A few years ago, PBS' Frontline had a very scary program about a syphilis outbreak among a group of teenagers in an upper middle class suburb of Atlanta.
"The Lost Children of Rockdale County"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/georgia/
There's a link to a transcript of the show on that page.
The scientific study of the outbreak, with a similar diagram, is here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/georgia/outbreak/details.html
JUST SAY NO!!!!!!!!
This network stuff has been used to map out the "real power structure" of organizations. Often this is done by the organizations themselves. One example was to map out the "national security structure" under Clinton. There is the "formal" structure of CIA director, FBI, etc. Then there was some guy Clinton had breakfast with once a week, and similarly with other administration officials. Information can flow rapidly through the informal chains as well as formally.
I'll bet the class computer nerd(s) have the "sexual network" mapped out in the first few days of each semester. Probably didn't interfere with any of their other activities either. The eighteen month study was most likely eighteen months behind when finished.
The practical result from such a rule is that no cores form, and that long, chain-like networks form instead. That has important implications for preventing the spread of STDs in teenage populations, according to Moody, Bearman and Stovel.
I've got a far easier way to prevent STDs in teenage populations. Teach the kids not to screw around until they are married. Works 100% of the time. Virgins never have STDs
And on the lighter side. I'll lay dollars to donuts that there's at least one enterprising boy in that school who found a way to get the map of the entire network just so he could date the 'node' girls.
And this is helpful how? Are they thinking they'll inject appropriate groupings with anti-VD drugs and hope for the best (because I can't imagine they'd want to actually PREVENT the sex)?
If you spread the benefits of abstinence rather than of the acceptability of being sexually active, you'll have an impact, period.
These people who study sex for a living are really disturbing. Do they never get any, is that why they have to study it?
OMG! I went to High School with this guy and dated him when he was a senior and I was a freshman! He later married one of my friends and after college he dragged her off to study Coyote scat in Montana. ROFLMAO! She divorced him a number of years later because she discovered he was basically a deviant who was into MUCH younger girls. In retrospect his choice of studying teens and sex makes perfect sense.
So glad to see he's done SO MUCH GOOD with his life.
Are my eyes failing me, or is there a 'blue to blue' connection on the guy with eight pinks around him in the larger figure? Slow night at the mall, I guess...