bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Cardiovascular comorbidities are increased in US patients with haemophilia A: a retrospective database analysis
Authors: Pocoski J. , Ma A. , Kessler C. M. , Boklage S. , Humphries T. J. 
Published: November 2013

SummaryThere is conflicting evidence in the literature on whether individuals with haemophilia in the USA have greater, reduced, or similar risks for cardiovascular disease as the general population. This study evaluated the prevalence of cardiovascular comorbidities among USA males with haemophilia A, relative to an unaffected general male population with similar characteristics. Males with haemophilia A and continuous insurance coverage were identified by ICD‐9‐CM code 286.0 (1 January 2007–31 December 2009) using the MarketScan® Commercial and Medicare Research Databases. Individuals with haemophilia A were exact matched 1:3 with males without a diagnosis of haemophilia A. The prevalence of cardiovascular comorbidities identified by ICD‐9‐CM code was determined for matched cohorts. Of the study population, 2506 were grouped in the haemophilia A cohort and 7518 in the general cohort. Proportions of individuals with haemorrhagic stroke (2.0% vs. 0.5%, P < 0.001), ischemic stroke (4.7% vs. 2.7%, P < 0.001), coronary artery disease (10.7% vs. 5.8%, P < 0.001), myocardial infarction (0.8% vs. 0.3%, P = 0.003), hypertension (22.6% vs. 15.5%, P < 0.001), hyperlipidaemia (15.9% vs. 11.9%, P < 0.001), arterial thrombosis (12.1% vs. 5.9%, P < 0.001), and venous thrombosis (4.4% vs. 1.1%, P < 0.001) were significantly greater for the haemophilia A cohort. Results were consistent across most age groups, and comorbidities appeared at an earlier age in those with haemophilia A than in the general population. Among the USA haemophilia A population cardiovascular comorbidities are more prevalent and they appear earlier in life in comparison to the general male population, suggesting the need for earlier, enhanced screening for age‐related comorbidities in the haemophilia community.
Contextualizing the findings of a systematic review on patient and carer experiences of dementia diagnosis and treatment: a qualitative study
Authors: Bunn Frances , Sworn Katie , Brayne Carol , Iliffe Steve , Robinson Louise , Goodman Claire 
Published: November 2013

AbstractBackgroundInvolving service users in the systematic review process is seen as increasingly important. As systematic reviews often include studies from diverse settings and covering a time span of several decades, involving service users in consideration of applicability to specific populations or settings might make reviews more useful to practitioners and policymakers.ObjectivesTo test and contextualize the findings of a systematic review of qualitative studies looking at patient and carer experiences of diagnosis and treatment of dementia.MethodsResults from the systematic review were discussed in focus groups and semi‐structured interviews with patient, public and professional participants in the South East of England. Analysis was guided by coding frameworks developed from the results of the systematic review.ParticipantsWe recruited 27 participants, including three people with dementia, 12 carers, six service providers and five older people without dementia.ResultsFindings from the focus groups and interviews were consistent with those from the systematic review and suggest that our review findings were applicable to the local setting. We found some evidence that access to information and diagnostic services had improved but, as in the systematic review, post‐diagnosis support was still often experienced as inadequate.ConclusionsFocus groups and interviews with service users and their representatives can provide useful contextual information. However, such strategies can require considerable investment of the part of the researcher in terms of time and resources, and more work is needed to refine strategies and establish the benefits for patients and the organization of services.
The maintenance of pulp health 17 years after root fracture in a maxillary incisor illustrating the diagnostic benefits of cone bean computed tomography
Authors: Makowiecki P. , Witek A. , Pol J. , Buczkowska‐Radlińska J. 
Published: November 2013

AbstractAimTo demonstrate the maintenance of pulp health in a tooth with a fractured root without any complications or endodontic treatment and the advantage of cone bean computed tomography (CBCT) compared with traditional radiographs in the diagnosis of root fractures.SummaryThe horizontal fracture of a maxillary central incisor is described that was an incidental finding on a routine radiographic examination 17 years after trauma. The tooth was asymptomatic. Intra‐oral radiography revealed a complicated multiple root fracture with separation of the root fragments, which was not confirmed by CBCT. This case report illustrates spontaneous healing of root fracture and the reparative potential in the area of root fracture including preservation of pulp health and also demonstrates that CBCT is a more reliable imaging technique than conventional radiographs regarding root fracture diagnosis.Key learning points

The dental pulp is characterized by the ability to heal spontaneously in cases of root fracture.

CBCT has advantages in diagnosing root fractures over intra‐oral radiographs.

CBCT should be employed with caution due to its increased radiation dose compared with periapical radiography.
Tubeless simultaneous bilateral percutaneous nephrolithotomy: Safety, feasibility and efficacy in an Indian setting
Authors: Pillai Sunil , Mishra Dilip , Sharma Pritam , Venkatesh Giridhar , Chawla Arun , Hegde Padmaraj , Thomas Joseph 
Published: November 2013

ObjectivesTo study the safety, feasibility and efficacy of tubeless simultaneous bilateral percutaneous nephrolithotomy.MethodsWe retrospectively studied 85 patients who underwent tubeless simultaneous bilateral percutaneous nephrolithotomy in the Department of Urology, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, Karnataka, India, from July 2006 to June 2013. The demographic profile and outcomes were compared with the other existing series reported in the literature.ResultsA total of 65 male and 20 female patients with a mean age of 45.7 ± 11.6 years underwent tubeless simultaneous bilateral percutaneous nephrolithotomy. The mean stone burden was 299 mm2, with 12 staghorn calculi. Mean operative time was 87.6 ± 35.5 min. A total of 95% of stones were cleared with single access tracts. The success rate of tubeless simultaneous bilateral percutaneous nephrolithotomy (stone clearance) was 95.2%. Mean hemoglobin drop was 1.1 ± 0.9 gm% per patient, with 10.5% of patients requiring blood transfusion. Mean hospital stay was 69.6 ± 28.4 h. Complications included urosepsis (Clavien grade 4), acute kidney injury requiring hemodialysis (grade 3), pneumonia (grade = 2) and hydrothorax requiring intercostal drainage tube insertion (grade 3). On follow up, 4.7% of the renal units required ancillary procedures.ConclusionsOur findings confirm that tubeless simultaneous bilateral percutaneous nephrolithotomy is a safe and effective modality of treatment. It allows obviating a second anesthetic exposure, thus reducing analgesic requirement, hospitalization time and costs. This translates into a significant socioeconomic impact on the outlook of Indian patients presenting with bilateral renal stone disease.
Better recovery of kidney function in patients with de novo chronic kidney disease after partial nephrectomy compared with those with pre‐existing chronic kidney disease
Authors: Takagi Toshio , Kondo Tsunenori , Iizuka Junpei , Omae Kenji , Kobayashi Hirohito , Hashimoto Yasunobu , Yoshida Kazuhiko , Tanabe Kazunari 
Published: November 2013

AbstractWe compared kidney functional recovery between patients with pre‐existing chronic kidney disease, those with de novo chronic kidney disease and those with normal kidney function, after partial nephrectomy. A total of 311 patients who underwent partial nephrectomy at Tokyo Women's Medical University Hospital, Tokyo, Japan, between January 2004 and July 2011 with sufficient kidney functional data participated in the study. Patients with pre‐existing chronic kidney disease (group1: 78 patients) were defined as those with estimated glomerular filtration rate under 60 mL/min/m2 before partial nephrectomy. Patients with de novo chronic kidney disease (group 2: 49) were defined as those with estimated glomerular filtration rate over 60 mL/min/m2 before surgery and who developed estimated glomerular filtration rate under 60 mL/min/m2 3 months after partial nephrectomy. Normal patients (group 3: 184) were defined as those with estimated glomerular filtration rate over 60 mL/min/m2 both before and after partial nephrectomy. Group 1 was associated with older age and higher comorbidity, including hypertension and diabetes mellitus, compared with other groups. R.E.N.A.L. score was not significantly different between the groups. Although the percent change of estimated glomerular filtration rate between the preoperative period and 3 months after partial nephrectomy in group 2 was significantly decreased compared with that in other groups (group 1: −6.8%, group 2: −18%, group 3: −7.3%), the renal functional recovery between 3 and 12 months after partial nephrectomy in group 2 was better than that in other groups (group 1: −0.5%, group 2: 5.6%, group 3: −0.4%). Patients with de novo chronic kidney disease had better kidney functional recovery than the other two groups, which might suggest that they were surgically assaulted and developed chronic kidney disease in the early postoperative period, and were essentially different from those with pre‐existing chronic kidney disease.
La recommandation sur les socles de protection sociale: un document de six pages peut‐il changer le cours de l'histoire sociale?
Authors: Cichon Michael 
Published: November 2013

RésuméEn juin 2012, lorsque la Conférence internationale du Travail (CIT) a adopté à l'unanimité la recommandation sur les socles de protection sociale, qui donne un contenu concret au droit humain qu'est le droit à la sécurité sociale, la communauté internationale a franchi une étape importante sur la voie de la reconnaissance de la protection sociale comme une composante à part entière des stratégies de développement nationales et internationales. Le présent article resitue la recommandation no 202 dans l'histoire des activités normatives et des politiques de développement, retrace la genèse du concept de socle de protection sociale et analyse le contenu de la nouvelle recommandation et certaines des questions politiquement sensibles qu'elle a soulevées. Il apprécie ensuite si ce nouvel instrument peut faire évoluer la réalité sociale dans les 185 Etats Membres de l’Organisation internationale du Travail (OIT). Il souligne que son adoption constitue une preuve sans précédent de la bonne volonté de la communauté internationale et un consensus international ambitieux concernant la politique sociale, mais qu'il est indispensable, pour créer la marge de manœuvre nécessaire à une évolution des politiques nationales, que la campagne visant à instaurer, au minimum, une sécurité sociale de base pour tous se poursuive et demeure une priorité internationale. En conclusion, il recense les stratégies que la coalition mondiale qui mène cette campagne doit mettre en œuvre pour que la sécurité sociale demeure ou devienne un objectif inaliénable des stratégies de développement nationales et internationales.
Financement des socles de protection sociale: réflexions sur l'espace budgétaire
Authors: Harris Elliott 
Published: November 2013

RésuméL'efficacité de la protection sociale dans la lutte contre la pauvreté et la vulnérabilité, l'atténuation des chocs, la diminution des inégalités et le soutien à la croissance sur le long terme est aujourd'hui reconnue, mais de nombreux pays en développement et à bas revenu ont longtemps considéré les régimes de protection sociale efficaces comme un luxe qu'ils ne pouvaient se permettre. Le concept de socle de protection sociale vise à garantir une protection sociale minimale à un coût raisonnable, et ce même avec des ressources limitées, et à constituer une plateforme permettant la mise en œuvre progressive d'un régime de protection sociale complet. L'instauration, puis le maintien ou l'élargissement de ce socle de protection suppose de mobiliser un espace budgétaire, à court et long terme. Le présent article fait valoir que les efforts entrepris pour générer un espace budgétaire doivent veiller à prendre en compte la question de la prédictibilité, ainsi que les répercussions des choix financiers opérés présentement sur la pérennité du budget et de la dette, la stabilité macroéconomique, les inégalités, la diminution de la pauvreté et la croissance, et donc sur l'espace budgétaire futur. C'est dans cette perspective qu'il examine certaines des conséquences de la création d'un espace budgétaire par le biais de la mobilisation de ressources nationales supplémentaires, de la réaffectation des dépenses ou de la réalisation de gains d'efficience, de la diminution du service de la dette ou du recours à un financement extérieur. Enfin, il présente quelques exemples d'actions menées récemment qui ont été financées à un coût raisonnable et de manière durable dans des pays enregistrant des niveaux de revenu et de développement différents, à partir à la fois de ressources internes et externes.
Disentangling the effect of hybrid interactions and of the constant effort hypothesis on ecological community stability
Authors: Suweis Samir , Grilli Jacopo , Maritan Amos 
Published: November 2013

In the last years, a remarkable theoretical effort has been made in order to understand the relation between stability and complexity in ecological communities. Yet, what maintains species diversity in real ecological communities is still an open question. The non‐random structures of ecological interaction networks have been recognized as one key ingredient impacting the maximum number of coexisting species within the ecological community. However most of the earlier theoretical studies have considered communities with only one interaction type (either antagonistic, competitive or mutualistic). Recently, it has been proposed that multiple interaction types might stabilize ecosystems and that, in this hybrid case, increasing complexity increases stability. Here we show that these results depend on ad hoc hypothesis that the authors used in their model and we highlight the need to disentangle the role of multiple interaction types and constant interaction effort allocation on community stability. Indeed, we find that mixing of mutualistic and predator–prey interaction types does not stabilize the community dynamics and we demonstrate that a positive correlation between complexity and stability is observed only if a constant effort allocation is imposed in the ecological interactions.SynthesisIn recent years a sparkling research has been devoted to the search of new theoretical mechanisms to explain way ecosystems may persist despite their complexity. Here we show that, contrary to what recently suggested (Mougi et al. 2012), the mismatch between theoretical results and empirical evidences on the stability of ecological community is still there also for communities with both mutualistic and antagonistic interactions, and the ‘complexity‐stability’ paradox is still alive. Indeed, we demonstrate that their results arise as an artifact of the peculiar rescaling of the interaction strengths they imposed. Our study suggests that further theoretical studies and experimental evidences are still needed to better understand the role of interaction strengths in real ecological communities.
Ecologists should not use statistical significance tests to interpret simulation model results
Authors: White J. Wilson , Rassweiler Andrew , Samhouri Jameal F. , Stier Adrian C. , White Crow 
Published: November 2013

Simulation models are widely used to represent the dynamics of ecological systems. A common question with such models is how changes to a parameter value or functional form in the model alter the results. Some authors have chosen to answer that question using frequentist statistical hypothesis tests (e.g. ANOVA). This is inappropriate for two reasons. First, p‐values are determined by statistical power (i.e. replication), which can be arbitrarily high in a simulation context, producing minuscule p‐values regardless of the effect size. Second, the null hypothesis of no difference between treatments (e.g. parameter values) is known a priori to be false, invalidating the premise of the test. Use of p‐values is troublesome (rather than simply irrelevant) because small p‐values lend a false sense of importance to observed differences. We argue that modelers should abandon this practice and focus on evaluating the magnitude of differences between simulations.SynthesisResearchers analyzing field or lab data often test ecological hypotheses using frequentist statistics (t‐tests, ANOVA, etc.) that focus on p‐values. Field and lab data usually have limited sample sizes, and p‐values are valuable for quantifying the probability of making incorrect inferences in that situation. However, modern ecologists increasingly rely on simulation models to address complex questions, and those who were trained in frequentist statistics often apply the hypothesis‐testing approach inappropriately to their simulation results. Our paper explains why p‐values are not informative for interpreting simulation models, and suggests better ways to evaluate the ecological significance of model results.
Should repeated TESE be performed following a failed TESE in men with Klinefelter Syndrome?
Authors: Haliloglu A. H. , Tangal S. , Gulpinar O. , Onal K. , Pabuccu R. 
Published: November 2013

SummaryThe main goal of this study was to evaluate the success rate of repeated Testicular Sperm Extraction (TESE) in Klinefelter Syndrome (KS). Eighteen patients with the diagnosis of KS who had undergone micro TESE previously were re‐evaluated between May 2007 and May 2012. Testes were measured and testicular volume was calculated by orchidometer and by scrotal ultrasonography in all patients All patients underwent repeated micro TESE. Serum follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), testosterone levels and testicular volume of the patients with and without successful sperm retrieval were compared statistically. A p value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. The mean age of the patients was 30.3 years. The mean testicular volume was 2.08 and 2.1 mL for right and left testes respectively. The comparisons of serum FSH, LH, testosterone levels and testicular volume between patients with and without successful sperm retrieval did not show any significant difference. Three of the 18 patients who underwent repeated micro TESE, had successful sperm retrieval and repeated TESE failed in 15 patients. Three patients with successful sperm retrieval underwent intracytoplasmic sperm injection using retrieved testicular spermatozoa. Two embryos for each patient which were determined as healthy were transferred to the wives of the patients. Pregnancy occured in one of them and a healthy female infant was born. We conclude that consideration and hope must be given for a repeated micro TESE in patients with KS, even with a minimal chance of success.
Microscopic Removal Function and the Relationship Between Slurry Particle Size Distribution and Workpiece Roughness During Pad Polishing
Authors: Suratwala Tayyab , Feit Michael , Steele William , Wong Lana , Shen Nan , Dylla‐Spears Rebecca , Desjardin Richard , Mason Daniel , Geraghty Paul , Miller Philip , Baxamusa Salmaan 
Published: November 2013

Various ceria and colloidal silica polishing slurries were used to polish fused silica glass workpieces on a polyurethane pad. Characterization of the slurries' particle size distribution (PSD) (using both ensemble light scattering and single particle counting techniques) and of the polished workpiece surface (using atomic force microscopy) was performed. The results show the final workpiece surface roughness is quantitatively correlated with the logarithmic slope of the distribution function for the largest particles at the exponential tail end of the PSD. Using the measured PSD, fraction of pad area making contact, and mechanical properties of the workpiece, slurry, and pad as input parameters, an Ensemble Hertzian Gap (EHG) polishing model was formulated to estimate each particle's penetration, load, and contact zone. The model is based on multiple Hertzian contact of slurry particles at the workpiece–pad interface in which the effective interface gap is determined through an elastic load balance. Separately, ceria particle static contact and single pass sliding experiments were performed showing ~1‐nm depth removal per pass (i.e., a plastic type removal). Also, nanoindentation measurements on fused silica were made to estimate the critical load at which plastic type removal starts to occur (Pcrit~5 × 10−5 N). Next the EHG model was extended to create simulated polished surfaces using the Monte Carlo method where each particle (with the calculated characteristics described above) slides and removes material from the silica surface in random directions. The polishing simulation utilized a constant depth removal mechanism (i.e., not scaling with particle size) of the elastic deformation zone cross section between the particle and silica surface, which was either 0.04 nm (for chemical removal) at low loads (<Pcrit) or 1.0 nm (for plastic removal) at intermediate loads (>Pcrit). The simulated surfaces quantitatively compare well with the measured rms roughness, power spectra, surface texture, absolute thickness material removal rate, and load dependence of removal rate.
Three‐dimensional Ceramic/Camphene‐based Coextrusion for Unidirectionally Macrochanneled Alumina Ceramics with Controlled Porous Walls
Authors: Moon Young‐Wook , Shin Kwan‐Ha , Koh Young‐Hag , Jung Hyun‐Do , Kim Hyoun‐Ee 
Published: November 2013

We report the utility of three‐dimensional ceramic/camphene‐based coextrusion, newly developed in this study, for the production of unidirectionally macrochanneled alumina ceramics with three‐dimensionally interconnected porous alumina walls. In this technique, a continuous ceramic/camphene filament with a diameter of 1 mm, comprised of a pure camphene core and a frozen alumina/camphene shell, was produced by the coextrusion process and then deposited in a layer‐by‐layer sequence using a computer‐controlled 3‐axis moving table. Unidirectionally aligned macrochannels (~400 μm in diameter) and three‐dimensionally interconnected pores (several tens of micrometers in size) in the alumina walls were created by removing the camphene core and the camphene dendrites formed in the alumina/camphene region, respectively. The sample showed much higher compressive strength in the macrochannel direction than in the perpendicular direction. In addition, the compressive strength of the sample could increase with an increase in initial alumina content owing to a decrease in the total porosity.