Doxycycline-containing glass ionomer cement for arresting residual caries: an in vitro study and a pilot trial

In a previous study, we demonstrated that the incorporation of doxycycline hyclate (DOX) into resin-modified glass ionomer cement (RMGIC) inhibited important cariogenic microorganisms, without modifying its biological and mechanical characteristics. In this study, we keep focused on the effect of that experimental material as a potential therapy for arresting residual caries by analyzing other in vitro properties and conducting a pilot clinical trial assessing the in vivo effect of DOX-containing RMGIC on residual mutans streptococci after partial carious removal in primary molars. Specimens of the groups RMGIC (control); RMGIC + 1.5% DOX; RMGIC + 3% DOX; and RMGIC + 4.5% DOX were made to evaluate the effect of DOX incorporation on surface microhardness and fluoride release of RMGIC and against biofilm of Streptococcus mutans. Clinical intervention consisted of partial caries removal comparing RMGIC and RMGIC + 4.5% DOX as lining materials. After 3 months, clinical and microbiologic evaluations were performed. Data were submitted to ANOVA/Tukey or Wilcoxon/Mann-Whitney set as α=0.05. Fluoride release and surface microhardness was not influenced by the incorporation of DOX (p>0.05). There was a significant reduction of S. mutans biofilm over the material surface with the increase of DOX concentration. After clinical trial, the remaining dentin was hard and dry. Additionally, mutans streptococci were completely eliminated after 3 months of treatment with RMGIC + 4.5% DOX. The incorporation of DOX provided better antibiofilm effect, without jeopardizing fluoride release and surface microhardness of RMGIC. This combination also improved the in vivo shortterm microbiological effect of RMGIC after partial caries removal

In vitro and in vivo evaluations of glass-ionomer cement containing chlorhexidine for Atraumatic Restorative Treatment

Objectives: Addition of chlorhexidine has enhanced the antimicrobial effect of glass ionomer cement (GIC) indicated to Atraumatic Restorative Treatment (ART); however, the impact of this mixture on the properties of these materials and on the longevity of restorations must be investigated. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of incorporating chlorhexidine (CHX) in the in vitro biological and chemical-mechanical properties of GIC and in vivo clinical/ microbiological follow-up of the ART with GIC containing or not CHX. Material and Methods: For in vitro studies, groups were divided into GIC, GIC with 1.25% CHX, and GIC with 2.5% CHX. Antimicrobial activity of GIC was analyzed using agar diffusion and anti-biofilm assays. Cytotoxic effects, compressive tensile strength, microhardness and fluoride (F) release were also evaluated. A randomized controlled trial was conducted on 36 children that received ART either with GIC or GIC with CHX. Saliva and biofilm were collected for mutans streptococci (MS) counts and the survival rate of restorations was checked after 7 days, 3 months and one year after ART. ANOVA/Tukey or Kruskal-Wallis/ Mann-Whitney tests were performed for in vitro tests and in vivo microbiological analysis. The Kaplan-Meier method and Log rank tests were applied to estimate survival percentages of restorations (

Áudios para aulas de Química: uma análise do Portal Dia a Dia Educação

A utilização de áudios em sala de aula não tem sido muito utilizada nos últimos anos, entretanto existem portais que disponibilizam esse recurso como material didático. Um destes portais é o Dia a Dia Educação da Secretaria do Estado do Paraná-SEED. Assim este artigo apresenta uma análise realizada a partir de áudios que estão disponibilizados nesse portal. Nossa intenção foi verificar a funcionalidade e a recepção dos estudantes para este tipo de recurso. As avaliações demonstram que é possível utilizar esse recurso em sala de aula, entretanto é preciso superar algumas dificuldades técnicas impostas pelos recursos tecnológicos oferecidos à professores e estudantes nas escolas do Paraná

APOIO AUTOMATIZADO PARA APLICAÇÃO DE TÉCNICAS DE ELICITAÇÃO DE REQUISITOS (doi:10.5329/RESI.2009.0801004)

The definition of the requirements that should be mandatory to the information systems is one of the great challenges that companies face when automating their organizational process. In spite of the investments in requirements’ engineering methods and tools there is a lack of automated support to obtaining the requirements and analyzing them. This paper presents a tool that helps requirements’ engineering through a special support to the requirements’ elicitation. The tool implements techniques in order to automate the requirements elicitation process. The contribution of this work is to provide systems developers with a resource that makes possible a controlled and flexible management of the use of elicitation techniques and an agile and effective requirements’ elicitation way.A definição dos requisitos que devem ser atendidos pelos sistemas de informação representa um dos grandes desafios que as empresas enfrentam para automatizar seus processos organizacionais. Apesar dos investimentos em métodos e ferramentas de engenharia de requisitos, ainda há carência de apoio automatizado para a atividade de obtenção e análise dos requisitos. A proposta deste trabalho é apresentar uma ferramenta para auxiliar a engenharia de requisitos, dando suporte prin­cipalmente à etapa de elicitação dos requisitos de software. Nesta ferramenta foram implementadas técnicas para a captura de requisitos, visando automatizar o processo de elicitação para usuários da ferramenta. A contribuição do trabalho é oferecer aos desenvolvedores de sistemas de software um recurso que possibilite uma gestão controlada e flexível da aplicação das técnicas de elicitação, além de proporcionar um meio para identificação de requisitos de maneira ágil e eficaz

Software architecture for web-based project management system

This article presents software architecture for a web-based system to aid project managing, conceptually founded on guidelines of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) and on ISO/IEC 9126, as well as on the result of an empiric study done in Brazil. Based on these guidelines, this study focused on two different points of view about project management: the view of those who develop software systems to aid management and the view of those who use these systems. The designed software architecture is capable of guiding an incremental development of a quality system that will satisfy today's marketing necessities, principally those of small and medium size enterprises

Optimization of algorithm to identification of duplicate tuples through similarity phonetic based on multithreading

Aiming to ensure greater reliability and consistency of data stored in the database, the data cleaning stage is set early in the process of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) and is responsible for eliminating problems and adjust the data for the later stages, especially for the stage of data mining. Such problems occur in the instance level and schema, namely, missing values, null values, duplicate tuples, values outside the domain, among others. Several algorithms were developed to perform the cleaning step in databases, some of them were developed specifically to work with the phonetics of words, since a word can be written in different ways. Within this perspective, this work presents as original contribution an optimization of algorithm for the detection of duplicate tuples in databases through phonetic based on multithreading without the need for trained data, as well as an independent environment of language to be supported for this. © 2011 IEEE

Multi-relational algorithm for mining association rules in large databases

Multi-relational data mining enables pattern mining from multiple tables. The existing multi-relational mining association rules algorithms are not able to process large volumes of data, because the amount of memory required exceeds the amount available. The proposed algorithm MRRadix presents a framework that promotes the optimization of memory usage. It also uses the concept of partitioning to handle large volumes of data. The original contribution of this proposal is enable a superior performance when compared to other related algorithms and moreover successfully concludes the task of mining association rules in large databases, bypass the problem of available memory. One of the tests showed that the MR-Radix presents fourteen times less memory usage than the GFP-growth. © 2011 IEEE

Comparative study of algorithms for mining association rules: Traditional approach versus multi-relational approach

The multi-relational Data Mining approach has emerged as alternative to the analysis of structured data, such as relational databases. Unlike traditional algorithms, the multi-relational proposals allow mining directly multiple tables, avoiding the costly join operations. In this paper, is presented a comparative study involving the traditional Patricia Mine algorithm and its corresponding multi-relational proposed, MR-Radix in order to evaluate the performance of two approaches for mining association rules are used for relational databases. This study presents two original contributions: the proposition of an algorithm multi-relational MR-Radix, which is efficient for use in relational databases, both in terms of execution time and in relation to memory usage and the presentation of the empirical approach multirelational advantage in performance over several tables, which avoids the costly join operations from multiple tables. © 2011 IEEE

Spatial clustering applied to health area

The significant volume of work accidents in the cities causes an expressive loss to society. The development of Spatial Data Mining technologies presents a new perspective for the extraction of knowledge from the correlation between conventional and spatial attributes. One of the most important techniques of the Spatial Data Mining is the Spatial Clustering, which clusters similar spatial objects to find a distribution of patterns, taking into account the geographical position of the objects. Applying this technique to the health area, will provide information that can contribute towards the planning of more adequate strategies for the prevention of work accidents. The original contribution of this work is to present an application of tools developed for Spatial Clustering which supply a set of graphic resources that have helped to discover knowledge and support for management in the work accidents area. © 2011 IEEE