Maltese dentistry in the E.C. context

The practice of Dentistry in the European Community is regulated by the Council Directives of 1978 which provide for the activities of and training programmes for dental practitioners, and the mutual recognition of qualifications to facilitate the right to freedom of movement and the establishment of dental practices by non-nationals. In this article the author describes the dental health and the dental manpower in Malta and E.C.peer-reviewe

Message from the Dean and the Chairman of Dental Surgery

The first course of Dental Surgery at the (Royal) University of Malta commenced in October of 1933 in the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. Recognition of the Diploma in Dental Surgery by the General Medical Council of the UK was granted in 1936, a year before the end of the course. (The General Dental Council as a distinct regulatory body was established later). Dental Surgery become a Faculty , separate from Medicine and Surgery, in 1954. St. Luke's Hospital has since then also been designated a Dental Teaching Hospital. The most serious problem facing the Department at this stage of development is the uncertainty associated with the move to the new hospital, We are scheduled to move in Phase Three whenever that maybe.peer-reviewedpeer-reviewe

A prosthetic approach to maxillary defects

Prosthetic rehabilitation of maxillary defects is a subject which has attracted considerable attention in dental literature. The literature on maxillary obturators is briefly reviewed and a technique for their construction, using a two stage temporary obturator, is described. The use of a temporary obturator is now generally recognised as essential immediately following maxillary resection. The essential functions of a temporary obturator are outlined, including restoration of facial contour and prevention of surgical cavity contamination. The construction of a permanent appliance is initiated when the surgical cavity has healed completely. This period varies with the individual patient but is usually in the region of two months after operation.peer-reviewe

Bacterial atmospheric contamination during routine dental activity

Routine dental procedures cause atmospheric bacterial contamination in the dental clinic and laboratory. This environmental hazard, quantified by the Air Microbial Index, was shown in our study to be directly related to aerosol creating instruments and ventilation.peer-reviewe

Bacterial cross-contamination between the dental clinic and laboratory during prosthetic treatment

Prosthetic treatment involves various stages in construction. This may result in cross-contamination between the dental clinic and laboratory. According to results obtained from the study, recommendations were made so as to reduce as much as possible cross-contamination, making a safer environment for the dental team and patient.peer-reviewe

Oral Cancer in Malta

The incidence of oral cancer is influenced by a variety of recognized contributory factors. A proportion of these factors are national habits. As a consequence the Incidence varies enormously from country to country and between different racial groups in the same country. This study, covering a four year period 1969-1972, was undertaken with a view to putting into perspective the problem of oral cancer in Malta. Oral cancer accounts for 6.2% of the total number of malignancies. This can be regarded as a relatively low percentage. A wide range of figures is reported from other countries varying between 5% and 50%. In Malta cancer of the lip is seen to account for the majority of oral tumours 55.9%. The incidence of oral malignancies is commoner in males than in females although cancer of the tongue is not uncommon in females. The relatively high incidence per 100,000 population of cancer of the lip gives cause for concern. This is no doubt due, in part, to the high level of actinic rays in the island.peer-reviewe

Decoding the retina with the first wave of spikes

International audienceUnderstanding how the retina encodes visual information remains an open question. Using MEAs on salamander retinas, Gollisch & Meister (2008) showed that the relative latencies between some neuron pairs carry sufficient information to identify the phase of square-wave gratings (,. Using gratings of varying phase, spatial frequency, and contrast on mouse retinas, we extended this idea by systematically considering the relative order of all spike latencies, i.e. the shape of the first wave of spikes after stimulus onset. The discrimination task was to identify the phase among gratings of identical spatial frequency. We compared the performance (fraction correct predictions) of our approach under classical Bayesian and LDA decoders to spike count and response latency of each recorded neuron. Best results were obtained for the lowest spatial frequency. There, results showed that the spike count discrimination performance was higher than for latency under both the Bayesian (0,95+-0,02 and 0,75+-0,11 respectively) and LDA (0,95+-0,01 and 0,62+-0,03 respectively) decoders. The first wave of spikes decoder is (0,46+-0,06) less efficient than the spike count. Nevertheless, it accounts for 50% of the overall performance. Interestingly, these results tend to confirm the rank order coding hypothesis (Thorpe & Gautrais, 1998)

Rank order coding: a retinal information decoding strategy revealed by large-scale multielectrode array retinal recordings

International audienceHow a population of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) encodes the visual scene remains an open question. Going beyond individual RGC coding strategies, results in salamander suggest that the relative latencies of an RGC pair encodes spatial information. Thus a population code based on this concerted spiking could be a powerful mechanism to transmit visual information rapidly and efficiently. Here, we tested this hypothesis in mouse by recording simultaneous light-evoked responses from hundreds of RGCs, at pan-retinal level, using a new generation of large-scale, high density multielectrode array consisting of 4096 electrodes. Interestingly, we did not find any RGCs exhibiting a clear latency tuning to the stimuli, suggesting that in mouse, individual RGC pairs may not provide sufficient information. We show that a significant amount of information is encoded synergistically in the concerted spiking of large RGC populations. Thus, the RGC population response described with relative activities, or ranks, provides more relevant information than classical independent spike count- or latency- based codes. In particular, we report for the first time that when considering the relative activities across the whole population, the wave of first stimulus-evoked spikes (WFS) is an accurate indicator of stimulus content. We show that this coding strategy co-exists with classical neural codes, and that it is more efficient and faster. Overall, these novel observations suggest that already at the level of the retina, concerted spiking provides a reliable and fast strategy to rapidly transmit new visual scenes

Leadership and style in the French Fifth Republic:Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency in historical and cultural perspective

This article contributes to the body of the developing theoretical research in leadership and presidential studies by adding analysis of what I have termed ‘comportmental style’ as a factor in leader/follower relations. Within institutionalism and the wider structure/agency debate in political science, one of the challenges as regards the study of leadership is to identify factors that offer scope to or else militate against leaders’ performance. The comportmental style of Nicolas Sarkozy (President of the French Republic 2007–2012), deployed in the context of the – changing – institution of the presidency, was a major factor in his extreme unpopularity, and contributed to his defeat in 2012. What this tells us about the nature of the changing French presidency and the role of style will be discussed in the conclusion

Whole exome re-sequencing implicates CCDC38 and cilia structure and function in resistance to smoking related airflow obstruction

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a leading cause of global morbidity and mortality and, whilst smoking remains the single most important risk factor, COPD risk is heritable. Of 26 independent genomic regions showing association with lung function in genome-wide association studies, eleven have been reported to show association with airflow obstruction. Although the main risk factor for COPD is smoking, some individuals are observed to have a high forced expired volume in 1 second (FEV1) despite many years of heavy smoking. We # hypothesised that these ‘‘resistant smokers’’ may harbour variants which protect against lung function decline caused by smoking and provide insight into the genetic determinants of lung health. We undertook whole exome re sequencing of 100 heavy smokers who had healthy lung function given their age, sex, height and smoking history and applied three complementary approaches to explore the genetic architecture of smoking resistance. Firstly, we identified novel functional variants in the ‘‘resistant smokers’’ and looked for enrichment of these novel variants within biological pathways. Secondly, we undertook association testing of all exonic variants individually with two independent control sets. Thirdly, we undertook gene-based association testing of all exonic variants. Our strongest signal of association with smoking resistance for a non-synonymous SNP was for rs10859974 (P = 2.3461024) in CCDC38, a gene which has previously been reported to show association with FEV1/FVC, and we demonstrate moderate expression of CCDC38 in bronchial epithelial cells. We identified an enrichment of novel putatively functional variants in genes related to cilia structure and function in resistant smokers. Ciliary function abnormalities are known to be associated with both smoking and reduced mucociliary clearance in patients with COPD. We suggest that genetic influences on the development or function of cilia in the bronchial epithelium may affect growth of cilia or the extent of damage caused by tobacco smoke