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
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Network of sexual contacts and sexually transmitted HIV infection in Burkina Faso
Vito Latora,André Nyamba,Jacques Simpore,Bahiré Sylvette,Sandwidi Diane,Bukiki Sylvére,Salvatore Musumeci +6 more
TL;DR: It has been found that the number of different sexual partners reported by males is a power law distribution with an exponent γ = 2.9 (0.1) which is consistent with the degree distribution of scale‐free networks.
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An empirical study of Chinese language networks
TL;DR: The results indicate that in many topological aspects Chinese language shapes complex networks with organizing principles similar to other previously studied language systems, which shows that different languages may have some common characteristics in their evolution processes.
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Degree correlations in directed scale-free networks.
TL;DR: This work considers the problem of building directed networks with a prescribed degree distribution, providing a method for proper generation of power-law-distributed directed degree sequences, and shows that scale-free networks are on average uncorrelated across directed links for three of the four possible degree-degree correlations.
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Evolutionary Dynamics on Scale-Free Interaction Networks
TL;DR: This paper systematically investigating takeover times under local uniform selection in scale-free topologies with varying scaling exponents, assortativities, average degrees, and numbers of vertices shows that 97% of the variance of logarithmically transformed average takeover times could be accounted for by a planar function of the average inverse degree and the logariths of the population size.
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Number of Sexual Encounters Involving Intercourse and the Transmission of Sexually Transmitted Infections
TL;DR: It is possible that individuals who have a large number of partners may not, as is often assumed, be the only ones to play a central role as spreaders of STIs.
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