Obesity has become a major epidemic in the 21st century. It increases the risk of dyslipidemia, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes, which are known cardiometabolic risk factors and components of the metabolic syndrome. Although overt cardiovascular (CV) diseases such as stroke or myocardial infarction are the domain of adulthood, it is evident that the CV continuum begins very early in life. Recognition of risk factors and early stages of CV damage, at a time when these processes are still reversible, and the development of prevention strategies are major pillars in reducing CV morbidity and mortality in the general population. In this review, we will discuss the role of well-known but also novel risk factors linking obesity and increased CV risk from prenatal age to adulthood, including the role of perinatal factors, diet, nutrigenomics, and nutri-epigenetics, hyperuricemia, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and cardiorespiratory fitness. The importance of ‘tracking’ of these risk factors on adult CV health is highlighted and the economic impact of childhood obesity as well as preventive strategies are discussed.

Customer reviews posted on the web and through social media (electronic word of mouth [eWOM]) have grown in importance for tourism businesses, but most studies have examined the effects of the content of reviews, particularly negative reviews (i.e., their valence). This study considers both the valence and the volume of eWOM using a broad and varied sample of 16,680 hotels in 249 tourist areas. The study found a relationship between valence and volume, in the sense that early reviews of a business tend to be disproportionately negative. As the number of reviews increases, the valence becomes more balanced, and the negative effect is mitigated. Moreover, the study agrees with other findings that positive comments are more common than negative reviews. Whether or not hotels actively respond to negative reviews, one implication of this study is that hoteliers should try to increase the number of reviews they receive to balance the positive and negative representations of their property (in addition to investigating and correcting the causes of negative comments). Those promoting tourist destinations should follow a similar strategy of facilitating access to customer review sites to obtain a balance of negative and favorable ratings.

Spain has gone from a surplus to a shortage of medical doctors in very few years. Medium and long-term planning for health professionals has become a high priority for health authorities.

The importance of Small Area Variation Analysis for policy-making contrasts with the scarcity of work on the validity of the statistics used in these studies. Our study aims at 1) determining whether variation in utilization rates between health areas is higher than would be expected by chance, 2) estimating the statistical power of the variation statistics; and 3) evaluating the ability of different statistics to compare the variability among different procedures regardless of their rates.