bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Changes in choroidal thickness after vitrectomy for epiretinal membrane combined with vitreomacular traction
Authors: Kang Eui Chun , Lee Kyou Ho , Koh Hyoung Jun 
Published: May 2016

AbstractPurposeTo compare choroidal thickness after vitrectomy between epiretinal membrane (ERM) with and without vitreomacular traction (VMT).MethodsIn this retrospective study, 228 consecutive participants with ERM who underwent vitrectomy were categorized into two groups according to the presence of VMT on spectral domain–optical coherence tomography: VMT group (ERM with VMT, n = 21) and non‐VMT group (ERM without VMT, n = 207). The primary outcome was the mean subfoveal choroidal thickness (SFCT) at baseline, and at 3 and 6 months postsurgery.ResultsAt baseline, the prevalence of VMT in eyes with ERM was 9.6% (21/228), and mean SFCT was greater in the VMT than in the non‐VMT group (270.3 ± 93.4 vs. 223.7 ± 82.1 μm; p = 0.015). After surgery, mean SFCT decreased in the VMT group (241.7 ± 92.3 μm at 3 months and 228.8 ± 86.4 μm at 6 months; p < 0.001), but remained unchanged in the non‐VMT group (223.6 ± 78.9 μm at 3 months and 223.3 ± 82.6 μm at 6 months; p = 0.696). There were no differences in mean SFCT between the groups at 3 and 6 months after surgery (p = 0.339 and p = 0.772, respectively).ConclusionChoroidal thickness was greater in ERM eyes with than without VMT possibly due to direct anteroposterior traction on the retina and choroid, increased vascular endothelial growth factor associated with stress on retinal pigment epithelial cells and inflammation. After vitrectomy, mean SFCT reduced in the eyes with VMT, but not in those without VMT.
“You Can't Always Get What You Want”: A Novel Research Paradigm to Explore the Relationship between Multiple Intentions and Behaviours
Authors: Sniehotta Falko F. , Presseau Justin , Allan Julia , Araújo‐Soares Vera 
Published: May 2016

ObjectiveResearch investigating cognitive moderators of the intention–behaviour relationship and psychological consequences of failure to enact intentions is usually conducted in a single‐behaviour paradigm. A multiple‐behaviour paradigm is introduced which overcomes bias inherent to single‐behaviour designs and allows testing of novel hypotheses. Two exploratory studies illustrate the utility of this new paradigm by investigating the role of cognitive predictors and psychological correlates of intention–behaviour relationships.MethodThe proposed method involves measuring multiple intentions across common areas of life activity at baseline and corresponding behaviours at follow‐up. In two studies, 51 intentions and behaviours were assessed (49 by self‐report, 2 objectively). In Study 1, participants (n = 126) also completed self‐reported measures of everyday cognitive failures and dysexecutive behaviours, crystallised intelligence (Mill Hill Vocabulary Scale) at baseline and Quality of Life (QoL; follow‐up). In Study 2, objective executive function measures (Stroop, Go/NoGo task and Word Fluency test) were completed by N = 30 participants.ResultsThe total number of intentions, cognitive, and QoL measures were unrelated to the percentage of intentions enacted. Crystallised intelligence was related to successful intention implementation and problems with emotion regulation were associated with forming fewer intentions and with fewer failed intentions. QoL was strongly related with more intentions, regardless of whether or not these were implemented. Study 2 showed that cognitive flexibility (word fluency) and task errors, rather than Stroop effect and Go/No‐Go performance were related, to intention–behaviour congruence.ConclusionIntention–behaviour relationships might be better understood when considering the multiple intentions and behaviours that people are engaged in at once at any one point in time. A multiple‐behaviour paradigm suggests novel hypotheses. Preliminary findings reported here require replication. Anticipated applications of the paradigm are outlined and discussed.
Effects of stocking density, light and perches on broiler growth
Authors: Velo Ramón , Ceular Angel 
Published: May 2016

AbstractThe aim of this study was to determine the effect of stocking density, light intensity and light color on broiler growth. The experiment consisted of four 35‐day phases during each of which 320 chickens were surveyed. The research was performed at stocking densities of four and six birds/m2. Illuminances of 15 and 30 lx were obtained through commercial lamps with 4000 K and 6000 K color temperatures. Lighting was used 17 h a day, between 06.00 and 23.00 hours (17 L:7 D). The results showed a decrease in body, carcass, breast and thighs weight (P < 0.05) with the increase in stocking density. Body weight decreased by 10.5% and carcass weight decreased by 9.4% at six birds/m2 stocking density. Contrastingly, no differences were found for the tested light colors. Increasing illuminance from 15 to 30 lx caused a 1.9% decrease in body weight. The analysis of the effect of perches revealed that using perches significantly increased body (2.5%) and breast weight (11.8%). The interactions between light intensity or color and stocking density and between light intensity and light color were analyzed.
Improving the fermentation quality of wheat straw silage stored at low temperature by psychrotrophic lactic acid bacteria
Authors: Zhang Miao , Lv Haoxin , Tan Zhongfang , Li Ya , Wang Yanping , Pang Huili , Li Zongwei , Jiao Zhen , Jin Qingsheng 
Published: May 2016

AbstractThis study aimed to explore the feasible approaches to develop a silage production technique in regions with low temperatures. An effective low‐temperature silage technology system was constructed and two frigostable Lactobacillus (L.) strains isolated from alpine pastures were selected and proved to be available for wheat straw silage at 5°C. The strains QZ227 and QZ887 were both identified as L. plantarum according to the phenotype, 16S rRNA, and RecA gene analysis. QZ227, QZ887 and a commercial inoculant FG1 consisting of L. plantarum were effective for improving the fermentation quality of wheat straws silage at 5°C for 30 days as indicated by the higher content of lactic acid and for 60 days by lower pH values, while the control with sterile water instead conferred reduced benefits. Additionally, silages fermented at low temperature proved to be acceptable for feeding livestock after being placed in a simulated environmental temperature of 20°C for 14 days to detect its edibility during the early spring when the temperature begins to rise. Both QZ227 and QZ887 showed potential applications of silage making in frigid areas and were effective inoculants in a low‐temperature silage technology system.
Fast and Robust Inversion‐Free Shape Manipulation
Authors: Liu Tiantian , Gao Ming , Zhu Lifeng , Sifakis Eftychios , Kavan Ladislav 
Published: May 2016

AbstractWe present a shape manipulation technique capable of producing deformations of 2D and 3D meshes, guaranteeing that no elements will be inverted. We achieve this by augmenting the quadratic ex‐rotated elastic energy with additional convex terms that penalize the presence of inverted elements. Using a schedule of increasing penalty coefficients, we efficiently and robustly converge to an inversion free state by solving a sequence of unconstrained convex minimization problems. This process can be interpreted as a special purpose Semi‐Definite Programming (SDP) solver. We demonstrate that our method outperforms solvers used in previous work, including commercial‐grade SDP software (MOSEK). As an additional benefit, our method also converges to the solution via a more intuitive path, which can be used for quick preview. We demonstrate the efficacy of our scheme in a number of 2D and 3D shapes undergoing moderate to drastic deformation.
Improved Surface Quality in 3D Printing by Optimizing the Printing Direction
Authors: Wang W. M. , Zanni C. , Kobbelt L. 
Published: May 2016

AbstractWe present a pipeline of algorithms that decomposes a given polygon model into parts such that each part can be 3D printed with high (outer) surface quality. For this we exploit the fact that most 3D printing technologies have an anisotropic resolution and hence the surface smoothness varies significantly with the orientation of the surface. Our pipeline starts by segmenting the input surface into patches such that their normals can be aligned perpendicularly to the printing direction. A 3D Voronoi diagram is computed such that the intersections of the Voronoi cells with the surface approximate these surface patches. The intersections of the Voronoi cells with the input model's volume then provide an initial decomposition. We further present an algorithm to compute an assembly order for the parts and generate connectors between them. A post processing step further optimizes the seams between segments to improve the visual quality. We run our pipeline on a wide range of 3D models and experimentally evaluate the obtained improvements in terms of numerical, visual, and haptic quality.
Generalized Diffusion Curves: An Improved Vector Representation for Smooth‐Shaded Images
Authors: Jeschke Stefan 
Published: May 2016

AbstractThis paper generalizes the well‐known Diffusion Curves Images (DCI), which are composed of a set of Bezier curves with colors specified on either side. These colors are diffused as Laplace functions over the image domain, which results in smooth color gradients interrupted by the Bezier curves. Our new formulation allows for more color control away from the boundary, providing a similar expressive power as recent Bilaplace image models without introducing associated issues and computational costs. The new model is based on a special Laplace function blending and a new edge blur formulation. We demonstrate that given some user‐defined boundary curves over an input raster image, fitting colors and edge blur from the image to the new model and subsequent editing and animation is equally convenient as with DCIs. Numerous examples and comparisons to DCIs are presented.
Smooth Image Sequences for Data‐driven Morphing
Authors: Averbuch‐Elor Hadar , Cohen‐Or Daniel , Kopf Johannes 
Published: May 2016

AbstractSmoothness is a quality that feels aesthetic and pleasing to the human eye. We present an algorithm for finding “as‐smooth‐as‐possible” sequences in image collections. In contrast to previous work, our method does not assume that the images show a common 3D scene, but instead may depict different object instances with varying deformations, and significant variation in lighting, texture, and color appearance. Our algorithm does not rely on a notion of camera pose, view direction, or 3D representation of an underlying scene, but instead directly optimizes the smoothness of the apparent motion of local point matches among the collection images. We increase the smoothness of our sequences by performing a global similarity transform alignment, as well as localized geometric wobble reduction and appearance stabilization. Our technique gives rise to a new kind of image morphing algorithm, in which the in‐between motion is derived in a data‐driven manner from a smooth sequence of real images without any user intervention. This new type of morph can go far beyond the ability of traditional techniques. We also demonstrate that our smooth sequences allow exploring large image collections in a stable manner.
Narrow Band FLIP for Liquid Simulations
Authors: Ferstl Florian , Ando Ryoichi , Wojtan Chris , Westermann Rüdiger , Thuerey Nils 
Published: May 2016

AbstractThe Fluid Implicit Particle method (FLIP) for liquid simulations uses particles to reduce numerical dissipation and provide important visual cues for events like complex splashes and small‐scale features near the liquid surface. Unfortunately, FLIP simulations can be computationally expensive, because they require a dense sampling of particles to fill the entire liquid volume. Furthermore, the vast majority of these FLIP particles contribute nothing to the fluid's visual appearance, especially for larger volumes of liquid. We present a method that only uses FLIP particles within a narrow band of the liquid surface, while efficiently representing the remaining inner volume on a regular grid. We show that a naïve realization of this idea introduces unstable and uncontrollable energy fluctuations, and we propose a novel coupling scheme between FLIP particles and regular grid which overcomes this problem. Our method drastically reduces the particle count and simulation times while yielding results that are nearly indistinguishable from regular FLIP simulations. Our approach is easy to integrate into any existing FLIP implementation.
A Multi‐sided Bézier Patch with a Simple Control Structure
Authors: Várady Tamás , Salvi Péter , Karikó György 
Published: May 2016

AbstractA new n‐sided surface scheme is presented, that generalizes tensor product Bézier patches. Boundaries and corresponding cross‐derivatives are specified as conventional Bézier surfaces of arbitrary degrees. The surface is defined over a convex polygonal domain; local coordinates are computed from generalized barycentric coordinates; control points are multiplied by weighted, biparametric Bernstein functions. A method for interpolating a middle point is also presented.This Generalized Bézier (GB) patch is based on a new displacement scheme that builds up multi‐sided patches as a combination of a base patch, n displacement patches and an interior patch; this is considered to be an alternative to the Boolean sum concept. The input ribbons may have different degrees, but the final patch representation has a uniform degree. Interior control points—other than those specified by the user—are placed automatically by a special degree elevation algorithm. GB patches connect to adjacent Bézier surfaces with G1continuity. The control structure is simple and intuitive; the number of control points is proportional to those of quadrilateral control grids. The scheme is introduced through simple examples; suggestions for future work are also discussed.
Compressed Multiresolution Hierarchies for High‐Quality Precomputed Shadows
Authors: Scandolo Leonardo , Bauszat Pablo , Eisemann Elmar 
Published: May 2016

AbstractThe quality of shadow mapping is traditionally limited by texture resolution. We present a novel lossless compression scheme for high‐resolution shadow maps based on precomputed multiresolution hierarchies. Traditional multiresolution trees can compactly represent homogeneous regions of shadow maps at coarser levels, but require many nodes for fine details. By conservatively adapting the depth map, we can significantly reduce the tree complexity. Our proposed method offers high compression rates, avoids quantization errors, exploits coherency along all data dimensions, and is well‐suited for GPU architectures. Our approach can be applied for coherent shadow maps as well, enabling several applications, including high‐quality soft shadows and dynamic lights moving on fixed‐trajectories.
Modeling and Estimation of Energy‐Based Hyperelastic Objects
Authors: Miguel Eder , Miraut David , Otaduy Miguel A. 
Published: May 2016

AbstractIn this paper, we present a method to model hyperelasticity that is well suited for representing the nonlinearity of real‐world objects, as well as for estimating it from deformation examples. Previous approaches suffer several limitations, such as lack of integrability of elastic forces, failure to enforce energy convexity, lack of robustness of parameter estimation, or difficulty to model cross‐modal effects. Our method avoids these problems by relying on a general energy‐based definition of elastic properties. The accuracy of the resulting elastic model is maximized by defining an additive model of separable energy terms, which allow progressive parameter estimation. In addition, our method supports efficient modeling of extreme nonlinearities thanks to energy‐limiting constraints. We combine our energy‐based model with an optimization method to estimate model parameters from force‐deformation examples, and we show successful modeling of diverse deformable objects, including cloth, human finger skin, and internal human anatomy in a medical imaging application.
Inertial Steady 2D Vector Field Topology
Authors: Günther Tobias , Theisel Holger 
Published: May 2016

AbstractVector field topology is a powerful and matured tool for the study of the asymptotic behavior of tracer particles in steady flows. Yet, it does not capture the behavior of finite‐sized particles, because they develop inertia and do not move tangential to the flow. In this paper, we use the fact that the trajectories of inertial particles can be described as tangent curves of a higher dimensional vector field. Using this, we conduct a full classification of the first‐order critical points of this higher dimensional flow, and devise a method to their efficient extraction. Further, we interactively visualize the asymptotic behavior of finite‐sized particles by a glyph visualization that encodes the outcome of any initial condition of the governing ODE, i.e., for a varying initial position and/or initial velocity. With this, we present a first approach to extend traditional vector field topology to the inertial case.
The use of Masson's trichrome staining, second harmonic imaging and two‐photon excited fluorescence of collagen in distinguishing intestinal tuberculosis from Crohn's disease
Authors: Mao H. , Su P. , Qiu W. , Huang L. , Yu H. , Wang Y. 
Published: May 2016

AbstractAimDifferentiation between Crohn's disease (CD) and intestinal tuberculosis (ITB) continues to be difficult. The present study investigated the collagen fibre characteristics of CD and ITB using Masson's trichrome staining, second harmonic generation (SHG) imaging and two‐photon excited fluorescence (TPEF) imaging with the aim of distinguishing between them.MethodThe characteristics of collagen fibres in intestinal specimens from patients with CD, ITB and healthy controls were compared using Masson's trichrome staining and SHG and TPEF imaging.ResultsMasson's trichrome staining showed that the content of collagen fibre (540.92 [139.61−1681.93] vs 236.17 [72.94−1108.32], P < 0.05) and fibre deposits (888.92 [315.89−3172.9] vs 498.98 [38.82−5802.31], P < 0.05) were both higher in ITB than in CD. The content of collagen fibre (594.677 [139.61−1681.93] vs 107.425 [4.66−988.7], P < 0.05) and fibre deposits (1118.4661 [315.89−5802.31] vs 340.575 [29.62−1188.87], P < 0.05) were significantly higher in lesions with granulomata than in those without. The SHG/TPEF images demonstrated that the percentage of fibrosis in ITB was also significantly higher than in CD (P < 0.05), in both surgical (13.363% ± 5.303% vs 8.322% ± 5.078%, P = 0.044) and endoscopic specimens (mean rank 13.5 vs 7.5, P = 0.023). The SHG/TPEF imaging described different distribution patterns of collagen between CD and ITB; in the former this was irregular in clumps while in ITB the collagen was arranged around caseating granulomata.ConclusionThe evaluation of fibrosis in CD and ITB by Masson's trichrome staining and SHG and TPEF imaging appears to distinguish between these two diseases.
Macrophage adaptation leads to parallel evolution of genetically diverse Escherichia coli small‐colony variants with increased fitness in vivo and antibiotic collateral sensitivity
Authors: Ramiro Ricardo S. , Costa Henrique , Gordo Isabel 
Published: May 2016

AbstractSmall‐colony variants (SCVs) are commonly observed in evolution experiments and clinical isolates, being associated with antibiotic resistance and persistent infections. We recently observed the repeated emergence of Escherichia coli SCVs during adaptation to the interaction with macrophages. To identify the genetic targets underlying the emergence of this clinically relevant morphotype, we performed whole‐genome sequencing of independently evolved SCV clones. We uncovered novel mutational targets, not previously associated with SCVs (e.g. cydA, pepP) and observed widespread functional parallelism. All SCV clones had mutations in genes related to the electron‐transport chain. As SCVs emerged during adaptation to macrophages, and often show increased antibiotic resistance, we measured SCV fitness inside macrophages and measured their antibiotic resistance profiles. SCVs had a fitness advantage inside macrophages and showed increased aminoglycoside resistance in vitro, but had collateral sensitivity to other antibiotics (e.g. tetracycline). Importantly, we observed similar results in vivo. SCVs had a fitness advantage upon colonization of the mouse gut, which could be tuned by antibiotic treatment: kanamycin (aminoglycoside) increased SCV fitness, but tetracycline strongly reduced it. Our results highlight the power of using experimental evolution as the basis for identifying the causes and consequences of adaptation during host‐microbe interactions.
Extra‐medial thickness of carotid artery in patients with Behçet's disease: evaluation of atherosclerotic vessel wall changes with a novel carotid artery ultrasound index
Authors: Sereflican Betul , Kizildag Betul , Halicioglu Sıddıka , Goksugur Nadir , Tuman Bengu , Dagistan Emine 
Published: May 2016

AbstractObjectivesChronic inflammation and endothelial dysfunction are the characteristic features of Behçet's disease (BD). We researched carotid extra‐medial thickness (cEMT), a novel ultrasound parameter for atherosclerotic vessel wall changes, and carotid intima media thickness (cIMT), a widely accepted marker of subclinical atherosclerosis, in patients with BD, and we evaluated the relationship between these two parameters.Materials and methodsIn total, 31 patients with BD were matched to 26 control subjects based on age, gender, and major cardiovascular risk factors. Laboratory parameters, including lipid profile, were measured for both patients and controls. B‐mode ultrasonography was used to assess the cEMT and cIMT.ResultsThere was no significant difference in the cEMT values between the patients with BD and the control group (P = 0.90). cIMT in the BD group was significantly higher compared with the control group (P = 0.021). There was a significant positive correlation between cIMT and cEMT (r = 0.585, P = 0.001). Both cEMT and cIMT were positively correlated with age and the presence of arthritis. There was linear correlation with sedimentation, C‐reactive protein, and cEMT.ConclusionsTo the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate both cEMT and cIMT in BD. This study presents morphological evidence of subclinical atherosclerosis in terms of cIMT. Although there was no significant increment in cEMT, it has the potential to assess endothelial dysfunction in BD. Further studies are required to confirm this finding.