A Model ofExperiential Comparative Religion

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Periodontal Treatment, Individual, Psychological Factors and Oral Health Related Quality of Life

Introduction: Periodontitis negatively impacts on Oral Health Related Quality of Life (OHRQoL) and is ameliorated by periodontal treatment. Individual and environmental factors may affect treatment outcomes. Aim: To determine OHRQoL and clinical changes after the diagnosis and treatment of chronic periodontitis. Objectives: To determine: (1) OHRQoL and clinical changes after periodontal treatment. (2) OHRQoL trajectory from diagnosis to treatment and follow-up. (3) Individual (psychological) and environmental factors predicting OHRQoL and clinical changes after periodontal treatment. (4) Relationships between psychological factors, OHRQoL and clinical changes. Methods: 140 patients with chronic periodontitis completed a prospective single arm intervention study (non-surgical treatment). Participants self-completed questionnaires: Sense of Coherence, Locus of Control, Self-esteem and Task-specific Self-efficacy before treatment, and Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-14) at assessment, treatment, oral hygiene review and end of study time points. Relationships between OHRQoL, clinical data, individual and environmental characteristics were explored within the Wilson and Cleary model with structural equation modelling (SEM) and Growth Curve Modelling (GCM). Results: OHRQoL worsened before treatment, then improved along with the periodontal status afterwards. Greater sense of coherence and age, better periodontal status, lower DMFT and being male predicted better OHRQoL after treatment. Better task-specific self-efficacy predicted better baseline and end periodontal status. Greater age and higher plaque score predicted worse baseline periodontal status. Better self-esteem, but worse plaque score predicted better end periodontal status. GCM determined better sense of coherence, being male and a non-smoker predicted better OHRQoL at assessment. The rate of change was predicted by sense of coherence and locus of control. Gains in the clinical attachment level and reductions in probing depths were negatively predicted by task-specific self-efficacy. Conclusions: OHRQoL and the periodontal status improved after periodontal treatment, and this was predicted by individual demographic and psychological factors

Generic protease detection technology for monitoring periodontal disease

Periodontal diseases are inflammatory conditions that affect the supporting tissues of teeth and can lead to destruction of the bone support and ultimately tooth loss if untreated. Progression of periodontitis is usually site specific but not uniform, and currently there are no accurate clinical methods for distinguishing sites where there is active disease progression from sites that are quiescent. Consequently, unnecessary and costly treatment of periodontal sites that are not progressing may occur. Three proteases have been identified as suitable markers for distinguishing sites with active disease progression and quiescent sites: human neutrophil elastase, cathepsin G and MMP8. Generic sensor materials for the detection of these three proteases have been developed based on thin dextran hydrogel films cross-linked with peptides. Degradation of the hydrogel films was monitored using impedance measurements. The target proteases were detected in the clinically relevant range within a time frame of 3 min. Good specificity for different proteases was achieved by choosing appropriate peptide cross-linkers.<br/

Disaster education in the UK

The seminar series brought together emergency management specialists and educationalists to explore how disaster management knowledge, innovation and education can contribute to building a culture of safety and resilience in the UK. The series was primarily focussed on ways of understanding UK disaster reduction contexts, though informed by contributions from other parts of the world. The strengthening of debate on practical and policy developments for disaster education helped exchange experiences and ideas about dealing with changing hazards and vulnerabilities. This contributed to wider and strengthened interest in disaster risk reduction engagement through associated educational needs. The series analysed conceptual, practical and policy issues surrounding UK disaster education. Institutional partners were The universities of Northumbria (lead), Glamorgan, UCL and Kyoto served as partners with significant inputs from practice institutions, including in hosting of seminars. This facilitated a rich mix of learning cultures from within and without the academy for open debate and awareness building regards learning and education in disaster reduction. There are consequent developments for further activities beyond the life of this grant, such as ongoing additional conference sessions on disaster education, an EU project, and a DFID funded disaster education and community resilience programme in Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. These also feed back into the UK context. The series exposed a deeply held interest in disaster education from within the UK emergency management sector. Key conclusions were the need to develop in depth grounded learning processes, integrated institutional development and mixed qualitative and quantitative tools for the job

Guidelines for safe cable crossing over a pipeline

High voltage submarine cables are increasingly being installed in existing and new offshore oil and gas fields for power supply and control purposes. These power cables are both large and with a high submerged weight, which poses a challenge when designing a safe, maintenance free (economical), and fit-for-purpose crossing over a pipeline. Damage to subsea pipeline crossings caused by deterioration of a crossing support, field joint materials and cover components is well known in the industry, particularly with old pipelines. Crossing cables over an existing pipeline should be avoided whenever economical and practical. However, it is inevitable in some situations to use the existing pipeline (unburied) as the crossing support to a new cable/umbilical. In these situations, crossing the cable/umbilical over the existing pipeline may be a cost-effective and worthy consideration. However, there are no explicit guidelines or criteria in the industry concerning the acceptable practice of design and construction of crossings. The only clear recommendation is relating to pipeline separation distances. This paper documents a recent case study of damage of a field joint coating at a crossing of an existing pipeline by a 132 kV subsea cable of 191 mm outside diameter. Investigation of the damage on site revealed that it was caused by lateral movement of the cable under the influence of hydrodynamic forces. Further to investigation and assessment of the damage of the case study presented here, the paper proposes some guidelines for the safe design and construction of cable crossing. Another objective of this paper is to invite further evaluation of the proposed guidelines so that appropriate crossing design requirements can be further developed and standardised. © 2020 Elsevier Lt

Classical antiparticles

We review how antiparticles may be introduced in classical relativistic mechanics, and emphasize that many of their paradoxical properties can be more transparently understood in the classical than in the quantum domain.Comment: 14 pages, standard LaTeX, no figures, no macros. To be published in the American Journal of Physics. Ref [1] is archived here as hep-ph/950341

Evaluation of Osteogenic and Cementogenic Potential of Periodontal Ligament Fibroblast Spheroids Using a Three-Dimensional In Vitro

The aim of this study was to develop a three-dimensional in vitro model of periodontium to investigate the osteogenic and cementogenic differentiation potential of the periodontal ligament fibroblast (PDLF) spheroids within a dentin-membrane complex. PDLFs were cultured in both spheroid forms and monolayers and were seeded onto two biological collagen-based and synthetic membranes. Cell-membrane composites were then transferred onto dentin slices with fibroblasts facing the dentin surface and further cultured for 20 days. The composites were then processed for histology and immunohistochemical analyses for osteocalcin, Runx2, periostin, and cementum attachment protein (CAP). Both membranes seeded with PDLF-derived cells adhered to dentin and fibroblasts were present at the dentin interface and spread within both membranes. All membrane-cell-dentine composites showed positive staining for osteocalcin, Runx2, and periostin. However, CAP was not expressed by any of the tissue composites. It can be concluded that PDLFs exhibited some osteogenic potential when cultured in a 3D matrix in the presence of dentin as shown by the expression of osteocalcin. However the interaction of cells and dentin in this study was unable to stimulate cementum formation. The type of membrane did not have a significant effect upon differentiation, but fibroblast seeded-PGA membrane demonstrated better attachment to dentin than the collagen membrane

The problem with Kappa

It is becoming clear that traditional evaluation measures used in Computational Linguistics (including Error Rates, Accuracy, Recall, Precision and F-measure) are of limited value for unbiased evaluation of systems, and are not meaningful for comparison of algorithms unless both the dataset and algorithm parameters are strictly controlled for skew (Prevalence and Bias). The use of techniques originally designed for other purposes, in particular Receiver Operating Characteristics Area Under Curve, plus variants of Kappa, have been proposed to fill the void. This paper aims to clear up some of the confusion relating to evaluation, by demonstrating that the usefulness of each evaluation method is highly dependent on the assumptions made about the distributions of the dataset and the underlying populations. The behaviour of a number of evaluation measures is compared under common assumptions. Deploying a system in a context which has the opposite skew from its validation set can be expected to approximately negate Fleiss Kappa and halve Cohen Kappa but leave Powers Kappa unchanged. For most performance evaluation purposes, the latter is thus most appropriate, whilst for comparison of behaviour, Matthews Correlation is recommended

Forensic Investigation of Cyberstalking Cases using Behavioural Evidence Analysis

Behavioural Evidence Analysis (BEA) is, in theory, useful in developing an understanding of the offender, the victim, the crime scene, and the dynamics of the crime. It can add meaning to the evidence obtained through digital forensic techniques and assist investigators with reconstruction of a crime. There is, however, little empirical research examining the application of BEA to actual criminal cases, particularly cyberstalking cases. This study addresses this gap by examining the utility of BEA for such cases in terms of understanding the behavioural and motivational dimensions of offending, and the way in which digital evidence can be interpreted. It reports on the forensic analysis of 20 cyberstalking cases investigated by Dubai Police in the last five years. Results showed that BEA helps to focus an investigation, enables better understanding and interpretation of victim and offender behaviour, and assists in inferring traits of the offender from available digital evidence. These benefits can help investigators to build a stronger case, reduce time wasted to mistakes, and to exclude suspects wrongly accused in cyberstalking cases