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Research Integrity Advisors are used in Australia to provide impartial guidance to researchers who have questions about any aspect of responsible research practice. Every Australian institution conducting research must provide access to trained advisors. This national policy could be an important part of creating a safe environment for discussing research integrity issues and thus resolving issues. We conducted the first formal study of advisors, using a census of every Australian advisor to discover their workload and attitudes to their role. We estimated there are 739 advisors nationally. We received responses to our questions from 192. Most advisors had a very light workload, with an median of just 0.5 days per month. Thirteen percent of advisors had not received any training, and some advisors only discovered they were an advisor after our approach. Most advisors were positive about their ability to help colleagues deal with integrity issues. The main desired changes were for greater advertising of their role and a desire to promote good practice rather than just supporting potential issues. Advisors might be a useful policy for supporting research integrity, but some advisors need better institutional support in terms of training and raising awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impaired thermoregulatory function is a clinical feature of many health conditions that affect triathletes using wheelchairs and consequently, individual athlete performances may fluctuate according to environmental temperature. We aimed to determine the effect of 1) water temperature on wheelchair triathlon swim time and 2) air temperature on handcycle and wheelchair run (push) time. Published race records from 2017 to 2023 (n = 49 events) were extracted from the World Triathlon website. Bayesian negative binomial regression was used to separately model the nonlinear relationships between water temperature and swim time, and air temperature and handcycle and push time. Age, sex, sport class, whether wetsuits were worn (swim model), and swim time (handcycle and push model) were included as fixed effects. Over the observed water temperature range of 15.7–30.5°C, male swim time (mm:ss) improved from 14:13 (95% credible interval [CrI] = 12:27, 16:09) to 12:35 (95% CrI = 11:00, 14:19). Female swim time improved from 15:33 (95% CrI = 13:24, 17:55) to 12:46 (95% CrI = 11:03, 14:38). It was unclear whether handcycle and push time slowed over the observed air temperature range of 14–33°C. Warmer water temperatures, up to 30.5°C, were associated with faster swim times. It was unclear whether combined handcycle and push time slowed with increases in air temperature, up to 33°C. The integration of information on athlete impairment type and severity with performance data is needed to better understand the extent to which individual athlete performances fluctuate across environmental conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Awards can propel academic careers. They also reflect the culture and values of the scientific community. But do awards incentivize greater transparency, inclusivity, and openness in science? Our cross-disciplinary survey of 222 awards for the "best" journal articles across all 27 SCImago subject areas revealed that journals and learned societies administering such awards generally publish little detail on their procedures and criteria. Award descriptions were brief, rarely including contact details or information on the nominations pool. Nominations of underrepresented groups were not explicitly encouraged, and concepts that align with Open Science were almost absent from the assessment criteria. At the same time, 10% of awards, especially the recently established ones, tended to use article-level impact metrics. USA-affiliated researchers dominated the winner's pool (48%), while researchers from the Global South were uncommon (11%). Sixty-one percent of individual winners were men. Overall, Best Paper awards miss the global calls for greater transparency and equitable access to academic recognition. We provide concrete and implementable recommendations for scientific awards to improve the scientific recognition system and incentives for better scientific practice. Research awards are an integral part of the universal "prestige economy" in science, but do they incentivize greater transparency, inclusivity, and openness? This study uses cross-disciplinary data to explore the level of transparency of publicly available award descriptions and assessment criteria, asking whether such awards contribute to or propagate existing reproducibility crises and inequities in science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Occupational heat stress, exacerbated by factors such as climate change and insufficient cooling solutions, endangers the health and productivity of workers, especially in low‐resource workplaces. Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of two cooling strategies in reducing physiological strain and productivity of piece‐rate workers over a 9‐h work shift in a southern Thailand sawmill. Methods: In a crossover randomized control trial design, 12 (33 ± 7 y; 1.58 ± 0.05 m; 51 ± 9 kg; n = 5 females) medically screened sawmill workers were randomly allocated into three groups comprising an established phase change material vest (VEST), an on‐site combination cooling oasis (OASIS) (i.e., hydration, cold towels, fans, water dousing), and no cooling (CON) across 3 consecutive workdays. Physiological strain was measured via core temperature telemetry and heart rate monitoring. Productivity was determined by counting the number of pallets of wood sorted, stacked, and stowed each day. Results: Relative to CON, OASIS lowered core temperature by 0.25°C [95% confidence interval = 0.24, 0.25] and heart rate by 7 bpm [6, 9] bpm, compared to 0.17°C [0.17, 0.18] and 10 [9,12] bpm reductions with VEST. It was inconclusive whether productivity was statistically lower in OASIS compared to CON (mean difference [MD] = 2.5 [–0.2, 5.2]), and was not statistically different between VEST and CON (MD = 1.4 [–1.3, 4.1]). Conclusions: Both OASIS and VEST were effective in reducing physiological strain compared to no cooling. Their effect on productivity requires further investigation, as even small differences between interventions could lead to meaningful disparities in piece‐rate worker earnings over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There have been concerns of an aging Australian volunteer firefighter workforce. Aims: To (1) determine the age distribution of Australian volunteer firefighters; (2) estimate the proportion of volunteer firefighters who met the Australian physical activity guidelines; (3) investigate the relationship between age and physical activity and exercise in volunteer firefighters. Methods: An online survey was electronically distributed to Rural Fire Service volunteers in Queensland, Australia. The survey included demographic and physical activity questions. National guidelines were used to determine whether respondents met the Australian physical activity recommendations. The relationships between age and weekly physical activity and weekly exercise minutes were modelled using Bayesian methods. Key results: The median age of responders (n = 480) was 54 years. Compared with Australian population data, volunteer firefighters were four times more likely to meet the physical activity guidelines and the exercise-only guidelines, but 1.4 times more likely to not meet the strength-based activity guidelines. Number of weekly physical activity minutes declined with age, by 61 min each decade. Conclusions: Volunteers were more likely to meet the national physical activity and exercise-only guidelines, but less likely to meet the strength-based activity guidelines. Implications: Volunteer firefighters could benefit from outreach programs that promote participation in strength-based training. This cross-sectional study investigated the age and physical activity status of Australian volunteer firefighters. The mean age was 51.4 years. We found that volunteer firefighters were more likely to meet the national physical activity and exercise-only guidelines, but less likely to meet the strength-based training guidelines compared with the general Australian population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the effect of peer presence on session rating of perceived exertion (RPE) responses. Method: Fourteen males, with mean (SD) age 22.4 (3.9) years, peak oxygen uptake 48.0 (6.6) mL·kg−1·min−1, and peak power output 330 (44) W, completed an incremental cycling test and 3 identical experimental sessions, in groups of 4 or 5. Experimental sessions involved 24 minutes of cycling, whereby the work rate alternated between 40% and 70% peak power output every 3 minutes. During cycling, heart rate was collected every 3 minutes, and session-RPE was recorded 10 minutes after cycling, in 3 communication contexts: in written form unaccompanied (intrapersonal communication), verbally by the researcher only (interpersonal communication), and in the presence of the training group. Session-RPE was analyzed using ordinal regression and heart rate using a linear mixed-effects model, with models fit in a Bayesian framework. Results: Session-RPE was voted higher when collected in the group's presence compared with when written (odds ratio = 4.26, 95% credible interval = 1.27–14.73). On average, the posterior probability that session-RPE was higher in the group setting than when written was.53. Session-RPE was not different between the group and verbal, or verbal and written collection contexts. Conclusions: This study suggests that contextual psychosocial inputs influence session-RPE and highlights the importance of session-RPE users controlling the measurement environment when collecting votes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to quantify the perceived needs and adequacy of realised access to post-acute services in a sample of people with acquired brain injury in the first 6-months after discharge from inpatient rehabilitation. A secondary focus was the influence of access to funding and specialist transitional rehabilitation on unmet needs. Participants were 51 adults with a median age of 50 (IQR 35–57) recruited from an inpatient rehabilitation unit in an Australian tertiary hospital. The sample was those who had an acquired brain injury, including 23 who sustained a traumatic injury and 28 who sustained a non-traumatic injury. Measures were collected via telephone at 3- and 6-months, in a prospective observational cohort design using the Needs and Provisions Complexity Scale. A series of logistic regression models were used to determine the effects of participation in a transitional rehabilitation program and funding pathway on adequacy and unmet needs. Unmet needs for rehabilitation were most commonly reported (60%), followed by unmet needs in relation to health care (40%), social care (35%), personal care (32%) and environment-related (14%). Participants who attended transitional rehabilitation were more likely to indicate unmet health care needs (OR = 6.40, 95% CI = 1.40–29.24, p = 0.02). The study highlights the need to look beyond functional impairment when conceptualising appropriate access. Additionally, the present research highlighted the need for greater work into an expectation of services. The majority of people with an acquired brain injury report unmet needs at 6 months post discharge. Present findings support the utility of patient reported measures when considering treatment evaluation with people with ABI, where assessing the personal appraisal of individuals needs may prove to be a key indicator to facilitate optimal service access. There are specific services that needed and not provided including psychological, speech pathology, family carer needs and vocational rehabilitation, and therefore are a key target for ensuring appropriate support is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This randomized cross-over study tested the hypothesis that heat acclimation training would detrimentally affect sleep variables and alter incidental physical activity compared to a thermoneutral training control condition. Eight recreationally trained males (V̇O2peak 49±4.9 mL.kg-1.min-1) completed two separate interventions separated by at least 31 days: 5 consecutive day training blocks of moderate-intensity cycling (60 min·day-1 at 50% peak power output) in a hot (34.9±0.7 °C and 53±4 % relative humidity) and a temperate (22.2±2.6 °C; 65±8 % relative humidity) environment. Wrist-mounted accelerometers were worn continuously for the length of the training blocks and recorded physical activity, sleep quality and quantity. Data were analysed in a Bayesian framework, with the results presented as the posterior probability that a coefficient was greater or less than zero. Compared to the temperate training environment, heat acclimation impaired sleep efficiency (Pr β<0 =.979) and wake on sleep onset (Pr β>0 =.917). Daily sedentary time was, on average, 35 min longer (Pr β>0 =.973) and light physical activity time 18 min shorter (Pr β>0 =.960) during the heat acclimation period. No differences were observed between conditions in sleep duration, subjective sleep quality, or moderate or vigorous physical activity. These findings may suggest that athletes and coaches need to be cognisant that heat acclimation training may alter sleep quality and increase sedentary behaviour. Highlights Five consecutive days of heat training negatively affected some objective measures of sleep quality and incidental physical activity in recreationally trained athletes. Athletes and coaches need to be aware of the potential unintended consequences of using heat acclimation on sleep behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]