Toady I saw a technical report that mobiles have a new use that can be utilized to research patterns of human movement. 手机新用途：研究人类移动模式

This new study shows that mobiles can be used to track patterns of human movement and aid in urban planning, disaster management and disease monitoring. 我们都知道手机在商业和社交上的作用很大，但是科学家还使用它来进行研究，追踪人类的移动模式。

In a paper titled “Understanding Individual Human Mobility Patterns” in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature, researchers from the US report that they monitored movements of 100,000 people following their cellphone signals and found, predictably, that “most people are creatures of habit”, inclined to move around the same few locations, occasionally given to long hops. And the active region of most people is less than 10 km inside. 大部分人的活动范围少于10公里之内。

And another interesting finding is that activities of most people are regulated by one mathematical relation called power law. 还有一个有趣的发现是大部分人的活动都是准确地根据一个称为幂次法则（power law）的数学关系来进行的。

I think this is an interesting study. But I felt that the result is normal and obvious. Before the industrial age, we were an agricultural society, all countries were like this. People had to grow food to keep them alive and therefore they tended to be born, live and die in the same area. It just wasn’t easy or safe to travel very far. Although it is easier to travel since modern transportation evolved, most people have no desire to travel the world and tend to stay in their comfort zone.

You can see the more detailed information on the following web page: “Mobiles can help track patterns of human movement, says study—Understanding human mobility patterns can aid in urban planning, disaster management and disease monitoring”.

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