Interdisciplinary studies articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Contact patterns influence the spread of infectious diseases, but mathematical models of epidemics typically only account for age differences in contacts. Here, the authors investigate the importance of other sociodemographic characteristics in shaping contact patterns and vaccine uptake using survey data from Hungary.

    • Adriana Manna
    • , Júlia Koltai
    •  & Márton Karsai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traders of financial options bet that firms’ stock prices will be affected by forecasts of seasonal climate produced by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Firms are exposed throughout the economy, and traders spend more to hedge the news from more skillful forecasts

    • Derek Lemoine
    •  & Sarah Kapnick

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using large-scale mobility data, the authors examine how the quality of food in mobile environments away from home affects food choice.

    • Bernardo García Bulle Bueno
    • , Abigail L. Horn
    •  & Esteban Moro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Xu and colleagues find that the average trophic level of aquatic food items in the human diet is declining (from 3.42 to 3.18) because of the considerable increase in low-trophic level aquaculture species output relative to that of capture fisheries since 1976. Additionally they find that trade has contributed to increasing the availability and trophic level of aquatic foods in >60% of the world’s countries.

    • Kangshun Zhao
    • , Steven D. Gaines
    •  & Jun Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Link prediction in temporal networks is relevant for many real-world systems, however, current approaches are usually characterized by high computational costs. The authors propose a temporal link prediction framework based on the sequential stacking of static network features, for improved computational speed, appropriate for temporal networks with completely unobserved or partially observed target layers.

    • Xie He
    • , Amir Ghasemian
    •  & Peter J. Mucha

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Implicit biases are influenced by social contexts which, in cities, are shaped by the constraints of urban infrastructure networks. Here the authors show that more populous, more diverse, and less segregated cities are less biased and that this is predicted by a complex systems model.

    • Andrew J. Stier
    • , Sina Sajjadi
    •  & Marc G. Berman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using historical data across the U.S., the authors find that population declines are associated with flood exposure. Projecting this relationship to 2053, the authors find that flood risk may result in 7% lower growth than otherwise expected.

    • Evelyn G. Shu
    • , Jeremy R. Porter
    •  & Edward Kearns

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Novel indicators of infectious disease prevalence could improve real-time surveillance and support healthcare planning. Here, the authors show that sales data for non-prescription medications from a UK high street retailer can improve the accuracy of models forecasting mortality from respiratory infections.

    • Elizabeth Dolan
    • , James Goulding
    •  & Laila J. Tata

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Open science practices are becoming more common in the social sciences, but there is limited data on their popularity and prevalence. Here, using survey data, the authors provide evidence that levels of adoption are relatively high and underestimated by many in the field.

    • Joel Ferguson
    • , Rebecca Littman
    •  & John-Henry Pezzuto

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors conduct a multidisciplinary study of human-great ape viral sharing in Cameroon and a European zoo, finding that environmental co-use enables more enteric virome sharing, virome convergence, and adenovirus and enterovirus sharing between Cameroonian humans and apes.

    • Victor Narat
    • , Maud Salmona
    •  & Tamara Giles-Vernick

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Global COVID-19 vaccine distribution has been inequitable. In this mathematical modelling study, the authors estimate the proportion of deaths that could have been averted in twenty low- and lower-middle-income countries if vaccines had been more widely available early in the pandemic.

    • Nicolò Gozzi
    • , Matteo Chinazzi
    •  & Alessandro Vespignani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A more equitable global distribution of vaccines can benefit the world, while a multilateral benefit-sharing instrument needs to be developed to remove some of the disincentives for early equitable vaccines distribution globally.

    • Daoping Wang
    • , Ottar N. Bjørnstad
    •  & Nils C. Stenseth

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    This Comment piece summarises current challenges regarding routine vaccine uptake in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and provides recommendations on how to increase uptake. To implement these recommendations, the article points to evidence-based resources that can support health-care workers, policy makers and communicators.

    • Cornelia Betsch
    • , Philipp Schmid
    •  & Amanda Garrison

  • Article
    | Open Access

    For many AI systems, it is hard to interpret how they make decisions. Here, the authors show that non-experts value interpretability in AI, especially for decisions involving high stakes and scarce resources, but they sacrifice AI interpretability when it trades off against AI accuracy.

    • Anne-Marie Nussberger
    • , Lan Luo
    •  & M. J. Crockett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most of the intensive human activities usually occur in lowlands. Here the authors report that human activity expansions also were widely distributed in Asian highlands in the 21st century and held dual effects, which provides new insights for regional human activity expansions.

    • Chao Yang
    • , Huizeng Liu
    •  & Guofeng Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Intergenerational preconditions and historical conferment of opportunity play a role in social mobility. This study considers the geography of relative deprivation to show how different family groups across Great Britain experience different intergenerational outcomes.

    • Paul A. Longley
    • , Justin van Dijk
    •  & Tian Lan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influences the weather around the world and, therefore, has strong impacts on society. Here, the authors show that ENSO is associated with child nutrition in many countries, with warmer El Niño conditions leading to more child undernutrition in large parts of the developing world.

    • Jesse K. Anttila-Hughes
    • , Amir S. Jina
    •  & Gordon C. McCord

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scientific revolutions have famously inspired scientists and innovation but large-scale analyses of scientific revolutions in modern science are rare. Here, the authors investigate one possible factor connected with a topic’s extraordinary growth—scientific prizes.

    • Ching Jin
    • , Yifang Ma
    •  & Brian Uzzi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Despite their ubiquitous nature across a wide range of creative domains, it remains unclear if there is any regularity underlying the beginning of successful periods in a career. Here, the authors develop computational methods to trace the career outputs of artists, film directors, and scientists and explore how they move in their creative space along their career trajectory.

    • Lu Liu
    • , Nima Dehmamy
    •  & Dashun Wang

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Globalisation supports the clustering of critical infrastructure systems, sometimes in proximity to lower-magnitude (VEI 3–6) volcanic centres. In this emerging risk landscape, moderate volcanic eruptions might have cascading, catastrophic effects. Risk assessments ought to be considered in this light.

    • Lara Mani
    • , Asaf Tzachor
    •  & Paul Cole

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent technological, social, and educational changes are profoundly impacting our work, but what makes labour markets resilient to those labour shocks? Here, the authors show that labour markets resemble ecological systems whose resilience depends critically on the network of skill similarities between different jobs.

    • Esteban Moro
    • , Morgan R. Frank
    •  & Iyad Rahwan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Human perceptual and cognitive abilities are limited resources and consequently cheaply available information translates into hypercompetition for rewarding outcomes. Here the authors show, with empirical analysis and an ecological model, that actors-memes ecosystems evolve towards a narrow set of emergent, natural network patterns.

    • María J. Palazzi
    • , Albert Solé-Ribalta
    •  & Javier Borge-Holthoefer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tropical cyclones can cause severe damage and can thus have devastating impacts on societies. Here, the authors use Medicare data to show that tropical cyclone exposure in the United States is associated with increased hospitalization rates for older adults from many different acute causes.

    • Robbie M. Parks
    • , G. Brooke Anderson
    •  & Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Not much is known about the joint relationships between social network structure, urban geography, and inequality. Here, the authors analyze an online social network and find that the fragmentation of social networks is significantly higher in towns in which residential neighborhoods are divided by physical barriers such as rivers and railroads.

    • Gergő Tóth
    • , Johannes Wachs
    •  & Balázs Lengyel

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Synthetic biology engineering principles enable two-way communication between living and inanimate substrates. Here the authors consider the development of this bio-informational exchange and propose cyber-physical architectures and applications.

    • Thomas A. Dixon
    • , Thomas C. Williams
    •  & Isak S. Pretorius

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Marine aquaculture is widely proposed as compatible with ocean sustainability, biodiversity conservation, and human nutrition goals. In this Perspective, Belton and colleagues dispute the empirical validity of such claims and contend that the potential of marine aquaculture has been much exaggerated.

    • Ben Belton
    • , David C. Little
    •  & Shakuntala H. Thilsted

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Previous research on the importance of prosociality is based on observations from WEIRD societies, questioning the generalizability of these findings. Here the authors present a global investigation of the relation between prosociality and labor market success and generalize the positive relation to a wide geographical context.

    • Fabian Kosse
    •  & Michela M. Tincani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The systemic risk of real-world financial networks is understudied. Here the authors focused on the guarantee network among Chinese firms and found that the global financial crisis during 2007-2008 and economic policies in the aftermath had significant influence on the evolution of guarantee network structure.

    • Yingli Wang
    • , Qingpeng Zhang
    •  & Xiaoguang Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about decentralized institutions that could facilitate cooperation for the sake of future generations. Here, the authors show that allowing for peer punishment within a generation is only partially successful in facilitating cooperation for the sake of later generations.

    • Johannes Lohse
    •  & Israel Waichman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phenomena like imitation, herding and positive feedbacks in the complex financial markets characterize the emergence of endogenous instabilities, which however is still understudied. Here the authors show that the graph-based approach is helpful to timely recognize phases of increasing instability that can drive the system to a new market configuration.

    • Alessandro Spelta
    • , Andrea Flori
    •  & Fabio Pammolli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chinese government has implemented the air pollution control measure-the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan in 2013, whose effects have not been fully studied. Here the authors show that from 2013 to 2017, the plan has achieved substantial public health benefits.

    • Huanbi Yue
    • , Chunyang He
    •  & Brett A. Bryan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The partial effects of saving rate changes on CO2 emissions remain unclear. Here the authors found that the increase in saving rates of China has led to increments of global industrial CO2 emissions by 189 million tonnes (Mt) during 2007-2012, while global CO2 emissions would be reduced by 186 Mt if the saving rates of China decreased by 15 percentage points.

    • Chen Lin
    • , Jianchuan Qi
    •  & Zhifeng Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Individuals within social networks rarely observe the network as a whole; rather, their observations are limited to their social circles. Here we show that network structure can distort observations, making a trait appear far more common within many social circles than it is in the network as a whole.

    • Nazanin Alipourfard
    • , Buddhika Nettasinghe
    •  & Kristina Lerman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Robust estimates of either urban expansion worldwide or the effects of such phenomenon on terrestrial net primary productivity (NPP) are lacking. Here the authors used the new dataset of global land use to show that the global urban areas expanded largely between 2000 and 2010, which in turn reduced terrestrial NPP globally.

    • Xiaoping Liu
    • , Fengsong Pei
    •  & Zhu Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    By examining publication records of scientists from four disciplines, the authors show that coauthoring a paper with a top-cited scientist early in one's career predicts lasting increases in career success, especially for researchers affiliated with less prestigious institutions.

    • Weihua Li
    • , Tomaso Aste
    •  & Giacomo Livan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How do socially polarized systems change and how does a change in polarization relate to performance? Using instant messaging data and performance records from day traders, the authors find that certain relations are prone to balance and that balance is associated with better trading decisions.

    • Omid Askarisichani
    • , Jacqueline Ng Lane
    •  & Brian Uzzi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Failure to account for heterogeneity in TB risk can mislead model-based evaluation of proposed interventions. Here, the authors introduce a metric to estimate the distribution of risk in populations from routinely collected data and find that variation in infection acquisition is the most impactful.

    • M. Gabriela M. Gomes
    • , Juliane F. Oliveira
    •  & Christian Lienhardt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    For most actors sustained productivity defines success. Here the authors study the careers of actors and identify a "rich-get-richer" mechanism with respect to productivity, the emergence of hot streaks and the presence of gender bias, and are able to predict whether the most productive year of an actor is yet to come.

    • Oliver E. Williams
    • , Lucas Lacasa
    •  & Vito Latora

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Could similar ecological and biogeographic drivers explain the distributions of biological diversity and human cultural diversity? The authors explore ecological correlates of human language diversity, finding strong support for a role of high year-round productivity but less support for landscape features.

    • Xia Hua
    • , Simon J. Greenhill
    •  & Lindell Bromham

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In areas with two or more spoken languages, linguistic shift may occur as speakers of one language switch to the other. Here, the authors show that linguistic shift is faster in rural compared to urban regions of Galicia, a bilingual community in Spain, due to the competition of internal complexity and network relevance.

    • Mariamo Mussa Juane
    • , Luis F. Seoane
    •  & Jorge Mira

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