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There is currently no scientific evidence concerning the direct effect of running shoes on running performance and prevention of injury. It has been suggested that excessive cushioning in running shoes may have had the unintended effect of weakening the foot and altering the way that people run. Lightweight running shoes with minimal cushioning and reduced heel lift have been shown to increase muscle strength and cause potentially beneficial changes to the way that we run. Lightweight running shoes may be of benefit to runners wanting to improve running performance and prevent injury. The aim of this project is to investigate the long term effects of running shoes on running performance and prevention of injury.

Spasticity affects more than half of stroke survivors and can severely impact on functional independence, quality of life and caregiver burden.Recently non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) has been proposed as an alternative approach to promote the recovery of motor impairments after stroke. This type of intervention aims to alter brain excitability and may have potential as a therapeutic intervention to enhance neuroplasticity after stroke. There may be benefits in combining this novel intervention with standard therapies. Therefore in this study we will assess the effect of NIBS on upper limb spasticity in individuals with stroke concurrently treated with botulinum toxin. We anticipate that this study will guide us to develop a novel intervention program to improve spasticity in stroke survivors and in turn motor control and upper limb function.

Studies of the treatment of firesetters are limited, being largely focussed on juveniles or conducted in inpatient psychiatric settings. Consequently, there are currently no standardised treatments for adult firesetters in use in the UK, the United States or Australia. Research indicates that predisposing factors for deliberate firesetting include poor interpersonal functioning and poor communication skills, and difficulties regulating emotion (particularly anger) and behaviour. Less is known about specific fire-related beliefs that contribute to this type of offending, however it is likely that, as with other types of offending, firesetters have specific beliefs that allow them to justify, rationalise and minimise their firesetting that arise from underlying schemas and attitudes supportive of such antisocial behaviour. Jackson’s model has previously informed treatment programs for incarcerated mentally disordered offenders, and intellectually disabled firesetters, although both programs are group-based and tailored to specific settings that are not easily replicated in Australia. The proposed research aims to develop and evaluate a treatment program that can be delivered to an array of firesetters in a variety of settings, and which closely adheres to established principles of effective offender treatment. Thus it will address the core components relevant to risk of offending generally as well as delivering fire-specific interventions targeted at the hypothesised pathways to arson offending. Both aspects are considered integral to a successful application of risk management and offending treatment for firesetters. The aims of this project are: 1. To investigate the psychological and psychiatric characteristics of individuals who engage in deliberate firesetting. 2. To develop and trial a psychological intervention to reduce the risk of repeat firesetting. 3. To examine clinical, attitudinal, behaviour change monitoring as a result of involvment in treatment.

Each year CSIRO Animal, Food and Health Sciences perform a number of research projects involving human participants. The present study will be investigating genetic differences in sweet and fat taste and the association with dietary intake and health status.

It is known that regular exercise has a positive effect on improving depressed mood in adults. At this stage it is not known if exercise offers the same benefits to young people. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of exercise on reducing symptoms of depression among adolescents and young adults.

To produce an evidenced based physical activity intervention for classroom teachers that will integrate PA across the primary school curriculum as highlighted in the Auditor General’s Report June 2012. The Easy Minds intervention has run a successful feasibility trial that demonstrated that integrating PA into other subjects can lead to: Increased moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) within both the intervention session and the school day, reduce sitting time and improve classroom behaviour.

This is a pilot study designed to test how easy it is to follow an Australianised Mediterranean Diet (AusMed diet) for 2 weeks. This includes an investigation into consumption of nutrients, BMI stability, palatibility, satiety and cost of the diet, and other lifestyle factors which might be affected by the diet. The information we collect will then be used to help refine and change the diet to make it easier to follow in the long term. We hypothesise that with some minor changes, it will be feasible to follow the AusMed diet for 2 weeks.

This project will deploy, operate and evaluate a state of the art, NBN enabled telehealth system for the management of chronic disease in the community in five different states and six different clinical trial sites in partnership with a variety of public and private sector health care service providers, including Local Health Districts, Medicare Locals and not for profit health care service providers. New methods for the automated risk stratification of patients will be developed that will facilitate future large scale deployment of NBN enabled telehealth services. Each clinical trial site will operate as a statistically independent case matched control trial with 25 Test patients supplied with NBN enabled Telehealth services and 50 patients receiving normal care. The overall patient cohort of 150 test patients and 300 control patients provide sufficient statistical power to ensure reliable and reproducible results across the whole health care sector. This project will provide the clinical and health economic evidence on how NBN enabled telehealth services can be scaled up nationally to provide an alternative cost effective health service for the management of chronic disease in the community. As well as demonstrating effective deployment of NBN enabled healthcare services, a number of critical success factors will be analysed. These include; * Health care outcomes * Health economic benefits * Impact on clinical work force availability and deployment * Human factors (acceptability, usability by patients, carers, nurses, GPs and administrators, impact on workplace culture) * Organisational change management and business processes Large scale deployment will also require automated risk stratification of patients according to their health status to ensure that the best possible response is orchestrated at the right time to avoid unnecessary hospitalisation. In the first year of the trial, CSIRO and its partners will develop a range of sophisticated automated risk stratification algorithms based on sophisticated statistical analysis and advanced data analytics. These were intended to be deployed and tested in the second year and the outcomes with respect to a range of healthcare outcomes, and socio-economic variables analysed and reported. However with the trial period now effectively shortened to 16 months, we will now be able to deploy the new risk stratification and decision support algorithms and evaluate useability and clinical acceptance of the service, but there will be insufficient time to rigorously evaluate the impact of this new facility on health care or socio-economic outcomes. This would require an additional eight months as initially planned. The third major contribution that will be the development and testing of a data architecture and communication framework consistent with NeHTA National eHealth Architecture, capable of transferring telehealth data to and from the PCEHR. Since the PCEHR will ultimately synchronise with GP systems and receive data from multiple sources, this development will firmly embed telehealth data recorded by patients at home as an important adjunct to the patient electronic health record. In addition, this project will analyse and report comprehensive health care outcome, health economic, work force and organisational change management data to provide the evidence that Government and treasury need to develop the policy and funding framework to facilitate the development of a national public and private sector market for the provision of telehealth services.

The primary purpose of this study was to see if regular daily swimming in a chlorinated pool could help resolve severe middle ear infections in Aboriginal children.

The aim of the trial is to find out whether eating marshmallows helps to reduce the stoma output in people with an ileostomy. Eating marshmallows to reduce stoma output is widely documented on online websites and blogs as well as in the recommendations given by stoma-care therapists. However, there is no evidence to support these recommendations. We will invite people that have had an ileostomy for at least 3 months, are medically stable, with no relevant dietary restrictions and over 18 years of age to take part in the trial. We will use a repeated measures design with random crossover between a 5 day study period and 5 day control period with a 2 day ‘wash out’ in between. Primary outcome: to determine the efficacy of marshmallow intake in reducing stoma output in patients with ileostomies. Hypotheses: a) Marshmallow in take will reduce daily stoma output volumes b) Marshmallow intake will reduce the frequency of daily stoma bag empties and changes