Long-term efficacy of orthokeratology contact lens wear in controlling the progression of childhood myopia

Purpose: The primary outcome of this study is to compare the axial length growth of white European myopic children wearing orthokeratology contact lenses (OK) to a control group (CT) over a 7-year period. Methods: Subjects 6–12 years of age with myopia −0.75 to −4.00DS and astigmatism ≤1.00DC were prospectively allocated OK or distance single-vision spectacles (SV) correction. Measurements of axial length (Zeiss IOLMaster), corneal topography, and cycloplegic refraction were taken at 6-month intervals over a 2-year period. Subjects were invited to return to the clinic approximately 5 years later (i.e., 7 years after the beginning of the study) for assessment of their ocular refractive and biometric components. The CT consisted of 4 SV and 12 subjects who switched from SV to soft contact lens wear after the initial 2 years of SV lens wear. Changes in axial length relative to baseline over a 7-year period were compared between groups. Results: Fourteen and 16 subjects from the OK and CT groups, respectively, were examined 6.7 ± 0.5 years after the beginning of the study. Statistically significant changes in the axial length were found over time and between groups (both p <0.001), but not for the time*group interaction (p = 0.125). The change in the axial length for the OK group was 22% (p = 0.328), 42% (p = 0.007), 40% (p = 0.020), 41% (p = 0.013), and 33% (p = 0.062) lower than the CT group following 6, 12, 18, 24, and 84 months of lens wear, respectively. Conclusion: A trend toward a reduction in the rate of axial elongation of the order of 33% was found in the OK group in comparison to the CT group following 7 years of lens wear.

Short-term and long-term changes in corneal power are not correlated with axial elongation of the eye induced by orthokeratology in children

PURPOSE: To assess the relationship between short-term and long-term changes in power at different corneal locations relative to the change in central corneal power and the 2-year change in axial elongation relative to baseline in children fitted with orthokeratology contact lenses (OK). METHODS: Thirty-one white European subjects 6 to 12 years of age and with myopia −0.75 to −4.00 DS and astigmatism ≤1.00 DC were fitted with OK. Differences in refractive power 3 and 24 months post-OK in comparison with baseline and relative to the change in central corneal power were determined from corneal topography data in eight different corneal regions (i.e., N[nasal]1, N2, T[temporal]1, T2, I[inferior]1, I2, S[superior]1, S2), and correlated with OK-induced axial length changes at two years relative to baseline. RESULTS: After 2 years of OK lens wear, axial length increased by 0.48±0.18 mm (P0.05). CONCLUSION: The reduction in central corneal power and relative increase in paracentral and pericentral power induced by OK over 2 years were not significantly correlated with concurrent changes in axial length of white European children.

3D-form metrology of arbitrary optical surfaces by absorption in fluids

We present an imaging technique for the 3D-form metrology of optical surfaces. It is based on the optical absorption in fluids situated between the surface and a reference. An improved setup with a bi-chromatic light source is fundamental to obtain reliable topographic maps. It is able to measure any surface finish (rough or polished), form and slope and independently of scale. We present results focused on flat and spherical optical surfaces, arrays of lenses and with different surface finish (rough-polished). We achieve form accuracies from several nanometers to sub-lambda for sag departures from tens to hundred of microns. Therefore, it seems suitable for the quality control in the production of precision aspheric, freeform lenses and other complex shapes on transparent substrates, independently of the surface finish.

Visual outcomes after bilateral trifocal diffractive intraocular lens implantation

Background In recent years new models of intraocular lenses are appearing on the market to reduce requirements for additional optical correction. The purpose of this study is to assess visual outcomes following bilateral cataract surgery and the implant of a FineVision® trifocal intraocular lens (IOL). Methods Prospective, nonrandomized, observational study. Vision was assessed in 44 eyes of 22 patients (mean age 68.4 ± 5.5 years) before and 3 months after surgery. Aberrations were determined using the Topcon KR-1 W wave-front analyzer. LogMAR visual acuity was measured at distance (corrected distance visual acuity, CDVA 4 m), intermediate (distance corrected intermediate visual acuity, DCIVA 60 cm) and near (distance corrected near visual acuity, DCNVA 40 cm). The Pelli-Robson letter chart and the CSV-1000 test were used to estimate contrast sensitivity (CS). Defocus curve testing was performed in photopic and mesopic conditions. Adverse photic phenomena were assessed using the Halo v1.0 program. Results Mean aberration values for a mesopic pupil diameter were: total HOA RMS: 0.41 ± 0.30 μm, coma: 0.32 ± 0.22 μm and spherical aberration: 0.21 ± 0.20 μm. Binocular logMAR measurements were: CDVA −0.05 ± 0.05, DCIVA 0.15 ± 0.10, and DCNVA 0.06 ± 0.10. Mean Pelli-Robson CS was 1.40 ± 0.14 log units. Mean CSV100 CS for the 4 frequencies examined (A: 3 cycles/degree (cpd), B: 6 cpd, C: 12 cpd, D: 18 cpd) were 1.64 ± 0.14, 1.77 ± 0.18, 1.44 ± 0.24 and 0.98 ± 0.24 log units, respectively. Significant differences were observed in defocus curves for photopic and mesopic conditions (p < 0.0001). A mean disturbance index of 0.28 ± 0.22 was obtained. Conclusions Bilateral FineVision IOL implant achieved a full range of adequate vision, satisfactory contrast sensitivity, and a lack of significant adverse photic phenomena. Trial registration Eudract Clinical Trials Registry Number: 2014-003266-2.

Accommodative changes produced in response to overnight orthokeratology

Background To evaluate short-term (3 months) and long-term (3 years) accommodative changes produced by overnight orthokeratology (OK). Methods A prospective, longitudinal study on young adult subjects with low to moderate myopia was carried out. A total of 93 patients took part in the study. Out of these, 72 were enrolled into the short-term follow-up: 21 were on a control group, 26 on a Paragon CRT contact lenses group, and 25 on a Seefree contact lenses group. The other 21 patients were old CRT wearers on long-term follow-up. Accommodative function was assessed by means of negative and positive relative accommodation (NRA / PRA), monocular accommodative amplitude (MAA), accommodative lag, and monocular accommodative facility (MAF). These values were compared among the three short-term groups at the follow-up visit. The long- and short-term follow-up data was compared among the CRT groups. Results Subjective accommodative results did not suffer any statistically significant changes in any of the accommodative tests for any of the short-term groups when compared to baseline. There were no statistically significant differences between the three short-term groups at the follow-up visit. When comparing the short- and long-term groups, only the NRA showed a significant difference (p = 0.0006) among all the accommodation tests. Conclusions OK does not induce changes in the ocular accommodative function for either short-term or long-term periods.

Exploring the Experience of Teachers Working with Exceptional Learners

Regular classroom teachers, who often report that they lack adequate training and resources, increasingly find themselves supporting students with special education needs (Connelly & Graham, 2009). Teachers working in challenging environments can thrive in their role and continue to experience professional growth and passion about their work with students with exceptionalities (Perry, Brenner, Collie, & Hofer, 2015). Thriving is one framework of psychological wellness that can provide insight into the experiences of teachers working with exceptional learners (Spreitzer & Porath, 2014). Chronic stress from occupational demands such as heavy workload and insufficient resources can negatively affect the wellbeing of teachers and lead to poor mental health (Desrumaux et al., 2015). Burnout and compassion fatigue are two constructs of poor mental health that can inform our understanding of teachers’ social and emotional experiences. The purpose of this study was to explore the social and emotional experiences of teachers working with exceptional learners in regular classrooms. The objective of this study was to describe the elements within teachers’ professional roles that they report contribute to their social and emotional experiences understood through the lenses of thriving, burnout, and compassion fatigue. Interviews were conducted with five teachers: one full-time in-service teacher and four teachers who are pursuing graduate studies in education. The theme of thriving emerged as a significant component of the interview with all five participants. All five participants described experiences of vitality and learning as essential to their workplace satisfaction and overall thriving. Although the data from this study did not suggest that participants were experiencing burnout or compassion fatigue, elements of the two constructs did emerge as relevant to the social-emotional experiences of the teachers.

Infants, interfaces, and intermediation: digital parenting and the production of 'iPad baby' videos on YouTube

We investigate the ways young children’s use of mobile touchscreen interfaces is both understood and shaped by parents through the production of YouTube videos and discussions in associated comment threads. This analysis expands on, and departs from, theories of parental mediation, which have traditionally been framed through a media effects approach in analyzing how parents regulate their children’s use of broadcast media, such as television, within family life. We move beyond the limitations of an effects framing through more culturally and materially oriented theoretical lenses of mediation, considering the role mobile interfaces now play in the lives of infants through analysis of the ways parents intermediate between domestic spaces and networked publics. We propose the concept of intermediation, which builds on insights from critical interface studies as well as cultural industries literature to help account for these expanded aspects of digital parenting. Here, parents are not simply moderating children’s media use within the home, but instead operating as an intermediary in contributing to online representations and discourses of children’s digital culture. This intermediary role of parents engages with ideological tensions in locating notions of “naturalness:” the iPad’s gestural interface or the child’s digital dexterity.

Epistemic, Ontic, Axiologic, and Praxic Constructs in Knowledge Organization Research

The work of knowledge organization requires a particular set of tools. For instance we need standards of content description like Anglo-American Cataloging Rules Edition 2, Resource Description and Access (RDA), Cataloging Cultural Objects, and Describing Archives: A Content Standard. When we intellectualize the process of knowledge organization – that is when we do basic theoretical research in knowledge organization we need another set of tools. For this latter exercise we need constructs. Constructs are ideas with many conceptual elements, largely considered subjective. They allow us to be inventive as well as allow us to see a particular point of view in knowledge organization. For example, Patrick Wilson’s ideas of exploitative control and descriptive control, or S. R. Ranganathan’s fundamental categories are constructs. They allow us to identify functional requirements or operationalizations of functional requirements, or at least come close to them for our systems and schemes. They also allow us to carry out meaningful evaluation.What is even more interesting, from a research point of view, is that constructs once offered to the community can be contested and reinterpreted and this has an affect on how we view knowledge organization systems and processes. Fundamental categories are again a good example in that some members of the Classification Research Group (CRG) argued against Ranganathan’s point of view. The CRG posited more fundamental categories than Ranganathan’s five, Personality, Matter, Energy, Space, and Time (Ranganathan, 1967). The CRG needed significantly more fundamental categories for their work.1 And these are just two voices in this space we can also consider the fundamental categories of Johannes Kaiser (1911), Shera and Egan, Barbara Kyle (Vickery, 1960), and Eric de Grolier (1962). We can also reference contemporary work that continues comparison and analysis of fundamental categories (e.g., Dousa, 2011).In all these cases we are discussing a construct. The fundamental category is not discovered; it is constructed by a classificationist. This is done because it is useful in engaging in the act of classification. And while we are accustomed to using constructs or debating their merit in one knowledge organization activity or another, we have not analyzed their structure, nor have we created a typology. In an effort to probe the epistemological dimension of knowledge organization, we think it would be a fruitful exercise to do this. This is because we might benefit from clarity around not only our terminology, but the manner in which we talk about our terminology. We are all creative workers examining what is available to us, but doing so through particular lenses (constructs) identifying particular constructs. And by knowing these and being able to refer to these we would consider a core competency for knowledge organization researchers.

Revêtement intelligent à base des silices mésoporeuses fonctionnalisées pour le relargage stimulé d’agents antimicrobiens

Les biofilms bactériens sont composés d’organismes unicellulaires vivants au sein d’une matrice protectrice, formée de macromolécules naturelles. Des biofilms non désirés peuvent avoir un certain nombre de conséquences néfastes, par exemple la diminution du transfert de chaleur dans les échangeurs de chaleurs, l’obstruction de membranes poreuses, la contamination des surfaces coques de navires, etc. Par ailleurs, les bactéries pathogènes qui prolifèrent dans un biofilm posent également un danger pour la santé s’ils croissent sur des surfaces médicales synthétiques comme des implants biomédicaux, cathéters ou des lentilles de vue. De plus, la croissance sur le tissu naturel par certaines souches des bactéries peut être fatale, comme Pseudomonas aeruginosa dans les poumons. Cependant, la présence de biofilms reste difficile à traiter, car les bactéries sont protégées par une matrice extracellulaire. Pour tenter de remédier à ces problèmes, nous proposons de développer une surface antisalissure (antifouling) qui libère sur demande des agents antimicrobiens. La proximité et la disposition du système de relargage placé sous le biofilm, assureront une utilisation plus efficace des molécules antimicrobiennes et minimiseront les effets secondaires de ces dernières. Pour ce faire, nous envisageons l’utilisation d’une couche de particules de silice mésoporeuses comme agents de livraison d’agents antimicrobiens. Les nanoparticules de silice mésoporeuses (MSNs) ont démontré un fort potentiel pour la livraison ciblée d’agents thérapeutiques et bioactifs. Leur utilisation en nano médecine découle de leurs propriétés de porosité intéressantes, de la taille et de la forme ajustable de ces particules, de la chimie de leur surface et leur biocompatibilité. Ces propriétés offrent une flexibilité pour diverses applications. De plus, il est possible de les charger avec différentes molécules ou biomolécules (de tailles variées, allant de l’ibuprofène à l’ARN) et d’exercer un contrôle précis des paramètres d’adsorption et des cinétiques de relargage (désorption). Mots Clés : biofilms, nanoparticules de silice mésoporeuses, microfluidique, surface antisalissure.

Creative Practices Around the Production of Cork

Cork, as a natural product provided by the bark of the cork oak tree, is an important staple of the Portuguese economy and important to Portuguese culture. It is a sustainable product with a positive ecological footprint, from harvesting to industrial production, with the advantage of creating a local economic model through regional labour activity and distribution. Within the balance between nature-human-economy to create a sustainable system, cork production in Portugal represents a human and social dimension. By focusing on that dimension and by creating an awareness of the cultural and social impact of the activity and by re-appraising the meaning of the material within the culture, the study reframes a consideration of the actual place of labour and production. The human, geophysical, historical, social, economic, ecological and cultural aspects of the place are observed as regards their relation to work or labour in that physical space. A pilot study is being developed in the village of Azaruja in the district of Évora, Portugal. In this small locality, cork is very important in terms of the relationships between the physical subsistence of their residents and the local natural resources, because it structures the place in its cultural, social and economical dimensions. This paper outlines the theoretical foundations, the process and the outcomes of the participatory ecodesign project titled Creative Practices Around the Production of Cork which was initiated by a Portuguese artist/design researcher and developed further through the collaboration with the other two authors, one a Portuguese visual artist/researcher and the other a Turkish fashion designer/theorist. The investigation focuses on questions that expand the notion of place for artists and designers, filtered through the lenses of manual labourers in order to understand their physical, social, cultural and economic relationship with the environment. To create the process of interaction with the place and the people, a creative collaborative dynamic is developed between the authors with their range of artistic sensibilities and the local population. To adopt a holistic notion of sustainability and cultural identity a process of investigation is designated to: (1) analyse, test and interpret - through the dissemination of life stories, visual representation of the place and the creation of cork objects - the importance of culture related to the labour activity of a local natural resource that determines and structures the region; (2) to give public recognition to those involved, taking into account their sense of belonging to the place and in order to show the value of their sustainable labour activities related to local natural resources; (3) to contribute to the knowledge of the place and to its dynamism through an aesthetic approach to labour activities. With reference to fields of knowledge such as anthropology, the social arts and sustainable design, a practice-based research is conducted with collaborative and participatory design methods to create an open model of interaction which involves local people in the realization of the project. Outcomes of this research will be presented in the paper as a survey analysis with theoretical conclusions.

Towards the Enabling City: Intermediate Places between Practices and Planning for Social Innovation in Bologna

The research investigates the interaction between social innovation practices and urban planning, assuming as a case study and field of application the city of Bologna, observed from the point of view of the production of urban policies and with respect to the places where it is practiced. Social innovation are localised actions tackling current urban complexities with micro-scale practices of service and urban production, by which new urban actors find answers to social needs, which are less afforded by the market and the public sectors. Planning and social innovation practices are two dimensions working in the city in different but complementary ways, subject to a mismatch. Through the lenses of interaction, the research explores the context of Bologna, a paradigmatic study and application field, a laboratory of innovative policies where a tradition of collective civic initiatives intertwines with a more responsible institutional planning framework. After drawing from area-based policies of Berlin and Barcelona, the thesis reads the role of specific intermediate places, mediators in bridging the level of institutions and the practices. Through an inventory and a cross-cutting taxonomy of intermediate places, the research draws the knowledge to inform a new urban model for the city of Bologna, aimed at overtake the mismatches by enabling the practices to act, allowing urban planning to frame them in a cross-fertilisation dimension. The proposed urban diagrammatic model, foresees intermediate places as local socio-urban observatories for research and development, interacting with both institutions and communities. The goal is to critically explore the limits and widen the meaning of the capacity of action of social innovation practices engaging in mutual-learning with the city. The model suggests a new possibility for reflection on urban planning as a more flexible approach, which translates the numerous experiences of the city into alternatives and multiple visions.

Transitional Justice as a Post-Revolution Constitutional Arrangement: A Law and Economics Approach

This dissertation addresses the timely questions of transitional justice (TJ) in the aftermath of revolutions against autocratic regimes, dealing with TJ as a constitutional arrangement through the lenses of constitutional economics. After an introductory chapter, chapter 2 deals with why nations rarely adopt meaningful TJ processes in the first place, it then explains the limitations of civil society as the arbiter, facilitator, and enforcer of TJ policies. Chapter 3 tackles the question of which mechanisms to choose? It uses the UN Guidelines on TJ that sets five principal TJ mechanisms. It provides a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of each mechanism and suggests policy implications accordingly. The CBA inspires chapter 4 analysis, suggesting a tradeoff between restrictive fair trial standards under constitutional laws and justice considerations. The tradeoff explains the suggested efficiency of the balanced TJ approaches that combine trials and amnesties. This approach is used for the case study analysis of TJ in Tunisia after the 2011 revolution in chapter 5. The chapter presents the first index of TJ mechanisms in Tunisia through novel data collected by the author. It shows an ultimate TJ design that ended with a modest harvest in the application. The lack of cooperation between the Tunisian parties, added to the absence of transparency in many TJ measures, threatens any possible positive outcomes of the partial TJ process. It is also alarming regarding constitutional compliance in a system that – until recently - was considered the only democracy in the Arab region. Chapter 6 is a summary

Study of the calorimetric performance of a liquid Argon detector based on a novel optical imaging concept

DUNE is a next-generation long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. It aims to measure the still unknown $ \delta_{CP} $ violation phase and the sign of $ \Delta m_{13}^2 $, which defines the neutrino mass ordering. DUNE will exploit a Far Detector composed of four multi-kiloton LArTPCs, and a Near Detector (ND) complex located close to the neutrino source at Fermilab. The SAND detector at the ND complex is designed to perform on-axis beam monitoring, constrain uncertainties in the oscillation analysis and perform precision neutrino physics measurements. SAND includes a 0.6 T super-conductive magnet, an electromagnetic calorimeter, a 1-ton liquid Argon detector - GRAIN - and a modular, low-density straw tube target tracker system. GRAIN is an innovative LAr detector where neutrino interactions can be reconstructed using only the LAr scintillation light imaged by an optical system based on Coded Aperture masks and lenses - a novel approach never used before in particle physics applications. In this thesis, a first evaluation of GRAIN track reconstruction and calorimetric capabilities was obtained with an optical system based on Coded Aperture cameras. A simulation of $\nu_\mu + Ar$ interactions with the energy spectrum expected at the future Fermilab Long Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) was performed. The performance of SAND was evaluated, combining the information provided by all its sub-detectors, on the selection of $ \nu_\mu + Ar \to \mu^- + p + X $ sample and on the neutrino energy reconstruction.