Effect of Delmopinol Hydrochloride on Endodontic Biofilm

Background: The ideal goal of endodontic therapy is to decrease the microbial load within the root canal system followed by the placement of a hermetic seal of the apical portion of the root. Sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) has long been considered the gold standard for disinfecting root canals, but, the presence of a persistent intraradicular biofilm in properly cleaned and shaped canals has led to the need of development for adjunct irrigant targeting these complex structures. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to compare the effects on the biofilm of NaOCl and delmopinol hydrochloride (DH), a new FDA approved oral rinse, on multiple species biofilms. Methods: Preliminary data was collected with zones of inhibition on Candida albicans, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa grown on Mueller-Hinton vs 30% Poloxamer (biofilm phenotype) plates incubated at 37C for 24 hours. The effect was then studied using a Calgary Bioflm Device with crystal violet staining (CV), scanning electron microscope imaging (SEM) and sonication with Mueller-Hinton plating. Results: The data showed that delmopinol hydrochloride does not possess the strong antimicrobial properties that sodium hypochlorite does. However, delmopinol hydrochloride did possess antibiofilm capabilities, on all organisms that remained, even at diluted concentrations. Conclusion: Delmopinol hydrochloride is not an irrigant to replace sodium hypochlorite, but could be used as an adjunct in the final steps of irrigation to reduce biofilm colonization.

School Leadership Initiatives: To Promote Equitable and Inclusive Family Engagement Practices for English Language Learners

This qualitative case study aimed to understand and document changes that coincided with a planned district-wide initiative, especially from the perspectives of the school system leadership team and families of English language learners (ELL). The following research questions were addressed in this study: How did school leaders experience the initiative to increase equitable family and inclusive family engagement practices for English Language Learners? How did the parents of ELL students experience change through the initiative? The findings of this study revealed that to work effectively with parents of ELL students, school systems must understand the experiences and needs of these families. Working with families of diverse backgrounds must be important to school system leaders to affect important change initiatives on their behalf. Increasing equitable and inclusive family engagement practices for ELLs requires that school systems understand the group’s social, cultural, and linguistic needs and values, which requires training and open mindsets

An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Unannounced Safety Inspections Versus Announced Inspections in Academic Research Laboratories That Utilize Biological Hazards

Inspections are integral to comprehensive biosafety programs at academic research institutions that use a wide variety of infectious agents. However, there is no standardization of biosafety inspection procedures from institution to institution. This study analyzed results of 2,098 documented inspections conducted from January 2012 through December of 2016 performed by biosafety staff at a large Research I land grant institution in order to evaluate the effectiveness of an unannounced versus the more traditional announced approach to inspection procedure. Results demonstrated that: a) more findings were noted during unannounced inspections, therefore more accurately informing biosafety staff of the true day to day conditions of the laboratory; b) the most common findings decreased over the time; and c) over time, not only did findings noted in unannounced inspections decrease, but those noted in formalized announced inspections also decreased. Therefore, the results of this study support the implementation of unannounced inspections, specifically designed to prevent interruption of laboratorians’ work, as an adjunct to announced inspections at academic research institutions

Disengaged Reason and Belief in God

It is sometimes assumed that the appropriate way to reflect on whether to believe in God is to consider philosophical arguments about whether God is needed as an explanation of the physical universe. I argue that treating this relatively disengaged form of reasoning as a primary way of deciding for or against religious belief confuses the issue by making belief in God into a kind of theoretical question. Rather than treating the idea of God as the answer to a question about how to explain the universe, I argue that we should treat it as an answer to the practical question of how to live. This question arises in the context of exercising agency within a value-laden world, and it is at this level that one can consider features of human experience that tend to drop out of our theoretical reflection, but are vital to acquiring or maintaining religious belief

Augmented, Assessed, Addressed: Reframing the Curricula for First Year STEM Students.

There is a particular challenge with engaging technically motivated STEM students with ‘softer skill’ development, despite clear evidence from employers that these skills are highly desirable. In the UK, Higher Education Institutes response has been to require undergraduate courses to contain an element of Personal Development Planning (PDP)[1]. Our paper directly addresses the issue of trying to engage students from Computer and Gaming courses with their PDP. Previous experiences of teaching these cohorts traditionally report low attendance and poor completion rates, impacting on first year/second year progression. This study reports on work reframing the curricula for this essential aspect of the student learning experience, by offering the students realistic and authentic tasks by ‘flipping’ the classroom. This requires them to work in small groups, selecting, designing and then creating an augmented reality artefact using ‘Aurasma’[2], a free software tool for developing augmented reality objects. We note that the co-design process of curriculum development has enhanced student engagement; student completion rates have significantly increased, and class attendance improved

The impact of risk management practice upon the implementation of recovery-oriented care in community mental health services: a qualitative investigation

Background: Recovery-oriented care has become guiding principle for mental health policies and practice in the UK and elsewhere. However, a pre-existing culture of risk management practice may impact upon the provision of recovery-oriented mental health services. Aims: To explore how risk management practice impacts upon the implementation of recovery-oriented care within community mental health services. Method: Semi-structured interviews using vignettes were conducted with 8 mental health worker and service user dyads. Grounded theory techniques were used to develop explanatory themes. Results: Four themes arose: 1) recovery and positive risk taking; 2) competing frameworks of practice; 3) a hybrid of risk and recovery; 4) real-life recovery in the context of risk. Discussion: In abstract responses to the vignettes, mental health workers described how they would use a positive risk taking approach in support of recovery. In practice, this was restricted by a risk-averse culture embedded within services. Mental health workers set conditions with which service users complied to gain some responsibility for recovery. Conclusion: A lack of strategic guidance at policy level and lack of support and guidance at practice level may result in resistance to implementing ROC in the context of RMP. Recommendations are made for policy, training and future research

COSMOS 2044. Experiment K-7-19. Pineal physiology in microgravity: Relation to rat gonadal function

It is now known that the pineal organ can interact with many endocrine and nonendocrine tissues in a regulatory fashion. Given its key role in the regulation of melatonin synthesis, its high concentration, and that its levels may persist longer than the more rapidly changing melatonin, it was felt that serotonin might give a more accurate assessment of the effects of microgravity on pineal function following recovery of animals from flight. Five-hydroxyindole acetic acid (5-HIAA), a major metabolite of serotonin metabolism, was also measured. One of the most interesting concomitants to spaceflight and exposure to microgravity has been the disturbing alteration in calcium metabolism and resulting skeletal effects. Given the link between exposure to microgravity and perturbation of calcium metabolism and the fact that the pineal is apparently one of the only soft tissues to calcify, pineal calcium content was examined following spaceflight

High resolution forecast models of water vapour over mountains: comparison of results from the UM and MERIS

Propagation delay due to variable tropospheric water vapor (WV) is one of the most intractable problems for radar interferometry, particularly over mountains. The WV field can be simulated by an atmospheric model, and the difference between the two fields is used to correct the radar interferogram. Here, we report our use of the U.K. Met Office Unified Model in a nested mode to produce high-resolution forecast fields for the 3-km-high Mount Etna volcano. The simulated precipitablewater field is validated against that retrieved from the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) radiometer on the Envisat satellite, which has a resolution of 300 m. Two case studies, one from winter (November 24, 2004) and one from summer (June 25, 2005), show that the mismatch between the model and the MERIS fields (rms = 1.1 and 1.6 mm, respectively) is small. One of the main potential sources of error in the models is the timing of the WV field simulation. We show that long-wavelength upper tropospheric troughs of low WV could be identified in both the model output and Meteosat WV imagery for the November 24, 2004 case and used to choose the best time of model output. © 2007 IEEE

Consequences of disk scale height on lisa confusion noise from close white dwarf binaries

Gravitational radiation from the Galactic population of close white dwarf binaries (CWDBs) is expected to produce a confusion-limited signal at the lower end of the sensitivity band of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). The canonical scale height of the disk population has been taken to be 90 pc for most studies of the nature of this confusion-limited signal. This estimate is probably too low, and the consequences of a more realistic scale height are investigated with a model of the LISA signal due to populations of CWDBs with different scale heights. If the local space density of CWDBs is held constant, increasing the scale height results in both an increase in the overall strength of the confusion-limited signal as well as an increase in the frequency at which the signals become individually resolvable. If the total number of binaries is held constant, increasing the scale height results in a reduction of the number of expected bright signals above the confusion-limited signal at low frequencies. We introduce an estimator for comparing this transition frequency that takes into account the signal spreading at higher frequencies. © 2006. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved