The Effect of a Prescribed Pre-season Weight-training Program Upon a Select Group of Varsity Baseball Candidates

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of six-week weight-training program on the running, hitting, and throwing skills of baseball. Six exercises were sued in the program, and a plan of ten executions of each exercise was utilized. An experimental group of fifteen varsity baseball candidates at South Dakota State College participated in the weight-training program during the winter quarter of 1961. Training sessions for this weight-training program were held three times per week, for six weeks. An attempt was made to maintain a training schedule in which training periods were not held two days in succession. Tests to measure running speed as well as swinging a bat or throwing a ball were administered before and after the weight-training program. The initial tests were administered during the fall quarter, 1961, and the final tests were administered during the spring quarter, 1962. The testing data were recorded and analyzed to determine whether the speed of the actions involved had been increased following the weight-training program. The initial test scores were compared with the final test scores to determine if any significant different could be attributed to the training program which was used. The speed of swinging a bat was improved to a degree which was significant at the 0.05 level. Although running and throwing speed were improved, the degree of improvement was not sufficient to be significant

Decontamination and Management of Contaminated Hair following a CBRN or HazMat Incident

© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Toxicology.This in vitro study evaluated the “triple protocol” of dry decontamination, the ladder pipe system (a method for gross decontamination), and technical decontamination for the decontamination of hair following chemical contamination. First, we assessed the efficacy of the 3 protocols, alone or in combination, on excised porcine skin and human hair contaminated with either methyl salicylate (MS), phorate (PHR), sodium fluoroacetate (SFA), or potassium cyanide (KCN). A second experiment investigated the residual hair contamination following decontamination with the triple protocol at different intervals postexposure. In a third experiment, hair decontaminated after exposure to MS or PHR was evaluated for off-gassing. Though skin decontamination was highly effective, a substantial proportion (20%–40%) of the lipophilic compounds (MS and PHR) remained within the hair. The more water-soluble contaminants (SFA and KCN) tended to form much smaller reservoirs within the hair. Interestingly, substantial off-gassing of MS, a medium volatility chemical, was detectable from triple-decontaminated hair up to 5 days postexposure. Overall, the decontamination strategies investigated were effective for the decontamination of skin, but less so for hair. These findings highlight the importance of contaminated hair serving as a source of potential secondary contamination by contact or inhalation. Therefore, consideration should be given to the removal of contaminated hair following exposure to toxic chemicals.Peer reviewe

A Precision Post-Operative Wellness Monitoring Solution

Multiple orthogonal challenges around escalating costs and providing quality care plague healthcare delivery, especially in OECD countries. This research in progress paper addresses the post-operative discharge phase of the patient journey and proffers a technology enabled model that both supports a quality care experience post discharge but also prudent management to minimize costly unplanned readmissions and thereby subscribe to a value-based care paradigm. The chosen context is stoma patients but the solution can be easily generalized to other contexts. Next steps include the conducting of clinical trials to establish proof of concept, validity and usability

Development of a Search and Rescue Simulation to Study the Effects of Prolonged Isolation on Team Decision Making

The goals of this project were to identify and investigate aspects of team and individual decision-making and risk-taking behaviors hypothesized to be most affected by prolonged isolation. A key premise driving our research approach is that effects of stressors that impact individual and team cognitive processes in an isolated, confined, and hazardous environment will be projected onto the performance of a simulation task. To elicit and investigate these team behaviors we developed a search and rescue task concept as a scenario domain that would be relevant for isolated crews. We modified the Distributed Dynamic Decision-making (DDD) simulator, a platform that has been extensively used for empirical research in team processes and taskwork performance, to portray the features of a search and rescue scenario and present the task components incorporated into that scenario. The resulting software is called DD-Search and Rescue (Version 1.0). To support the use of the DDD-Search and Rescue simulator in isolated experiment settings, we wrote a player's manual for teaching team members to operate the simulator and play the scenario. We then developed a research design and experiment plan that would allow quantitative measures of individual and team decision making skills using the DDD-Search and Rescue simulator as the experiment platform. A description of these activities and the associated materials that were produced under this contract are contained in this report

Who uses custom sports betting products?

Background: The expansion of online gambling in the UK has been accompanied by an increase in the number of novel betting products, particularly for soccer. The present research investigates which types of sports bettors are the most likely to use novel gambling products called ‘custom sports bets’ (CSBs), which allow gamblers to create their own unique bets. Method: A large-scale, cross-sectional survey of online sports/horse racing bettors (N = 789, 32.7% female). The survey collected two measures of CSB usage and four validated gambling measures: the Problem Gambling Severity Index, the Gambling Related Cognition Illusion of Control Scale, the Short Gambling Harm Screen, and the Consumption Screen for Problem Gambling. Results: Overall, 62.0% of participants reported having used a CSB, and those who had used a CSB did so on an average of 29.4 days over the last year. Overall, 16.0% of participants who had used a CSB were current problem gamblers, compared to 6.7% among those who had not. CSB users reported an average of 2.3 out of 10 possible gambling harms, compared to 1.5 harms for those who had not used a CSB. The illusion of control scale was significantly positively correlated with whether participants had ever used a CSB before, but not with past year frequency of CSB usage. The usage of CSB products was most strongly associated with the frequency of gambling consumption. Conclusions: Overall, these findings suggest that CSB products raise distinctive concerns around consumer protection for frequent sports bettors which deserve further investigation

Evaluation of US Federal Guidelines (Primary Response Incident Scene Management [PRISM]) for Mass Decontamination of Casualties During the Initial Operational Response to a Chemical Incident

Study objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical and operational effectiveness of US federal government guidance (Primary Response Incident Scene Management [PRISM]) for the initial response phase to chemical incidents. Methods The study was performed as a large-scale exercise (Operation DOWNPOUR). Volunteers were dosed with a chemical warfare agent simulant to quantify the efficacy of different iterations of dry, ladder pipe system, or technical decontamination. Results The most effective process was a triple combination of dry, ladder pipe system, and technical decontamination, which attained an average decontamination efficiency of approximately 100% on exposed hair and skin sites. Both wet decontamination processes (ladder pipe system and technical decontamination, alone or in combination with dry decontamination) were also effective (decontamination efficiency >96%). In compliant individuals, dry decontamination was effective (decontamination efficiency approximately 99%), but noncompliance (tentatively attributed to suboptimal communication) resulted in significantly reduced efficacy (decontamination efficiency approximately 70%). At-risk volunteers (because of chronic illness, disability, or language barrier) were 3 to 8 times slower than ambulatory casualties in undergoing dry and ladder pipe system decontamination, a consequence of which may be a reduction in the overall rate at which casualties can be processed. Conclusion The PRISM incident response protocols are fit for purpose for ambulatory casualties. However, a more effective communication strategy is required for first responders (particularly when guiding dry decontamination). There is a clear need to develop more appropriate decontamination procedures for at-risk casualties.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio