Sustained intraocular pressure reduction throughout the day with travoprost ophthalmic solution 0.004%

Harvey B Dubiner1, Robert Noecker21Clayton Eye Center, Morrow, GA; 2Ophthalmic Consultants of Connecticut, Fairfield, CT, USABackground: The purpose of this study was to characterize intraocular pressure (IOP) reduction throughout the day with travoprost ophthalmic solution 0.004% dosed once daily in the evening.Methods: The results of seven published, randomized clinical trials including at least one arm in which travoprost 0.004% was dosed once daily in the evening were integrated. Means (and standard deviations) of mean baseline and on-treatment IOP, as well as mean IOP reduction and mean percent IOP reduction at 0800, 1000, and 1600 hours at weeks 2 and 12 were calculated.Results: From a mean baseline IOP ranging from 25.0 to 27.2 mmHg, mean IOP on treatment ranged from 17.4 to 18.8 mmHg across all visits and time points. Mean IOP reductions from baseline ranged from 7.6 to 8.4 mmHg across visits and time points, representing a mean IOP reduction of 30%. Results of the safety analysis were consistent with the results from the individual studies for travoprost ophthalmic solution 0.004%, with ocular hyperemia being the most common side effect.Conclusion: Travoprost 0.004% dosed once daily in the evening provides sustained IOP reduction throughout the 24-hour dosing interval in subjects with ocular hypertension or open-angle glaucoma. No reduction of IOP-lowering efficacy was observed at the 1600-hour time point which approached the end of the dosing interval.Keywords: travoprost ophthalmic solution 0.004%, intraocular pressure reductio

Computer Algebra meets Finite Elements: an Efficient Implementation for Maxwell's Equations

We consider the numerical discretization of the time-domain Maxwell's equations with an energy-conserving discontinuous Galerkin finite element formulation. This particular formulation allows for higher order approximations of the electric and magnetic field. Special emphasis is placed on an efficient implementation which is achieved by taking advantage of recurrence properties and the tensor-product structure of the chosen shape functions. These recurrences have been derived symbolically with computer algebra methods reminiscent of the holonomic systems approach.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, 1 table; Springer Wien, ISBN 978-3-7091-0793-

Ocular hypotensive effect of fixed-combination brinzolamide/brimonidine adjunctive to a prostaglandin analog: a randomized clinical trial

To determine whether intraocular pressure (IOP) lowering with fixed-combination brinzolamide/brimonidine (BBFC) adjunctive to a prostaglandin analog (PGA) was superior to that of vehicle+PGA in patients with open-angle glaucoma or ocular hypertension who were inadequately controlled with PGA monotherap

Non-subtitled, uncaptioned TV viewing supports foreign-language learning: A self-study of the learning of Greek outside Greece

In this paper, the author explores the impact of watching a television series in Greek without subtitles or captions as a learning tool. The study assumes that comprehensible input, epistemic agency, reflective learning, and narrow viewing build the basis for adequate independent learning of less commonly taught languages (LCTL). In this self-study, the researcher relies on her experiences viewing 134 episodes of the series Sasmos , along with her knowledge of applied linguistics and foreign language acquisition theories to gain deeper understanding of foreign language learning processes. The data set includes reflections, a scrutiny of vocabulary learned as documented in her vocabulary notebook, and the series itself. Findings illuminate several aspects of foreign language learning. Pedagogical implications regarding the use of a TV series as a central contributor to input in LCTLs are suggested

Solving Wave Equations on Unstructured Geometries

Waves are all around us--be it in the form of sound, electromagnetic radiation, water waves, or earthquakes. Their study is an important basic tool across engineering and science disciplines. Every wave solver serving the computational study of waves meets a trade-off of two figures of merit--its computational speed and its accuracy. Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods fall on the high-accuracy end of this spectrum. Fortuitously, their computational structure is so ideally suited to GPUs that they also achieve very high computational speeds. In other words, the use of DG methods on GPUs significantly lowers the cost of obtaining accurate solutions. This article aims to give the reader an easy on-ramp to the use of this technology, based on a sample implementation which demonstrates a highly accurate, GPU-capable, real-time visualizing finite element solver in about 1500 lines of code.Comment: GPU Computing Gems, edited by Wen-mei Hwu, Elsevier (2011), ISBN 9780123859631, Chapter 1

Order preserving pattern matching on trees and DAGs

The order preserving pattern matching (OPPM) problem is, given a pattern string $p$ and a text string $t$, find all substrings of $t$ which have the same relative orders as $p$. In this paper, we consider two variants of the OPPM problem where a set of text strings is given as a tree or a DAG. We show that the OPPM problem for a single pattern $p$ of length $m$ and a text tree $T$ of size $N$ can be solved in $O(m+N)$ time if the characters of $p$ are drawn from an integer alphabet of polynomial size. The time complexity becomes $O(m \log m + N)$ if the pattern $p$ is over a general ordered alphabet. We then show that the OPPM problem for a single pattern and a text DAG is NP-complete