Teaching periodontal pocket charting to dental students: a comparison of computer assisted learning and traditional tutorials

AIM: The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of a computer assisted learning (CAL) programme with that of traditional small group tutorials in teaching theoretical and practical aspects of periodontal pocket charting. METHOD: Sixty-one third year undergraduate dental students were randomized to either receive a tutorial or to work through the CAL programme. Students using the CAL programme completed questionnaires relating to previous computer experience and the ease of use of the programme. All students were assessed immediately after the intervention by means of a confidence log, a practical exercise and a further confidence log. They were assessed again three weeks later by means of a confidence log and a multiple-choice written test. RESULTS: There were very few significant differences between groups for any of the assessments used. However, subjective comments indicated that students occasionally felt disadvantaged if they had not received a tutorial. CONCLUSION: CAL and traditional teaching methods are equally effective in teaching periodontal pocket charting to undergraduate dental students

Economic evidence for the prevention and treatment of atopic eczema: a protocol for a systematic review

Background: Eczema, synonymous with atopic eczema or atopic dermatitis, is a chronic skin disease that has a similar impact on health-related quality of life as other chronic diseases. The proposed research aims to provide a comprehensive systematic assessment of the economic evidence base available to inform economic modelling and decision making on interventions to prevent and treat eczema at any stage of the life course. Whilst the Global Resource of Eczema Trials (GREAT) database collects together the effectiveness evidence for eczema there is currently no such systematic resource on the economics of eczema. It is important to gain an overview of the current state of the art of economic methods in the field of eczema in order to strengthen the economic evidence base further. Methods/design: The proposed study is a systematic review of the economic evidence surrounding interventions for the prevention and treatment of eczema. Relevant search terms will be used to search MEDLINE, EMBASE, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, NHS Economic Evaluation Database, Health Technology Assessment, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Econ Lit, Scopus, Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Registry and Web of Science in order to identify relevant evidence. To be eligible for inclusion studies will be primary empirical studies evaluating the cost, utility or full economic evaluation of interventions for preventing or treating eczema. Two reviewers will independently assess studies for eligibility and perform data abstraction. Evidence tables will be produced presenting details of study characteristics, costing methods, outcome methods and quality assessment. The methodological quality of studies will be assessed using accepted checklists. Discussion: The systematic review is being undertaken to identify the type of economic evidence available, summarise the results of the available economic evidence and critically appraise the quality of economic evidence currently available to inform future economic modelling and resource allocation decisions about interventions to prevent or treat eczema. We aim to use the review to offer guidance about how to gather economic evidence in studies of eczema and/or what further research is necessary in order to inform this

Metallosupramolecular self-assembly of a universal 3-ravel

In the realm of supramolecular chemistry, a small number of intricately interwoven structures that bridge the boundaries between art and science have been reported. These motifs, which typically form on the nanometre scale, display both considerable beauty and complexity. However, the generation of new topologies of this type has remained a very significant synthetic challenge. Here, we describe the synthesis of a discrete highly intertwined metallosupramolecular assembly based on a universal 3-ravel motif—a topology as yet unprecedented in supramolecular chemistry. The exotic, 20-component, [Fe8L12] ravel entanglement may be considered as a 'branched knot', with individual molecules displaying either left- or right-handed chirality. The formation of this cluster was demonstrated by single-crystal and powder X-ray diffraction. The arrangement is stabilized by a favourable combination of π–π interactions and Nature's tendency to minimize voids in molecular architectures

Temporal perception deficits in schizophrenia: integration is the problem, not deployment of attentions

Patients with schizophrenia are known to have impairments in sensory processing. In order to understand the specific temporal perception deficits of schizophrenia, we investigated and determined to what extent impairments in temporal integration can be dissociated from attention deployment using Attentional Blink (AB). Our findings showed that there was no evident deficit in the deployment of attention in patients with schizophrenia. However, patients showed an increased temporal integration deficit within a hundred-millisecond timescale. The degree of such integration dysfunction was correlated with the clinical manifestations of schizophrenia. There was no difference between individuals with/without schizotypal personality disorder in temporal integration. Differently from previous studies using the AB, we did not find a significant impairment in deployment of attention in schizophrenia. Instead, we used both theoretical and empirical approaches to show that previous findings (using the suppression ratio to correct for the baseline difference) produced a systematic exaggeration of the attention deficits. Instead, we modulated the perceptual difficulty of the task to bring the baseline levels of target detection between the groups into closer alignment. We found that the integration dysfunction rather than deployment of attention is clinically relevant, and thus should be an additional focus of research in schizophrenia

Decision-Directed Channel Estimation Implementation for Spectral Efficiency Improvement in Mobile MIMO-OFDM

Channel estimation algorithms and their implementations for mobile receivers are considered in this paper. The 3GPP long term evolution (LTE) based pilot structure is used as a benchmark in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) receiver. The decision directed (DD) space alternating generalized expectation-maximization (SAGE) algorithm is used to improve the performance from that of the pilot symbol based least-squares (LS) channel estimator. The performance is improved with high user velocities, where the pilot symbol density is not sufficient. Minimum mean square error (MMSE) filtering is also used in estimating the channel in between pilot symbols. The pilot overhead can be reduced to a third of the LTE pilot overhead with DD channel estimation, obtaining a ten percent increase in data throughput. Complexity reduction and latency issues are considered in the architecture design. The pilot based LS, MMSE and the SAGE channel estimators are implemented with a high level synthesis tool, synthesized with the UMC 0.18 μm CMOS technology and the performance-complexity trade-offs are studied. The MMSE estimator improves the performance from the simple LS estimator with LTE pilot structure and has low power consumption. The SAGE estimator has high power consumption but can be used with reduced pilot density to increase the data rate.National Science FoundationTekesElektrobitRenesas Mobile EuropeAcademy of FinlandNokia Siemens NetworksXilin

Sensory substitution information informs locomotor adjustments when walking through apertures

The study assessed the ability of the central nervous system (CNS) to use echoic information from sensory substitution devices (SSDs) to rotate the shoulders and safely pass through apertures of different width. Ten visually normal participants performed this task with full vision, or blindfolded using an SSD to obtain information regarding the width of an aperture created by two parallel panels. Two SSDs were tested. Participants passed through apertures of +0%, +18%, +35%, and +70% of measured body width. Kinematic indices recorded movement time, shoulder rotation, average walking velocity across the trial, peak walking velocities before crossing, after crossing and throughout a whole trial. Analyses showed participants used SSD information to regulate shoulder rotation, with greater rotation associated with narrower apertures. Rotations made using an SSD were greater compared to vision, movement times were longer, average walking velocity lower and peak velocities before crossing, after crossing and throughout the whole trial were smaller, suggesting greater caution. Collisions sometimes occurred using an SSD but not using vision, indicating that substituted information did not always result in accurate shoulder rotation judgements. No differences were found between the two SSDs. The data suggest that spatial information, provided by sensory substitution, allows the relative position of aperture panels to be internally represented, enabling the CNS to modify shoulder rotation according to aperture width. Increased buffer space indicated by greater rotations (up to approximately 35% for apertures of +18% of body width), suggests that spatial representations are not as accurate as offered by full vision

Algebraic QFT in Curved Spacetime and quasifree Hadamard states: an introduction

Within this chapter (published as [49]) we introduce the overall idea of the algebraic formalism of QFT on a fixed globally hyperbolic spacetime in the framework of unital $*$-algebras. We point out some general features of CCR algebras, such as simplicity and the construction of symmetry-induced homomorphisms. For simplicity, we deal only with a real scalar quantum field. We discuss some known general results in curved spacetime like the existence of quasifree states enjoying symmetries induced from the background, pointing out the relevant original references. We introduce, in particular, the notion of a Hadamard quasifree algebraic quantum state, both in the geometric and microlocal formulation, and the associated notion of Wick polynomials.Comment: v3: better discussion of Unitary Equivalence, thanks to comments of Ko Sanders. v2: minor corrections, added reference to older work by Sahlmann and Verch. v1: 59 pages, 4 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1008.1776 by other author

Preparation and Characterization of Fluorescence Probe from Assembly Hydroxyapatite Nanocomposite

A new nanocomposite fluorescence probe with thioglycolic acid (TA) functional layers embedded inside the hydroxyapatite nanoribbon spherulites has been synthesized. The fluorescence intensity of the novel probe is about 1.5–3.3-fold increase compared with the probe containing no TA. When used to detect cadmium ion, the most of original assembly nanoribbon spherulites structure in the novel probe is found to have been damaged to new flake structures. The mechanism of determining cadmium ion in alcohol solution has been studied. The present systematic study provides significant information on the effect of assembly nanostructure on the metal-enhanced fluorescence phenomenon