A multidisciplinary approach for the management of hypodontia: case report

Hypodontia is the congenital absence of one or more teeth and may affect permanent teeth. Several options are indicated to treat hypodontia, including the maintenance of primary teeth or space redistribution for restorative treatment with partial adhesive bridges, tooth transplantation, and implants. However, a multidisciplinary approach is the most important requirement for the ideal treatment of hypodontia. This paper describes a multidisciplinary treatment plan for congenitally missing permanent mandibular second premolars involving orthodontics, implantology and prosthodontic specialties

The properties of the local spiral arms from RAVE data: two-dimensional density wave approach

Using the RAVE survey, we recently brought to light a gradient in the mean galactocentric radial velocity of stars in the extended solar neighbourhood. This gradient likely originates from non-axisymmetric perturbations of the potential, among which a perturbation by spiral arms is a possible explanation. Here, we apply the traditional density wave theory and analytically model the radial component of the two-dimensional velocity field. Provided that the radial velocity gradient is caused by relatively long-lived spiral arms that can affect stars substantially above the plane, this analytic model provides new independent estimates for the parameters of the Milky Way spiral structure. Our analysis favours a two-armed perturbation with the Sun close to the inner ultra-harmonic 4:1 resonance, with a pattern speed \Omega_p=18.6^{+0.3}_{-0.2} km/s/kpc and a small amplitude A=0.55 \pm 0.02% of the background potential (14% of the background density). This model can serve as a basis for numerical simulations in three dimensions, additionally including a possible influence of the galactic bar and/or other non-axisymmetric modes.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Heritability of semantic verbal fluency task using time-interval analysis

Individual variability in word generation is a product of genetic and environmental influences. The genetic effects on semantic verbal fluency were estimated in 1,735 participants from the Brazilian Baependi Heart Study. The numbers of exemplars produced in 60 s were broken down into time quartiles because of the involvement of different cognitive processes—predominantly automatic at the beginning, controlled/executive at the end. Heritability in the unadjusted model for the 60-s measure was 0.32. The best-fit model contained age, sex, years of schooling, and time of day as covariates, giving a heritability of 0.21. Schooling had the highest moderating effect. The highest heritability (0.17) was observed in the first quartile, decreasing to 0.09, 0.12, and 0.0003 in the following ones. Heritability for average production starting point (intercept) was 0.18, indicating genetic influences for automatic cognitive processes. Production decay (slope), indicative of controlled processes, was not significant. The genetic influence on different quartiles of the semantic verbal fluency test could potentially be exploited in clinical practice and genome-wide association studies

The influence of chemical composition on the properties of Cepheid stars. II-The iron content

The Cepheid period-luminosity (PL) relation is unquestionably one of the most powerful tools at our disposal for determining the extragalactic distance scale. While significant progress has been made in the past few years towards its understanding and characterization both on the observational and theoretical sides, the debate on the influence that chemical composition may have on the PL relation is still unsettled. With the aim to assess the influence of the stellar iron content on the PL relation in the V and K bands, we have related the V-band and the K-band residuals from the standard PL relations of Freedman et al. (2001) and Persson et al. (2004), respectively, to [Fe/H]. We used direct measurements of the iron abundances of 68 Galactic and Magellanic Cepheids from FEROS and UVES high-resolution and high signal-to-noise spectra. We find a mean iron abundance ([Fe/H]) about solar (sigma = 0.10) for our Galactic sample (32 stars), -0.33 dex (sigma = 0.13) for the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) sample (22 stars) and -0.75 dex (sigma = 0.08) for the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) sample (14 stars). Our abundance measurements of the Magellanic Cepheids double the number of stars studied up to now at high resolution. The metallicity affects the V-band Cepheid PL relation and metal-rich Cepheids appear to be systematically fainter than metal-poor ones. These findings depend neither on the adopted distance scale for Galactic Cepheids nor on the adopted LMC distance modulus. Current data do not allow us to reach a firm conclusion concerning the metallicity dependence of the K-band PL relation. The new Galactic distances indicate a small effect, whereas the old ones support a marginal effect.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic