PURPOSE To evaluate the age-related change in contrast sensitivity seen in a middle-aged to elderly Japanese population. METHODS Contrast sensitivity and visual acuity were measured in subjects aged 40 to 79 years randomly recruited from a community in Aichi prefecture near Nagoya, Japan. Contrast sensitivity tests were performed using the Vistech contrast sensitivity test chart (VCTS 6500). ...

Consistent behavior is a desirable characteristic that common items are expected to have when administered to different groups. Findings from the literature have established that items do not always behave in consistent ways; item indices and IRT item parameter estimates of the same items differ when obtained from different administrations. Content effects, such as discrepancies in instructiona...

OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of age and/or surgical approach on perioperative wound complication following ovariohysterectomy (OHE). METHODS A retrospective search of perioperative monitoring records from a shelter desexing program was conducted to identify cats that underwent OHE between 1 June 2010 and 31 December 2012 inclusive. A wound complication was de...

BACKGROUND HIV/AIDS treatment programs are currently being mounted in many developing nations that include palliative care services. While measures of palliative care have been developed and validated for resource rich settings, very little work exists to support an understanding of measurement for Africa, Latin America or Asia. METHODS This study investigates the construct validity of measur...

Table 1. RMP and pilot study sampling stations. Table 2. RMP and pilot sampling events. Table 3. Trace element data available from sampling events 7–15 for model-based clustering of sampling sites. Table 4. Definition of a stratification scheme for the MIDAS transects in San Francisco Bay. Table 5. Sample SpaceStat output from an OLS ANOVA for ln-transformed chromium (event 13). Table 6. Summar...

Geographical genetics allows the evaluation of evolutionary processes underlying genetic variation within and among local populations and forms the basis for establishing more effective strategies for biodiversity conservation at the population level. In this study, we used explicit spatial analyses to investigate molecular genetic variation (estimated using 7 microsatellite markers) of Pseudop...

Development of suitable approaches to the analysis of genetic diversity in a spatial context, where factors such as pollination, seed dispersal, breeding system, habitat heterogeneity and human influence are appropriately integrated, can provide new insights in the understanding of the mechanisms of maintenance and dynamics of populations. In this sense, it is important to recognise that patter...

Understanding how natural processes affect population genetic structures is an important issue in evolutionary biology. One effective method is to assess the relative importance of environmental and geographical factors in the genetic structure of populations. In this study, we examined the spatial genetic variation of thirteen Myriophyllum spicatum populations from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau ...

The authors develop jackknife and analytical variance estimators for the estimator of Chambers & Dunstan (1986) and Rao, Kovar & Mantel (1990) of the finite population distribution function, using complete auxiliary information. They also describe the associated model and show the design consistency of the variance estimators, whose small-sample performance is examined through a limited simulat...

The coin package implements a unified approach for conditional inference procedures commonly known as permutation tests. The theoretical basis of design and implementation is the unified framework for permutation tests given by Strasser and Weber (1999). For a very flexible formulation of multivariate linear statistics, Strasser and Weber (1999) derived the conditional expectation and covarianc...