A review of implant provision for hypodontia patients within a Scottish referral centre

Background: Implant treatment to replace congenitally missing teeth often involves multidisciplinary input in a secondary care environment. High quality patient care requires an in-depth knowledge of treatment requirements. Aim: This service review aimed to determine treatment needs, efficiency of service and outcomes achieved in hypodontia patients. It also aimed to determine any specific difficulties encountered in service provision, and suggest methods to overcome these. Methods: Hypodontia patients in the Unit of Periodontics of the Scottish referral centre under consideration, who had implant placement and fixed restoration, or review completed over a 31 month period, were included. A standardised data collection form was developed and completed with reference to the patient's clinical record. Information was collected with regard to: the indication for implant treatment and its extent; the need for, complexity and duration of orthodontic treatment; the need for bone grafting and the techniques employed and indicators of implant success. Conclusion: Implant survival and success rates were high for those patients reviewed. Incidence of biological complications compared very favourably with the literature

Global variation in the cost of increasing ecosystem carbon

Slowing the reduction, or increasing the accumulation, of organic carbon stored in biomass and soils has been suggested as a potentially rapid and cost-effective method to reduce the rate of atmospheric carbon increase(1). The costs of mitigating climate change by increasing ecosystem carbon relative to the baseline or business-as-usual scenario has been quantified in numerous studies, but results have been contradictory, as both methodological issues and substance differences cause variability(2). Here we show, based on 77 standardized face-to-face interviews of local experts with the best possible knowledge of local land-use economics and sociopolitical context in ten landscapes around the globe, that the estimated cost of increasing ecosystem carbon varied vastly and was perceived to be 16-27 times cheaper in two Indonesian landscapes dominated by peatlands compared with the average of the eight other landscapes. Hence, if reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) and other land-use mitigation efforts are to be distributed evenly across forested countries, for example, for the sake of international equity, their overall effectiveness would be dramatically lower than for a cost-minimizing distribution.Peer reviewe

Nitrogenase Gene Amplicons from Global Marine Surface Waters Are Dominated by Genes of Non-Cyanobacteria

Cyanobacteria are thought to be the main N2-fixing organisms (diazotrophs) in marine pelagic waters, but recent molecular analyses indicate that non-cyanobacterial diazotrophs are also present and active. Existing data are, however, restricted geographically and by limited sequencing depths. Our analysis of 79,090 nitrogenase (nifH) PCR amplicons encoding 7,468 unique proteins from surface samples (ten DNA samples and two RNA samples) collected at ten marine locations world-wide provides the first in-depth survey of a functional bacterial gene and yield insights into the composition and diversity of the nifH gene pool in marine waters. Great divergence in nifH composition was observed between sites. Cyanobacteria-like genes were most frequent among amplicons from the warmest waters, but overall the data set was dominated by nifH sequences most closely related to non-cyanobacteria. Clusters related to Alpha-, Beta-, Gamma-, and Delta-Proteobacteria were most common and showed distinct geographic distributions. Sequences related to anaerobic bacteria (nifH Cluster III) were generally rare, but preponderant in cold waters, especially in the Arctic. Although the two transcript samples were dominated by unicellular cyanobacteria, 42% of the identified non-cyanobacterial nifH clusters from the corresponding DNA samples were also detected in cDNA. The study indicates that non-cyanobacteria account for a substantial part of the nifH gene pool in marine surface waters and that these genes are at least occasionally expressed. The contribution of non-cyanobacterial diazotrophs to the global N2 fixation budget cannot be inferred from sequence data alone, but the prevalence of non-cyanobacterial nifH genes and transcripts suggest that these bacteria are ecologically significant

Alternative Rationales for Superior Real Estate Investment Performance: An Empirical Reinterpretation of Prior Research

The purpose of this study is to re-evaluate the existing research on superior real estate investment performance and to suggest alternative explanations for previous findings. A portion of this analysis draws on data from the empirical studies reviewed to the extent possible with appraisal data as well as transaction data based on properties sold by the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) members used for studies which do not report their data. Evidence is presented which links superior real estate investment performance to positive excess skewness in the return distribution. The study also shows that there is a greater likelihood that the return distributions having positive excess skewness are associated with returns computed on the basis of appraised values as opposed to transaction prices. In addition to this, the study finds that inflation and the omission of assets from the market proxy also accounts in part for superior real estate investment performance.Liu37_Alternate_rationales.pdf: 39 downloads, before Aug. 1, 2020