Humans
Soothing loneliness with Facebook, plus mapping crowds and making a good first impression in this week’s news
By Science News
What you see is where you go
By considering a pedestrian’s line of sight and travel speed, researchers have created a more accurate model of how people navigate crowds without bumping into each other. Most such models consider human traffic flow in terms of physics, but the point-of-view approach is more realistic, researchers in Europe argue online April 18 in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
. Collision physics does play a role when modeling superdense crowds: Coordinated behavior ceases, giving rise to turbulence. —