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Background: Concern has been raised over the injury risk to school Rugby union (Rugby) players and the potential long-term health consequences. Despite the increase in studies for this cohort, the influence of playing position on injury incidence and presentation is unclear. Purpose: To describe the incidence, nature and severity of match injuries for school Rugby in Ireland overall, and as a function of playing position. Study Design: Prospective cohort study. Methods: Data were collected from 15 male (aged 16-19 years) school Senior Cup teams across 2 seasons. In total, 339 players participated in season 1, whereas 326 players participated in season 2. Injury data were recorded onto a bespoke online platform. Match exposure was also recorded. Results: The incidence rate of match injuries (24-hour time loss) was 53.6 per 1000 hours. Across both seasons, 6810 days were lost from play due to injury. Forwards (65.4 per 1000 hours) sustained significantly more ( P < 0.05) injuries than backs (40.5 per 1000 hours). The head, shoulder, knee, and ankle were the most common injured body regions; however, forwards sustained significantly more ( P < 0.05) head and shoulder injuries than backs. The tackle was responsible for the majority of injuries in both groups. The highest proportion of injuries occurred during the third quarter. Conclusion: Clear differences in injury presentation and incidence were evident when comparing forwards versus backs. The high rate of head and shoulder injuries in the forwards suggest the need for more targeted injury-prevention strategies and further research on education and laws around the tackle event. The spike of injuries in the third quarter suggests that fatigue or inadequate half-time warm-up may be a contributing factor warranting further exploration. Clinical Relevance: This study demonstrates clear differences in injury presentation according to playing position in school Rugby and highlights the need for a more tailored approach to the design and implementation of injury-prevention strategies. Level of Evidence: Level 3

The emerging progress of esports lacks the approaches for ensuring high-quality analytics and training in professional and amateur esports teams. In this paper, we demonstrated the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) approach in the esports domain, particularly in simulated racing. To achieve this, we gathered a variety of feature-rich telemetry data from several web sources that was captured through MoTec telemetry software and the ACC simulated racing game. We performed a number of analyses using ML algorithms to classify the laps into the performance levels, evaluating driving behaviors along these performance levels, and finally defined a prediction model highlighting the channels/features that have significant impact on the driver performance. To identify the optimal feature set, three feature selection algorithms, i.e., the Support Vector Machine (SVM), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) and Random Forest (RF) have been applied where out of 84 features, a subset of 10 features has been selected as the best feature subset. For the classification, XGBoost outperformed RF and SVM with the highest accuracy score among the other evaluated models. The study highlights the promising use of AI to categorize sim racers according to their technical-tactical behaviour, enhancing sim racing knowledge and know how.

peer-reviewed Esports has experienced unprecedented growth recently and with it, the proposition for aspiring gamers to pursue a professional esport career has become increasingly attractive. “Esports” are video-games played competitively (and often professionally) through the means of cyberspace (Campbell et al., 2018) and are an important fixture in the overall gaming industry, which is estimated to be worth more than 120 billion US$ (Takahashi, 2020). The exponential rise in popularity has led to the inclusion of two esports (Rocket League and Street Fighter V) in an International Olympics Council sanctioned tournament before the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games (Martinello, 2019). Despite the appeal of esports as a profession, aspiring esport athletes face many obstacles that can threaten their prospective career timespan, and present post-career difficulties. To date, very limited formal exploration exists into this challenge; thus, this grand field challenge aims to explore the difficulties faced by esport athletes. It also highlights the unique skillsets and experience acquired during a professional esports career, and the value these could offer to alternate high performance professions.

This study set out for the first time to identify whether gamers of low, intermediate, and elite skill level in a prominent esports game, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, demonstrated increasingly superior performance on a test of a specific cognitive skill (cognitive inhibition). Here we tested low, intermediate, and high ranked gamers and compared their performance on a color-word Stroop Task and also compared the performance of players in each gaming rank group to non-gamers. Contrary to our hypothesis, the Stroop Task did not differentiate significantly gamers of varying expertise. Although, we found that when considering both accuracy and response times, elite gamers performed significantly better than both intermediate and low ranked gamers on the simple choice reaction time condition and both elite and novice gamers performed significantly better than intermediate ranked gamers on the incongruent condition (a measure of cognitive inhibitory ability).

Understanding the neurological changes that take place as expertise develops is a central topic in both cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Here, we argue that video games, despite previous misconceptions, are an excellent model environment from which one can examine the development of neurocognitive expertise. Of particular relevance we argue is the area of esports, which encompass video/computer games played within the medium of cyberspace competitively and increasingly professionally. The massive scale of participation, controlled environments, structured skill ratings, pervasive social nature, and large repositories of data, together make esports potentially a very fruitful area for scientific research to increase our understanding of a new era of cognitive athletes. This chapter reviews the progress and prospects for esports research with a particular focus on the effects of gaming on neurocognition. We also outline some exciting new avenues and techniques from which we hope to further elucidate the benefits of esports on the brain.

Motivation has been the subject of much research in the sport psychology literature, whereas athlete mental health has received limited attention. Motivational complexities in elite sport are somewhat reflected in the mental health literature, where there is evidence for both protective and risk factors for athletes. Notably, few studies have linked motivation to mental health. Therefore, the key objective of this study was to test four mental health outcomes in the motivational sequence posited by the Hierarchical Model of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: motivational climate → basic psychological needs → motivation → mental health outcomes. Elite team-sport athletes (140 females, 75 males) completed seven psychometric inventories of motivation-related and mental health variables. Overall, the athletes reported positive motivational patterns, with autonomous motivation and task climate being more prevalent than their less adaptive counterparts. Elevated depressive symptoms and poor sleep quality affected nearly half of the cohort. Structural equation modeling supported pathways between motivational climate, basic needs, motivation, and mood, depressive symptoms, sleep quality, and trait anxiety. Specifically, a task climate was positively associated with the three basic psychological needs, and an ego climate was positively associated with competence. Autonomy and relatedness had positive and negative associations with autonomous and controlled forms of motivation, respectively. Controlled motivation regulations were positively associated with the four mental health outcomes. Integrated regulation had a negative association with anxiety, and intrinsic regulation had a positive association with depressive symptoms. These findings highlight the complexities of and interrelations between motivation and mental health among athletes, and support the importance of considering mental health as an outcome of motivation.

Can scientists self-regulate effectively? The controversial select agent regulations, the recent implementation of U.S. dual-use research of concern policies, the funding moratorium on gain of function experiments, and the 2014 incidents at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all seem to suggest that the answer is a resounding "no." Yet history tells us that it is feasible. In this comprehensive history of the first iteration of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Recombinant DNA Guidelines, we examine the principles, thoughts, and behaviors that resulted in successful self-regulation of scientific research for the past four decades and how engagement of scientists made it possible. Starting with a willingness on the part of researchers all over the world to pause exciting experiments, and with a genuine concern for public health, the individuals involved demonstrated unprecedented (and thus far never replicated) openness to dialogue with others from different disciplines, the media, and the public.

The goal of this project is to identify and characterize the types of incidents, accidents, exposures, and subsequent infections involving recombinant DNA materials that have occurred since the inception of biotechnology and oversight by NIH from June 1976 through December 31, 2010, a period spanning approximately 35 years of recombinant DNA research. A total of 197 records were identified by NIH/OBA describing incidents, accidents, exposures, or laboratory-acquired infections (LAIs) from 88 NIH-funded institutions reporting. These data were provided over a 3-year period from NIH through several FOIA requests and included all documentation in support of notification to NIH through resolution by the entity of a laboratory incident, accident, exposure, or LAI and constituted 3,045 pages of documentation. These data were collected using the REDCap data collection tool. A number of descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were completed. One hundred and thirty-nine (139) occupational exposures were re...

peer-reviewed Purpose: Burnout has been shown to develop due to chronic stress or distress, which has negative implications for both physical and mental health and well-being. Burnout research originated in the “caring-professions.” However, there is a paucity of research which has focused specifically on how job demands, resources and personal characteristics affect burnout among practitioner psychologists. Methods: This PRISMA review (Moher et al., 2009) involved searches of key databases (i.e., Web of Knowledge, SCOPUS and Google Scholar) for articles published prior to 1st January, 2017. Articles concerning the prevalence and cause(s) of burnout in applied psychologists, that were published in the English language were included. Both quantitative and qualitative investigative studies were included in the review. The Crowe Critical Appraisal Tool (CCAT; Crowe, 2013) was used to appraise the quality of each paper included in this review. An inductive content analysis approach (Thomas, 2006) was subsequently conducted in order to identify the developing themes from the data. Results: The systematic review comprised 29 papers. The most commonly cited dimension of burnout by applied psychologists was emotional exhaustion (34.48% of papers). Atheoretical approaches were common among the published articles on burnout among applied psychologists.Workload and work setting are the most common job demands and factors that contribute to burnout among applied psychologists, with the resources and personal characteristics of research are age and experience, and sex the most commonly focused upon within the literature. Conclusions: The results of the current review offers evidence that burnout is a concern for those working in the delivery of psychological interventions. Emotional exhaustion is themost commonly reported dimension of burnout, with job and personal characteristics and resources also playing important roles in the development of burnout in the mental health care profession. Finally, tentative recommendations for those within the field of applied psychology

Motivation is widely-researched, in both sport psychology and other fields. As rigorous measurement is essential to understanding this latent construct, a critical appraisal of measurement instruments is needed. Thus, the purpose of this review was to evaluate the six most highly cited motivation measures in sport. Peer-reviewed articles published prior to August 2016 were searched to identify the six most highly cited motivation questionnaires in sport: Sport Motivation Scale (SMS), Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI), Situational Motivational Scale (SIMS), Perceptions of Success Questionnaire (POSQ), Behavioural Regulation in Sport Questionnaire (BRSQ), and Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ). The questionnaires were then evaluated and discussed in four sections: Development, Reliability, Correlates, and Summary. Bibliometric data were also calculated (average weighted impact factor) and assessed (e.g., citations per year) to evaluate the impact of the use of each questionnaire. Despite some variance in their psychometric properties, conceptualization, structure, and utility, the six questionnaires are psychometrically strong instruments for quantifying motivation that are widely supported in the literature. Bibliometric analyses suggested that the IMI ranks first and the SMS ranks sixth according to the average weighted impact factors of their original publications. Consideration of each questionnaire's psychometric strengths/limitations, and conceptualization of motivation in the context of specific research questions should guide researchers in selecting the most appropriate instrument to measure motivation in sport. The average weighted impact factor of each questionnaire is a useful value to consider as well. With these points in mind, recommendations are provided.

The US government (USG) has not fully implemented a robust system to evaluate dual-use research (DUR). In particular, the USG has failed to effectively fund, support, and expand the role of the local Institutional Biosafety Committee in the oversight of DUR and in the changing scientific landscape; a comprehensive education program for all in life sciences research with regard to the dual-use dilemma has not been forthcoming; and finally, there has been no systematic evaluation of the impact of USG policy, regulations, and guidance on an institution’s cost structure and on scientific discovery. We detail our judgments on current USG DUR policy and provide recommendations for future oversight of DUR from our perspective as senior administrators and laboratory scientists charged with the responsibility of conducting life-sciences research in an era of increasing regulatory requirements and decreasing federal support.

The past decade has seen a significant rise in research on high-consequence human and animal pathogens, many now known as "select agents." While physical security around these agents is tightly regulated, information security standards are still lagging. The understanding of the threats unique to the academic and research environment is still evolving, in part due to poor communication between the various stakeholders. Perhaps as a result, information security guidelines published by select agent regulators lack the critical details and directives needed to achieve even the lowest security level of the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). While only government agencies are currently required to abide by the provisions of FISMA (unless specified as preconditions for obtaining government grants or contracts--still a relatively rare or narrowly scoped occurrence), the same strategies were recently recommended by executive order for others. We propose that information security guidelines for select agent research be updated to promulgate and detail FISMA standards and processes and that the latter be ultimately incorporated into select agent regulations. We also suggest that information security in academic and research institutions would greatly benefit from active efforts to improve communication among the biosecurity, security, and information technology communities, and from a secure venue for exchange of timely information on emerging threats and solutions in the research environment.

An intermolecular Morita–Baylis–Hillman (MBH) reaction using dicobalthexacarbonyl complexed acetylenic acetals as the electrophile is reported. Employing BF3–OEt2 as the Lewis acid with a sulfide as the Lewis base MBH adducts were obtained.

The possible enhancement of anti-influenza A virus memory cytotoxic T cell (CTL) responses to inactivated influenza virus vaccine by coadministration of intranasal live attenuated influenza A virus vaccine was investigated. Fifty elderly nursing home residents received inactivated trivalent influenza virus vaccine intramuscularly and simultaneously were randomly assigned to receive either bivalent live attenuated influenza A virus vaccine or saline placebo intranasally in a blinded fashion. A larger proportion of volunteers who received live attenuated virus vaccine than of those who received placebo experienced a postvaccination rise in anti-influenza A virus CTL activity (15 of 23 vs. 8 of 24 ; P

Treatment of Co-complexes (I) with BF3·OEt2 generates stabilized cationic intermediates which react with activated alkenes (II) to provide coupling products (III) after decomplexation.