C Your circle of friends may help you get a better reading on your overall health and wellness rather than just using wearable devices such as a Fitbit , according to researchers. The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, yzed what the structure of social netw o rks says about the state of health, happines s and stress. "We were interested in the topololgy ( 拓扑学 ) of the social network — what does my position within my social network predict about my health and well-being?" said Nitesh V. Chawla, a professor at the University of Notre Dame in the US. “What we found was the social network structure provides a significant improvement in predictability of wellness states of an individual over just using the data obtained from wearables, like the number of steps or heart rate , ” Chawla said . For the study, parti ci pants wore a Fit bit to capture health behavior data about walking , sleeping, heart rate and overa ll activity level. They also completed surveys and self -a ssessments of their stress, happiness and positivity. Chaw l a and his team then yzed the data with a machine lea rn ing model, alongside the characteristics of an in divid ual's social network . The study showed a strong correlation ( 相关性 ) between social netw o rk structures, heart rate, number of steps and level of act iv ity. Social network structure provided significant improvement in predicting one's health and well-being compared to just looking at health behavior data from the Fi tbit alone. For e xam ple, when social netw o rk structure is combined with the data from wearables, the machine le arn ing model achieved a 65 percent improvement in predicting h appiness. The model also achieved a 54 percent improvement in predicting one's se lf -assessed health prediction, a 55 percent improvement in predicting positive attitude and a 38 percent improvement in predicting success . " This study asserts ( 断言 ) that without social network information, we only have an incomplete view of an individual's wellness state, and to be fully predict iv e, i t is critical to be aware of the so ci al network ," Chawla sai d.