Adjusting crop acreages for war production to the soil resources of Iowa

To some people soil conservation is a peacetime luxury; to others it is a first essential of land use. Some say, We are at war now, what does soil matter? Plow it up. Others say, For many years we have been learning conservation; we must not now throwaway our gains. Both attitudes are right if we distinguish between soils which are subject to serious erosion and those which are not, but they are wrong when applied to all soils without regard to their differences. Actually, we face the necessity of exploiting our soils to the point where we will obtain the most food and raw materials over the next 3 to 5 years. We face a serious food shortage in terms of\u27 the needs of our armed forces, our civilian population, our allies and the hungry masses which will soon be freed from tyranny. To meet these needs we should produce the maximum amount of feeds and food products required. We also need to adjust our diets to consume more of those foods which yield the most nourishment per acre

Intra-individual reaction time variability and all-cause mortality over 17 years: A community-based cohort study

Background: very few studies have examined the association between intra-individual reaction time variability and subsequent mortality. Furthermore, the ability of simple measures of variability to predict mortality has not been compared with more complex measures. Method: a prospective cohort study of 896 community-based Australian adults aged 70+ were interviewed up to four times from 1990 to 2002, with vital status assessed until June 2007. From this cohort, 770–790 participants were included in Cox proportional hazards regression models of survival. Vital status and time in study were used to conduct survival analyses. The mean reaction time and three measures of intra-individual reaction time variability were calculated separately across 20 trials of simple and choice reaction time tasks. Models were adjusted for a range of demographic, physical health and mental health measures. Results: greater intra-individual simple reaction time variability, as assessed by the raw standard deviation (raw SD), coefficient of variation (CV) or the intra-individual standard deviation (ISD), was strongly associated with an increased hazard of all-cause mortality in adjusted Cox regression models. The mean reaction time had no significant association with mortality. Conclusion: intra-individual variability in simple reaction time appears to have a robust association with mortality over 17 years. Health professionals such as neuropsychologists may benefit in their detection of neuropathology by supplementing neuropsychiatric testing with the straightforward process of testing simple reaction time and calculating raw SD or CV

Geographical variation in certification rates of blindness and sight impairment in England, 2008-2009

To examine and interpret the variation in the incidence of blindness and sight impairment in England by PCT, as reported by the Certificate of Vision Impairment (CVI). Design: Analysis of national certification data. Setting: All Primary Care Trusts, England. Participants: 23 773 CVI certifications issued from 2008 to 2009. Main Outcome measures: Crude and Age standardised rates of CVI data for blindness and sight loss by PCT. Methods: The crude and age standardised CVI rates per 100 000 were calculated with Spearman's rank correlation used to assess whether there was any evidence of association between CVI rates with Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) and the Programme Spend for Vision. Results: There was high-level variation, almost 11-fold (coefficient of variation 38%) in standardised CVI blindness and sight impairment annual certification rates across PCTs. The mean rate was 43.7 and the SD 16.7. We found little evidence of an association between the rate of blindness and sight impairment with either the IMD or Programme Spend on Vision. Conclusions: The wide geographical variation we found raises questions about the quality of the data and whether there is genuine unmet need for prevention of sight loss. It is a concern for public health practitioners who will be interpreting these data locally and nationally as the CVI data will form the basis of the public health indicator ‘preventable sight loss’. Poor-quality data and inadequate interpretation will only create confusion if not addressed adequately from the outset. There is an urgent need to address the shortcomings of the current data collection system and to educate all public health practitioners

How effective is eccentric viewing training? A systematic literature review

Purpose: The global prevalence of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and associated central vision loss (CVL) is rising. CVL hinders the performance of many activities of daily living (ADLs). Adaptive strategies such as eccentric viewing (EV) and steady eye strategy (SES) may be used to compensate for CVL. In order to establish the potential of these rehabilitation strategies, this systematic review evaluates current literature regarding the effectiveness of EV and SES training in people with CVL. Recent Findings: The search strategies identified 2605 publications, 36 of which met the inclusion criteria for the review, but only three of which were randomised controlled trials. This literature shows that EV and SES training can improve near visual acuity, reading speed, and performance of ADLs in people with CVL. However, there was insufficient literature to establish a relationship between training and distance visual acuity or quality-of-life. There is no conclusive evidence to show that a particular model of EV training is superior to another, little clear evidence of a relationship between participant characteristics and training outcomes and no data regarding the cost effectiveness of training. Summary: This report highlights the need for further robust research to establish the true potential and cost effectiveness of EV and SES training as a rehabilitation strategy for individuals with CVL

Active surveillance of choroidal neovascularisation in children: incidence, aetiology and management findings from a national study in the UK

BACKGROUND/AIMS: To determine the UK incidence, demographics, aetiology, management and visual outcome for children developing choroidal neovascularisation (CNV). METHODS: A prospective population-based observational study of routine practice via the British Ophthalmological Surveillance Unit between January 2012 and December 2013 with subsequent 1-year follow-up in children under 16 years old with newly diagnosed CNV. RESULTS: Twenty-seven children with CNV were reported. The UK estimated annual incidence for those aged 16 and under was 0.21 per 100 000 (95% CI 0.133 to 0.299). The mean age was 11.1 years (SD 3.9, range 4-16). Fourteen were female. Seventy-seven per cent (22 patients) were Caucasian British. Twenty-three children (85%) had unilateral disease. The most common aetiology included inflammatory retinochoroidopathy (n=9), optic disc abnormalities (n=9) and idiopathic (n=5). Optical coherence tomography was performed in all cases and fundus fluorescein angiography in 61%. Management included observation only (n=10), anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) injection of bevacizumab (n=14) or ranibizumab (n=2), or both (n=1), and additional use of oral (n=1) and local (periocular n=2 and intravitreal n=2) steroids in five children with inflammatory retinochoroidopathy. The mean number of anti-VEGF injections was 2±1, with eight patients receiving only one injection. The mean (SD) best corrected visual acuity in LogMAR was 0.91 (0.53) at presentation and 0.74 (0.53) at 1-year follow-up (p=0.09). CONCLUSION: This is the first population-based prospective study of CNV in children. This is a rare disorder with a poor visual prognosis irrespective of CNV location and the use of anti-VEGF therapy

Effective role of unpolarized nonvalence partons in Drell-Yan single spin asymmetries

We perform numerical simulations of the Sivers effect from single spin asymmetries in Drell-Yan processes on transversely polarized protons. We consider colliding antiprotons and pions at different kinematic conditions of interest for the future planned experiments. We conventionally name "framework I" the results obtained when properly accounting for the various flavor dependent polarized valence contributions in the numerator of the asymmetry, and for the unpolarized nonvalence contribution in its denominator. We name "framework II" the results obtained when taking a suitable flavor average of the valence contributions and neglecting the nonvalence ones. We compare the two methods, also with respect to the input parametrization of the Sivers function which is extracted from data with approximations sometimes intermediate between frameworks I and II. Deviations between the two approaches are found to be small except for dilepton masses below 3 GeV. The Sivers effect is used as a test case; the arguments can be generalized to other interesting azimuthal asymmetries in Drell-Yan processes, such as the Boer-Mulders effect.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures in eps forma