bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Single transpulmonary thermodilution and continuous monitoring of central venous oxygen saturation during off‐pump coronary surgery
Authors: SMETKIN A. A. , KIROV M. Y. , KUZKOV V. V. , LENKIN A. I. , EREMEEV A. V. , SLASTILIN V. Y. , BORODIN V. V. , BJERTNAES L. J. 
Published: January 2009

Background:Off‐pump coronary artery bypass grafting (OPCAB) requires thorough monitoring of hemodynamics and oxygen transport. Our aim was to find out whether therapeutic guidance during and after OPCAB, using an algorithm based on advanced monitoring, influences perioperative hemodynamic and fluid management as well as the length of post‐operative ICU and hospital stay.Methods:Patients were randomized into two groups of hemodynamic monitoring: the conventional monitoring (CM) group (n=20) and the advanced monitoring (AM) group (n=20). In the CM group, therapy was guided by central venous pressure, mean arterial pressure (MAP) and heart rate (HR), and in the AM group by the intrathoracic blood volume index, MAP, HR, central venous oxygen saturation (ScvO2) and cardiac index (CI). The measurements were performed before and during surgery, and at 2, 4 and 6 h post‐operatively.Results:In the AM group, colloids and dobutamine were given more frequently and were accompanied by increments in ScvO2, CI and oxygen delivery compared with baseline. The percentage of ephedrine administration was higher in the CM group. The algorithm guided by AM decreased time until achieving the status of ‘fit for ICU discharge’ and post‐operative hospital stay by 15% and 25%, respectively.Conclusions:A goal‐directed algorithm based on advanced hemodynamic monitoring and continuous measurement of ScvO2facilitates early detection and correction of hemodynamic changes and influences the strategy for fluid therapy that can improve the course of post‐operative period after coronary artery bypass grafting on the beating heart.
From student to therapist: Follow up of a first cohort of Bachelor of Occupational Therapy students
Authors: Doherty Georgina , Stagnitti Karen , Schoo Adrian M. M. 
Published: January 2009

Aim:  This study aimed to investigate the perception of graduate students on their preparation for practice, at 7 months post graduation. Method:  Using an anonymous postal questionnaire, 18 respondents (58% response rate) provided data on the nature of current employment, the experience as a graduate therapist, and perceptions of their undergraduate experience in preparing them for practice. Results:  Fifty percent of the respondents were practising in a rural environment. There was a significant positive relationship between respondents perception of their curriculum and fieldwork experiences and their preparation for practice (rho = 0.52, p < 0.05, and rho = 0.55, p < 0.05, respectively). Of the fieldwork experiences, respondents rated block placements as more beneficial to practice than non‐traditional placements. However, a correlational analysis showed the non‐traditional placement was significantly related to preparation for practice (rho = 0.54, p < 0.05). On a seven‐point Likert scale, respondents rated themselves from 5.2 to 5.7 for perceived self‐competence as a newly graduated practitioner with community‐based graduates having the higher rating. Confidence in clinical decision‐making was rated 5.0 to 5.6 with community‐based graduates having higher rating. Respondents reported a positive perception that the undergraduate program prepared them to enter the workforce and practise as an occupational therapist (mean ratings 5.5 to 6.2).Conclusion:  Respondents felt adequately prepared to enter the occupational therapy profession and workforce. Strengths and weaknesses in their preparation are discussed as well as the need for further research.
Evaluation of modern pathological criteria for positive margins in radical prostatectomy specimens and their use for predicting biochemical recurrence
Authors: Bong Gary W. , Ritenour Chad W.M. , Osunkoya Adeboye O. , Smith M. Timothy , Keane Thomas E. 
Published: January 2009

OBJECTIVESTo assess the interpretation of modern criteria for evaluating surgical margins (SMs), by examining the incidence of positive SMs (PSMs) and subsequent biochemical recurrence in a single‐surgeon series of radical prostatectomy (RP) at two institutions, as the criteria for determining PSMs after RP are subject to individual interpretation, and this might explain some of the variability in biochemical recurrence rates with different rates of PSMs.PATIENTS AND METHODSWe reviewed 301 consecutive perineal RPs by one surgeon (T.K.) at Emory University Hospital (EUH) and the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), with each pathology department using modern criteria to evaluate the SMs. The SM status and biochemical recurrence (BCR) were analysed, the latter defined as a prostate‐specific antigen level of ≥0.2 ng/mL.RESULTSThere were 158 perineal RPs at EUH followed by 143 at MUSC. PSMs were reported in 39 patients (24.7%) at EUH, whereas six (4.2%) were positive at MUSC. The overall BCR rates were similar between the groups, but BCR within margin‐positive cases was 100% at MUSC vs 25.6% at EUH (P < 0.01). The presence of tumour at <1 mm from the margin did not increase the rate of BCR compared to those with obvious negative SMs (P = 0.731).CONCLUSIONIn this single‐surgeon series, using the same criteria to evaluate the SMs resulted in significantly different PSM rates and margin‐positive BCR rates between the institutions. Although the reason for these differences is difficult to determine, the study shows clearly that tumour within 1 mm of the margin should not be classified as margin‐positive.
Media as a Mechanism of Institutional Change and Reinforcement
Authors: Coyne Christopher J. , Leeson Peter T. 
Published: January 2009

SUMMARYWe argue that mass media is a mechanism of institutional evolution and identify three important effects media has on institutions. The ‘gradual effect’ involves media contributing to marginal changes in existing institutions. The ‘punctuation effect’ involves media catalyzing rapid institutional overhaul. The ‘reinforcement effect’ involves media contributing to the durability and sustainability of punctuated institutional equilibria. Our analysis identifies a paradoxical relationship between mass media and institutions wherein media both changes and reinforces existing institutions. This finding resolves a tension in the institutional literature that defines institutions by their durability but recognizes we observe (sometimes rapid and radical) institutional change. Case studies from the collapse of communism in Poland and Russia illustrate our argument.
Does Too Much Trust Hamper Economic Growth?
Authors: Roth Felix 
Published: January 2009

SUMMARYThis paper examines the relationship between trust and economic growth. Taking panel data and using a fixed‐effects estimation for a 41‐country sample over the time period from 1980 to 2004 and with a total of 129 observations, the paper points out that economic growth is negatively related to an increase in trust. This negative finding is in contrast to most empirical findings using a cross‐sectional design. The common knowledge which has governed the nature of discussions in social science and economics for the last ten years, that trust is generally positively related to economic performance, must be seriously questioned. From a policy point of view an increase in trust is crucial for countries with low levels of trust, but can likely be neglected by countries with sufficient levels of trust and may even hamper economic performance in countries with high levels of trust. The relationship is tested in the context of EU countries, OECD countries and developing countries. Interpersonal trust and systemic trust is differentiated.
Trust and Success in Venture Capital Financing—an Empirical Analysis with German Survey Data
Authors: Duffner Stefan , Schmid Markus M. , Zimmermann Heinz 
Published: January 2009

SUMMARYThis paper presents an empirical analysis of the role of trust in the relationship between venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Following the social sciences literature, we try to differentiate between trust as an affective, value‐based category from confidence which is understood as a backward‐looking, evidence‐based mechanism. Using data from a survey among German venture capitalists conducted in 2003, we analyze 111 financing relationships from 75 respondents. We find a significant reciprocal positive relationship between trust and success. Other significant determinants of trust include the perceived quality of the entrepreneur and credibility of information (two proxy variables for measuring confidence), the perceived importance of reputation and the stage of the entrepreneur's venture. The level of monitoring and control is identified as a substitute for trust. We address a potential endogeneity of trust and success by estimating a system of two simultaneous equations by 3SLS and find the results to be robust. Finally, we use data from a second survey conducted in 2006 to assess whether trust predicts success. In fact, our results indicate that a higher level of trust in 2003 is associated with a higher success rate in 2006.
The interface between obesity and periodontitis with emphasis on oxidative stress and inflammatory response
Authors: Boesing F. , Patiño J. S. R. , Da Silva V. R. G. , Moreira E. A. M. 
Published: January 2009

SummaryObesity is characterized by the abnormal or excessive deposition of fat in the adipose tissue. Its consequences go far beyond adverse metabolic effects on health, causing an increase in oxidative stress that leads not only to endothelial dysfunction but also to negative effects in relation to periodontitis, because of the increase in proinflammatory cytokines. Thus, obesity appears to participate in the multifactorial phenomenon of causality of periodontitis through the increased production of reactive oxygen species. Within this context, this paper aims to highlight, by analysis and description of previous studies, the interface between obesity and periodontitis, with emphasis on oxidative stress and the inflammatory response.
Partial 3D Shape Retrieval by Reeb Pattern Unfolding
Authors: Tierny Julien , Vandeborre Jean‐Philippe , Daoudi Mohamed 
Published: January 2009

Abstract This paper presents a novel approach for fast and efficient partial shape retrieval on a collection of 3D shapes. Each shape is represented by a Reeb graph associated with geometrical signatures. Partial similarity between two shapes is evaluated by computing a variant of their maximum common sub‐graph. By investigating Reeb graph theory, we take advantage of its intrinsic properties at two levels. First, we show that the segmentation of a shape by a Reeb graph provides charts with disk or annulus topology only. This topology control enables the computation of concise and efficient sub‐part geometrical signatures based on parameterisation techniques. Secondly, we introduce the notion of Reeb pattern on a Reeb graph along with its structural signature. We show this information discards Reeb graph structural distortion and still depicts the topology of the related sub‐parts. The number of combinations to evaluate in the matching process is then dramatically reduced by only considering the combinations of topology equivalent Reeb patterns. The proposed framework is invariant against rigid transformations and robust against non‐rigid transformations and surface noise. It queries the collection in interactive time (from 4 to 30 seconds for the largest queries). It outperforms the competing methods of the SHREC 2007 contest in term of NDCG vector and provides, respectively, a gain of 14.1% and 40.9% on the approaches by Biasotti et al.[BMSF06]and Cornea et al.[CDS*05]. As an application, we present an intelligent modelling‐by‐example system which enables a novice user to rapidly create new 3D shapes by composing shapes of a collection having similar sub‐parts.
Efficient Geometry Compression for GPU‐based Decoding in Realtime Terrain Rendering
Authors: Dick Christian , Schneider Jens , Westermann Rüdiger 
Published: January 2009

AbstractWe present a geometry compression scheme for restricted quadtree meshes and use this scheme for the compression of adaptively triangulated digital elevation models (DEMs). A compression factor of 8–9 is achieved by employing a generalized strip representation of quadtree meshes to incrementally encode vertex positions. In combination with adaptive error‐controlled triangulation, this allows us to significantly reduce bandwidth requirements in the rendering of large DEMs that have to be paged from disk. The compression scheme is specifically tailored for GPU‐based decoding, since it minimizes dependent memory access operations. We can thus trade CPU operations and CPU–GPU data transfer for GPU processing, resulting in twice faster streaming of DEMs from main memory into GPU memory. A novel storage format for decoded DEMs on the GPU facilitates a sustained rendering throughput of about 300 million triangles per second. Due to these properties, the proposed scheme enables scalable rendering with respect to the display resolution independent of the data size. For a maximum screen‐space error below 1 pixel it achieves frame rates of over 100 fps, even on high‐resolution displays. We validate the efficiency of the proposed method by presenting experimental results on scanned elevation models of several hundred gigabytes.
Networks of Attachment Relationships in Low‐income Children of Mexican Heritage: Infancy through Preschool
Authors: Howes Carollee , Wishard Guerra Alison G. 
Published: January 2009

AbstractEighty‐three low‐income Mexican‐heritage children (44 girls) and their mothers participated in this research. Children were observed with alternative caregivers at 14, 24, and 36 months of age using the Attachment Q‐Set. Most children received regular care from infancy through preschool from relatives and childcare providers. Children had high attachment security scores with both mothers and caregivers. Child–mother and child‐alternative caregiver attachment security scores were independent of each other. Children whose mothers did not participate in family clusters were lowest in child–mother attachment security at 14 months. More emotionally sensitive mothers and responsive alternative caregivers were associated with more secure child–adult attachments. Mothers who had more contact with relatives still in Mexico were more likely to have somewhat more positive relations between intrusive interaction and positive attachment relationships than mothers who had less contact.
Sharing the Cost of a Public Good without Subsidies
Authors: FLEURBAEY MARC , SPRUMONT YVES 
Published: January 2009

AbstractWe study the construction of a social ordering function for the case of a public good financed by contributions from the population. We extend the analysis of Maniquet and Sprumont (2004) to the case when cost shares cannot be negative, i.e., agents cannot receive subsidies from others. We adapt the Maniquet–Sprumont defense of public good welfare egalitarianism to this context. Weakening their Free Lunch Aversion axiom and adding a continuity requirement allows us to characterize the public good welfare maximin social ordering function.
Intermediate Preferences and Behavioral Conformity in Large Games
Authors: CARMONA GUILHERME 
Published: January 2009

AbstractMotivated by Wooders, Cartwright, and Selten (2006), we consider games with a continuum of players and intermediate preferences. We show that any such game has a Nash equilibrium that induces a partition of the set of attributes into a bounded number of convex sets with the following property: all players with an attribute in the interior of the same element of the partition play the same action. We then use this result to show that all sufficiently large, equicontinuous games with intermediate preferences have an approximate equilibrium with the same property. Our result on behavior conformity for large finite game generalizes Theorem 3 of Wooders et al. (2006) by allowing both a wider class of preferences and a more general attribute space.
Repeated Contests with Asymmetric Information
Authors: MÜNSTER JOHANNES 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThe same contestants often meet repeatedly in contests. Behavior in a contest potentially provides information with regard to one's type and can therefore influence the behavior of the opponents in later contests. This paper shows that if effort is observable, this can induce a ratchet effect in contests: high ability contestants sometimes put in little effort in an early round in order to make the opponents believe that they are of little ability. The effect reduces overall effort and increases equilibrium utility of the contestants when compared with two unrelated one‐shot contests. It does, however, also introduce an allocative inefficiency since sometimes a contestant with a low valuation wins. The model assumes an imperfectly discriminating contest. In an extension I show that, qualitatively, results are similar in a perfectly discriminating contest (all pay auction).
Taxing Deficits to Restrain Government Spending
Authors: STÄHLER NIKOLAI 
Published: January 2009

AbstractIn a dynamic model of fiscal policy, social polarization provokes a deficit bias. Policy advisors have recently proposed that governments running a deficit should be forced to generate additional tax revenue. We show that this deficit taxation reduces each group's spending bias today because it decreases the fear that the financial resource will not be available tomorrow due to the other groups' spending behavior. This effect adds to the literature as previous findings focused mainly on the fact that deficit taxation reduces excessive spending because it increases the likelihood of politicians being voted out of office as the private sector dislikes taxation. In the present setup, the effect is driven solely by internalizing the externality exerted on tomorrow's spending potential.
Production and Abatement Distortions under Noisy Green Taxes
Authors: FENG HONGLI , HENNESSY DAVID A. 
Published: January 2009

AbstractA pollution regulator seeking to maximize social surplus can be viewed as facing two efficiency problems. One is that, given abatement technology investment decisions, it should attempt to ensure that firms which should produce do produce and firms which should not produce do not produce. This ex‐post efficiency problem is not trivial when there is noise concerning the extent of environmental damage a firm does. We use a Bayesian information framework to show that the regulator may find it efficient to tax a firm that reads as a high (low) damage polluter at less (more) than the damage reading. Unfortunately when an abatement decision has to be made, this ex‐post efficient tax system also dampens the incentive to abate. In the absence of wrong‐firm concerns, a regulator can solve the abatement problem by an ex ante declaration that taxes will not be adjusted for signal noise. However, the regulator has a commitment problem as such taxes may not be ex‐post efficient. The most appropriate policy may involve a combination of instruments.
A Note on the Theme of Too Many Instruments*
Authors: Roodman David 
Published: January 2009

AbstractThe difference and system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators are growing in popularity. As implemented in popular software, the estimators easily generate instruments that are numerous and, in system GMM, potentially suspect. A large instrument collection overfits endogenous variables even as it weakens the Hansen test of the instruments’ joint validity. This paper reviews the evidence on the effects of instrument proliferation, and describes and simulates simple ways to control it. It illustrates the dangers by replicating Forbes [American Economic Review (2000) Vol. 90, pp. 869–887] on income inequality and Levine et al. [Journal of Monetary Economics] (2000) Vol. 46, pp. 31–77] on financial sector development. Results in both papers appear driven by previously undetected endogeneity.
Comparative studies of brain evolution: a critical insight from the Chiroptera
Authors: Dechmann Dina K. N , Safi Kamran 
Published: January 2009

AbstractComparative studies of brain size have a long history and contributed much to our understanding of the evolution and function of the brain and its parts. Recently, bats have been used increasingly as model organisms for such studies because of their large number of species, high diversity of life‐history strategies, and a comparatively detailed knowledge of their neuroanatomy. Here, we draw attention to inherent problems of comparative brain size studies, highlighting limitations but also suggesting alternative approaches. We argue that the complexity and diversity of neurological tasks that the brain and its functional regions (subdivisions) must solve cannot be explained by a single or few variables representing selective pressures. Using an example we show that by adding a single relevant variable, morphological adaptation to foraging strategy, to a previous analysis a correlation between brain and testes mass disappears completely and changes entirely the interpretation of the study. Future studies should not only look for novel determinants of brain size but also include known correlates in order to add to our current knowledge. We believe that comparisons at more detailed anatomical, taxonomic, and geographical levels will continue to contribute to our understanding of the function and evolution of mammalian brains.
Land crabs as key drivers in tropical coastal forest recruitment
Authors: Lindquist Erin Stewart , Krauss Ken W. , Green Peter T. , O’Dowd Dennis J. , Sherman Peter M. , Smith Thomas J. 
Published: January 2009

ABSTRACTPlant populations are regulated by a diverse assortment of abiotic and biotic factors that influence seed dispersal and viability, and seedling establishment and growth at the microsite. Rarely does one animal guild exert as significant an influence on different plant assemblages as land crabs. We review three tropical coastal ecosystems–mangroves, island maritime forests, and mainland coastal terrestrial forests–where land crabs directly influence forest composition by limiting tree establishment and recruitment. Land crabs differentially prey on seeds, propagules and seedlings along nutrient, chemical and physical environmental gradients. In all of these ecosystems, but especially mangroves, abiotic gradients are well studied, strong and influence plant species distributions. However, we suggest that crab predation has primacy over many of these environmental factors by acting as the first limiting factor of tropical tree recruitment to drive the potential structural and compositional organisation of coastal forests. We show that the influence of crabs varies relative to tidal gradient, shoreline distance, canopy position, time, season, tree species and fruiting periodicity. Crabs also facilitate forest growth and development through such activities as excavation of burrows, creation of soil mounds, aeration of soils, removal of leaf litter into burrows and creation of carbon‐rich soil microhabitats. For all three systems, land crabs influence the distribution, density and size‐class structure of tree populations. Indeed, crabs are among the major drivers of tree recruitment in tropical coastal forest ecosystems, and their conservation should be included in management plans of these forests.