Antimicrobial activity of ProRoot MTA in contact with blood

Dental materials based on Portland cement, which is used in the construction industry have gained popularity for clinical use due to their hydraulic properties, the interaction with tooth tissue and their antimicrobial properties. The antimicrobial properties are optimal in vitro. However in clinical use contact with blood may affect the antimicrobial properties. This study aims to assess whether antimicrobial properties of the Portland cement-based dental cements such as mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) are also affected by contact with blood present in clinical situations. ProRoot MTA, a Portland cement-based dental cement was characterized following contact with water, or heparinized blood after 1 day and 7 days aging. The antimicrobial activity under the mentioned conditions was assessed using 3 antimicrobial tests: agar diffusion test, direct contact test and intratubular infection test. MTA in contact with blood was severely discoloured, exhibited an additional phosphorus peak in elemental analysis, no calcium hydroxide peaks and no areas of bacterial inhibition growth in the agar diffusion test were demonstrated. ProRoot MTA showed limited antimicrobial activity, in both the direct contact test and intratubular infection test. When aged in water ProRoot MTA showed higher antimicrobial activity than when aged in blood. Antimicrobial activity reduced significantly after 7 days. Further assessment is required to investigate behaviour in clinical situations.ERDF (Malta) for the financing of the testing equipment through the project: “Developing an Interdisciplinary Material Testing and Rapid Prototyping R&D Facility” (Ref. no. 012)

Work on values when shaping public institutions: “What’s trust got to do with it?” - Experiences from Scandinavia. Kap. 12

Values work appears in the shaping of structures as well as in the shaping of cultures in organisations. In this chapter, the author elaborates on mechanisms of values work, based on textual analysis of articles concerning trust and trust-based management in three Scandinavian popular scientific journals. The findings indicate that trust is ‘worked upon’ in the shaping of structures within public organisations, and not in an homogenous manner. Competing concerns for trust and distrust in public sector are manifestations of differences between institutional logics. The variety in understanding concerns related to trust in public institutions illustrates the ambiguity within values. Yet this ambiguity makes it possible for actors to agree on the importance of trust yet differ fundamentally on the understanding of what it means to structurally perform and strengthen trust

Value-Based Decision Making : Decision Theory Meets e-Government

Electronic government, or e-Government, is the use of information and communication technology in the public sector. As a research field, it is characterized as multi-disciplinary with heritage from both the information systems and public administration fields. This diverse background may be beneficial, but it may also result in a fragmented theoretical base and conceptual vagueness. This paper applies decision theory to e-Government to tie a number of theoretical and practical concepts together. In particular, five concepts from decision theory (i.e. objectives, stakeholder inclusion, weighting and resource allocation, risk analysis, and outcomes assessment) are compared with counterparts in e-Government. The findings have both theoretical and practical implications. First, they add to and unite e-Government theory. Second, practical methods for operationalizing the theoretical concepts are proposed. This operationalization includes using a holistic approach to e-participation throughout decision processes