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Authors: David Martín-Corral, Manuel García-Herranz, Manuel Cebrian, Esteban Moro Publication: medRxiv 2022.11.15.22282355 LINK Abstract: Detecting early signs of an outbreak in a viral process is challenging due to its exponential nature, yet crucial given the benefits to public health it can provide. If available, the network structure where infection happens can provide rich information about the very early stages of viral outbreaks. For example, more central nodes have been used as social network sensors in biological or informational diffusion processes to detect early contagious outbreaks. ...

Inequality is one of the most important problems in our societies. For example, economic inequality is today higher than it was in the 1970’s and by some metrics stands at levels not seen since the last Great Depression. A special form of segregation is that happening in our cities. We share the public places, our workplaces and our residential neighborhoods with people like us: same type of jobs, same education, similar economic status, and political opinions. ...

Our behavior conditions our health. Exposure to infections depends on our and other people’s mobility. Exposure to healthy environments or habits depends on our choices and opportunities. Although human behavior is highly adaptive and dynamic, most social determinants of health are restricted to static aggregated representations of socio-demographic groups or residential environments. We have started a program to understand behavioral-network determinants of health outcomes by modeling physical exposure between people and environments using large datasets of human mobility and activity and multilayer networks. ...

Authors: Tianyu Su , Maoran Sun, Zhuangyuan Fan, Ariel Noyman, Alex Pentland, and Esteban Moro Publication: EPJ Data Science 11, 43 (2022). Link Abstract: As the living tissue connecting urban places, streets play significant roles in driving city development, providing essential access, and promoting human interactions. Understanding street activities and how these activities vary across different streets is critical for designing both efficient and livable streets. However, current street classification frameworks primarily focus on either streets’ functions in transportation networks or their adjacent land uses rather than actual activity patterns, resulting in coarse classifications. ...

Authors: Alberto Aleta, David Martín-Corral, Michiel A.Bakker, Ana Pastore y Piontti, Marco Ajelli, Maria Litvinova , Matteo Chinazzi, Natalie E. Dean, M. Elizabeth Halloran,Ira M. Longini,Jr, Alex Pentland, Alessandro Vespignani, Yamir Moreno, and Esteban Moro. Publication: PNAS (2022). Link Abstract: Detailed characterization of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission across different settings can help design less disruptive interventions. We used real-time, privacy-enhanced mobility data in the New York City, NY and Seattle, WA metropolitan areas to build a detailed agent-based model of SARS-CoV-2infection to estimate the where, when, and magnitude of transmission events during thepandemic’s first wave. ...

Marty, I’ve been to the future and I have bad news. Wordle is getting harder. Not much, but harder. With millions of people playing the game Wordle online and the recent takeover by the New York times, some speculation about whether the game is getting harder is unavoidable. Since Wordle chooses a different word every day, some players have started to complain recent target words are harder to be guessed: It must be a coincidence, but the NY Times puzzles are hard and suddenly Wordle has questionable words ...