bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Associations of early age‐related macular degeneration with ocular and general parameters. The central India eyes and medical study
Authors: Jonas Jost B. , Nangia Vinay , Kulkarni Maithili , Gupta Rajesh , Khare Anshu 
Published: January 2012

Abstract.Purpose:  To assess associations between age‐related macular degeneration (AMD) and ocular and general parameters.Methods:  The Central India Eye and Medical Study, a population‐based study performed in rural Central India, included 4711 subjects (aged 30+ years) out of 5885 eligible subjects (response rate: 80.1%). Fundus photographs were assessed using the Wisconsin Age‐Related Maculopathy Grading system.Results:  Fundus photographs were available for 4542 (96.4%) subjects. Early AMD was present in 215/4542 subjects (4.7 ± 0.3%), and late AMD was detected in 8/4542 (0.2 ± 0.03%) subjects. After adjustment for age, prevalence of AMD was significantly associated with hyperopic refractive error (p = 0.001), shorter axial length (p = 0.01), and higher corneal refractive power (p = 0.02). Each dioptre increase in hyperopic refraction or each millimetre decrease in axial length was associated with a 15% [odds ratio (OR):1.15; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.06, 1.24] and 19% (OR: 0.81; 95%CI: 0.69, 0.95) increased probability of early AMD, respectively. AMD was not significantly associated with blood pressure, serum concentration of cholesterol, glycosylated haemoglobin Hb1Ac, high‐density lipoproteins and postprandial glucose, gender, level of education, any parameter of smoking, alcohol consumption, psychiatric depression or of daily activities, anterior chamber depth, lens thickness, intraocular pressure, size of the optic disc, neuroretinal rim and parapapillary atrophy, nor amount of nuclear cataract and status after cataract surgery. If the statistical analysis was adjusted for age and refractive error, age‐related macular degeneration was marginally significantly associated with a low intake of fruits (p = 0.06).Conclusions:  Hyperopia (and short axial length) besides age was the single most important associated factor for AMD in adult Indians.
Disturbed correlation between arterial resistance and pulsatility in glaucoma patients
Authors: Abegão Pinto Luís , Vandewalle Evelien , Stalmans Ingeborg 
Published: January 2012

Abstract.Purpose:  (i) To investigate whether pulsatility index (PI) and mean flow velocities (MFV) are altered in glaucoma patients. (ii) To evaluate the significance of PI in retrobulbar autoregulation capacity.Methods:  Patients with primary open‐angle glaucoma (POAG; n = 49), normal tension glaucoma (NTG; n = 62) and healthy controls (n = 48) underwent colour Doppler imaging measurements of the retrobulbar vasculature. Kruskal–Wallis test was used to compare variables between the three diagnostic groups. Restricted cubic splines were used to determine nonlinearities between the resistive index (RI) and PI correlations.Results:  Mean flow velocities (MFV) were lower in both short posterior ciliary arteries (SCPA) and central retinal arteries (CRA) from the two glaucoma groups (p < 0.04 versus healthy controls). No differences were detected in RI or PI in any arteries of the three diagnostic groups (p > 0.08). In healthy individuals, correlations between RI and PI were linear in all arteries. In both POAG and NTG patients, CRA presented a nonlinear curve with a cutpoint at RI 0.77 (p < 0.001) and 0.61 (p = 0.03), respectively, above which the slope increased nearly five‐ and tenfold (POAG: 1.96 to 10.06; NTG: −0.46–4.06), respectively. A nonlinear correlation in the ophthalmic artery was only observed in NTG patients, with a cutpoint at RI 0.82 (p < 0.001), above which the slope increased from 3.47 to 14.03.Conclusions:  Glaucoma patients do not present the linear relationships between RI and PI observed in healthy individuals. Their nonlinear relations may be indicative of an altered autoregulation and suggest a possible threshold RI could be determined above which autoregulatory disturbances become more relevant.
Absence of the fourth cranial nerve in congenital Brown syndrome
Authors: Kaeser Pierre‐François , Kress Bodo , Rohde Stefan , Kolling Gerold 
Published: January 2012

Abstract.Purpose:  To elucidate the aetiology of congenital Brown syndrome.Methods:  Four consecutive patients diagnosed with unilateral congenital Brown syndrome had a comprehensive standardized ocular motility examination. Any compensatory head posture was measured. Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with regard for the IV cranial nerve (CN) was performed in all patients. Orbital MRI was performed in 2/4 patients, with images acquired in eight directions of gaze and superior oblique (SO) muscle areas compared.Results:  CN IV could not be identified bilaterally in two patients, but was absent only on the side of the Brown syndrome in the two other patients. On the normal side, orbital MRI revealed a smaller SO muscle area in upgaze than in downgaze, demonstrating normal actions of this muscle. On the side of the Brown syndrome, the SO area remained the same in upgaze and in downgaze and approximately symmetric to the area of SO in downgaze on the normal side.Conclusions:  These cases add further anatomical support to the theory of paradoxical innervation in congenital Brown syndrome. CN IV was absent in two patients on the side of the Brown syndrome, but without muscle hypoplasia. SO muscle size did not vary in up‐ and downgaze, which we interpreted as a sign of constant innervation through branches of CN III.
Glaucoma screening during regular optician visits: the feasibility and specificity of screening in real life
Authors: de Vries Margriet M. , Stoutenbeek Remco , Müskens Rogier P. H. M. , Jansonius Nomdo M. 
Published: January 2012

Abstract.Purpose:  To determine the feasibility and specificity of glaucoma screening during regular optician visits.Methods:  In four optician shops, glaucoma screening was offered to 400 consecutive visitors aged 45 years or above. If the visitor agreed to participate, an intraocular pressure measurement and – in those with a pressure below 25 mmHg – a frequency‐doubling perimeter (FDT) C20‐1 visual field screening test were performed. Those with an elevated pressure or at least one reproducibly abnormal test location on FDT were referred to our hospital.Results:  Three‐hundred and fifty‐two of 400 consecutive visitors (88%) were screened. Fifteen of the unscreened visitors were not screened because they were already regularly checked by an ophthalmologist related to glaucoma. Forty‐two of 352 screened participants (12%) were referred. Of these 42 referrals, seven were diagnosed with glaucoma, 10 were diagnosed with ocular hypertension (OHT), 12 did not have any eye disease, seven had an eye disease other than glaucoma or OHT that was diagnosed previously and six were newly diagnosed with an eye disease other than glaucoma or OHT. The specificity of the screening protocol was 91% (95% confidence interval 88–94%).Conclusions:  Glaucoma screening at the optician shop was feasible, but the specificity of the screening protocol was rather low. With more stringent cut‐off points (30 mmHg; at least two reproducibly abnormal test locations), the specificity could be improved to 96% (94–98%), apparently without a significant loss of sensitivity. This suggests that screening during regular optician visits might be a viable approach.
Lifestyle modification, nutritional and vitamins supplements for age‐related macular degeneration
Authors: Sin Helena P. Y. , Liu David T. L. , Lam Dennis S. C. 
Published: January 2012

Abstract.Purpose:  To provide a systematic review of the published studies pertaining to the lifestyle modification, dietary, nutritional and vitamins supplements for preventing occurrence or halting deterioration of age‐related macular degeneration (AMD).Methods:  The literature searches from 1990 to December 2010 with following keywords, ‘age related macular degeneration’, ‘nutrition’, ‘antioxidant’, ‘diet’ and ‘vitamins supplements’ using search engines Pubmed, Google Scholar, Medline and the Cochrane Library.Meta‐analyses, population‐based cohort studies and case‐controlled trials were reviewed, whereas small cases series, case reports, commentaries, abstracts in proceedings or personal observations were excluded.Results:  Smoking and obesity are identified risk factors for AMD. High dietary intakes of omega‐3 fatty acids, and macular xanthophylls lutein and zeaxanthin have been associated with a lower risk of prevalence and incidence in AMD. Vitamin B and extracts from wolfberry, Gingko biloba and berry anthocyanins were also subjects of intense research interests, but there has been no concluding scientific evidence yet. The Age‐Related Eye Disease study (AREDS) is the only large‐scale randomized controlled clinical trial to show beneficial effect of AREDS formulation of vitamins C, E, beta‐carotene and zinc with copper in reducing the risk progression to advanced AMD in patients with intermediate AMD or with advanced AMD in one eye.Conclusion:  Quit smoking is an important advice to patients to prevent or slow the progress of AMD. There is no recommendation for routine nutritional or vitamins supplementation for primary prevention. However, patients with documented intermediate risk of AMD or advanced AMD in one eye are recommended to take AREDS‐type vitamin supplements.
Association between Article Citation Rate and Level of Evidence in the Companion Animal Literature
Authors: Giuffrida M.A. , Brown D.C. 
Published: January 2012

BackgroundLevel of evidence (LOE) hierarchies rank scientific articles according to the use of study design features intended to limit bias. Citation analysis of medical articles has shown that studies with highLOEranking are preferentially cited.ObjectivesTo determine whether clinical companion animal articles reporting study designs classified as highLOEare more frequently cited than those with designs classified as lowLOEand to characterize other factors associated with 5‐year citation rate.MethodsLiterature survey of all original clinical articles published in 2004 in 5 peer‐reviewed clinical veterinary journals. For each eligible article, details of scientific and nonscientific characteristics were collected, anLOEclassification was assigned, and the 5‐year citation rate following publication was determined. Linear regression was used to identify factors associated with citation rate.ResultsOverallLOEwas low with 188 of 209 eligible articles describing a study design classified as lowLOE. An association was not identified between 5‐year citation frequency andLOEclassification or any specific feature of study methodology. Articles pertaining to infectious disease or published in theJournal ofVeterinaryInternalMedicinewere associated with significantly greater subsequent citations.Conclusions and Clinical ImportanceReports of veterinary studies designed to limit the influence of bias are not more widely referenced than articles reporting data obtained through less stringent methodologies. Medical subspecialty and publishing journal prestige can influence an article's subsequent citation rate.
Assessing transferability of ecological models: an underappreciated aspect of statistical validation
Authors: Wenger Seth J. , Olden Julian D. 
Published: January 2012

Summary1. Ecologists have long sought to distinguish relationships that are general from those that are idiosyncratic to a narrow range of conditions. Conventional methods of model validation and selection assess in‐ or out‐of‐sample prediction accuracy but do not assess model generality or transferability, which can lead to overestimates of performance when predicting in other locations, time periods or data sets.2. We propose an intuitive method for evaluating transferability based on techniques currently in use in the area of species distribution modelling. The method involves cross‐validation in which data are assigned non‐randomly to groups that are spatially, temporally or otherwise distinct, thus using heterogeneity in the data set as a surrogate for heterogeneity among data sets.3. We illustrate the method by applying it to distribution modelling of brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalisMitchill) and brown trout (Salmo truttaLinnaeus) in western United States. We show that machine‐learning techniques such as random forests and artificial neural networks can produce models with excellent in‐sample performance but poor transferability, unless complexity is constrained. In our example, traditional linear models have greater transferability.4. We recommend the use of a transferability assessment whenever there is interest in making inferences beyond the data set used for model fitting. Such an assessment can be used both for validation and for model selection and provides important information beyond what can be learned from conventional validation and selection techniques.
Cascade multivariate regression tree: a novel approach for modelling nested explanatory sets
Authors: Ouellette Marie‐Hélène , Legendre Pierre , Borcard Daniel 
Published: January 2012

Summary1. Ecological data analysis frequently calls for the assessment of the relationship between species composition and a set of explanatory variables of interest. The assessment may have to be pursued while taking into account the influence of another set of explanatory variables. The hypothetical nature and structure of the influence of an explanatory set on the effect of a distinct explanatory set guides the proper choice of modelling methodology for a combined explanatory assessment.2. Here, we describe a framework where the relationship between the response data and a main set of explanatory variables is not linear. It may, for example, take the form of abrupt changes in the response following thresholds of the explanatory variables, or any other nonlinearizable relationship. The influence of a second set of explanatory variables is determined a posteriori, after the influence of the main explanatory set has been taken into account. This is useful when one of the sets is thought to have an effect that varies as a function of the other.3. To achieve this type of assessment, we propose a cascade of multivariate regression trees (CMRT). We decompose the total dispersion of a response matrix between two explanatory data sets in a nested manner. By handling each leaf (group) resulting from the first‐level multivariate regression tree (MRT) analysis as separate independent data sets in following analyses, we can separate the explanatory power of the first partition from those of the subordinate partitions computed using a second explanatory set. A preliminary biological hypothesis will guide the choice of which set of explanatory variables should be used to compute the main partition. The method could be extended to more than two explanatory data sets whose effects on the response data are hierarchical.4. Cascade of multivariate regression trees allows the users to impose a nested structure to their causal hypotheses in MRT analysis. To illustrate this new procedure, we use the well‐known and readily available Doubs fish and oribatid mite data sets and provide the necessary R functions in a package available on CRAN (http://cran.r‐project.org).
Lenition and Phonemic Overlap in Rome Italian
Authors: Hualde José Ignacio , Nadeu Marianna 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to offer acoustic evidence for an unusual phonemic contrast in Rome Italian. In our corpus, about half of all tokens of intervocalic /p t k/ are realized with uninterrupted voicing (both word-internally and across word boundaries). Furthermore, the voiced realizations of /t/ and /k/ do not significantly differ from /d/ and /g/ in duration and/or degree of constriction (as acoustically determined). Phonemic contrast is maintained under substantial phonetic overlap. Regarding the labials, duration keeps /p/ and /b/ apart. Contrary to the universal tendency, it is /b/ that is considerably longer, due to complex diachronic facts.
Perceptually Informed Quantification of Speech Rhythm in Pairwise Variability Indices
Authors: Cumming Ruth E. 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
Two previous experiments demonstrated that f0 and duration are interdependent in the perception of rhythmic groups in speech and sentence rhythmicality, and that the relative weighting of tonal and durational cues depends on listeners’ native language. The listeners were native speakers of Swiss German, Swiss French, or Metropolitan French (i.e. from France). The experiment reported here investigates a means of applying this perceptual finding to production data from these three languages, to make a rhythm metric, the Pairwise Variability Index (PVI), perceptually informed. The relative weighting that an appropriate duration and an appropriate f0 contributed to listeners’ rhythmicality judgements is calculated, and these language-specific weighting values are incorporated into combined durational- tonal PVIs, to quantify rhythm in the three languages. The results demonstrate that Swiss German and Swiss/Metropolitan French are distinct according to classic durational PVIs, but more similar according to PVIs which are acoustically multidimensional and language-specifically weighted. It is concluded that rhythm produced by speakers, when quantified to account for the acoustic multidimensionality and language-specificity of rhythm perceived by listeners, may be less cross-linguistically divergent than durational rhythm metrics suggest. An evaluation of these language-specifically weighted PVIs concludes that if rhythm metrics remain in use, they should link rhythm perception with rhythm production.
Rain-Rate Characteristics over the Korean Peninsula and Improvement of the Goddard Profiling (GPROF) Database for TMI Rainfall Retrievals
Authors: Ryu Geun-Hyeok , Sohn Byung-Ju , Kummerow Christian D. , Seo Eun-Kyoung , Tripoli Gregory J. 
Published: January 2012

AbstractSummer rainfall characteristics over the Korean Peninsula are examined using six years of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI) measurements and surface rain measurements from the densely populated rain gauges spread across South Korea. A comparison of the TMI brightness temperature at 85 GHz with the measured surface rain rate reveals that a significant portion of rainfall over the peninsula occurs at warmer brightness temperatures than would be expected from the Goddard profiling (GPROF) database. By incorporating the locally observed rain characteristics into the GPROF algorithm, efforts are made to test whether locally appropriate hydrometeor profiles may be used to improve the retrieved rainfall. Profiles are obtained by simulating rain cases using the cloud-resolving University of Wisconsin Nonhydrostatic Modeling System (UW-NMS) model and matching the calculated radar reflectivities to TRMM precipitation radar (PR) reflectivities. Selected profiles and the corresponding simulated TMI brightness temperatures (limited in this study to values that are larger than 235 K) are added to the GPROF database to form a modified database that is considered to be more suitable for local application over the Korean Peninsula. The rainfall retrieved from the new database demonstrates that heavy-rainfall events—in particular, those associated with warmer clouds—are better captured by the new algorithm as compared with the official TRMM GPROF version-6 retrievals. The results suggest that a more locally suitable rain retrieval algorithm can be developed if locally representative rain characteristics are included in the GPROF algorithm.
The Effect of Mesoscale Mountain over the East Indochina Peninsula on Downstream Summer Rainfall over East Asia
Authors: Qi Li , Wang Yuqing 
Published: January 2012

AbstractThe mesoscale mountain over the east Indochina Peninsula, named Annam Cordillera, plays a key role in shaping the South China Sea (SCS) summer climate in both the atmosphere and the ocean. However, its effect is not limited to the SCS. Ensemble simulations using a high-resolution regional atmospheric model with or without the mountain reveals that the Annam Cordillera has a significant impact on regional climate as far as 3000 km over south and east China, and western Northwest Pacific (WNP).By blocking/lifting the warm and moist air from the Bay of Bengal, the Annam Cordillera forces upward motion and precipitation on the windward side and subsidence on the leeward side, and a low-level southwesterly jet to the southeast tip of the Indochina Peninsula over the SCS. The latter gives rise to coastal upwelling and cold sea surface temperature (SST) filaments in the western SCS, reducing surface sensible and latent heat fluxes and thus suppressing convection over the SCS. Heating associated with the orographic rainfall forces a low-level anomalous easterly over the SCS and an anomalous cyclone and anticyclone in the midlower troposphere to the south and north, respectively. The anomalous circulation modifies the low-level moisture transport, reducing rainfall over the SCS and to the east of Taiwan Island over the WNP, while increasing rainfall as much as 15%–30% in a southwest–northeast-oriented belt extending from south China to the East China Sea. The cold SST filaments in the western SCS enhance the orographically induced circulation; however, its effect accounts for less than 50% of the direct effect of the orographic lifting/blocking.
Assimilation of Satellite-Observed Snow Albedo in a Land Surface Model
Authors: Malik M. Jahanzeb , van der Velde Rogier , Vekerdy Zoltan , Su Zhongbo 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
This study assesses the impact of assimilating satellite-observed snow albedo on the Noah land surface model (LSM)-simulated fluxes and snow properties. A direct insertion technique is developed to assimilate snow albedo into Noah and is applied to three intensive study areas in North Park (Colorado) that are part of the 2002/03 Cold Land Processes Field Experiment (CLPX). The assimilated snow albedo products are 1) the standard Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) product (MOD10A1) and 2) retrievals from MODIS observations with the recently developed Pattern-Based Semiempirical (PASS) approach. The performance of the Noah simulations, with and without assimilation, is evaluated using the in situ measurements of snow albedo, upward shortwave radiation, and snow depth. The results show that simulations with albedo assimilation agree better with the measurements. However, because of the limited impact of snow albedo updates after subsequent snowfall, the mean (or seasonal) error statistics decrease significantly for only two of the three CLPX sites. Though the simulated snow depth and duration for the snow season benefit from the assimilation, the greatest improvements are found in the simulated upward shortwave radiation, with root mean squared errors reduced by about 30%. As such, this study demonstrates that assimilation of satellite-observed snow albedo can improve LSM simulations, which may positively affect the representation of hydrological and surface energy budget processes in runoff and numerical weather prediction models.