Systemic medications and cortical cataract: the Singapore Epidemiology of Eye Diseases Study.

Background/aims: To evaluate the association between systemic medications and cortical cataract prevalence in an Asian population.

Methods: The Singapore Epidemiology of Eye Diseases Study recruited 10 033 Chinese, Malay and Indian residents aged 40+ years living in Singapore. Information on medication use was collected at interview using questionnaires.

Cost-effectiveness of intravitreal aflibercept versus other treatments for wet age-related macular degeneration in Japan.

Objective: This analysis estimated the cost-effectiveness of intravitreal aflibercept injection(s) (IAI) for wet age-related macular degeneration (wAMD) compared with other treatments in Japan.

Methods: This was a cost-utility analysis based on published data. A state-transition cohort model was constructed with six health states based on best-corrected visual acuity in the better-seeing eye.

Automatic relevance determination in nonnegative matrix factorization with the β-divergence.

This paper addresses the estimation of the latent dimensionality in nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) with the β-divergence. The β-divergence is a family of cost functions that includes the squared euclidean distance, Kullback-Leibler (KL) and Itakura-Saito (IS) divergences as special cases. Learning the model order is important as it is necessary to strike the right balance between data fidelity and overfitting.

Investigation of an optical limiting mechanism in multiwalled carbon nanotubes.

We report our investigation of the mechanism that is responsible for the optical limiting behavior in multiwalled carbon nanotubes. We conducted energy-dependent transmission measurements, picosecond time-resolved pump-probe experiment, and nonlinear scattering experiments at 532-nm wavelength on multiwalled carbon nanotube suspension. For comparison, C(60)-toluene solutions and carbon black suspensions were also studied in the same experiments.

Paedocypris, a new genus of Southeast Asian cyprinid fish with a remarkable sexual dimorphism, comprises the world's smallest vertebrate.

Paedocypris is a new genus of paedomorphic cyprinid fish from highly acidic blackwater peat swamps in Southeast Asia. It includes two new species, one of which (Paedocypris progenetica) appears to be the smallest fish and vertebrate known, with the smallest mature female measuring a mere 7.9 mm.