Work done in collaboration with Jose S. Andrade from Universidade Federal de Ceara, Brazil. Large cities are more productive than small ones so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they produce more CO2 as well, say physicists. See press coverage at MIT Technology Review and Arizona News. Original article: Oliveira, E.A., Andrade, J.S. & Makse, H.A. Large cities are less green. Sci. Rep. 4, 4235; DOI:10.1038/srep04235 (2014), pdf. At the same time, the science of cites shows that bigger cities have fewer suicides per capita than smaller ones. Our new study shows that residents of bigger cities are less likely to commit suicide, suggesting the lonely find solace among increased opportunity for social interaction. Computational anthropologists Melo, Moreira, Makse and Soares suggest that the kind of emotional intensity associated with suicide might dissipate more easily in big cities, where there are more people to shoulder the burden, an idea known as emotional epidemics. Put another way, suicides are essentially a social phenomenon. See full article in the Arxiv and press coverage at MIT Technology Review. See also Medical Daily, The Guardian and the piece of Olga Khazan in The Atlantic: Hell might be other people, but they might just save you from yourself. Article at nextcity.org by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow dueling on the different definitions of cities including our CCA algorithms.
