A Survey of Treatment Characteristics in a University-based Graduate Orthodontic Program

While there are a few national surveys on malocclusion in the U.S., few reports characterize actual orthodontic patients and their treatments. The purpose of this study was to describe the patients and their treatment at a university based orthodontic department, namely the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis. The goals of this study are: (1) to research patient demographics, dental and skeletal relationships and treatment variables; (2) to test for temporal trends in these patients and their treatment across a 26 year interval from 1980 to 2005; and (3) to assess the correlations among patient demographics, dental and skeletal relationships, and treatment variables. Data were collected from 1,500 patient records chosen at random from all cases. Girls represent 60% of the overall sample, a percentage that did not change over time. This preponderance of females is driven by greater perception of need, not more prevalent or more severe malocclusions. Non-White races have increased in the patient population, suggesting slow improvement of their chronic under-representation. Patients treated with orthognathic surgery account for 2% of overall cases, but this percentage decreased over the time interval. The mean starting age of child and adolescent patients was 13.4 years. Over time, the average patient age increased, reflecting more adult patients. Extraction cases of all types decreased over time from above 70% down to below 50% of cases. Over this same time, treatment duration has decreased, and more Angle Class I patients are being treated compared to Class II cases. Causes are multifactorial, but people with simpler malocclusions seeking treatment seem to be one factor. Non-extraction treatment was only found to be of shorter duration when compared to extraction of (4-4/4-4), (4-4/5-5), and (4-4/0-0); no other extraction pattern involving premolars was found to be of longer duration than non-extraction, and treatment duration difference between all extraction patterns were not significant. This survey provides a unique insight into the patient population and treatment and how these have changed over time and not only adds to the orthodontic literature, but serves a useful audit of treatment at The University of Tennessee Graduate Orthodontic Clinic

Massively parallel support for a case-based planning system

Case-based planning (CBP), a kind of case-based reasoning, is a technique in which previously generated plans (cases) are stored in memory and can be reused to solve similar planning problems in the future. CBP can save considerable time over generative planning, in which a new plan is produced from scratch. CBP thus offers a potential (heuristic) mechanism for handling intractable problems. One drawback of CBP systems has been the need for a highly structured memory to reduce retrieval times. This approach requires significant domain engineering and complex memory indexing schemes to make these planners efficient. In contrast, our CBP system, CaPER, uses a massively parallel frame-based AI language (PARKA) and can do extremely fast retrieval of complex cases from a large, unindexed memory. The ability to do fast, frequent retrievals has many advantages: indexing is unnecessary; very large case bases can be used; memory can be probed in numerous alternate ways; and queries can be made at several levels, allowing more specific retrieval of stored plans that better fit the target problem with less adaptation. In this paper we describe CaPER's case retrieval techniques and some experimental results showing its good performance, even on large case bases

Growth and Diversity of the Population of the Soviet Union

The most remarkable feature of the Soviet Union's demography is its ethnic diversity. More than 90 ethnic groups are indigenous to the territory of the Soviet Union. Ethnic Russians composed only 50.8 percent of the population according to preliminary 1989 census results. The article examines official Soviet statistics for the period 1959 to 1989 to illustrate some of the risks in describing Soviet demographic behavior. Is fertility in the Soviet Union high or low? Answer: both. Is the Soviet population growing rapidly or slowly? Answer: both. The changing ethnic composition of the population of the USSR as a whole reflects large differences in growth rates of ethnic groups; the changing composition of the USSR by region also reflects differences in migration by ethnic group. Differences in growth rates are reshaping the ethnic composition of the Soviet labor force. For the USSR as a whole between 1979 and 1989, three-fourths of the net increment to the working ages was contributed by the one-sixth of the population in 1979 that was traditionally Muslim in religion.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67141/2/10.1177_000271629051000112.pd

Evaluación de los efectos de la urbanización en los arroyos de Tierra del Fuego

We set out to understand how urbanization affects streams in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego. Paired ttestsand linear regressions were used to compare physico-chemical stream habitat variables (i.e., temperature,turbidity, conductivity, dissolved oxygen and pH) and benthic macroinvertebrate community structure (i.e.,density, taxonomic richness, Shannon-Weiner diversity) and function (functional feeding groups [FFG]) in fourwatersheds with urban and reference sites. We then calculated indices of biotic integrity for habitat (rapid visualassessment protocol [RVAP]) and benthos (Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera richness [EPT], family bioticindex [FBI], rapid bioassessment protocol [RBP] and biotic monitoring Patagonian streams [BMPS]). Resultsindicated that urbanization negatively impacted these streams? underlying ecological condition, decreasingbenthic biodiversity and dissolved oxygen, while increasing conductivity and turbidity. FFG assemblagewas similar between both sites, but urbanization increased the existing dominance of collector-gatherers.Additionally, urban sites presented lower values in three of the benthic macroinvertebrate indices (EPT, RBP,BMPS, but not FBI) and also for habitat (RVAP). These data fill an existing gap in stream ecology for southernPatagonia and are useful to create monitoring tools. By incorporating urbanization as a driver of ecosystemchange, managers and planners will be better able to confront the issue of sustainable development in thisregion, which is considered one of the most pristine wilderness areas remaining on the planet but whosehuman population is concentrated in a few densely populated urban areas.Fil: Zagarola, Jean Paul A.. Bonneville Environmental Foundation; Estados UnidosFil: Martínez Pastur, Guillermo José. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas; ArgentinaFil: Lopez, María Eugenia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas; ArgentinaFil: Anderson, Christopher Brian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas; Argentin

Dissociable Effects of Salience on Attention and Goal-Directed Action

SummaryEveryday behavior frequently involves encounters with multiple objects that compete for selection. For example, driving a car requires constant shifts of attention between oncoming traffic, rearview mirrors, and traffic signs and signals, among other objects. Behavioral goals often drive this selection process [1, 2]; however, they are not the sole determinant of selection. Physically salient objects, such as flashing, brightly colored hazard signs, or objects that are salient by virtue of learned associations with reward, such as pictures of food on a billboard, often capture attention regardless of the individual’s goals [3–6]. It is typically thought that strongly salient distractor objects capture more attention and are more disruptive than weakly salient distractors [7, 8]. Counterintuitively, though, we found that this is true for perception, but not for goal-directed action. In a visually guided reaching task [9–11], we required participants to reach to a shape-defined target while trying to ignore salient distractors. We observed that strongly salient distractors produced less disruption in goal-directed action than weakly salient distractors. Thus, a strongly salient distractor triggers suppression during goal-directed action, resulting in enhanced efficiency and accuracy of target selection relative to when weakly salient distractors are present. In contrast, in a task requiring no goal-directed action, we found greater attentional interference from strongly salient distractors. Thus, while highly salient stimuli interfere strongly with perceptual processing, increased physical salience or associated value attenuates action-related interference

An Experimental Investigation of Victim Blaming in Sexual Assault: The Roles of Victim Sexual Orientation, Coercion Type, and Stereotypes About Bisexual Women

Bisexual women are more likely to be sexually assaulted and to receive negative reactions to disclosures of sexual assault than heterosexual and lesbian women. However, few studies have examined the extent to which victim sexual orientation and related factors influence perceptions of sexual assault victims and perpetrators. To fill this gap, the current study used an experimental manipulation to examine the influence of victim sexual orientation and coercion type on perceptions of sexual assault victims and perpetrators. Participants (N = 826) were randomly assigned to read one of nine vignettes in which the sexual orientation of the female victim (bisexual, lesbian, heterosexual) and the type of coercion (verbal, physical, alcohol incapacitation) were varied. Then, participants were asked a series of questions about the victim and the perpetrator. Results indicated that bisexual and heterosexual female victims were both perceived as having wanted to have sex with the perpetrator more and as having “led the perpetrator on” more than lesbian victims. In contrast, victim sexual orientation was not associated with explicit ratings of victim or perpetrator responsibility or victim suffering. Bisexual female victims were also perceived as more promiscuous than both lesbian and heterosexual female victims. In turn, perceiving the victim as more promiscuous was associated with perceiving the victim as more responsible, having wanted to have sex with the perpetrator more, having “led the perpetrator on” more, and suffering less, and with perceiving the perpetrator as less responsible. In sum, our findings suggest that efforts to reduce sexual violence toward bisexual women should attend to negative attitudes toward bisexual women, especially the perception of bisexual women as promiscuous

Spinal Progenitor-Laden Bridges Support Earlier Axon Regeneration Following Spinal Cord Injury.

Impact statementSpinal cord injury (SCI) results in loss of tissue innervation below the injury. Spinal progenitors have a greater ability to repair the damage and can be injected into the injury, but their regenerative potential is hampered by their poor survival after transplantation. Biomaterials can create a cell delivery platform and generate a more hospitable microenvironment for the progenitors within the injury. In this work, polymeric bridges are used to deliver embryonic spinal progenitors to the injury, resulting in increased progenitor survival and subsequent regeneration and functional recovery, thus demonstrating the importance of combined therapeutic approaches for SCI

A value-driven mechanism of attentional selection.

Attention selects stimuli for cognitive processing, and the mechanisms that underlie the process of attentional selection have been a major topic of psychological research for over 30 years. From this research, it has been well documented that attentional selection can proceed both voluntarily, driven by visual search goals, and involuntarily, driven by the physical salience of stimuli. In this review, I provide a conceptual framework for attentional control that emphasizes the need for stimulus selection to promote the survival and wellbeing of an organism. I argue that although goal-driven and salience-driven mechanisms of attentional selection fit within this framework, a central component that is missing is a mechanism of attentional selection that is uniquely driven by learned associations between stimuli and rewards. I go on to review recent evidence for such a value-driven mechanism of attentional selection, and describe how this mechanism functions independently of the well-documented salience-driven and goal-driven mechanisms. I conclude by arguing that reward learning modifies the attentional priority of stimuli, allowing them to compete more effectively for selection even when nonsalient and task-irrelevant

Robustness issues in double-integrator undirected rigid formation systems

In this paper we consider rigid formation control systems modelled by double integrators (including formation stabilization systems and flocking control systems), with a focus on their robustness property in the presence of distance mismatch. By introducing additional state variables we show the augmented double-integrator distance error system is self-contained, and we prove the exponential stability of the distance error systems via linearization analysis. As a consequence of the exponential stability, the distance error still converges in the presence of small and constant distance mismatches, while additional motions of the resulted formation will occur. We further analyze the rigid motions induced by constant mismatches for both double-integrator formation stabilisation systems and flocking control systems.This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) under grant DP130103610 and DP160104500. Z. Sun was supported by the Australian Prime Minister's Endeavour Postgraduate Award from Australian Government. The work of S. Mou was supported by funding from Northrop Grumman Corporation