📅 Mark your calendars for our SPECIAL seminar on 23 May!

📚 In tribute to Loet Leydesdorff’s legacy, nine speakers will reflect on their collaborations with him and explore future directions in scientometrics and information science.

More information 👉 www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20...

Fantastic news! Congrats, Luca!!!

Open postdoc position at @ceu-dnds.bsky.social in Vienna in the Computational Human Dynamics Lab of @martonkarsai.bsky.social on inequalities in 15-minutes cities in collaboration with www.dut-coline.org. Check it out: careers.ceu.edu/job/Vienna-P...
@ic2s2.bsky.social @netscisociety.bsky.social

I read in Scientific American that mRNA research is threatened in the US (tinyurl.com/4evz7dah).

Our previous research found that during the 3rd COVID-19 wave in Hungary, believers of conspiracy theories were more likely to refuse mRNA vaccines.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am searching for applicants for a 3-year Momentum MSCA Fellowship at @AnetiLabs in Budapest, in the area of network science, urban data science, economic geography.
Fellowship details: momentummsca.mta.hu
Contact: anetilab.org
Application deadline: May 31.

Great opportunities for a PhD student and postdoc

📣 New paper in Nature Human Behavior @natureportfolio.bsky.social! Using large-scale mobility data, we find how businesses, amenities, and other urban places depend on each other. It reveals connections that aren’t always visible but have substantial economic impacts.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Social contagion is a powerful force.

People copy thoughts, feelings, & actions of those to whom they are connected. Understanding social network structure & function makes it possible to use social contagion to intervene in the world to improve human welfare. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 1/

Our data do not allow us to infer a causal relation. Distress, depressive symptoms, and anxiety are known to hinder social relations. Our research does not substitute experiments that can reveal causal mechanisms needed for practical applications.

Overall, the large scale of the data signals a previously undocumented correlation between the spatial diversity of social connections and mental health.

The dosage of antidepressants in subsequent years decreased more for patients who have spatially diverse networks. This latter relationship is stable after controlling for the local accessibility of antidepressants and is stronger for young individuals than for the elderly.

We find that, besides the cohesion of social networks around home, the diversity of connections to distant places is negatively correlated with the probability of antidepressant use. However, the significance of LC as a predictor of antidepressant use vanishes at high levels of SD.

Then, we proxy bonding social capital with a local cohesion (LC) indicator, which captures the tendency to participate in cohesive networks in subjects’ hometowns. We define an SD index that captures the capacity to connect diverse communities in distant towns as a proxy for bridging social capital.

Testing the correlation between network cohesion measured by the clustering coefficient and antidepressant use, we find a reversed U-shape. This result signals that both network cohesion and diversity can be important for mental health.

We link the prescription data to the iWiW online social network of 277,344 small-town residents on the individual level. This provides us an informative scale for the social network analysis of mental health.

We examine a nationwide dataset on antidepressant use in Hungary. Our prescription data do not capture undiagnosed mental problems or treatments without medication, but it does indicate depression, anxiety, or sleeping disorders on a population scale.

A vast literature has argued that cohesive networks and bonding social capital can help maintain mental balance by reducing anxiety, and depression. Due to data limitations, diverse networks have gained less attention despite their pivotal role in providing economic opportunities.

"Antidepressant use in spatial social networks"

In our new Science Advances paper, in collaboration with Gergő Tóth @nachristakis.bsky.social Anikó Bíró, we demonstrate the role of diverse networks in mental health.

Open access at:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...