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Recent studies have established immersive virtual environments (IVEs) as promising tools for studying human thermal states and human–building interactions. One advantage of using immersive virtual environments is that experiments or data collection can be conducted at any time of the year. However, previous studies have confirmed the potential impact of outdoor temperature variations, such as seasonal variations on human thermal sensation. To the best of our knowledge, no study has looked into the potential impact of variations in outdoor temperatures on experiments using IVE. Thus, this study aimed to determine if different outdoor temperature conditions affected the thermal states in experiments using IVEs. Experiments were conducted using a head mounted display (HMD) in a climate chamber, and the data was analyzed under three temperature ranges. A total of seventy-two people participated in the experiments conducted in two contrasting outdoor temperature conditions, i.e., cold and warm outdoor conditions. The in situ experiments conducted in two cases, i.e., cooling in warm outdoor conditions and heating in cold outdoor conditions, were used as a baseline. The baseline in-situ experiments were then compared with the IVE experiments conducted in four cases, i.e., cooling in warm and cold outdoor conditions and heating in warm and cold outdoor conditions. The selection of cooling in cold outdoor conditions and heating in warm outdoor conditions for IVE experiments is particularly for studying the impact of outdoor temperature variations. Results showed that under the experimental and outdoor temperature conditions, outdoor temperature variations in most cases did not impact the results of IVE experiments, i.e., IVE experiments can replicate a temperature environment for participants compared to the ones in the in situ experiments. In addition, the participant’s thermal sensation vote was found to be a reliable indicator between IVE and in situ settings in all studied conditions. A few significantly different cases were related to thermal comfort, thermal acceptability, and overall skin temperature. 

Abstract Regular exercise promotes whole-body health and prevents disease, but the underlying molecular mechanisms are incompletely understood^1–3. Here, the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium⁴profiled the temporal transcriptome, proteome, metabolome, lipidome, phosphoproteome, acetylproteome, ubiquitylproteome, epigenome and immunome in whole blood, plasma and 18 solid tissues in male and femaleRattus norvegicusover eight weeks of endurance exercise training. The resulting data compendium encompasses 9,466 assays across 19 tissues, 25 molecular platforms and 4 training time points. Thousands of shared and tissue-specific molecular alterations were identified, with sex differences found in multiple tissues. Temporal multi-omic and multi-tissue analyses revealed expansive biological insights into the adaptive responses to endurance training, including widespread regulation of immune, metabolic, stress response and mitochondrial pathways. Many changes were relevant to human health, including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, inflammatory bowel disease, cardiovascular health and tissue injury and recovery. The data and analyses presented in this study will serve as valuable resources for understanding and exploring the multi-tissue molecular effects of endurance training and are provided in a public repository (https://motrpac-data.org/).