bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A nanotechnology‐based solution for epi‐on corneal cross‐linking
Authors: Pais Rita , Cidra João Pedro , Morgado Miguel , Ramalho Amílcar Lopes , Ambrósio António Francisco , Gil João , Francisco Vítor , Ferreira Lino , Quadrado Maria João , Campos Elisa Julião 
Published: January 2024

Keratoconus (KC) is a bilateral progressive corneal ectasia resulting in irregular astigmatism and loss of visual function, in youth and children. Corneal cross‐linking (CXL) is the standard treatment to halt the progression of KC. The conventional protocol consists of removal of the corneal epithelium (epi‐off), followed by soaking of riboflavin and then irradiation with UVA light, leading to stiffening of the cornea. However, postoperative ocular adverse events related to epithelial removal, such as infectious keratitis and delayed visual recovery, have been described. Some alternative methodologies have been tested but pain, no control on corneal permeability, and high investment for set‐up acquisition are drawbacks. Accordingly, the treatment of KC is at an extremely exciting stage, and research on delivering riboflavin into the cornea without removing the epithelium is underway.To address this clinical unmet need, we developed an advanced solution consisting of nanoparticle‐modified commercial soft contact lenses. Safety conditions were determined using ex vivo porcine eyes. The efficacy of our solution on corneal epithelial permeability to riboflavin was tested using in vivo rat eyes. Our nanotechnology‐based solution allows high spatial and temporal precision control of epithelial permeability to riboflavin. We aim to validate this innovative strategy as an epithelium‐on (epi‐on) protocol for the effective treatment of KC, with obvious advantages in terms of safety, patient comfort, and recovery time. Furthermore, our strategy is compatible with current equipment and riboflavin solutions, allowing to capitalize clinicians' expertise and the resources already existing in private clinics and public health services.This project was financially supported by Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal): Exploratory Research Project EXPL/BIA‐BQM/0042/2021, Strategic Projects UIDB/04539/2020, UIDP/04539/2020, and UID/NEU/04539/2019; and by COMPETE‐FEDER (POCI‐01‐0145‐FEDER‐007440).
Professor Khodadoust and his sign
Authors: Ghazi‐Nouri Seyed 
Published: January 2024

Professor Ali Asghar Khodadoust was a pioneer and innovative corneal transplant surgeon with international reputation. He was born in Shiraz, Iran, in October 1935 where he later founded the Khodadoust eye hospital in 2003. He studied Medicine at Shiraz university and went to the United States of America (USA) in 1959 to continue his medical education. While in America, he did extensive research into corneal transplantation and rejection and was the first to describe the endothelial rejection sign which was named after him as the “Khodadoust line”. It separates the immunologically damaged endothelium from unaffected endothelium in cornea and represents transplant rejection. Dr Khodadoust completed his fellowship training at Wimer Eye Institute at Hopkins and was later involved in establishing an exchange program between Shiraz university in Iran and Hopkins university in the USA which ran between 1968 and 1979. He was a faculty member of Yale and John Hopkins universities in the USA. Dr Khodadoust was honoured as a national treasure to Iran in a ceremony organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Shiraz in 2015. He died in New York, USA, in March 2018 aged 82.His life, works and achievements, will be presented in this lecture.
In vivo confocal microscopy of the cornea: State of the art and the potential of artificial intelligence
Authors: Ferrari Giulio 
Published: January 2024

In vivo confocal microscopy of the cornea: state of the art and the potential of artificial intelligence.Giulio Ferrari, MD PhD; Massimo De Micheli, MD.Laser confocal microscopy of the cornea (IVCM) allows in vivo, real time imaging of the corneal histology. All the corneal layers can be imaged, without need of contrast agents. While morphological characteristics of multiple corneal and systemic diseases have been described, the use of IVCM in the clinic is principally indicated to reach an early diagnosis of acanthamoeba and fungal keratitis. Significant limitations include the need of highly experienced examinators, and inability to diagnose bacterial keratitis. Moreover, reaching a correct diagnosis is more complex in advanced cases, where coexisting inflammation substantially reduces corneal transparency. Artificial intelligence represents an attractive tool to overcome, at least in part, these shortcomings and has potential to substantially increase the specificity and sensitivity of IVCM.
The role of deep learning in the diagnosis of ocular diseases
Authors: Ghidoni Stefano 
Published: January 2024

Deep Learning (DL) revolutionized a wide variety of research fields and applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the last years. Computer vision is among those fields that witnessed a stronger impact, especially in some tasks like image equalization, classification and segmentation, that have several applications in medical imaging. Such applications often focus on microscopy images, but they can be successfully extended to other fields, like the detection of diseases involving the ocular surface and the cornea.One of the reasons of the success of deep learning applied to image processing relies in the end‐to‐end data‐driven approach. This means that the whole image processing and classification/segmentation pipeline can be adapted to the data being processed. This is particularly powerful when dealing with medical images, whose processing is often based on the detection of low‐ and mid‐level patterns that might be difficult to define in a formal manner. This means that deep learning has the chance to select and consider some image elements that would be nearly impossible to define using standard computer vision techniques. However, this becomes possible if large amounts of data are available for training the network, which became reality in the last years thanks to the wide digitalization of medical systems, including ophthalmology equipment.Based on a substantial amount of literature that has rapidly grown in the last years, this talk will focus on the new perspectives of eye disease diagnosis that were opened by the advent of deep learning. At the same time, the limitations and risks that must be considered in the development of DL‐based medical systems, like overfitting and lack of generalization, will be highlighted and discussed. Keeping track of such limitations is crucial in order not to consider DL as a sort of magic box, but rather, as powerful image analysis and processing tool.The talk will also provide a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the diagnosis systems currently available that exploit DL and AI systems. The current and future impact of automatic image processing systems dedicated to ophthalmology will also be discussed. When automatic medical image analysis will be widely available, the patterns of medical diagnosis will need to change, taking advantage of the possibility to perform larger screenings that will be automatically processed.
Conscious sensations and protective reflexes driven by eye surface nerves in health and disease
Authors: Acosta M. Carmen 
Published: January 2024

The trigeminal primary sensory neurons that innervate the ocular surface, especially the cornea, have been classified in three functional types: polymodal nociceptors, mechano‐nociceptors and cold thermoreceptors. These sensory nerves are responsible for the conscious sensations evoked in response to ocular surface stimulation as well as for the regulation of tearing and blinking, and they are also involved in the trophic maintenance of the ocular tissues.Depending on the transducing channels they express in their membrane, sensory nerves from the ocular surface respond to different types of stimulus and, after this information is processed by the CNS, different conscious sensations are evoked: corneal mechano‐nociceptors' activation led to pricking pain; polymodal nociceptors evoke burning irritation, and cold thermoreceptors' activation may evoke freshness/cold/dryness/pain depending on the subtype of cold thermoreceptor neuron activated by the stimulus. While reflex blinking and tearing are driven by the activation of polymodal nociceptors as the afferent arm of the reflex, basal blinking and tearing rate are under the control of cold thermoreceptors' activity.During inflammation and after injury (such as UV‐induced keratitis, allergic keratoconjunctivitis, corneal surgery, tear‐deficient dry eye) the activity of corneal sensory nerves is modified in both eyes, even when inflammation or damage affects only one eye. The abnormal corneal sensory nerve activity constitutes the basis for the discomfort, dryness and pain sensations experienced under these conditions. Also, protective mechanisms depending on ocular nerve activity such as blinking and tearing become altered.(Supported by PID2020‐115934RB‐I00 from DOI: MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110001103, and CIPROM/2021/48 from the Generalitat Valenciana, Spain)
Swedish cohort study found that half of the girls with shunted hydrocephalus had precocious or early puberty
Authors: Dahl Margareta , Proos Lemm A. , Arnell Kai , Gustafsson Jan 
Published: January 2024

AbstractAimWe aimed to evaluate the occurrence of, and risk factors for precocious and early puberty in a retrospective cohort study of girls with shunted infantile hydrocephalus.MethodsThe study population comprised 82 girls with infantile hydrocephalus, born between 1980 and 2002, and treated with a ventriculoperitoneal shunt. Data were available for 39 girls with myelomeningocele and 34 without. Medical records were analysed regarding clinical data and timing of puberty. Precocious and early puberty was defined as the appearance of pubertal signs before 8 years and 0 months and 8 years and 9 months, respectively.ResultsMedian age at last admission was 15.8 years (range 10.0–18.0). In total, 15 girls (21%) had precocious puberty, and another 21 (29%) had early puberty. Three or more shunt revisions had been performed in 26/36 girls with early or precocious puberty and in 3/37 girls without (p = 0.01). The number of shunt revisions correlated negatively with age at the start of puberty in the girls with myelomeningocele (Spearman's correlation coefficient = −0.512, p = 0.001).ConclusionGirls with shunted infantile hydrocephalus have a high risk of precocious or early puberty. Repeated shunt revisions seemed to be associated with early puberty.
Study on the multi‐scale online fatigue crack deformation and growth behaviors under overload in Q&P steel
Authors: Gao Hongli , Zhan Jingsong , Li Weirong , Shang Hongbin , Lin Zhiyuan 
Published: January 2024

AbstractThe multi‐scale online fatigue crack deformation and growth behaviors under single overload (SOL) and periodic overload (POL) case in Quenching and Partitioning (Q&P) steel were studied using two micro cameras and sub‐image stitching and matching digital image correlation (DIC) method. Firstly, the microscopic crack tip speckle images and crack images on both sides of the compact tension (CT) specimen during the fatigue crack growth (FCG) process were collected under different overload parameters. Then, the FCG overload retardation, crack tip closing and blunting behaviors, and the crack tip strain distribution and evolution, overload retardation mechanism were analyzed. In addition, the corresponding multi‐scale FCG morphological characteristics and material microstructure under overload case were observed. The results indicate that the overload ratio and interval affect the overload retardation effect of Q&P steel seriously; the overload crack tip blunting and plastic zone are the major factors inducing the overload retardation effect in Q&P steel.
Climate‐related performance and stock price crash risk
Authors: Kosmidou Kyriaki , Kousenidis Dimitrios , Ladas Anestis , Negkakis Christos 
Published: January 2024

AbstractWe examine how environmental performance affects future stock price crash risk. Previous literature shows that legitimacy threats, stemming from environmental risk, lead firms to be particularly sensitive about environmental disclosure and performance. However, we hypothesise and find that under specific conditions, relating to lower operating performance, firms that have higher environmental performance also have higher future stock price crash risk. Further analysis shows that such firms may also have lower readability and more confident tone in their 10‐K annual reports. We attribute these findings to impression management utilising environmental performance along with disclosure misdirection practices, where managers of firms with negative news, attempt in some cases to draw the attention of the users of financial reports by obfuscating annual reports for bad news hoarding purposes. Even though in the current year such practices may have a negative effect for stock price crash risk, future stock price crash risk increases due to the dissemination of the negative news in the market. Overall, our results show that environmental disclosure may be used, under certain conditions, as a tool for impression management, which along with financial reporting distraction practices, leads to higher future stock price crash risk.
TLR2 agonist prevents the progression of periapical lesions in mice by reducing osteoclast activity and regulating the frequency of Tregs
Authors: Almeida Lana Kei Yamamoto , Battaglino Ricardo Anibal , Araujo Lisa Danielly Curcino , Lucisano Marília Pacífico , Massoni Vivian Vicentin , da Silva Léa Assed Bezerra , Nelson‐Filho Paulo , Morse Leslie Rae , da Silva Raquel Assed Bezerra 
Published: January 2024

AbstractAimTo evaluate the role of regulatory T lymphocytes (Tregs) in the presence or absence of the synthetic ligand Pam3Cys during the progression of periapical lesion in wild‐type (WT) and toll‐like receptor 2 knockout (TLR2KO) mice.Methodology.A total of 130 C57BL/6 male WT and TLR2KO mice were allocated into control (n = 5) and experimental (periapical lesion induction) (n = 10) groups. In specific groups (WT+Pam3cys and TLR2KO+Pam3cys), the synthetic ligand Pam3cys was administered intraperitoneally every 7 days, according to the experimental period (14, 21 and 42 days). At the end of those periods, the animals were euthanized, and the mandible and the spleen were submitted to histotechnical processing. Mandible histological sections were analysed by haematoxylin and eosin, TRAP histoenzymology and immunohistochemistry (FOXP3, RANK, RANKL and OPG). Spleen sections were analysed by immunohistochemistry (FOXP3).ResultsThe inflammatory infiltrate and bone resorption were more intense in the TLR2KO group compared to the WT group. The animals that received the Pam3cys had smaller periapical lesions when compared to the animals that did not receive the ligand (p < .05). TLR2KO animals showed a significant increase in the number of osteoclasts when compared to TLR2KO+Pam3cys group (p < .05). At 21 days, the WT+Pam3cys group had a lower number of osteoclasts when compared to the WT animals (p = .02). FOXP3 expression was more intense in the WT+Pam3cys groups when compared to the WT animals in the 42 days (p = .03). In the spleen analysis, the WT+Pam3cys group also had a higher expression of FOXP3 when compared to the WT animals at 14 and 42 days (p = .02). Concerning RANKL, there was a reduction in staining in the KOTLR2+Pam3cys groups at 21 and 42 days (p = .03) and a higher binding ratio between RANK/RANKL in animals that did not receive the ligand.ConclusionAdministration of the Pam3cys increased the proliferation of Tregs, showed by FOXP3 expression and prevented the progression of the periapical lesion in WT mice. On the other hand, in the TLR2KO animals, Treg expression was lower with larger areas of periapical lesions. Finally, systemic administration of the Pam3cys in KO animals was able to limit the deleterious effects of the absence of the TLR2 receptor.
A model for the involvement of service users as instructors into the psychiatric nursing curriculum in Korea: A qualitative study on participation experience
Authors: Ahn Suyoun , Shin Soyoung , Joung Jaewon 
Published: January 2024

AbstractFor many years, attempts have been made to incorporate service users into psychiatric nursing education, particularly in European countries and Australia. In Asian countries, however, concrete examples of this are notably scarce, and the limited instances of implementation lack the necessary systematic organisation and long‐term sustainability. This study systematically planned and implemented a psychiatric nursing curriculum that integrated service users in Korea. It explored the experiences of 14 nursing students and four service users (who participated as instructors) who participated in these classes. Content analysis was performed on the results of focus group interviews with the participants. Owing to the participation of service users in the programme, students focused more on the patients as human beings, with the contexts of their individual lives, rather than on their diseases. The process facilitated a deeper grasp of person‐centred psychiatric nursing and heightened student engagement in the learning process. The service users' experiences as instructors breathed new meaning into their psychiatric distress as an opportunity for new possibilities and helped them view themselves in a positive light, as members of society with self‐esteem. They made great efforts to perform well in their role as instructors. These findings provide substantial evidence to support the expanded and sustained implementation of service user participation in future psychiatric nursing education. Establishing a national consortium to foster and support service user instructors could greatly improve psychiatric nursing education and related outcomes.
Warm‐season turfgrass species genotype‐by‐environment interaction for turfgrass quality under drought
Authors: Tome Gouveia Beatriz , Chandra Ambika , Kenworthy Kevin E. , Raymer Paul L. , Schwartz Brian M. , Wu Yanqi Q. , Milla‐Lewis Susana R. 
Published: January 2024

AbstractOne of the biggest challenges the turfgrass industry is currently facing is limitations of available water for irrigation of turfgrass areas. Efforts on breeding for drought resistance have increased over the past several years across the United States. Thus, the objectives of this study were to evaluate the performance of bermudagrass (Cynodon spp. Rich.), St. Augustinegrass (Stenotaphrum secundatum (Walter) Kuntze), seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum Swartz) and zoysiagrass (Zoysia spp. Willd.) breeding lines from five different breeding programs under drought and estimate genetic parameters in order to increase selection efficiency for drought resistance improvement in these breeding programs. The germplasm sources were bermudagrass from Oklahoma State University and University of Georgia (UGA); St. Augustinegrass from North Carolina State University, Texas A&M University System (TAMUS) and University of Florida (UF); zoysiagrass from UF and TAMUS; seashore paspalum from UGA. Field trials were conducted from 2016 to 2019 at research facilities in Citra, FL and Dallas, TX. The response variables evaluated were per cent living ground cover (%GC), and turfgrass quality under normal or non‐drought (TQND) and drought conditions (TQD). The genetic variance was significant for TQND and TQD in bermudagrass, TQD in St. Augustinegrass and all traits in zoysiagrass. The heritability estimates were higher for TQD than for TQND in bermudagrass and St. Augustinegrass. Genetic correlation estimates showed that indirect selection can be effective to select drought‐resistant genotypes. Several genotypes performed better than all commercial cultivars in both St. Augustinegrass and zoysiagrass.
‘There is no justice in nursing school’: A qualitative analysis of nursing students' experiences of discrimination shared on Reddit
Authors: Slemon Allie , Dhari Shivinder , Christie Tanya , Aubrey Gavin 
Published: January 2024

AbstractAimTo explore nursing students' experiences of stigma and discrimination within nursing programmes as shared on Reddit, and how other Reddit users offer support and guidance.DesignQualitative interpretive description.MethodsThrough a critical social theory lens, this study draws on students' posts from three nursing subreddits: r/studentnurse, r/nursingstudent and r/nursing. Data were collected from March 2013 to March 2023. Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted to generate broad themes of nursing students' experiences of stigma and discrimination, and how other Reddit users offered support and guidance.ResultsA total of 43 posts with 1412 associated comments were included in this analysis, which generated three predominant themes of nursing students' experiences. Nursing students faced stigma and discrimination across contexts, including from peers, nurses and other healthcare providers working in clinical practicum sites, and patients. Nursing students' posts described navigating the impacts and consequences of such experiences, including on well‐being, and programme and career success. In contexts where students were often alone in their experiences of stigma and discrimination within their programmes and with few identified supports, Reddit users sought support and community through Reddit. While many comments offered validation and support, challenges of this social media platform included conflicting advice and unhelpful, judgmental messages.ConclusionsDespite widely articulated social justice commitments in the profession, nursing students continue to experience stigma and discrimination across contexts within their nursing programmes.Implications for ProfessionNurses and nurse educators have a responsibility to acknowledge and make visible such experiences, and take direct action to prevent and remediate stigma and discrimination within nursing education.ImpactThis research contributes to the growing empirical evidence that nursing students' experience stigma and discrimination within nursing programmes and the healthcare system.Reporting MethodAdherence to COREQ guidelines was maintained.Patient or Public ContributionNo patient or public contribution.
Procrastination and Precrastination from the Perspective of Self‐Control
Authors: Adachi Miki , Adachi Keisuke 
Published: January 2024

AbstractProcrastination is defined as postponing a task, anticipating adverse consequences in the future. In contrast, D. A. Rosenbaum and colleagues introduced the concept of “precrastination” in 2014, defining it as people doing a task early even when involving physical cost because they desire to minimize their cognitive load. This study aimed to organize and expand the new concept and advance understanding of precrastination in everyday situations and of the associations between precrastination and self‐control. Using the scenario assumption method, we examined whether people would precrastinate or procrastinate a task to remove cognitive load and clear their mind even if there was physical cost/burden (Study 1), and whether they would precrastinate or procrastinate a painful event to remove emotional load stemming from a fear of pain (Study 2). The results showed that (a) people start tasks early in order to remove cognitive and emotional load; (b) people do not start tasks early when they involve physical cost, burden, or fear; (c) people with high self‐control start tasks early to remove cognitive load even when involving physical cost; and (d) people with high self‐control and low fear start tasks earlier to remove emotional load.