Interesting

Wow, Kent just told me about an article he read in Time magazine about American teen sexual networks and potential disease transmission. We looked up the paper for it and it has a diagram of the network they found at some random school, Jefferson High. The results are pretty interesting. The graph shows relationships over an 18 month period, which are likely to have involved an 'exchange of fluids' as the authors put it. Time is suppressed in the diagram.



How weird is it that there is a giant connected component? Makes you think doesn't it. They only studied the one school so there is no way to say how representative of schools in general it is but it's interesting just the same.
The reference (for those who have access to such things) is:

Chains of Affection: The Structure of Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Networks
Peter S. Bearman, James Moody, and Katherine Stovel
American Journal of Sociology.
Volume 110, Issue 1, Page 44–91, Jul 2004

Oh, actually I found a link so anyone interested can read it:
http://www.sociology.columbia.edu/pdf-files/bearmanarticle.pdf