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METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260811T223644Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20121116T203436Z
DTSTART:20090203T203000Z
DTEND:20090203T213000Z
UID:event368@bu.edu
URL:http://physics.bu.edu/internal/events/show/368
SUMMARY:The Physics of Human Mobility and What It Tells Us About Cell Phone
	 Viruses
DESCRIPTION:Featuring Lazlo Barabasi\, Center for Complex Network Research 
	and Department of Physics at Northeastern University. Department of Medicin
	e\, Harvard Medical School\nHosted by: William Klein\nPoster: http://physic
	s.bu.edu/internal//posters/2009_Spring/02_Barabasi.pdf\n\nPart of the Physi
	cs Department Colloquia Series.\n\nAbstract: Despite their importance for t
	he formation of social networks\, urban planning\, traffic forecasting and 
	the spread of biological and mobile viruses\, our understanding of the basi
	c laws governing human mobility is limited owing to the lack of tools to mo
	nitor the time-resolved location of individuals. I will discuss a study tha
	t explores the trajectory of anonymized mobile phone users\, finding that i
	n contrast with the random trajectories predicted by the prevailing Le´vy 
	flight and random walk models\, human trajectories show a high degree of te
	mporal and spatial regularity\, each individual being characterized by a ti
	me independent characteristic travel distance and a significant probability
	 to return to a few highly frequented locations. After correcting for diffe
	rences in travel distances and the inherent anisotropy of each trajectory\,
	 the individual travel patterns collapse into a single spatial probability 
	distribution\, indicating that\, despite the diversity of their travel hist
	ory\, humans follow simple reproducible patterns. I will also discuss an im
	portant application of this work\, predicting the potential impact of mobil
	e viruses.
LOCATION: \, \, 
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CLASS:PUBLIC
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