DENTAL SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONS AND THE CORPORATE PRACTICE OF DENTISTRY: WILL STREAMLINING CREATE LEGAL VIOLATIONS?

The increased use of technology when searching for health care providers means that consumers of dental care are more concerned with efficiency in making appointments and paying bills, immediate access to information, clear pricing, and transparency when it comes to choosing a provider and a facility to visit. Keeping up with the increased demands for efficiency and technological advances presents a challenge to sole practitioner dentists, which is the standard dental practice model. Dental support organizations (“DSOs”) have seen an increase in popularity recently, especially over the last five to ten years, in part to meet both the needs of dentists and the increased demands of patients. DSOs are corporations that provide management support for dentists and dental offices. This Note explains the DSO model and its increasing popularity of DSOs and how this could lead to more violations of the ban on the corporate practice of dentistry. More clarification and regulation regarding contractual proceedings between dentists and dental service organizations are needed to ensure compliance and to avoid future litigation. This Note discusses DSOs by examining the body of case law beginning in 2002 regarding litigation against the “OrthAlliance” chain of DSOs, decided in district courts across the United States, and how these cases exemplify the fact-specific inquiry of violations of the corporate practice of dentistry that almost always arise out of contractual disputes. Ultimately, this Note recommends increased regulation in the realm of DSOs for the protection of patients and the public at large but acknowledges the important role that DSOs will play as technology advances

Do we need non-Boussinesq effects in an ocean general circulation model for climate simulations?

The Boussinesq approximation is commonly made in ocean general circulation models (OGCMs). As a consequence, the model ocean is incompressible and conserves volume, but not mass. It has been argued that these consequence introduce errors at the noise level of coarse OGCMs, but that non-Boussinesq modeling is preferable simply for tidiness. Here, we use the height-pressure coordinate isomorphism implemented in the MITgcm to construct a non-Boussinesq OGCM and revisit the differences between Boussinesq and non-Boussinesq models at a resolution comparable to IPCC climate models. Subtleties such as the choice of a proper equation of state that includes the effect of pressure on heat capacity, but also the use of mass as a convenient alternative to pressure coordinates are discussed

An orthogonal curvilinear coordinate system for a world ocean model

A orthogonal, curvilinear grid system for World Ocean modelling is examined. It involves the coupling of two non-singular spherical sub-grids, avoiding the North Pole singularity of the standard, spherical coordinates. The two sub-grids are connected in the equatorial Atlantic. It is shown how to minimize the sudden variation in the grid size across the connection line. It is suggested that the two spherical coordinate systems be considered as a single orthogonal, curvilinear coordinate system, in which the metric coefficients and the OGCM governing equations are established

Rasionalitas Implementasi Chat GPT dalam Pembelajaran Keterampilan Menulis Karya Ilmiah

Sejak dirilis ke ranah publik, Chat GPT menggemparkan dunia dengan kemampuannya yang canggih. Kemampuan luar biasa Chat GPT dalam menghasilkan tulisan ilmiah tampaknya mulai merevolusi praksis penulisan ilmiah yang ada. Penelitian ini adalah studi eksplorasi yang mensintesis literatur terkini untuk mengulas terkait peluang dan potensi Chat GPT dalam pembelajaran menulis karya tulis ilmiah. Teknik pengumpulan data penelitian menggunakan studi kepustakaan berupa hasil penelitian dan teori-teori yang relevan dan sesuai dengan tujuan penulisan. Pencarian literatur dilakukan melalui mesin pencari Google Scholar dan ERIC Document. Di akhir, pada artikel ini merekomendasikan tentang bagaimana mengkolaborasikan kecerdasan buatan dengan tulisan alami untuk menghasilkan karya tulis ilmiah yang berkualitas. Penggunaan Chat GPT dapat turut berperan dalam proses produksi karya tulis ilmiah dengan tetap menampilkan kreativitas dan inovasi dari penulis itu sendiri.Since its release into the public domain, Chat GPT has taken the world by storm with its advanced capabilities. Chat GPT's extraordinary ability to produce scientific writing seems to be starting to revolutionize the existing practice of scientific writing. This research is an exploratory study that synthesizes the latest literature to review the opportunities and potential of Chat GPT in learning to write scientific papers. The research data collection technique uses library research in the form of research results and theories that are relevant and in accordance with the purpose of the writing. A literature search was carried out using the Google Scholar and ERIC Document search engines. At the end, this article recommends how to collaborate artificial intelligence with natural writing to produce quality scientific writing. The use of Chat GPT can play a role in the production process of scientific writing while still displaying the creativity and innovation of the writer himself

Meningkatkan Literasi Masyarakat Bangko Kanan dalam Menghadapi Pandemi COVID-19

Dalam menghadapi masa pandemi COVID-19 dibutuhkan tatanan masyarakat dengan pola pikir dan pandangan yang kritis dan kreatif. Hal tersebut akan terwujud jika masyarakat memiliki literasi yang baik terkait wabah COVID-19. Sementara itu, kemampuan literasi masyarakat di wilayah Bangko Kanan dinilai masih lemah. Hal ini terlihat dari masyarakat yang masih acuh terhadap protokol kesehatan dan juga kepanikan yang berlebihan terhadap informasi terkait virus Corona yang beredar luas di masyarakat. Oleh sebab itu, penyuluhan terkait pandemi COVID-19 khususnya di wilayah kerja Puskesmas Bangko Kanan, kabupaten Rokan Hilir ini dilaksanakan untuk meningkatkan literasi masyarakat agar lebih peduli terhadap protokol kesehatan dan bersikap kritis terhadap informasi yang disuguhkan media

Impact of sea-ice formation on the properties of Antarctic bottom water

It is generally accepted that fresh-water fluxes due to ice accretion or melting profoundly influence the formation of Antarctic bottom water (AABW). This is investigated by means of a global, three-dimensional ice-ocean model. Two model runs were conducted. At the high southern latitudes, the control experiment exhibits positive (i.e. towards the ocean) fresh-water fluxes over the deep ocean, and large negative fluxes over the Antarctic continental shelf, because of the intense ice-production taking place in this region. The salinity of shelf water can increase in such a way that deep-water formation is facilitated. The simulated net fresh-water flux over the shelf has an annual mean value of -1 m a-1. This flux induces a transport of salt to bottom waters, which corresponds to an increase of their salinity estimated to be around 0.05 psu. In the second model run, the fresh-water fluxes due to ice melting or freezing are neglected, leading to a rearrangement of the water masses. In particular, the AABW-formation rate decreases, which allows the influence of North Atlantic deep water (NADW) to increase. As NADW is warmer and saltier than AABW, the bottom-water salinity and temperature become higher

Oceanic control of multidecadal variability in an idealized coupled GCM

Idealized ocean models are known to develop intrinsic multidecadal oscillations of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC). Here we explore the role of ocean–atmosphere interactions on this low-frequency variability. We use a coupled ocean–atmosphere model set up in a flat-bottom aquaplanet geometry with two meridional boundaries. The model is run at three different horizontal resolutions (4°, 2° and 1°) in both the ocean and atmosphere. At all resolutions, the MOC exhibits spontaneous variability on multidecadal timescales in the range 30–40 years, associated with the propagation of large-scale baroclinic Rossby waves across the Atlantic-like basin. The unstable region of growth of these waves through the long wave limit of baroclinic instability shifts from the eastern boundary at coarse resolution to the western boundary at higher resolution. Increasing the horizontal resolution enhances both intrinsic atmospheric variability and ocean–atmosphere interactions. In particular, the simulated atmospheric annular mode becomes significantly correlated to the MOC variability at 1° resolution. An ocean-only simulation conducted for this specific case underscores the disruptive but not essential influence of air–sea interactions on the low-frequency variability. This study demonstrates that an atmospheric annular mode leading MOC changes by about 2 years (as found at 1° resolution) does not imply that the low-frequency variability originates from air–sea interactions

Sea ice dynamics solvers in the MITgcm

Most dynamic sea ice models for climate type simulations are based on the viscous-plastic (VP) rheology. New rheologies such as the Maxwell-Elasto-Brittle (MEB) rheology are usually compared against traditional VP-schemes, but the new schemes also require revisiting the validity of VP-schemes. So far, comparisons between different schemes are confounded by factors unrelated to rheology, such as grid resolution, advection schemes, forcing by atmosphere and ocean, and last but not least, by differences in numerical details of different model codes. The sea ice component of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation model (MITgcm) offers an easy-to-use testbed for comparing different sea ice rheologies and implementation that avoids any confounders because all solvers share the same code and configuration environment. VP-rheologies with different flavors of Picard (or fixed point iterative) solvers, Newton methods, and different variants of the Elastic-Viscous-Plastic solver have been evaluated in this framework. With this framework, a new implementations such as an MEB solver may be compared to these traditional solvers in idealized geometries and in realistic Arctic configurations