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Efficacy of the FIFA cooling break heat policy during an intermittent treadmill football simulation in hot conditions in trained males
No full textObjective To evaluate the efficacy of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) cooling break policy against alternative cooling configurations in attenuating thermal strain during simulated football in the heat. Methods 12 males (age: 27±6 years, V̇ O 2peak: 61±7 mL/kg/min) completed five 90 min intermittent treadmill football match simulations in 40°C and 41% relative humidity (32°C wet-bulb globe temperature) with different cooling configurations: regular match without cooling breaks (REG), 3 min breaks without cooling (BRK no-cool), 3 min breaks with cooling (BRK cool: current FIFA policy; chilled fluid ingestion and ice towel across neck and shoulders), 5 min extended half-time without cooling breaks (ExtHT only) and 3 min cooling breaks with 5 min ExtHT (ExtHT cool). Rectal temperature (T re), heart rate, whole-body sweat rate (WBSR) and rating of perceived exertion (RPE) were recorded. Data are presented as mean (95% CIs). Results Final T re was lower in BRK no-cool (0.20°C (0.01, 0.39), p=0.038), BRK cool (0.39°C (0.21, 0.57), p<0.001) and ExtHT cool (0.40°C (0.22, 0.58), p<0.001) than REG (39.1°C (38.8, 39.3)). Mean T re was lower in ExtHT cool (38.2°C (38.0, 38.4)) than BRK cool (38.3°C (38.1, 38.5), p=0.018), BRK no-cool and ExtHT only (38.4°C (38.2, 38.6), p<0.001) and REG (38.5°C (38.3, 38.7), p<0.001). Mean heart rate was lower during BRK cool (6 beats/min (4, 7), p<0.001) and ExtHT cool (7 beats/min (6, 8), p<0.001) compared with REG. WBSR was comparable across trials (p≥0.07) and RPE was attenuated during BRK cool (0.4 (0.1, 0.7), p=0.004) and ExtHT cool (0.5 (0.2, 0.7), p=0.002), compared with REG. Conclusion BRK cool and ExtHT cool attenuated thermal, cardiovascular and perceptual strain during a simulated football match in the heat. Additional strategies may be required in field settings or under harsher conditions.</p
Publicly available Australian hospital data on infant feeding:A review and comparative analysis of outcomes
Get PDFBackground: Breastfeeding is the optimal method of providing infant nutrition. The Baby Friendly Health Initiative (BFHI) is a global strategy to promote breastfeeding. This study aimed to explore infant feeding data in Australian hospitals and compare outcomes between BFHI and non-BFHI accredited hospitals, and between public and private hospitals. Methods: We targeted publicly available Australian public and private hospital data on breastfeeding outcomes at discharge from 2018 to 2019. We linked the data to the BFHI accredited hospitals and used t tests to compare mean breastfeeding rates and Chi square or Fisher's exact test for categorical variables. Findings: Across all Australian states and territories, only New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria (VIC) provided the publicly available target data. Breastfeeding indicators were defined differently between these states. In NSW, breastfeeding at discharge was reported as a full breastfeeding rate among live born infants (71 %) whereas in VIC, it was reported as exclusive breastfeeding rates among term babies only (79 %). Comparing public with private hospitals, the rates of full breastfeeding at discharge in NSW and exclusive breastfeeding in VIC were significantly lower among private non-BFHI accredited hospitals compared to public non-BFHI accredited hospitals. Conclusion: BFHI accreditation can be beneficial in decreasing the rates of commercial milk formula use. Consistent reinforcement of BFHI principles and implementation in both private and public hospitals is required. Regular state monitoring and national dissemination of aggregated data collected using standardised breastfeeding indicators is also essential.</p
Deconstructing transformations:Educational travellers’ cross-cultural transformative experiences
No full textTransformative travel experiences are crucial in the next normal, given their powerful implications of generating uplifting changes in travellers. These can be changes to how travellers perceive themselves or other societies. This research provides insight into the transformative experiences of educational travellers in Australia. Educational travellers, like international students, are significant contributors to the social and economic sustainability of destinations but are often understudied and neglected due to their unique positionality of being neither visitors nor migrants. Using an interpretive, phenomenological paradigm, this study uses a qualitative method to uncover, deconstruct and understand educational travellers' holistic transformative experiences. The findings reveal educational travellers' motivations and the diverse experiences that trigger transformations. The article then examines the transformative process and outcomes, highlighting how educational travellers experience a knowledge transformation, whether in their personal competencies or destination understanding, resulting in transformations to themselves (psychological) or in their attitudes towards others (social). The findings also reveal cross-cultural differences, with Asian and Hispanic educational travellers gaining more robust destination understanding and social transformations than European educational travellers. Finally, the study provides theoretical and practical insight into how educational travellers' experiences can be facilitated and how future research may expand the exploration of educational travellers’ experiences.</p
MARS:A Multiview Contrastive Approach to Human Activity Recognition from Accelerometer Sensor
No full textIn this letter, we present MARS, a novel approach, which com-bines a multiview fusion technique with contrastive loss to accurately identify human activities using accelerometer sensor data. Accelerometer sensor enables precise monitoring of human activities in diverse contexts. Our approach leverages both temporal and spectral views of accelerometer data, integrating them through an attention mechanism to enhance the overall understanding of human activities. To further improve the discriminative power of the learned representations corresponding to different activity classes, we apply a contrastive loss-based siamese network. Emprical findings confirm that MARS outperforms state-of-the-art on the harAGE dataset by a significant margin of 4.71 in unweighted average recall.</p
Comparing 2-dimensional macular pigment optical density with objective and subjective perimetry and visual acuity in age-related macular degeneration
No full textPurpose: To compare diagnostic power for different severities of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) of two-dimensional macular pigment optical densities (2D-MPOD) and spatially matched objective perimetry, with standard perimetry and best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA). Methods: The ObjectiveField Analyser (OFA) provided objective perimetry, and a Heidelberg Spectralis optical coherence tomography (OCT) measured 2D-MPOD in AMD patients, both completed twice over 0.99 ± 0.16 years. From each 2D-MPOD image, we extracted 20 regions/macula, matched to the 20 OFA stimuli/macula. For each region, we calculated 7 measures from the 2D-MPOD pixel values and correlated those with OFA sensitivities and delays. We quantified 2D-MPOD changes, the ability of 2D-MPOD and OFA to discriminate AMD stages, and the discriminatory power of Matrix perimetry and BCVA using percentage area under receiver operator characteristic plots (%AUROC). Results: In 58 eyes of 29 subjects (71.6 ± 6.3 years, 22 females), we found significant correlations between 2D-MPOD and OFA sensitivities for Age-Related Eye Disease Studies (AREDS)-3 and AREDS-4 severities. Delays showed significant correlations with AREDS-2. For AREDS-4, correlations extended across all eccentricities. Regression associated with the Bland–Altman plots showed significant changes in 2D-MPOD over the study period, especially variability measures. MPOD per-region medians discriminated AREDS-1 from AREDS-3 eyes at a %AUROC of 80.0 ± 6.3%, outperforming OFA, Matrix perimetry, and BCVA. Conclusions: MPOD changes correlated with central functional changes and significant correlations extended peripherally in later-stage AMD. Good diagnostic power for earlier-stage AMD and significant change over the study suggest that 2D-MPOD and OFA may provide effective biomarkers.</p
Impact of secondhand smoke on air quality in partially enclosed outdoor hospitality venues:a review
Get PDFBackground: Smoking is a leading cause of premature mortality and morbidity globally. The pollutants generated from smoke are not only harmful to smokers, but also to those exposed to secondhand smoke. As a result of increasingly restrictive indoor smoke-free policies in many countries, there is a tendency for tobacco smoking to move outdoors into partially enclosed settings in hospitality venues. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the impact of secondhand smoke on air quality in outdoor hospitality venues. Methods: Two electronic databases PubMed and Scopus were searched from 1 January 2010 to 30 June 2022 for studies of air quality impacts from tobacco smoking in outdoor hospitality venues. A total of 625 studies were screened and 13 studies were included in this review. Results: The majority (9 studies) of reviewed studies monitored PM2.5 concentration as an indicator of secondhand smoke. PM2.5 was reported from 10.9 µg/m3 to 91.0 µg/m3 in outdoor smoking areas, compared to 4.0 µg/m3 to 20.4 µg/m3 in outdoor control sites unaffected by smoking. Secondhand smoke can also drift into adjacent outdoor areas or infiltrate into indoor environments thus affecting air quality in spaces where smoking is not permitted. Conclusions: The reviewed studies indicated that air quality within outdoor hospitality venues where smoking is permitted is unlikely to meet current World Health Organization (WHO) ambient air quality guidelines for PM2.5. Customers and staff in outdoor hospitality venues with active smoking, and in adjacent outdoor and indoor non-smoking areas, are potentially exposed to secondhand smoke at levels exceeding WHO guidelines. Stronger smoking control policies are recommended for outdoor hospitality venues to protect the health of customers and staff from harmful secondhand smoke exposure. Prospero registration: CRD42022342417.</p
Preparedness for a first clinical placement in nursing:a descriptive qualitative study
Get PDFBackground: A first clinical placement for nursing students is a challenging period involving translation of theoretical knowledge and development of an identity within the healthcare setting; it is often a time of emotional vulnerability. It can be a pivotal moment for ambivalent nursing students to decide whether to continue their professional training. To date, student expectations prior to their first clinical placement have been explored in advance of the experience or gathered following the placement experience. However, there is a significant gap in understanding how nursing students’ perspectives about their first clinical placement might change or remain consistent following their placement experiences. Thus, the study aimed to explore first-year nursing students’ emotional responses towards and perceptions of their preparedness for their first clinical placement and to examine whether initial perceptions remain consistent or change during the placement experience. Methods: The research utilised a pre-post qualitative descriptive design. Six focus groups were undertaken before the first clinical placement (with up to four participants in each group) and follow-up individual interviews (n = 10) were undertaken towards the end of the first clinical placement with first-year entry-to-practice postgraduate nursing students. Data were analysed thematically. Results: Three main themes emerged: (1) adjusting and managing a raft of feelings, encapsulating participants’ feelings about learning in a new environment and progressing from academia to clinical practice; (2) sinking or swimming, comprising students’ expectations before their first clinical placement and how these perceptions are altered through their clinical placement experience; and (3) navigating placement, describing relationships between healthcare staff, patients, and peers. Conclusions: This unique study of first-year postgraduate entry-to-practice nursing students’ perspectives of their first clinical placement adds to the extant knowledge. By examining student experience prior to and during their first clinical placement experience, it is possible to explore the consistency and change in students’ narratives over the course of an impactful experience. Researching the narratives of nursing students embarking on their first clinical placement provides tertiary education institutions with insights into preparing students for this critical experience.</p
Analyzing the Influence of Risk Models and Investor Risk-Aversion Disparity on Portfolio Selection in Community Solar Projects:A Comparative Case Study
Get PDFThis study examines the impact of risk models and investors’ risk aversion on the selection of community solar portfolios. Various risk models to account for the volatility in the electrical power output of community solar, namely variance (Var), SemiVariance (SemiVar), mean absolute deviation (MAD), and conditional value at risk (CVaR), were considered. A statistical model based on modern portfolio theory was employed to simulate investors’ risk aversion in the context of community solar portfolio selection. The results of this study showed that the choice of risk model that aligns with investors’ risk-aversion level plays a key role in realizing more return and safeguarding against volatility in power generation. In particular, the findings of this research revealed that the CVaR model provides higher returns at the cost of greater volatility in power generation compared to other risk models. In contrast, the MAD model offered a better tradeoff between risk and return, which can appeal more to risk-averse investors. Based on the simulation results, a new approach was proposed for optimizing the portfolio selection process for investors with divergent risk-aversion levels by averaging the utility functions of investors and identifying the most probable outcome.</p
How to constitute global citizens' forums:Key selection principles
No full textOnce imagined as a theoretical possibility, global citizen deliberation is now beginning to appear in the practice of governance. How should global citizens' forums be constituted? A largely unexamined consensus on random selection as the ideal method to locate citizen participants has fractured as its limitations become more apparent. We undertake a systematic comparative examination of random selection and its alternatives, emphasizing, respectively, demographic diversity, discursive diversity, developmental participation, and affectedness. These alternatives are evaluated in terms of how well they promote inclusive and high-quality deliberation within the forum; how well they facilitate broader functions such as recommending policy decisions, providing information to policy makers on the distribution of informed global opinion, enhancing macro-level deliberation, and strengthening global discourses and publics; and how well they secure the perceived legitimacy of a forum. We show how different sorts of recruitment and representation might be combined to good effect, in the context of a proposal for a global citizens' assembly on genome editing.</p
From Tokyo through Paris to Los Angeles and beyond - Preparing athletes to face the heat of a warming world
No full textAfter Tokyo 2020 being the hottest Olympic Games on record, the 2024 Summer Olympiad will be held in Paris from July 26th to August 11th, with the Paralympic games being held from August 28th to September 8th, where it may be even hotter. In 2023, a heat wave spread across Europe with record breaking temperatures reached throughout the continent, with a peak temperature in France of 42.4 °C and in Paris of 35.4 °C. These temperatures occurred during the hottest year on record, 2023.1. However, 2024 is set to surpass that with each month of the year having already exceeded the temperatures from last year.1. Interestingly, the Olympic venues and facilities for Paris will be air-conditioning free, as the organising committee are aiming to make Paris 2024 the most sustainable games in modern history. The lack of air-conditioning and access to cooler environments, coupled with high ambient temperatures and the potential for heat waves, could detrimentally influence athlete performance and increase exertional heat illness risk.2,3 Beyond the Paris Olympics, lessons must be learned by athletes, practitioners and event organisers to allow sufficient planning and implementation time for the 2028 Summer Olympic/Paralympic games in Los Angeles