concept Inventory Pretest Scores.

TL;DR: In this article, a weekly administered survey, first year university students enrolled in an introductory physics course at a Danish university indicated with whom they remembered having communicated within different interaction categories, such as communication about how to solve physics problems in the course, communications about the nature of physics concepts, and social interactions that are not strictly related to the content of the physics classes in the introductory mechanics course.
Journal ArticleDOI

Evolutionary vaccination dilemma in complex networks.

TL;DR: This work analyzes the evolution of voluntary vaccination in networked populations by entangling the spreading dynamics of an influenza-like disease with an evolutionary framework taking place at the end of each influenza season so that individuals take or do not take the vaccine upon their previous experience.
Journal ArticleDOI

The strength of friendship ties in proximity sensor data.

TL;DR: Applying the Bluetooth signal strength parameter to distinguish between observations, it is demonstrated that weak links, compared to strong links, have a lower probability of being observed at later times, while such links—on average—also have lower link-weights and probability of sharing an online friendship.
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)