“I lied a little bit.” A qualitative study exploring the perspectives of elite Australian athletes on self-reported data

Objectives: Explore the perceptions and experiences of elite Australian athletes’ engagement with reporting data in surveillance systems. Design: Qualitative Descriptive. Setting: Semi-structured interviews conducted using Zoom. Participants: We recruited 13 elite Australian athletes competing at a national or international level for semi-structured interviews. Main outcome measures: Audio recordings were transcribed using DeScript, checked for errors and imported into QSR NVIVO. Thematic analysis using QSR NVIVO was used to determine key themes from transcripts. Results: Thematic analysis uncovered four key themes: ‘the paradox of reporting’, ‘data for data\u27s sake’, ‘eyes on reporting’ and ‘athlete friendly reporting’. Conclusion: Athletes perceived reporting as a burden and the athlete management system presented numerous technological difficulties which led to athletes to backfill data entries and compromise data accuracy. Athletes had little knowledge on how their data was used and managed and often received minimal feedback from staff accessing the data. Athletes were unaware of who has access to their data, which is of concern as sensitive information may be collected and athletes may be underage. As a result, many athletes chose to report dishonest data to avoid their performance being questioned

Influence of a native strain of Staphylococcus xylosus on the microbiological, physicochemical and sensorial characteristics on milano salami type

In this work, the influence of native starter cultures on the microbiological, physicochemical and sensorial characteristics of Milano salami type was studied. Two batches of Milano salami type were produced: Batch A, with the addition of Staphylococcus xylosus U5 and Batch B (control) without the starter culture. The Milano salami type was characterized by an important microbial activity of coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS) that resulted in substantial growth in Batch A during the ripening with an initial count of 7.60 log cfu.g-1 and reached 9.84 log CFU.g-1 after 14 days. Bacterial enzymes that showed efficient activity under the conditions found in Milano salami type were catalase, nitrite and nitrate reductase, contributing for sensory and physicochemical properties of the product. There were no significant differences in general free fatty acids composition among the batches, while the color parameters (L *, a * and b *) in the Batch A presented significantly higher values in relation to Batch B. Moreover, batch A had the higher preference in sensorial analysis.<br>A análise da influência de culturas iniciadoras nativas nas características microbiológicas, físicoquímicas e sensoriais de salame tipo Milano foi o objeto deste estudo. Foram produzidos dois grupos de salame tipo Milano: Grupo A - com aplicação de linhagem Staphylococcus xylosus U5 enquanto o controle, Grupo B, foi produzido sem culturas iniciadoras. O salame tipo Milano foi caracterizado pela importante atividade microbiana de estafilococos coagulase negativo (SCN), que resultou significativo crescimento no Grupo A durante a maturação, com contagem inicial de 7,60 ufc.g-1 e alcançando um crescimento de 9,84 cfu.g-1 depois de 14 dias. As enzimas bacterianas que mostraram eficiente atividade sob as condições encontradas no salame tipo Milano foram catalase, nitrito e nitrato redutase, contribuindo para as propriedades físicoquímicas e sensoriais do produto. Não houve diferenças significativas na composição geral dos ácidos graxos livres entre as amostras, enquanto os parâmetros de cor (L*, a* e b*) obtidos no salame inoculado (Grupo A) diferiram significativamente em relação ao controle (Grupo B) e foi o grupo preferido pelos degustadores