bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Combined Scraping, Coagulation, and Subconjunctival Bevacizumab in Descemet Stripping Automated Endothelial Keratoplasty for Bullous Keratopathy
Authors: Chiang Chun-Chi , Lin Jane-Ming , Tsai Yi-Yu 
Published: November 2012

Purpose This study evaluated the clinical outcomes of a combined method of scraping corneal epithelium, coagulating vessels, and subconjunctival bevacizumab in Descemet stripping automated endothelial keratoplasty (DSAEK) for bullous keratopathy with corneal neovascularization (NV). Methods The study included patients with bullous keratopathy undergoing DSAEK. Indications for DSAEK were advanced pseudophakic bullous keratopathy with superficial and deep corneal vascularization and failed corneal grafts. Patients were treated by scraping the corneal epithelium and lightly coagulating the corneal superficial stromal NV and the feeding vessels in the sclera, with a subconjunctival bevacizumab injection at the end of surgery. Subconjunctival and perilimbal bevacizumab dose of 2.5 mg/0.1 mL/affected quadrant was injected at the site of NV in each patient at the end of surgery. One or 2 injections were applied. At each visit, a full eye examination with photographic documentation was performed. Mean follow-up period was 32 ( 24 – 36 ) months. Results Eight eyes of 8 patients with high-risk corneal transplantation and corneal NV were included in this noncomparative interventional case series. The original corneal NV disappeared in all patients immediately after surgery. No patient in the series had recurrent corneal NV or rejection during at least 24 months of follow-up. Conclusions The combination of scraping, coagulating, and bevacizumab injection in DSAEK is an effective method to treat corneal NV in corneal transplantation for bullous keratopathy.
The Relationship Between Teachers’ Thinking Styles And Girl Students’ Spiritual Intelligence (SI) In Tehran’s High Schools
Authors: Omidi Mona , Shafiei Shirin Sadat 
Published: November 2012

The main goal of this study is to examine the relationship between teachers’ thinking styles and girl students’ Spiritual Intelligence (SI) in Tehran’s high schools. The population included all 155859 students and 12571 teachers in Tehran’s girl high schools. According to “Morgan table” 384 students and 375 teachers were selected using cluster random sampling method. Research tools were two standardized questionnaires: Emren & Demir’s (2007) Spiritual Intelligence Questionnaire and Sternberg’s thinking style inventory. Their validity indexes were evaluated by Mehrjou (2009). The reliability of the instruments was also calculated using Alpha Cronbach as 0.89 and 0.81 respectively. The research results revealed that teachers used a high level of executive and legislative thinking styles and a medium use of judicial style. There was also a negative relationship between executive style and problem solving. There was no meaningful relationship between executive thinking style and self-awareness consciousness, being holistic and grace. A negative relationship between legislative style and grace was also observed. However, there wasn’t a meaningful relation between this thinking style and problem solving. However, no positive relationship between this thinking style and grace was observed. Keywords - thinking styles, executive, legislative, judicial thinking, spiritual intelligence
Added cognitive burden or interest: Effect of enhancement in learning from slide lesson presentation in authentic classroom setting
Authors: Medula Cesar T. 
Published: November 2012

Multimedia technology is providing educators great potentials to improve teaching and learning. For the past decade or so, the use of slide lesson presentation, which is a form of multimedia, of various self-motivated designs has significantly increased in almost every local authentic classroom setting without significant scholarly examination of their real effects on student learning. The purpose of this empirical study is to look at the tangible impact of added enhancements in the form of interesting yet conceptually unrelated clip arts and sound effects on student learning as well as in terms of overall instructional efficiency. One hundred thirty five Nonscience major university students enrolled in three introductory physics classes served as the subjects of the study. Relevant data were collected through online standardized materials and researcher made paper and pencil tests. Retention and transfer tests were used to quantify student learning. Learning performance and mental effort as a measure of cognitive load during instruction were utilized to assess overall instructional efficiency. Findings revealed that the use of enhancements could lead to better retention and transfer but exceedingly comparable overall instructional efficiency. This suggests that in commonplace classroom settings, interest may mitigate, if not eliminate, the negative effects of remarkable although conceptually irrelevant multimedia elements. Keywords - Multimedia, Enhancement, Coherence Principle, Dual Coding Theory, Instructional Efficiency, Slide Presentation
Determinants of Faculty Research Productivity in Augustinian Higher Education Institutions in Luzon
Authors: Nuqui Alvin V. , Cruz Reynaldo C. 
Published: November 2012

This study assessed the determinants of faculty research productivity in Augustinian higher education institutions (HEIs) in Luzon. Findings of the study suggest that there is still a need for Augustinian HEIs in Luzon to further advance the faculty members’ educational experiences and background in research particularly in giving exposures to current professional literature and in the dissemination of research findings. Majority of the higher education faculty of Augustinian higher education institutions has recognized the value of scholarship as shown by their interest in doing research and taking small steps in attaining real work of research scholar. The findings of the study indicate that there is so much that can be desired in terms of improving the research productivity of the faculty members of Augustinian schools. Faculty research productivity in Augustinian HEIs in Luzon is significantly influenced by the extent of research promotion of institutions in terms of promotion of the research environment and providing mentors’ assistance. Just like any other Philippine HEIs, Augustinian schools haggle similar problems and issues on research productivity such as budget availability, institutional support mechanism and others. Keywords - Research productivity, Augustinian higher education institutions, Determinants, Faculty member, Research
Effective Teacher Characteristics in Higher Education from Students’ Perspective: An Exploratory Factor Analysis
Authors: Calaguas Glenn M. 
Published: November 2012

Teachers are an important resource in any educational system and such is true to all levels of education, thus, what characteristics are associated with effective teachers in higher education? Said question prompted the conduct of this study. Specifically, this study identified characteristics associated with effective teachers in higher education which can later be used in the conduct of researches on teaching effectiveness. Extant literature on effective teacher characteristics published between the years 2000 to 2009 in the Philippines and abroad were reviewed and served as bases for the development of a 107-item questionnaire. The items in the questionnaire were initially grouped into six major themes identified during the literature review: Personality, Subject Matter Expertise, Relational Competence, Professional Competence, Teaching Style, and Classroom Management Style. The questionnaire was administered to 497 college students in a state college in the Philippines. The responses of the 497 college students in the 107-item questionnaire were subjected to Exploratory Factor Analysis. It was revealed that effective teacher characteristics in higher education can be further reduced into four major themes which were labeled as Teaching related Behavior, Relational Expertise, Subject Matter Expertise, and Personality. Labeling was done based on the common themes of items in each cluster. Keywords - characteristics, effective teachers, exploratory factor analysis, higher education, state college, students’ perspective
Affection Levels of Educational Facilities on the Instructional Function of Teachers
Authors: Fajardo Orlando L. 
Published: November 2012

The study is a descriptive analysis of the ‘Affection Levels of Educational Facilities on the Instructional Function of Teachers’. The respondents of the study were the public elementary school teachers in Basilan Schools Division, Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). The study covered 9 central, and 9 noncentral public elementary schools. A stratified random sampling was adopted in this study. A two - part survey questionnaire was used. One part of the instrument drew information about the demographic profile of the public elementary school teachers. Part two of the questionnaire determined the affection and adequacy levels of the educational facilities in Public Elementary Schools, as perceived by the public elementary schools teachers, in terms of physical features, indoor environment, equipment and utilities, media and technology, and safety and security features. The findings revealed that, the educational facilities in public elementary schools in the Basilan, moderately affect the instructional function of the teachers. The Equipment and Utilities elements affect the instructional function of teachers to the greatest extent. The Safety & Security Features affect the instructional function of teachers to the least extent. Keywords - Affection, Educational Facilities, Public Elementary Schools, Basilan, Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao
Effects of a Six-Week Compound Training (CT) on the Performance of Fundamental Skills in Basketball
Authors: Inovero Jennifer G. , Pagaduan Jeffrey C. 
Published: November 2012

Compound training (CT) is the administration of sport-specific training and resistance training in separate training days. This study investigated the effects of a combined six-week resistance training and upper body plyometric program performed along with sport specific training in the performance of fundamental skills in basketball. Fourteen (N= 14) female physical education students (age: 17.6 ± 0.63 years; height: 156.8 ± 5.1 cm) were divided randomly into two groups: the experimental group (EG; n=7) performed a combined six-week strength and plyometric training twice a week for six weeks and two hours of skills training a week and the control group (CG; n=7) performed two hours of skills training a week. Pre-test and post test weight, height, grip strength, vertical jump and upper body strength (1Repetition Maximum) measures were gathered. The American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) basketball skills test was administered to the subjects. A two-way repeated measures ANOVA revealed a nonsignificant interaction effect of intervention and test time in all the variables of the study. A six-week compound training posted no significant difference on the physical and performance variables of female physical education students in a beginners’ class in basketball compared to sport-specific training. Key words: compound training, resistance training, plyometrics, basketball skills, sport performance
Strategizing Environmental Policy and Compliance for Firm Economic Sustainability: Evidence from Taiwanese Electronics Firms
Authors: Luan Chin‐jung , Tien Chengli , Wu Pei‐hua 
Published: November 2012

ABSTRACTThis study aims to examine whether the compliance of environmental policies can sustain firm economic performance, and whether a timing issue is relevant to firm economic sustainability in pursuit of eco‐friendly efforts. Offering models predominantly based on the institutional theory, this study tests hypotheses using data from 284 companies in the electronics sector in Taiwan during the period from 1997 to 2010. The findings reveal that the execution of environment policies mostly improves firm economic sustainability and some joint green efforts can even strengthen such sustainability; however, firms aiming to sustain their economic performance should not hasten to undertake eco‐friendly efforts, implying that first movers may not be guaranteed firm economic performance. Thus, managers should carefully strategize their green efforts to comply with environmental policies, and execute them in due course to prevent disadvantages, such as market uncertainty and complexity of green practices, while conquering organizational inertia. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
Racial disparity in renal cell carcinoma patient survival according to demographic and clinical characteristics
Authors: Chow Wong‐Ho , Shuch Brian , Linehan W. Marston , Devesa Susan S. 
Published: November 2012

AbstractBACKGROUND:Patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who are black tend to have poorer prognosis than similar patients who are white. This study examined whether the racial disparity in RCC patient survival varies by demographic and clinical characteristics.METHODS:Nearly 40,000 patients (4359 black and 34,991 white) diagnosed with invasive RCC from 1992 to 2007 were identified from 12 registries in the National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program, covering approximately 14% of the US population. Relative survival rates through 2008 were computed using the actuarial method.RESULTS:Proportionally more blacks than whites were diagnosed with RCC under age 50 and with localized cancer. Overall, the 5‐year relative survival rates were 72.6% (95% confidence interval 72.0%‐73.2%) for white and 68.0% (66.2%‐69.8%) for black patients. Survival was higher among women than men and among younger than older patients. Survival decreased with advancing tumor stage and, within each stage, decreased with increasing tumor size. Patients with clear cell RCC, a more common form among whites, had poorer prognosis than patients with papillary or chromophobe subtypes, which are more common among blacks. Survival for patients who received no surgical treatment (10.5% of white patients and 14.5% of black patients) was substantially lower than for patients treated with nephrectomy, with similar survival among whites and blacks. In all other demographic and clinical subgroups of patients, whites consistently had a survival advantage over blacks.CONCLUSIONS:Patients with RCC who are white consistently have a survival advantage over those RCC patients who are black, regardless of age, sex, tumor stage or size, histological subtype, or surgical treatment. Cancer 2013. © 2012 American Cancer Society.
Cloud‐based parallel solution for estimating statistical significance of megabyte‐scale DNA sequences
Authors: Hosny Ahmad M. , Shedeed Howida A. , Hussein Ashraf S. , Tolba Mohamed F. 
Published: November 2012

AbstractConfidence in a pairwise local sequence alignment is a fundamental problem in bioinformatics. For huge DNA sequences, this problem is highly compute‐intensive because it involves evaluating hundreds of local alignments to construct an empirical score distribution. Recent parallel solutions support only kilobyte‐scale sequence sizes and/or are based on sophisticated infrastructures that are not available for most of the research labs. This paper presents an efficient parallel solution for evaluating the statistical significance for a pair of huge DNA sequences using cloud infrastructures. This solution can receive requests from various researchers via web‐portal and allocate resources according to their demand. In this way, the benefits of cloud‐based services can be achieved. The fundamental innovation of this research work is proposing an efficient solution that utilizes both shared and distributed memory architectures via cloud technology to enhance the performance of evaluating the statistical significance for pair of DNA sequences. Therefore, the restriction on the sequence sizes is released to be in megabyte‐scale, which was not supported before for the statistical significance problem. The performance evaluation of the proposed solution was carried out on Microsoft's cloud and compared with the existing parallel solutions. The results show that the processing speed outperforms the recent cluster solutions that target the same problem. In addition, the performance metrics exhibit linear behavior for the addressed number of instances. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Adaptive code symbol assignment in a rateless coded multichannel cognitive radio network
Authors: Chen Shaolei , Zhang Zhaoyang , Lou Wentao , Chen Xiaoming 
Published: November 2012

SUMMARYBecause of its robustness to packet loss and adaptivity to channel conditions, rateless codes have been used in cognitive radio networks to improve the secondary system performance. In this paper, we investigate an adaptive code symbol assignment scheme for the secondary user (SU) in a multichannel cognitive radio network based on rateless coding. In particular, the SU transmitter first encodes its information data through rateless coding and then assigns the unceasingly generated code symbols adaptively to each available channel obtained by spectrum sensing. Thanks to the forward incremental redundancy provided by rateless codes, it is unnecessary for the SU receiver to request the retransmission of lost symbols and the code symbols collected from any channel at any time contribute to the final data recovery. With an alternating channel occupancy model of the primary user (PU), we conduct a weight enumerator analysis to derive the optimal number of code symbols to be assigned to each available channel, thus to maximize the system throughput while protecting PU from interference. Both theoretical analysis and numerical results demonstrate the good performance of our proposed scheme. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Low‐temperature synthesis of Mg(OH)2 nanoparticles from MgO as halogen‐free flame retardant for polypropylene
Authors: Kong Qinggang , Qian Haiyan 
Published: November 2012

ABSTRACTMg(OH)2 (MH) nanoparticles were synthesized by hydration of the light‐burned MgO at low temperature (70°C). Effects of additives, such as magnesium nitrate and magnesium acetate, on the size, morphology and agglomeration of MH particles were investigated. MH nanoparticles have platelet‐like structure and approximately 20–40 nm in thicknesses. The supersaturation degree plays an important role in magnesia hydration and is defined. When magnesium acetate was used as the additive, the hydroxyl ion can be homogeneously introduced into the solution. The size and morphology of MH nanoparticles are more homogeneous. Modified by titanate coupling agent, MH nanoparticles were used as the flame retardant for polypropylene (PP). The combustibility, mechanical properties and thermal behaviors of the PP/MH composites were characterized. The mechanical properties of PP/MH composites are not seriously deteriorated with increasing MH content. When the amount of MH fraction reached 65, the limiting oxygen index (LOI) value and UL 94 testing result of MH65 are 33.8 and V‐0 grading, respectively. The onset temperature (T10%) and the maximum thermal decomposition temperature (Tmax) of MH65 separately increased by approximately 100°C and 77°C than those of neat PP. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Behavioral and psychological subsyndromes in Alzheimer's disease using the Neuropsychiatric Inventory
Authors: Canevelli Marco , Adali Nawal , Voisin Thierry , Soto Maria Eugenia , Bruno Giuseppe , Cesari Matteo , Vellas Bruno 
Published: November 2012

AbstractObjectiveBehavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia represent common clinical features of dementias, contributing to the heterogeneous phenotypic expression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). During the last two decades, several studies explored the possible presence of neuropsychiatric subsyndromes in dementia by examining the internal structure of the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI). The aim of the present review is to present available evidence coming from studies adopting factor analysis to explore the NPI and describe neuropsychiatric clusters of symptoms in AD.DesignA systematic review of literature was performed concerning available studies describing neuropsychiatric subsyndromes in AD by adopting the NPI.ResultsOverall, our analysis showed a relatively low concordance among available evidence for what concerns the definition and composition of NPI clusters, possibly due (at least in part) to the heterogeneity of the sample populations recruited in the studies. However, we also observed some consistent associations of specific symptoms across studies, defining potential subsyndromes in AD. More consistent results were obtained by studies evaluating the 10‐item version of the NPI rather than the more recent 12‐item one.ConclusionsThis review represents the first attempt to systematically evaluate evidence coming from factor analyses exploring the internal structure of the NPI in order to facilitate the identification of neuropsychiatric syndromes in AD patients. The NPI may support the definition of behavioral subsyndromes in AD. The evaluation of neuropsychiatric subsyndromes should always take into account the main potential confounders, such as age, severity of disease, and concomitant pharmacological treatment. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An east–west‐trending Quaternary tunnel valley in the south‐eastern North Sea and its seismic–sedimentological interpretation
Authors: Hepp Daniel A. , Hebbeln Dierk , Kreiter Stefan , Keil Hanno , Bathmann Christian , Ehlers Jürgen , Mörz Tobias 
Published: November 2012

AbstractA combination of a dense reflection seismic grid and up to 50‐m‐long records from sediment cores and cone penetration tests was used to study the geometry and infill lithology of an E–W‐trending buried tunnel valley in the south‐eastern North Sea. In relation to previously known primarily N–S‐trending tunnel valleys in this area, the geometry and infill of this 38‐km‐long and up to 3‐km‐wide valley is comparable, but its E–W orientation is exceptional. The vertical cross‐section geometry may result from subglacial sediment erosion of advancing ice streams and secondary incision by large episodic meltwater discharges with high flow rates. The infill is composed of meltwater sands and reworked till remnants on the valley flanks that are overlain by late Elsterian rhythmic, laminated, lacustrine fine‐grained sediments towards the centre of the valley. A depression in the valley centre is filled with sediments most likely from the Holsteinian transgression and a subsequent post‐Holsteinian lacustrine quiet‐water setting. The exceptional axis orientation of this tunnel valley points to a regional N–S‐oriented ice front during the late Elsterian. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.