Avoidable Waste in Ophthalmic Epidemiology: A Review of Blindness Prevalence Surveys in Low and Middle Income Countries 2000-2014.

Purpose: Sources of avoidable waste in ophthalmic epidemiology include duplication of effort, and survey reports remaining unpublished, gaining publication after a long delay, or being incomplete or of poor quality. The aim of this review was to assess these sources of avoidable waste by examining blindness prevalence surveys undertaken in low and middle income countries (LMICs) between 2000 and 2014.

Methods: On December 1, 2016 we searched MEDLINE, EMBASE and Web of Science databases for cross-sectional blindness prevalence surveys undertaken in LMICs between 2000 and 2014.

Growing Up in New Zealand cohort alignment with all New Zealand births.

Objective: To compare the birth characteristics of the Growing Up in New Zealand cohort with those of all New Zealand (NZ) births over a similar time period, and to describe cohort alignment to current NZ births.

Method: The Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal study recruited 6,846 children from before birth via their pregnant mothers who were residing in the greater Auckland and Waikato regions during 2009 and 2010. Data were collected from mothers antenatally and six weeks after their expected delivery date, and from routine perinatal health records.

Reinforcer magnitude and demand under fixed-ratio schedules with domestic hens.

This study compared three methods of normalizing demand functions to allow comparison of demand for different commodities and examined how varying reinforcer magnitudes affected these analyses. Hens responded under fixed-ratio schedules in 40-min sessions with response requirement doubling each session and with 2-s, 8-s, and 12-s access to wheat. Over the smaller fixed ratios overall response rates generally increased and were higher the shorter the magazine duration.

A concurrent-choice analysis of amount-dependent temporal discounting.

Amount-dependent temporal discounting refers to the differential rates at which the values of large and small rewards are discounted over time. A lower rate of discounting of larger rewards is known as the magnitude effect. The present study aimed to establish a magnitude effect in humans using a concurrent-choice procedure.

How do you recruit and retain a prebirth cohort? Lessons learnt from growing up in New Zealand.

Growing Up in New Zealand, a longitudinal study following nearly 7,000 children, has faced some unique challenges in identifying, enrolling, and retaining a large and diverse antenatal cohort. Identification of a study region with population demographics that enabled enrollment of an appropriately diverse sample was required as was intensive community and participant engagement in order to promote the study. Complementary methods used included direct engagement with prospective participants and the community and indirect engagement via media.

The effects of session length on demand functions generated using FR schedules.

In comparing open and closed economies, researchers often arrange shorter sessions under the former condition than under the latter. Several studies indicate that session length per se can affect performance and there are some data that indicate that this variable can influence demand functions. To provide further data, the present study exposed domestic hens to series of increasing fixed-ratio schedules with the length of the open-economy sessions varied over 10, 40, 60, and 120 min.