Visual outcomes and subjective experience after bilateral implantation of a new diffractive trifocal intraocular lens

Purpose - To assess clinical outcomes and subjective experience after bilateral implantation of a diffractive trifocal intraocular lens (IOL). Setting - Midland Eye Institute, Solihull, United Kingdom. Design - Cohort study. Methods - Patients had bilateral implantation of Finevision trifocal IOLs. Uncorrected distance visual acuity, corrected distance visual acuity (CDVA), and manifest refraction were measured 2 months postoperatively. Defocus curves were assessed under photopic and mesopic conditions over a range of +1.50 to -4.00 diopters (D) in 0.50 D steps. Contrast sensitivity function was assessed under photopic conditions. Halometry was used to measure the angular size of monocular and binocular photopic scotomas arising from a glare source. Patient satisfaction with uncorrected near vision was assessed using the Near Activity Visual Questionnaire (NAVQ). Results - The mean monocular CDVA was 0.08 logMAR ± 0.08 (SD) and the mean binocular CDVA, 0.06 ± 0.08 logMAR. Defocus curve testing showed an extended range of clear vision from +1.00 to -2.50 D defocus, with a significant difference in acuity between photopic conditions and mesopic conditions at -1.50 D defocus only. Photopic contrast sensitivity was significantly better binocularly than monocularly at all spatial frequencies. Halometry showed a glare scotoma of a mean size similar to that in previous studies of multifocal and accommodating IOLs; there were no subjective complaints of dysphotopsia. The mean NAVQ Rasch score for satisfaction with near vision was 15.9 ± 10.7 logits. Conclusions - The trifocal IOL implanted binocularly produced good distance visual acuity and near and intermediate visual function. Patients were very satisfied with their uncorrected near vision.

Design and validity of a miniaturized open-field aberrometer

PURPOSE: To validate a new miniaturised, open-field wavefront device which has been developed with the capacity to be attached to an ophthalmic surgical microscope or slit-lamp. SETTING: Solihull Hospital and Aston University, Birmingham, UK DESIGN: Comparative non-interventional study. METHODS: The dynamic range of the Aston Aberrometer was assessed using a calibrated model eye. The validity of the Aston Aberrometer was compared to a conventional desk mounted Shack-Hartmann aberrometer (Topcon KR1W) by measuring the refractive error and higher order aberrations of 75 dilated eyes with both instruments in random order. The Aston Aberrometer measurements were repeated five times to assess intra-session repeatability. Data was converted to vector form for analysis. RESULTS: The Aston Aberrometer had a large dynamic range of at least +21.0 D to -25.0 D. It gave similar measurements to a conventional aberrometer for mean spherical equivalent (mean difference ± 95% confidence interval: 0.02 ± 0.49D; correlation: r=0.995, p<0.001), astigmatic components (J0: 0.02 ± 0.15D; r=0.977, p<0.001; J45: 0.03 ± 0.28; r=0.666, p<0.001) and higher order aberrations RMS (0.02 ± 0.20D; r=0.620, p<0.001). Intraclass correlation coefficient assessments of intra-sessional repeatability for the Aston Aberrometer were excellent (spherical equivalent =1.000, p<0.001; astigmatic components J0 =0.998, p<0.001, J45=0.980, p<0.01; higher order aberrations RMS =0.961, p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The Aston Aberrometer gives valid and repeatable measures of refractive error and higher order aberrations over a large range. As it is able to measure continuously, it can provide direct feedback to surgeons during intraocular lens implantations and corneal surgery as to the optical status of the visual system.

Corpus-driven lexicography

This paper discusses three important aspects of John Sinclair’s legacy: the corpus, lexicography, and the notion of ‘corpus-driven’. The corpus represents his concern with the nature of linguistic evidence. Lexicography is for him the canonical mode of language description at the lexical level. And his belief that the corpus should ‘drive’ the description is reflected in his constant attempts to utilize the emergent computer technologies to automate the initial stages of analysis and defer the intuitive, interpretative contributions of linguists to increasingly later stages in the process. Sinclair’s model of corpus-driven lexicography has spread far beyond its initial implementation at Cobuild, to most EFL dictionaries, to native-speaker dictionaries (e.g. the New Oxford Dictionary of English, and many national language dictionaries in emerging or re-emerging speech communities) and bilingual dictionaries (e.g. Collins, Oxford-Hachette).

Language change in young Panjabi/English children: implications for bilingual language assessment

This paper reports some of the more frequent language changes in Panjabi, the first language of bilingual Panjabi/English children in the West Midlands, UK. Spontaneous spoken data were collected in schools across both languages in three formatted elicitation procedures from 50 bilingual Panjabi/English-speaking children, aged 6–7 years old. Panjabi data from the children is analysed for lexical borrowings and code-switching with English. Several changes of vocabulary and word grammar patterns in Panjabi are identified, many due to interaction with English, and some due to developmental features of Panjabi. There is also evidence of pervasive changes of word order, suggesting a shift in Panjabi word order to that of English. Lexical choice is discussed in terms of language change rather than language deficit. The implications of a normative framework for comparison are explored. A psycholinguistic model interprets grammatical changes in Panjabi.

Issues in creating a corpus for EAP pedagogy and research

UK universities are accepting increasing numbers of students whose L1 is not English on a wide range of programmes at all levels. These students require additional support and training in English, focussing on their academic disciplines. Corpora have been used in EAP since the 1980s, mainly for research, but a growing number of researchers and practitioners have been advocating the use of corpora in EAP pedagogy, and such use is gradually increasing. This paper outlines the processes and factors to be considered in the design and compilation of an EAP corpus (e.g., the selection and acquisition of texts, metadata, data annotation, software tools and outputs, web interface, and screen displays), especially one intended to be used for teaching. Such a corpus would also facilitate EAP research in terms of longitudinal studies, student progression and development, and course and materials design. The paper has been informed by the preparatory work on the EAP subcorpus of the ACORN corpus project at Aston University. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Collocation:applications and implications

All aspects of the concept of collocation – the phenomenon whereby words naturally tend to occur in the company of a restricted set of other words – are covered in this book. It deals in detail with the history of the word collocation, the concepts associated with it and its use in a linguistic context. The authors show the practical means by which the collocational behaviour of words can be explored using illustrative computer programs and examine applications in teaching, lexicography and natural language processing that use collocation in formation. The book investigates the place that collocation occupies in theories of language and provides a thoroughly comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the current position of collocation in language studies and applied linguistics. This text presents a comprehensive description of collocation, covering both the theoretical and practical background and the implications and applications of the concept as language model and analytical tool. It provides a definitive survey of currently available techniques and a detailed description of their implementation.

Corpus linguistics

Corpora—large collections of written and/or spoken text stored and accessed electronically—provide the means of investigating language that is of growing importance academically and professionally. Corpora are now routinely used in the following fields: The production of dictionaries and other reference materials; The development of aids to translation; Language teaching materials; The investigation of ideologies and cultural assumptions; Natural language processing; and The investigation of all aspects of linguistic behaviour, including vocabulary, grammar and pragmatics.

Language as chunks, not words

Many people think of language as words. Words are small, convenient units, especially in written English, where they are separated by spaces. Dictionaries seem to reinforce this idea, because entries are arranged as a list of alphabetically-ordered words. Traditionally, linguists and teachers focused on grammar and treated words as self-contained units of meaning, which fill the available grammatical slots in a sentence. More recently, attention has shifted from grammar to lexis, and from words to chunks. Dictionary headwords are convenient points of access for the user, but modern dictionary entries usually deal with chunks, because meanings often do not arise from individual words, but from the chunks in which the words occur. Corpus research confirms that native speakers of a language actually work with larger “chunks” of language. This paper will show that teachers and learners will benefit from treating language as chunks rather than words.

A Framework for Fast Classification Algorithms

Today, due to globalization of the world the size of data set is increasing, it is necessary to discover the knowledge. The discovery of knowledge can be typically in the form of association rules, classification rules, clustering, discovery of frequent episodes and deviation detection. Fast and accurate classifiers for large databases are an important task in data mining. There is growing evidence that integrating classification and association rules mining, classification approaches based on heuristic, greedy search like decision tree induction. Emerging associative classification algorithms have shown good promises on producing accurate classifiers. In this paper we focus on performance of associative classification and present a parallel model for classifier building. For classifier building some parallel-distributed algorithms have been proposed for decision tree induction but so far no such work has been reported for associative classification.

Priming moral self-ambivalence heightens deliberative behaviour in self-ambivalent individuals

Background: Recent work on cognitive-behavioural models of obsessive-compulsive disorder has focused on the roles played by various aspects of self-perception. In particular, moral self-ambivalence has been found to be associated with obsessive-compulsive phenomena. Aims: In this study we used an experimental task to investigate whether artificially priming moral self-ambivalence would increase participants' deliberation on ethical problems, an index that might be analogous to obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Method: Non-clinical participants completed two online tasks designed to prime either moral self-ambivalence, general uncertainty, or neither. All participants then completed a task requiring them to consider solutions to moral dilemmas. We recorded the time participants took to respond to the dilemmas and the length of their responses; we then combined these variables to create a measure of deliberation. Results: Priming moral self-ambivalence led to increases in deliberation, but this was only significant among those participants who scored highly on a baseline measure of moral self-ambivalence. Priming general uncertainty had no significant effect upon deliberation. Conclusions: The results suggest that moral self-ambivalence may play a role in the maintenance of obsessive-compulsive behaviour. We propose that individuals who are morally self-ambivalent might respond to situations in which this ambivalence is made salient by exhibiting behaviour with obsessive-compulsive characteristics. These findings have implications for the incorporation of ideas about self-concept into theories of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

On the F word:a corpus-based analysis of the media representation of feminism in British and German press discourse, 1990-2009

Research in social psychology has shown that public attitudes towards feminism are mostly based on stereotypical views linking feminism with leftist politics and lesbian orientation. It is claimed that such attitudes are due to the negative and sexualised media construction of feminism. Studies concerned with the media representation of feminism seem to confirm this tendency. While most of this research provides significant insights into the representation of feminism, the findings are often based on a small sample of texts. Also, most of the research was conducted in an Anglo-American setting. This study attempts to address some of the shortcomings of previous work by examining the discourse of feminism in a large corpus of German and British newspaper data. It does so by employing the tools of Corpus Linguistics. By investigating the collocation profiles of the search term feminism, we provide evidence of salient discourse patterns surrounding feminism in two different cultural contexts. © The Author(s) 2012.

Novel, isoform-selective, cholecystokinin A receptor antagonist inhibits colon and pancreatic cancers in preclinical models through novel mechanism of action

Colon and pancreatic cancers contribute to 90,000 deaths each year in the USA. These cancers lack targeted therapeutics due to heterogeneity of the disease and multiple causative factors. One important factor that contributes to increased colon and pancreatic cancer risk is gastrin. Gastrin mediates its actions through two G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs): cholecystokinin receptor A (CCK-A) and CCK-B/gastrin receptor. Previous studies have indicated that colon cancer predominantly expresses CCK-A and responds to CCK-A isoform antagonists. However, many CCK-A antagonists have failed in the clinic due to poor pharmacokinetic properties or lack of efficacy. In the present study, we synthesized a library of CCK-A isoform-selective antagonists and tested them in various colon and pancreatic cancer preclinical models. The lead CCK-A isoform, selective antagonist PNB-028, bound to CCK-A at 12 nM with a 60-fold selectivity towards CCK-A over CCK-B. Furthermore, it inhibited the proliferation of CCK-A-expressing colon and pancreatic cancer cells without affecting the proliferation of non-cancerous cells. PNB-028 was also extremely effective in inhibiting the growth of MAC-16 and LoVo colon cancer and MIA PaCa pancreatic cancer xenografts in immune-compromised mice. Genomewide microarray and kinase-array studies indicate that PNB-028 inhibited oncogenic kinases and angiogenic factors to inhibit the growth of colon cancer xenografts. Safety pharmacology and toxicology studies have indicated that PNB-028 is extremely safe and has a wide safety margin. These studies suggest that targeting CCK-A selectively renders promise to treat colon and pancreatic cancers and that PNB-028 could become the next-generation treatment option.

Visual and quality outcomes following bilateral implantation of a trifocal intraocular lens

Purpose: To examine visual outcomes following bilateral implantation of the FineVision trifocal intraocular lens (IOL; PhysIOL, Liège, Belgium). Methods: 26 patients undergoing routine cataract surgery were implanted bilaterally with the FineVision Trifocal IOL and followed up post-operatively for 3 months. The FineVision optic features a combination of 2 diffractive structures, resulting in distance, intermediate (+1.75 D add) and near vision (+3.50 D add) zones. Apodization of the optic surface increases far vision dominance with pupil aperture. Data collected at the 3 month visit included uncorrected and corrected distance (CDVA) and near vision; subjective refraction; defocus curve testing (photopic and mesopic); contrast sensitivity (CSV-1000); halometry glare testing and a questionnaire (NAVQ) to gauge near vision function and patient satisfaction. Results: The cohort comprised 15 males and 11 females, aged 52.5–82.4 years (mean 70.6 ± 8.2 years). Mean post-operative UDVA was 0.22 ± 0.14 logMAR, with a mean spherical equivalent refraction of +0.02 ± 0.35 D. Mean CDVA was 0.13 ± 0.10 logMAR monocularly, and 0.09 ± 0.07 logMAR binocularly. Defocus curve testing showed an extensive range of clear vision in both photopic and mesopic conditions. Patients showed high levels of satisfaction with their near vision (mean ± 0.9 ± 0.6, where 0 = completely satisfied, and 4 = completely unsatisfied) and demonstrated good spectacle independence. Conclusion: The FineVision IOL can be considered in patients seeking spectacle dependence following cataract surgery, and provide good patient satisfaction with uncorrected vision.

Validity of a prototype surgical aberrometer

Poster Purpose: A study to validate a prototype Hartmann-Shack (HS) wavefront aberrometer. Methods: The dynamic range was assessed using a calibrated model eye. It was validated against a conventional HS-aberrometer (Topcon KR1W) in 75 eyes using both instruments in random order. Additionally, intra-sessional repeatability was tested. Results: The aberrometer showed a large dynamic range of +21.0 D to −25.0 D. It was comparable to a conventional HS aberrometer for spherical-equivalent SE (MD ± 95% CI: 0.02 ± 0.49D; correlation: r = 0.995, p < 0.001), astigmatic components (J0: 0.02 ± 0.15D; r = 0.977, p < 0.001; J45: 0.03 ± 0.28; r = 0.666, p < 0.001) and HOAs RMS (0.02 ± 0.20D; r = 0.620, p < 0.001). Intra-sessional repeatability correlation was also excellent (SE = 1.000, p < 0.001; astigmatic-components J0 = 0.998, p < 0.001, J45 = 0.980, p < 0.01; HOAs RMS = 0.961, p < 0.001). Conclusions: This study confirms the validity of the prototype aberrometer. The prototype aberrometer can measure continuously to provide direct feedback of the optical status of the eye during surgery.