ArticlePLoS computational biology2017
Tracking urban human activity from mobile phone calling patterns.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Latent brain subtypes of chronotype reveal unique behavioral and health profiles across population cohorts.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Neuropeptide dynamics coordinate layered plasticity mechanisms adaptingScience advances · 2025Article
- Multimodal population study reveals the neurobiological underpinnings of chronotype.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Relating Photoperiod and Outdoor Temperature With Sleep Architecture in Patients With Neuropsychiatric Sleep Disorders.Journal of pineal research · 2025Article
- Longitudinal Assessment of Seasonal Impacts and Depression Associations on Circadian Rhythm Using Multimodal Wearable Sensing: Retrospective Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- The rhythms of transient relationships: allocating time between weekdays and weekends.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- The origins and function of musical performance.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Using smartphone-GPS data to quantify human activity in green spaces.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Turnover in close friendships.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Morningness-eveningness assessment from mobile phone communication analysis.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The effects of seasons and weather on sleep patterns measured through longitudinal multimodal sensing.NPJ digital medicine · 2021Article
- The risk of re-identification remains high even in country-scale location datasets.Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- Article
- Link-centric analysis of variation by demographics in mobile phone communication patterns.PloS one · 2020Article
- Latitudinal trends in human primary activities: characterizing the winter day as a synchronizer.Scientific reports · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Timings of human activities are marked by circadian clocks which in turn are entrained to different environmental signals. In an urban environment the presence of artificial lighting and various social cues tend to disrupt the natural entrainment with the sunlight. However, it is not completely understood to what extent this is the case. Here we exploit the large-scale data analysis techniques to study the mobile phone calling activity of people in large cities to infer the dynamics of urban daily rhythms. From the calling patterns of about 1,000,000 users spread over different cities but lying inside the same time-zone, we show that the onset and termination of the calling activity synchronizes with the east-west progression of the sun. We also find that the onset and termination of the calling activity of users follows a yearly dynamics, varying across seasons, and that its timings are entrained to solar midnight. Furthermore, we show that the average mid-sleep time of people living in urban areas depends on the age and gender of each cohort as a result of biological and social factors.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.