Comparison of antimüllerian hormone levels and antral follicle count as predictor of ovarian response to controlled ovarian stimulation in good-prognosis patients at individual fertility clinics in two multicenter trials

Objective To compare antimüllerian hormone (AMH) and antral follicle count (AFC) as predictors of ovarian response to controlled ovarian stimulation at individual fertility clinics. Design Retrospective analysis of individual study center data in two multicenter trials. Centers that provided >10 patients were included in the analysis. Setting A total of 19 (n = 519 patients) and 18 study centers (n = 686 patients) participating in a long GnRH agonist trial (MERIT) and a GnRH antagonist trial (MEGASET), respectively. Patient(s) Infertile women of good prognosis. Intervention(s) Long GnRH agonist or GnRH antagonist cycles. Main Outcome Measure(s) Correlation between AMH and AFC, and oocyte yield by each study center for each trial. Results(s) Antimüllerian hormone was more strongly correlated with oocyte yield than AFC: r = 0.56 vs. r = 0.28 in the GnRH agonist cohort, and r = 0.55 vs. r = 0.33 in the GnRH antagonist cohort. The correlation was numerically higher for AMH than for AFC at a significantly higher proportion of study centers: 17 (89%) and 15 (83%) centers in the long GnRH agonist and GnRH antagonist trial, respectively. Assessment of the relative capacity of AMH and AFC for predicting oocyte yield demonstrated that AMH dominated the model: AMH, R2 = 0.29 and 0.23; AFC: R2 = 0.07 and 0.07; AMH + AFC: R2 = 0.30 and 0.23 for long GnRH agonist and GnRH antagonist trials, respectively. Conclusions(s) Antimüllerian hormone was a stronger predictor of ovarian response to gonadotropin therapy than AFC at the study center level in both randomized trials utilizing GnRH agonist and GnRH antagonist protocols. Antral follicle count provided no added predictive value beyond AMH.</p

The Effects of Severe Weather Warnings on Limited English Proficient (LEP) Hispanics/Latinos in Rural Nebraska

The language barrier may severely restrict how severe weather warnings are received and responded to by Hispanics/Latinos in rural Nebraska, a state well known for frequent, volatile weather patterns. Nearly 50% of Spanish speaking Nebraskans rated their English abilities as “less than very well” (US Census Bureau, 2013). The estimated number of Hispanics/Latinos with limited English proficiency (LEP) in Nebraska equates to approximately 57,000 people. This thesis attempted to assess English ability and how severe weather warnings were received and responded to by LEP Hispanics/Latinos in rural Nebraska. This was accomplished by analysis of data from completed optional Spanish or English surveys. This study was exploratory in nature and conducted among a convenience sample of Hispanics/Latinos from five rural health departments across Nebraska. The effects of limited English proficiency revealed multiple modes of media were utilized to confirm severe weather warnings. The results of this study support the notion of needed language and culturally specific severe weather warnings for non-English speaking, or limited English proficient residents. The use of multiple modes of media to confirm severe weather in this study, may in fact delay response times for mitigating actions, which could result in potentially disastrous situations. This study demonstrates a need for more robust research on how non-English speaking residents in Nebraska receive risk communications, not only for severe weather, but all emergent notifications

Poverty, Inequality, and Political Stability in Developing Countries

Provides a literature review and assessment of recent trends in poverty, inequality, and conflict in developing and post-Communist countries; their relation to economic growth; and the links between these trends

Of Shining Knights and Cunning Pettifoggers: The Symbolic World of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct

This article offers a coherent ethical perspective on the American Bar Association (ABA) Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The legal profession bases its Model Rules on assumptions about lawyers, their clients and adversaries, the authority to which lawyers appeal, and the economy in which they practice. Citing in support every Model Rule, this article exposes the rich symbolic assumptions underlying the Rules and concludes that it is through this symbolic world that the Model Rules are best understood. This article includes a description of the normative economy on which the symbolic world of the Model Rules is based

CRATE: A Simple Model for Self-Describing Web Resources

If not for the Internet Archive’s efforts to store periodic snapshots of the web, many sites would not have any preservation prospects at all. The barrier to entry is too high for everyday web sites, which may have skilled webmasters managing them, but which lack skilled archivists to preserve them. Digital preservation is not easy. One problem is the complexity of preservation models, which have specific meta-data and structural requirements. Another problem is the time and effort it takes to properly prepare digital resources for preservation in the chosen model. In this paper, we propose a simple preservation model called a CRATE, a complex-object consisting of undifferentiated metadata and the resource byte stream. We describe the CRATE complex object and compare it with other complex-object models. Our target is the everyday, personal, departmental, or community web site where a long-term preservation strategy does not yet exist

Creating Preservation-Ready Web Resources

There are innumerable departmental, community, and personal web sites worthy of long-term preservation but proportionally fewer archivists available to properly prepare and process such sites. We propose a simple model for such everyday web sites which takes advantage of the web server itself to help prepare the site\u27s resources for preservation. This is accomplished by having metadata utilities analyze the resource at the time of dissemination. The web server responds to the archiving repository crawler by sending both the resource and the just-in-time generated metadata as a straight-forward XML-formatted response. We call this complex object (resource + metadata) a CRATE. In this paper we discuss modoai, the web server module we developed to support this approach, and we describe the process of harvesting preservation- ready resources using this technique

Tools for a Preservation-Ready Web

PDF of a powerpoint presentation from the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) Partners Meeting, Washington D.C., July 9, 2008. Also available on Slideshare.https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/computerscience_presentations/1027/thumbnail.jp

Utilizing remote sensing of thematic mapper data to improve our understanding of estuarine processes and their influence on the productivity of estuarine-dependent fisheries

The land-water interface of coastal marshes may influence the production of estuarine-dependent fisheries more than the area of these marshes. To test this hypothesis, a spatial model was created to explore the dynamic relationship between marshland-water interface and level of disintegration in the decaying coastal marshes of Louisiana's Barataria, Terrebonne, and Timbalier basins. Calibrating the model with Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite imagery, a parabolic relationship was found between land-water interface and marsh disintegration. Aggregated simulation data suggest that interface in the study area will soon reach its maximum and then decline. A statistically significant positive linear relationship was found between brown shrimp catch and total interface length over the past 28 years. This relationship suggests that shrimp yields will decline when interface declines, possibly beginning about 1995