It is widely agreed that overtraining should be employed in order to achieve peak performance but it is also recognised that overtraining can actually produce decrements in performance. The challenge appears to be one of monitoring stress indicators in the athlete in order to titrate the training stimulus and prevent the onset of staleness. The present paper summarises a ten-year research effort in which the mood states of competitive swimmers have been monitored at intervals ranging from 2-4 weeks during individual seasons for the period 1975-1986. The training cycle has always involved the indoor season which extends from Septembeo to March and the athletes who served as subjects were 200 female and 200 male competitive swimmers. The results indicate that mood state disturbances increased in a dose-response manner as the training stimulus increased and that these mood disturbances fell to baseline levels with reduction of the training load. Whilst these results have been obtained in a realistic setting devoid of experimental manipulation, it is apparent that monitoring of mood state provides a potential method of preventing staleness.

We summarize recent contributions in the broad area of age of information (AoI). In particular, we describe the current state of the art in the design and optimization of low-latency cyberphysical systems and applications in which sources send time-stamped status updates to interested recipients. These applications desire status updates at the recipients to be as timely as possible; however, this is typically constrained by limited system resources. We describe AoI timeliness metrics and present general methods of AoI evaluation analysis that are applicable to a wide variety of sources and systems. Starting from elementary single-server queues, we apply these AoI methods to a range of increasingly complex systems, including energy harvesting sensors transmitting over noisy channels, parallel server systems, queueing networks, and various single-hop and multi-hop wireless networks. We also explore how update age is related to MMSE methods of sampling, estimation and control of stochastic processes. The paper concludes with a review of efforts to employ age optimization in cyberphysical applications.

Breast engorgement is a common problem in the early postpartum period. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Kinesio Elastic Therapeutic Taping® (K-ETT), used to increase lymphatic drainage or decrease fluid in congested areas, in treating breast engorgement in postpartum women. Thirty-four healthy mothers who delivered healthy babies over a 4-week period in a large community hospital participated, with one breast taped and the other remaining untaped. Two subjective measures, self-reported pain and self-rated engorgement, and one objective measure, firmness by durometer measured by the researchers, were taken at baseline and throughout the study period. Engorgement was defined as exceeding a threshold in at least two of the three measures. Overall, 65% of mothers experienced engorgement. There was no difference in the incidence of engorgement, comparing the taped to the untaped breast by paired analysis. Future work in this area should include development and testing of valid and reliable measures of engorgement, followed by testing of interventions using a rigorous protocol to provide evidence for practice change.

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The term ‘exotics’ covers a large range of animals and, as pets such as reptiles become increasingly popular, it is worth considering how the demands of these animals might be met should they ever need hospitalisation. This article describes the key areas that should be considered when setting up an exotics ward, and highlights some specific factors that should be taken into account for the care of particular species.

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