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Today's teachers play a critical role in preparing students for the integration of educational technologies, such as augmented reality (AR), into their lessons. It is thought that AR implementation improves collaboration, motivation, and learning outcomes. Considering this, this study aims to determine the teachers' perceptions of the benefits and obstacles of employing mobile AR applications (mAR) in their biology education, along with suggestions for practice, app developers, and policymakers. Therefore, a mixed-methods study was used to examine Austrian secondary school biology teachers' opinions. A questionnaire containing open-ended and closed-ended questions was distributed to 35 teachers. Descriptive statistics were employed to process quantitative data, whereas grounded theory was utilized to process qualitative data. According to the findings, biology teachers likely utilize mAR apps to teach about human anatomy or to identify living things (e.g., plant determination). According to the teachers, mAR can improve students' learning outcomes, motivation, and collaboration, and further their enthusiasm for learning biology. The main obstacles that teachers encounter whilst integrating mAR into their lessons are lack of technical devices, Internet issues, inconsistency with the curriculum, and questionable scientific accuracy of information. Despite the promising results, additional future studies with larger sample sizes are needed.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as superoxide radicals O2−, hydroxyl radicals OH−, and hydrogen peroxide H2O2 may have detrimental effects on marine organisms, including their integuments and visual appearances. Although some studies have described the impact of ROS on marine ecosystems and species ecology, the influence on the optical response of the integuments of marine species and on their visual appearances remains unknown. In this article, we used histology and optical characterisation to show, for the first time, that skin melanophores (melanin-containing chromophores) of the coral reef fish, Stegastes apicalis, change their shapes and fluorescent proprieties upon oxidation with H2O2 radicals. Our observations also suggest that pheomelanosomes may occur in fish integuments, where, previously, it was thought that fish melanosomes only contain eumelanin. This investigation relied on light and electron microscopy and steady-state fluorimetry, as well as time-resolved streak imaging systems. We suggest that the changes in the morphological and spectral characteristics of melanophores can be used as a marker of physiological stress induced by environmental factors such as ROS. Moreover, S. apicalis may be used as a potential model for studying the interaction between the surrounding environment and natural organisms in biologically diverse ecosystems, such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home telemonitoring has been used as a solution to support the care of individuals living with chronic disease. While effectiveness of telemonitoring have been widely studied, more research is needed to understand the perceptions among patients and clinicians in incorporating telemonitoring into their daily routine and practices. This paper presents an investigation of patients’ and clinicians’ experiences in a care augmenting telemonitoring service, their perceived impact delivered through the service, and clinicians’ perceptions on how the service was introduced in their organizations. This work was embedded in a large multi-site trial of home telemonitoring using a mixed method approach for evaluation. Interviews with clinicians involved in the study were conducted at multiple time points during the trial. Questionnaires were administered to clinicians and patients at the end of the trial. Results showed that both patients and clinicians recognized the benefits of patient empowerment through telemonitoring, and patient-clinician interactions. Results identified the needs of a dedicated telemonitoring clinical care coordinator role, guidelines that translate telemonitoring services into clinical pathways and engagement of different healthcare providers, especially general practitioners, to support the integration of telemonitoring into chronic disease management programs and long-term organizational strategic plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing video conferencing systems that are often used in telehealth services have been criticized for a number of reasons: (a) they are often too expensive to purchase and maintain, (b) they use proprietary technologies that are incompatible to each other, and (c) they require fairly skilled IT personnel to maintain the system. There is a need for less expensive, compatible, and easy-to-use video conferencing system. The web real-time communication (WebRTC) promises to deliver such a solution by enabling web browsers with real-time communications capabilities via simple JavaScript APIs. Utilizing WebRTC, users can conduct video/audio calls and data sharing through web browsers without having to purchase or download extra software. Though the promise and prospective of WebRTC have been agreed on, there have not been many cases of real life applications (in particular in telehealth) that utilizes the WebRTC. In this paper, we present our practical experience in the design and implementation of a video conferencing system for telehealth based on WebRTC. Our video conferencing system is a part of a large tele-home monitoring project that is being carried out at six locations in five different states in Australia. One of the aims of the project is to evaluate whether high-bandwidth enabled telehealth services, delivered through tele-home monitoring, can be cost effective, and improve healthcare outcomes and access to care. This paper however focuses on WebRTC-based video conferencing system which allows online meetings between remotely located care coordinators and patients at their home. We discuss the underlying issues, detailed design and implementation, and current limitations of using WebRTC in a real life application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Telehealth services based on at-home monitoring of vital signs and the administration of clinical questionnaires are being increasingly used to manage chronic disease in the community, but few statistically robust studies are available in Australia to evaluate a wide range of health and socio-economic outcomes. The objectives of this study are to use robust statistical methods to research the impact of at home telemonitoring on health care outcomes, acceptability of telemonitoring to patients, carers and clinicians and to identify workplace cultural factors and capacity for organisational change management that will impact on large scale national deployment of telehealth services. Additionally, to develop advanced modelling and data analytics tools to risk stratify patients on a daily basis to automatically identify exacerbations of their chronic conditions.Methods/design: A clinical trial is proposed at five locations in five states and territories along the Eastern Seaboard of Australia. Each site will have 25 Test patients and 50 case matched control patients. All participants will be selected based on clinical criteria of at least two hospitalisations in the previous year or four or more admissions over the last five years for a range of one or more chronic conditions. Control patients are matched according to age, sex, major diagnosis and their Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA). The Trial Design is an Intervention control study based on the Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) design.Discussion: Our preliminary data indicates that most outcome variables before and after the intervention are not stationary, and accordingly we model this behaviour using linear mixed-effects (lme) models which can flexibly model within-group correlation often present in longitudinal data with repeated measures. We expect reduced incidence of unscheduled hospitalisation as well as improvement in the management of chronically ill patients, leading to better and more cost effective care. Advanced data analytics together with clinical decision support will allow telehealth to be deployed in very large numbers nationally without placing an excessive workload on the monitoring facility or the patient's own clinicians.Trial Registration: Registered with Australian New Zealand Clinical Trial Registry on 1st April 2013. Trial ID: ACTRN12613000635763. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance evaluation of multi-target tracking algorithms is of great practical importance in the design, parameter optimization and comparison of tracking systems. The goal of performance evaluation is to measure the distance between two sets of tracks: the ground truth tracks and the set of estimated tracks. This paper proposes a mathematically rigorous metric for this purpose. The basis of the proposed distance measure is the recently formulated consistent metric for performance evaluation of multi-target filters, referred to as the OSPA metric. Multi-target filters sequentially estimate the number of targets and their position in the state space. The OSPA metric is therefore defined on the space of finite sets of vectors. The distinction between filtering and tracking is that tracking algorithms output tracks and a track represents a labeled temporal sequence of state estimates, associated with the same target. The metric proposed in this paper is therefore defined on the space of finite sets of tracks and incorporates the labeling error. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed metric behaves in a manner consistent with our expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

• Infrasound is not audible to residents with normal hearing who live at distances greater than 1 km from a wind farm. • Amplitude modulated (AM) tones occurring at low frequencies may be perceived up to distances of 9 km. • These results support that AM tones could be the main reason behind WFN complaints at long-range locations. Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sources of renewable energy in Australia. However, wind farm noise (WFN) continues to attract complaints from residents living near wind farms, including from residents who live relatively long-distances (> 1 km) away. Here we use a computational approach to assess the audibility of infrasound and amplitude modulated (AM) tones at long-range locations. Our approach considers the uncertainty associated with WFN measurements and human hearing variability. We show that infrasound is not audible to residents with normal hearing who live at distances greater than 1 km from a wind farm, but the measurements at one wind farm showed that AM tones occurring at low frequencies may be perceived up to distances of 9 km. Although these results from South Australian wind farms may not be reflective of other wind farm settings, these results support that AM tones could be the main reason behind WFN complaints at long-range locations, and thus warrant further attention to help make wind farms more acceptable to impacted residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study Objectives: Carefully controlled studies of wind turbine noise (WTN) and sleep are lacking, despite anecdotal complaints from some residents in wind farm areas and known detrimental effects of other noises on sleep. This laboratory-based study investigated the impact of overnight WTN exposure on objective and self-reported sleep outcomes., Methods: Sixty-eight participants (38 females) aged (mean ± SD) 49.2 ± 19.5 were recruited from four groups; N = 14, living <10 km from a wind farm and reporting WTN related sleep disruption; N = 18, living <10 km from a wind farm and reporting no WTN sleep disruption; N = 18, reporting road traffic noise-related sleep disruption; and N = 18 control participants living in a quiet rural area. All participants underwent in-laboratory polysomnography during four full-night noise exposure conditions in random order: a quiet control night (19 dB(A) background laboratory noise), continuous WTN (25 dB(A)) throughout the night; WTN (25 dB(A)) only during periods of established sleep; and WTN (25 dB(A)) only during periods of wake or light N1 sleep. Group, noise condition, and interaction effects on measures of sleep quantity and quality were examined via linear mixed model analyses., Results: There were no significant noise condition or group-by-noise condition interaction effects on polysomnographic or sleep diary determined sleep outcomes (all ps > .05)., Conclusions: These results do not support that WTN at 25 dB(A) impacts sleep outcomes in participants with or without prior WTN exposure or self-reported habitual noise-related sleep disruption. These findings do not rule out effects at higher noise exposure levels or potential effects of WTN on more sensitive markers of sleep disruption., Clinical Trial Registration: ACTRN12619000501145, UTN U1111-1229-6126. Establishing the physiological and sleep disruption characteristics of noise disturbances in sleep. https://www.anzctr.org.au/. This study was prospectively registered on the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trial Registry., (© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Sleep Research Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

The effect of height on pollen concentration is not well documented and little is known about the near-ground vertical profile of airborne pollen. This is important as most measuring stations are on roofs, but patient exposure is at ground level. Our study used a big data approach to estimate the near-ground vertical profile of pollen concentrations based on a global study of paired stations located at different heights. We analyzed paired sampling stations located at different heights between 1.5 and 50 m above ground level (AGL). This provided pollen data from 59 Hirst-type volumetric traps from 25 different areas, mainly in Europe, but also covering North America and Australia, resulting in about 2,000,000 daily pollen concentrations analyzed. The daily ratio of the amounts of pollen from different heights per location was used, and the values of the lower station were divided by the higher station. The lower station of paired traps recorded more pollen than the higher trap. However, while the effect of height on pollen concentration was clear, it was also limited (average ratio 1.3, range 0.7-2.2). The standard deviation of the pollen ratio was highly variable when the lower station was located close to the ground level (below 10 m AGL). We show that pollen concentrations measured at >10 m are representative for background near-ground levels., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

This paper aims to present findings on seasonal variation in a recently completed Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) national trial of home telemonitoring of patients with chronic conditions, carried out at five locations along the east coast of Australia. Patients in this trial were selected from a list of eligible patients living with a range of chronic conditions. Each test patient was case matched with at least one control patient. A total of 114 test patients and 173 control patients were available in this trial. However, of the 287 patients, we only considered subjects who had one or more admissions in the years 2010-2012. Three different groups were analyzed because of substantially different climates, i.e., Queensland (QLD), Australian Capital Territory & Victoria (ACT + VIC), and Tasmania (TAS). Time series data were analyzed using linear regression for a period of 3 years before the intervention in order to obtain an average seasonal variation pattern.

Goal: To identify any major factors that could affect patients' perceptions of a Home Telecare Management System (HTMS) and use the findings to contribute to development of a theoretical framework for patient acceptance of HTMS., Materials and Methods: Ten Focus Group Interviews (FGIs) were conducted with patients suffering from congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), or both, from seven different ethnic groups in Sydney. Six key discussion points were used to conduct the FGIs. The participants were shown a video demonstrating the HTMS and its operation, followed by the demonstration of an HTMS prototype. The participants, who had no prior experience with the HTMS, were then asked questions to access their perceptions in potentially real situations. The discussions were audio-taped and content analysis performed., Results: Four major themes and 16 sub-themes were identified. The themes were: intention to use the HTMS, the impact of the HTMS on patients' health management, concerns associated with using the HTMS, and the impact of the HTMS on healthcare services., Conclusion: Most participants perceived the system as a useful and convenient mode of health care delivery, expressed positive attitudes toward the HTMS and expressed intent to use the system. However, there were concerns centred on the issues of cost, ease of use, clinical support, low self-efficacy and anxiety related to the use of the HTMS. The findings of this study suggest that HTMS self-efficacy and anxiety are likely to be important constructs in patients' acceptance of home telecare. Therefore, we propose these two factors be included in future HTMS acceptance models. Also it is suggested that in order to develop training programs for patients to use HTMS, tailored training components should aim to reduce 'HTMS anxiety' and improve 'HTMS self-efficacy'. Participants agreed that the HTMS would save cost and time by reducing hospital admissions, emergency department and medical practitioner visits and associated travel. Participants generally agreed that the HTMS could inform patients of their health conditions, thus promoting active participation in their health management and empowering them to perform better self-care. Also, they agreed that the HTMS could improve their health management by their doctors by providing more accurate and up-to-date information, to help them make better decisions. They suggested that the HTMS could have a preventative role in terms of providing early warning when their health conditions were deteriorating, which could lead to on-time appropriate interventions. The latter may result in reducing the use of emergency services and hospital admissions.

Monitoring the occupancy pattern of elderly people can reveal changing trends in their health status. In this paper, we investigate the spatial characteristics of a pyro-electric infrared sensor at different walking speeds at different distances to design and develop a low cost and low power unobtrusive monitoring system. The pyro-electric infrared sensor has high performance for infrared radiation detection at room temperature. The choice of pyro-electric infrared sensor for the design of unobtrusive activity monitoring system is due to the fact that they are inexpensive and consume very low power. As these sensors are passive and are wall mounted, the system is relatively unobtrusive. An occupancy monitoring system using ZigBee wireless technology and infrared sensors has been developed by Biomedical System Laboratory at university of New South Wales, Australia. The analog signal from the sensor is proportional to the surface temperature, velocity of movement and the distance of the object from the sensor. Experimental results show that the sensor output is non uniform at different distances and at different angles for different walking speeds.

In response to an extended user needs analysis, a home telecare system designed for the management of patients with chronic disease was adapted for use in residential aged care facilities (RACFs). The system architecture and hardware and software components are described for both the client- and server-side. The client-side includes medication dispensing, scheduled clinical measurements and questionnaire delivery. The server-side supports Web-based administrative tools for scheduling and medications management, as well as automated reporting functions. A brief discussion on a trial of the system in five different RACFs focuses on how clinical information technology can support and improve care standards and deliver better health outcomes for residents in Australian aged care homes.

Information and communications technology (ICT) is increasingly being used in management of chronic illness to facilitate shared services (virtual health networks and electronic health records), knowledge management (care rules and protocols, scheduling, information directories), as well as consumer-based health education and evidence-based clinical protocols. Common applications of ICT include home monitoring of vital signs for patients with chronic disease, as well as replacing home visits by nurses in person with telemedicine videophone consultations. A patient-managed Home Telecare System with integrated clinical signs monitoring, automated scheduling and medication reminders, as well as access to health education and daily logs, is presented as an example of ICT use for chronic disease self-management. A clinical case study demonstrates how early identification of adverse trends in clinical signs recorded in the home can either avoid hospital readmission or reduce the length of hospital stay.