Natalia Arias Ramos

José Alberto Benítez-Andrades, Natalia Arias, María Teresa García-Ordás et al.

This study shows the feasibility of an eHealth solution for tackling eating habits and physical activity in the adolescent population. The participants were children from 11 to 15 years old. An intervention was carried out on 139 students in the intervention group and 91 students in the control group, in two schools during 14 weeks. The intervention group had access to the web through a user account and a password. They were able to create friendship relationships, post comments, give likes and interact with other users, as well as receive notifications and information about nutrition and physical activity on a daily basis and get (virtual) rewards for improving their habits. The control group did not have access to any of these features. The homogeneity of the samples in terms of gender, age, body mass index and initial health-related habits was demonstrated. Pre- and post-measurements were collected through self-reports on the application website. After applying multivariate analysis of variance, a significant alteration in the age-adjusted body mass index percentile was observed in the intervention group versus the control group, as well as in the PAQ-A score and the KIDMED score. It can be concluded that eHealth interventions can help to obtain healthy habits. More research is needed to examine the effectiveness in achieving adherence to these new habits.

María Teresa García-Ordás, Natalia Arias, Carmen Benavides et al.

COVID-19 disease has affected almost every country in the world. The large number of infected people and the different mortality rates between countries has given rise to many hypotheses about the key points that make the virus so lethal in some places. In this study, the eating habits of 170 countries were evaluated in order to find correlations between these habits and mortality rates caused by COVID-19 using machine learning techniques that group the countries together according to the different distribution of fat, energy, and protein across 23 different types of food, as well as the amount ingested in kilograms. Results shown how obesity and the high consumption of fats appear in countries with the highest death rates, whereas countries with a lower rate have a higher level of cereal consumption accompanied by a lower total average intake of kilocalories.

Pilar Marqués-Sánchez, María Cristina Martínez-Fernández, José Alberto Benítez-Andrades et al.

Aim: To study the existence of subgroups by exploring the similarities between the attributes of the nodes of the groups, in relation to diet and gender and, to analyse the connectivity between groups based on aspects of similarities between them through SNA and artificial intelligence techniques. Methods: 235 students from 5 different educational centres participate in this study between March and December 2015. Data analysis carried out is divided into two blocks: social network analysis and unsupervised machine learning techniques. As for the social network analysis, the Girvan-Newman technique was applied to find the best number of cohesive groups within each of the friendship networks of the different classes analysed. Results: After applying Girvan-Newman in the three classes, the best division into clusters was respectively 2 for classroom A, 7 for classroom B and 6 for classroom C. There are significant differences between the groups and the gender and diet variables. After applying K-means using population diet as an input variable, a K-means clustering of 2 clusters for class A, 3 clusters for class B and 3 clusters for class C is obtained. Conclusion: Adolescents form subgroups within their classrooms. Subgroup cohesion is defined by the fact that nodes share similarities in aspects that influence obesity, they share attributes related to food quality and gender. The concept of homophily, related to SNA, justifies our results. Artificial intelligence techniques together with the application of the Girvan-Newman provide robustness to the structural analysis of similarities and cohesion between subgroups.