bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Surgical Outcomes of Additional Ahmed Glaucoma Valve Implantation in Refractory Glaucoma
Authors: Ko Sung Ju , Hwang Young Hoon , Ahn Sang Il , Kim Hwang Ki 
Published: June 2015

Purpose:
To evaluate the surgical outcomes of the implantation of an additional Ahmed glaucoma valve (AGV) into the eyes of patients with refractory glaucoma following previous AGV implantation.

Methods:
This study is a retrospective review of the clinical histories of 23 patients who had undergone a second AGV implantation after a failed initial implantation. Age, sex, prior surgery, glaucoma type, number of medications, intraocular pressure (IOP), visual acuity, and surgical complications were analyzed. Surgical success was defined as IOP maintained below 21 mm Hg, with at least a 20% overall reduction in IOP, regardless of the use of IOP-lowering medications.

Results:
Following the implantation of a second AGV, the mean IOP decreased from 39.3 to 18.5 mm Hg (52.9% reduction, P<0.001). The mean number of postoperative IOP-lowering medications administered decreased from 2.8 to 1.7 after the second AGV implantation (P<0.001). The cumulative probability of success for the procedure was 87% after 1 year and 52% after 3 years. Three patients (13.0%) experienced bullous keratopathy after the second AGV implantation. None of the patients showed any evidence of diplopia or ocular movement limitation as a result of the presence of 2 AGVs in the same eye. Prior trabeculectomy was found to be a significant risk factor for failure (P=0.027).

Conclusions:
A second AGV implantation can be a good choice of surgical treatment when the first AGV has failed to control IOP.
Fluctuation of Bacteria on Bleb Surface After Trabeculectomy With Adjunctive Mitomycin C
Authors: Takahashi Nobumichi , Sawada Akira , Mochizuki Kiyofumi , Katada Toshihiko , Yamamoto Tetsuya 
Published: June 2015

Purpose:
To determine whether the bacterial and floral patterns on the bleb surface are affected by the season in eyes that had undergone trabeculectomy with adjunctive mitomycin C.

Patients and Methods:
Forty-four glaucoma patients who had an avascular or a hypovascular cystic filtering bleb were studied. Swabs of the bleb surface were taken 4 times in 1 year. The samples were cultured, and all organisms isolated were identified and tested for antibiotic sensitivity and resistance.

Results:
Of the 176 specimens, 48 tested positive in cultures. Out of the 44 glaucoma eyes that had undergone trabeculectomy, 30 (68.2%) eyes were culture positive. A total of 58 strains were isolated. The organisms isolated were 22 strains of Staphylococcus epidermidis, 21 strains of Propionibacterium acnes, 8 strains of Corynebacterium sp., 5 strains of Staphylococcus sp., and 1 strain of both Neisseria sp., and Candida parapsilosis. Fifteen eyes had a positive culture ≥2 times, and in 10 of these eyes, the same strain was isolated. There was no resistance to vancomycin by S. epidermidis, P. acnes, and Corynebacterium sp. All of the isolates of S.epidermidis were sensitive to minocycline and amikacin. The rate of bacterial detection in the spring was 13.6%, summer was 20.5%, autumn was 45.5%, and winter was 29.5%. The increase in the incidence of bacterial presence during autumn was significant (P=0.006; the Fisher exact probability test).

Conclusions:
It is not rare to detect the bacterial organisms on the bleb surface in glaucomatous eyes that had undergone trabeculectomy. The prevalence varied with the season and was highest in the autumn.
Stereological Evaluation of the Optic Nerve Volume in Alzheimer Disease
Authors: Kusbeci Tuncay , Kusbeci Ozge Yilmaz , Mas Nuket Gocmen , Karabekir Hamit Selim , Yavas Guliz , Yucel Aylin 
Published: June 2015

Abstract
Optic nerve damage occurs in Alzheimer disease (AD) related to the loss of the retinal ganglion cells that contribute fibers to the optic nerve and reduction of the density of axons of the optic nerve. In this study the authors evaluated optic nerve volume changes and the relation between the cerebrum and optic nerve volumes in AD patients.
The study evaluated the volumetric measurements of optic nerve by applying the stereological method on magnetic resonance images (MRI). It included age-matched study and control groups, which were composed of 20 patients with probable AD and 20 healthy subjects, respectively. MRIs were analyzed by using the point-counting approach holding Cavalieri principle.
There were statistically significant optic nerve volume reduction and cerebral atrophy in AD patients when compared with the age-matched control subjects (P = 0.013, P < 0.001, respectively) but there was no correlation between the optic nerve volume and cerebral volume in AD patients (r = 0.326, P = 0.160).
There was a difference between optic nerve volumes of AD and control subjects. The stereological evaluation of optic nerve volume is of importance for both clinicians and anatomists and it can provide valuable information in the evaluation of morphological changes of AD in vivo.
A Lacrimal Sump Syndrome With a Large Intranasal Ostium
Authors: Qian Zhenbin , Tu Yunhai , Xiao Tianlin , Wu Wencan 
Published: June 2015

Abstract
Lacrimal sump syndrome is an uncommon cause of failed dacryocystorhinostomy. Small osteotomy was reported as the major cause of this syndrome. Here, the authors described the first case of a lacrimal sump syndrome with a large intranasal ostium following endoscopic endonasal dacryocystorhinostomy (EE-DCR). A 51-year-old women patient suffered recurrence of epiphora and dacryocystitis for 8 months following an EE-DCR. Examination showed a large intranasal ostium with a lot of purulent discharge and patent lacrimal irrigation. Lacrimal sump syndrome was diagnosed after passing a probe into the residual lacrimal sac under the aid of an endoscope. The residual sac was reopened and merogel was packed around the wound. The clinical symptoms disappeared after the surgery. It is indicated that lacrimal sump syndrome does happen not only in a small intranasal ostium, but also in a large intranasal ostium. Existing residual sac with bacterial infection may be related to this particular case.
Genome Editing inCaenorhabditis briggsaeusing the CRISPR/Cas9 System
Authors: Culp Elizabeth , Richman Cory , Sharanya Devika , Gupta Bhagwati P 
Published: June 2015

Author SummaryThe CRISPR/Cas9 system has recently emerged as a powerful tool to engineer the genome of an organism. The system is adopted from bacteria where it confers immunity against invading foreign DNA. This work reports the first successful use of the CRISPR/Cas9 system inC. briggsae, a cousin of the well-known nematodeC. elegans. We used two plasmids, one expressing Cas9 endonuclease and the other an engineered CRISPR RNA corresponding to the DNA sequence to be cleaved. Our approach allows for the generation of loss-of-function mutations inC. briggsaegenes thereby facilitating a comparative study of gene function between nematodes.AbstractThe CRISPR/Cas9 system is an efficient technique for generating targeted alterations in an organism’s genome. Here we describe a methodology for using the CRISPR/Cas9 system to generate mutations via non-homologous end joining in the nematodeCaenorhabditis briggsae,a sister species ofC. elegans. Evidence for somatic mutations and off-target mutations are also reported. The use of the CRISPR/Cas9 system inC. briggsaewill greatly facilitate comparative studies toC. elegans.
Governance, inclusion and trust in Singapore, Hong Kong and Macao
Authors: Ho Chiew Siang Bryan 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– The contributions in this special issue focus specifically on pertinent issues concerning governance in Asian developmental states – Singapore, Hong Kong, and Macao. The purpose of this paper is to provide, first of all, an overview of conceptual issues on governance and its potential application for addressing the rise and development of Asia’s successful developmental states – Singapore, Hong Kong, and Macao.

Design/methodology/approach
– This introduction will show the relevance of these contributions theoretically, methodologically, and empirically in relation to the current literature on governance studies.

Findings
– The overview section links the theoretical and conceptual considerations with the empirical studies on either single country or a comparison between states.

Originality/value
– The concluding remarks point to the lessons drawn from these contributions and the implication(s) for further research in good governance.
Infrastructure management in Singapore: privatization and government control
Authors: Jones David S. 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– Singapore is a small, densely populated city-state, which has become a prosperous global trading, investment and communications hub. In light of this, particular challenges have arisen in the development of its infrastructure to meet its needs. These challenges are met by harnessing private capital in the design, building, management and funding of the infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to examine various arrangements in using private capital within key infrastructure sectors: mass rapid transit, roads, water supply, electricity generation and transmission, maritime ports and airport, ITC services, and industrial infrastructure, and to consider how full privatization, limited privatization (government-linked companies), direct government provision through statutory authorities (relying partly on private borrowing), and a mix of the above arrangements require infrastructure providers, even statutory authorities, to follow business practices.

Design/methodology/approach
– This paper adopts an empirical, discursive and critical approach.

Findings
– The Singapore government has continued to see its role as steering the economy into niche sectors where Singapore can acquire a competitive edge, and to overall facilitate economic development through active intervention. This includes, amongst other things, state-sponsored training and education, capital grants to start-ups, trade promotion, various fiscal incentives to businesses, guarantees for bank credit, etc. (Ghesquiere, 2007). This twin-pronged approach has been reflected in the development and management of the infrastructure. In line with the creation of a strong free enterprise economy, privatization and private capital has been a central feature of infrastructure investment and management.

Originality/value
– The paper shows how private capital can be used through privatization and borrowing from the private sector to manage the infrastructure. This may be considered an appropriate means to meet the needs of a densely populated small state which is also a global hub for trade, research, investment and communications. It also shows how the harnessing of private capital can be combined with continued government control to ensure that the infrastructure development reflects public policy and adheres to required standards.
European consumer preference for African dried fruits
Authors: Alphonce Roselyne , Temu Anna , Almli Valerie Lengard 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to assess European consumer preference and willingness to pay (WTP) for tropical dried fruits from Africa. The paper specifically investigates sensory and credence characteristics driving consumer preferences.

Design/methodology/approach
– Data on sensory descriptive analysis and hedonic evaluation for seven samples representing three fruit types: mango, pineapple and banana, were collected together with data on Country of Origin (COO) preferences and WTP for conventional, organic and fair-trade labelled dried fruits, among Norwegian consumers (n=96).

Findings
– The results show that consumer preferences for a dried fruit are affected significantly by its typical aroma intensity and consumers are willing to pay a premium for both organic and fair-trade products. Two consumer groups expressing distinct COO preferences for tropical dried fruits and a third group with no country preferences are revealed.

Originality/value
– This study provides useful insights for dried fruit producers and market strategists in tropical countries attempting to position value-added products for maximum revenue.
Does packaging matter? Energy consumption of pre-packed salads
Authors: Pagani Marco , Vittuari Matteo , Falasconi Luca 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– Packed salads are popular in many countries of the world. The purpose of this paper is to assess the energy footprint of these products from farm gate to retail gate, compared with unpacked produces distributed by retailers and farmers’ markets in Italy.

Design/methodology/approach
– Life cycle assessment served as methodological background, even if the analysis was focused on direct and indirect energy consumption. Three supply chains were analysed: packed (P-S) and unpacked (U-S) sold in supermarkets, and unpacked produce sold locally (U-L). Energy inputs were accounted for processing, packaging, refrigeration, transport, and distribution. Data were collected from available literature and from interviews with key experts in the transformation, packaging, and retail sectors. Energy inputs were computed for 1 kg of finished edible product (kgp).

Findings
– Packed salads require an elevated energy input ranging from 16 to 37 MJ kgp−1. Input energy is mostly required for packaging and refrigeration. By comparison, the U-L chain requires about one tenth of the energy (1.8-2.6 MJ.kgp−1), but local sold produces attain the best performance with only 0.6-1.2 MJ.kgp−1, since they do not need processing, refrigeration, and disposable packages. Packed products mainly rely on the availability of cheap fossil fuels and all the sector has significantly suffered after the oil shock of 2008. Increasing energy costs may lead the price of the commodity out of the market.

Originality/value
– The paper addresses the subject of energy consumption in a popular sector of processed food to which at present little attention has been paid in the domain of food research.
Market structure analysis of health and wellness food products in India
Authors: Ali Tabassum , Alam Aftab , Ali Jabir 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to analyze the market structure and level of competition in health and wellness food products by type, category, prime positioning and distribution networks in India.

Design/methodology/approach
– The study is conducted using secondary data from Euromonitor International. Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) has been calculated for analyzing the market trends in terms of type, category and prime positioning and market competition has been analyzed using Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). Analysis of variance has been used for analyzing the statistical difference in market competition.

Findings
– Consumer purchase behavior for food is significantly changing across the world and consumers are becoming increasingly conscious of the health enhancing properties of food. With growing incidences of problems like obesity, diabetes, coronary heart diseases and foodborne diseases, consumers are becoming aware of the role of food in ensuring health and well-being. There have been significant structural changes in the health and wellness food market compositions and India has huge market potential for health and wellness food products with a market size of Rs. 435 billion in 2013 and growing at a significantly high annual growth rate of about 13.8 percent during 2002-2013. HHI results clearly indicate that there is significant competition in the health and wellness food market with average HHI of 0.19. However, the structure of market competition shows a varied trend across the types, categories, prime-positioning and distribution channels of health and wellness food products.

Practical implications
– Results of the study provide a better understanding of temporal as well as intra-category changes in market size of health and wellness food products and the competitiveness of the health and wellness food market, providing valuable insights to the companies involved in producing and marketing of health and wellness food products in India.

Originality/value
– Health and wellness food market is an emerging area for the marketer and there are limited analysis on market structure and competition.
Assessing the comparative performance of banking branches
Authors: Balfour Ryan , Joo Seong-Jong , Whited Hsin-hui I. H. , Lin Jerry W. 
Published: June 2015

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to measure the performance and relative operating efficiency of mini branches of a commercial bank for internal benchmarking.Design/methodology/approach– The authors employ data envelopment analysis (DEA) for measuring the relative efficiency of mini bank branches in a region of a state in the USA. In addition, the authors use Tobit regression analysis for finding determinants of the efficiency.Findings– The authors identified efficient and inefficient branches using pertinent variables along with potential improvements for the inefficient branches. Among the variables, the authors confirmed that number of full-time employees and service charges were statistically significant for explaining the efficiency of bank branches.Research limitations/implications– The major limitation of this study is the one time measure of efficiency using observations for a month and selected variables. To improve this study: first, the authors need to test other variables related to, but not limited to, assets, bad loans, and number of new account opened; second, it is necessary to measure the efficiency of the branches over time.Originality/value– The contributions of this study include an application of DEA for measuring and benchmarking the performance of bank branches, especially mini branches located in grocery stores and the use of internal data, which is rarely available to the public.
Multicriteria analysis for benchmarking sustainability development
Authors: Deng Hepu 
Published: June 2015

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to formulate the process of measuring and benchmarking the performance of sustainability development of organizations as a multi-criteria analysis problem and presents an objective approach for solving the problem in a simple manner.Design/methodology/approach– An objective approach is developed for benchmarking the sustainability development performance of individual organizations in the context of multi-criteria analysis. The relative importance of the sustainability indicators is determined independent of the subjective preferences of the decision maker using the concept of information entropy. A modified technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solutions is used for effectively incorporating the objective indicator weights into the process of determining the overall performance of sustainability development of each organization. As a result, an unbiased overall ranking of individual organizations on the performance of their sustainability development can be obtained.Findings– The proposed approach is applicable for measuring and benchmarking the performance of organizational sustainability development through the presentation of an example.Originality/value– The originality of the paper is on the development of the objective approach within the context of multi-criteria analysis for measuring and benchmarking the performance of sustainability development of individual organizations.
An introduction to Monte Carlo simulations in criminal psychology: applications in evaluating biased estimators for recidivism
Authors: Hunt Priscillia , Miles Jeremy N.V 
Published: June 2015

Purpose– Studies in criminal psychology are inevitably undertaken in a context of uncertainty. One class of methods addressing such uncertainties is Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to MC simulation for representing uncertainty and focusses on likely uses in studies of criminology and psychology. In addition to describing the method and providing a step-by-step guide to implementing a MC simulation, this paper provides examples using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Survey data. Results show MC simulations can be a useful technique to test biased estimators and to evaluate the effect of bias on power for statistical tests.Design/methodology/approach– After describing MC simulation methods in detail, this paper provides a step-by-step guide to conducting a simulation. Then, a series of examples are provided. First, the authors present a brief example of how to generate data using MC simulation and the implications of alternative probability distribution assumptions. The second example uses actual data to evaluate the impact that omitted variable bias can have on least squares estimators. A third example evaluates the impact this form of heteroskedasticity can have on the power of statistical tests.Findings– This study shows MC simulated variable means are very similar to the actual data, but the standard deviations are considerably less in MC simulation-generated data. Using actual data on criminal convictions and income of fathers, the authors demonstrate the impact of omitted variable bias on the standard errors of the least squares estimator. Lastly, the authors show thep-values are systematically larger and the rejection frequencies correspondingly smaller in heteroskedastic error models compared to a model with homoskedastic errors.Originality/value– The aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding of what MC simulation methods are and what can be achieved with them. A key value of this paper is that the authors focus on understanding the concepts of MC simulation for researchers of statistics and psychology in particular. Furthermore, the authors provide a step-by-step description of the MC simulation approach and provide examples using real survey data on criminal convictions and economic characteristics of fathers in large US cities.
Development of value stream map for an Indian automotive components manufacturing organization
Authors: Vinodh S. , Selvaraj T. , Chintha Suresh Kumar , K E K Vimal 
Published: June 2015

Purpose
– This paper aims to apply Value Stream Mapping (VSM) for enabling leanness in an Indian automotive components manufacturing organization.

Design/methodology/approach
– The study was initiated with the selection of product line, construction of current state map, identification of various wastes and the development of future state map. The improvement proposals were subjected to implementation and performance measures were quantified.

Findings
– The expected outcomes of the study include the quantification of wastes, improvement in manpower productivity, quality improvement and throughput time reduction.

Research limitations/implications
– The implementation study has been conducted in only one manufacturing organization. The experiences gained by the conduct of this implementation study are feasible and deployable in similar manufacturing organizations.

Practical implications
– The results of the study indicated that significant improvement in lean characteristics is possible as a result of the implementation of VSM.

Originality/value
– The paper reports a real-time study conducted in an automotive components manufacturing organization. Hence, the contributions are original.