Strong long ties facilitate epidemic containment on mobility networks.

The analysis of connection strengths and distances in the mobility network is pivotal for delineating critical pathways, particularly in the context of epidemic propagation. Local connections that link proximate districts typically exhibit strong weights. However, ties that bridge distant regions with high levels of interaction intensity, termed strong long (SL) ties, warrant increased scrutiny due to their potential to foster satellite epidemic clusters and extend the duration of pandemics.

Heterogeneous changes in mobility in response to the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.2 outbreak in Shanghai.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the measures taken by authorities to control its spread have altered human behavior and mobility patterns in an unprecedented way. However, it remains unclear whether the population response to a COVID-19 outbreak varies within a city or among demographic groups. Here, we utilized passively recorded cellular signaling data at a spatial resolution of 1 km × 1 km for over 5 million users and epidemiological surveillance data collected during the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron BA.

Infection rate and factors affecting close contacts of COVID-19 cases: A systematic review.

Objective: Contact tracing plays an essential role in mitigating the impact of an epidemic. During the COVID-19 pandemic, studies of those who have been in close contact with confirmed cases offer critical insights to understand the epidemiological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 better. This study conducts a meta-analysis of existing studies' infection rates and affecting factors.

Travel-related Importation and Exportation Risks of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant in 367 Prefectures (Cities) - China, 2022.

Introduction: Minimizing the importation and exportation risks of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a primary concern for sustaining the "Dynamic COVID-zero" strategy in China. Risk estimation is essential for cities to conduct before relaxing border control measures.

Methods: Informed by the daily number of passengers traveling between 367 prefectures (cities) in China, this study used a stochastic metapopulation model parameterized with COVID-19 epidemic characteristics to estimate the importation and exportation risks.

Network Structure and Community Evolution Online: Behavioral and Emotional Changes in Response to COVID-19.

The measurement and identification of changes in the social structure in response to an exceptional event like COVID-19 can facilitate a more informed public response to the pandemic and provide fundamental insights on how collective social processes respond to extreme events. In this study, we built a generalized framework for applying social media data to understand public behavioral and emotional changes in response to COVID-19. Utilizing a complete dataset of Sina Weibo posts published by users in Wuhan from December 2019 to March 2020, we constructed a time-varying social network of 3.

Mobility in China, 2020: a tale of four phases.

2020 was an unprecedented year, with rapid and drastic changes in human mobility due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand the variation in commuting patterns among the Chinese population across stable and unstable periods, we used nationwide mobility data from 318 million mobile phone users in China to examine the extreme fluctuations of population movements in 2020, ranging from the Lunar New Year travel season (), to the exceptional calm of COVID-19 lockdown, and then to the recovery period. We observed that cross-city movements, which increased substantially in and then dropped sharply during the lockdown, are primarily dependent on travel distance and the socio-economic development of cities.

Evaluating link significance in maintaining network connectivity based on link prediction.

Evaluating the significance of nodes or links has always been an important issue in complex networks, and the definition of significance varies with different perspectives. The significance of nodes or links in maintaining the network connectivity is widely discussed due to its application in targeted attacks and immunization. In this paper, inspired by the weak tie phenomenon, we define the links' significance by the dissimilarity of their endpoints.

Attacker-defender game from a network science perspective.

Dealing with the protection of critical infrastructures, many game-theoretic methods have been developed to study the strategic interactions between defenders and attackers. However, most game models ignore the interrelationship between different components within a certain system. In this paper, we propose a simultaneous-move attacker-defender game model, which is a two-player zero-sum static game with complete information.

Enhancing structural robustness of scale-free networks by information disturbance.

Many real-world systems can be described by scale-free networks with power-law degree distributions. Scale-free networks show a "robust yet fragile" feature due to their heterogeneous degree distributions. We propose to enhance the structural robustness of scale-free networks against intentional attacks by changing the displayed network structure information rather than modifying the network structure itself.

Trade-offs between robustness and small-world effect in complex networks.

Robustness and small-world effect are two crucial structural features of complex networks and have attracted increasing attention. However, little is known about the relation between them. Here we demonstrate that, there is a conflicting relation between robustness and small-world effect for a given degree sequence.

Efficient network disintegration under incomplete information: the comic effect of link prediction.

The study of network disintegration has attracted much attention due to its wide applications, including suppressing the epidemic spreading, destabilizing terrorist network, preventing financial contagion, controlling the rumor diffusion and perturbing cancer networks. The crux of this matter is to find the critical nodes whose removal will lead to network collapse. This paper studies the disintegration of networks with incomplete link information.