Competence profiles in undergraduate dental education : a comparison between theory and reality

Background: Competence profiles are purposed to provide a blueprint in support to develop and/or benchmark the learning outcomes of undergraduate dental curricula. This study aims to investigate whether a competence profile as proposed by academic- and clinical experts is able to represent the real clinical reality. Methods: A questionnaire was developed including questions about gender and age, perception about required competences, and educational organisation and was distributed among Flemish dentists via email and on paper during a symposium. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics, Chi-square and non-parametric Mann-Whitney U-tests. Results: A total of 312 questionnaires were completed (=6.5% of dentist population, with similar gender and age characteristics). All competences in the European competence profile were rated between 7.2 and 9.4 on a 10-point scale. In dentists under 50 years, females rated the importance of identifying/managing anxiety and abnormal patient behaviour; and promoting/improving oral health as significantly higher than males. In dentists of 50 years and above, females rated 8 competences significantly higher than males, including obtaining/recording a complete history; identifying/managing anxiety and abnormal patient behaviour; obtaining/interpreting radiography; identifying temporomandibular and associated disorders; identifying orthodontic needs; awareness of own limitations/when to refer; managing dental urgencies; and basic-life-support/defibrillation. Clinical practice management was most frequently reported as additional competence to address in dental education. Furthermore, the respondents suggested an undergraduate dental curriculum based on 34% theoretical education, 26% preclinical skills training, and 40% clinical education and 86% agreed with a duration of 5 years. Finally, the respondents also illustrated the dynamic nature of dentistry including a reduction of amalgam fillings, a shift from individual practice to group practices, an increased administrative load, and more assertive patients. Conclusion: Findings in the present study suggest the validation of the proposed competences for graduating European dentists within the clinical reality of dental professionals in daily practice. Nevertheless, the results have also demonstrated heterogeneity regarding gender and age within the dentist population and emphasised a continuously evolving dental profession and required competences. Hence, to maintain high quality of dental care, a strategy should be developed in which dental curricula are continuously benchmarked against an evolving clinical reality

ProxiMAX randomisation:a new technology for non-degenerate saturation mutagenesis of contiguous codons

Back in 2003, we published ‘MAX’ randomisation, a process of non-degenerate saturation mutagenesis using exactly 20 codons (one for each amino acid) or else any required subset of those 20 codons. ‘MAX’ randomisation saturates codons located in isolated positions within a protein, as might be required in enzyme engineering, or else on one face of an alpha-helix, as in zinc finger engineering. Since that time, we have been asked for an equivalent process that can saturate multiple, contiguous codons in a non-degenerate manner. We have now developed ‘ProxiMAX’ randomisation, which does just that: generating DNA cassettes for saturation mutagenesis without degeneracy or bias. Offering an alternative to trinucleotide phosphoramidite chemistry, ProxiMAX randomisation uses nothing more sophisticated than unmodified oligonucleotides and standard molecular biology reagents. Thus it requires no specialised chemistry, reagents nor equipment and simply relies on a process of saturation cycling comprising ligation, amplification and digestion for each cycle. The process can encode both unbiased representation of selected amino acids or else encode them in pre-defined ratios. Each saturated position can be defined independently of the others. We demonstrate accurate saturation of up to 11 contiguous codons. As such, ProxiMAX randomisation is particularly relevant to antibody engineering

Beyond the natural proteome:nondegenerate saturation mutagenesis - methodologies and advantages

Beyond the natural proteome, high-throughput mutagenesis offers the protein engineer an opportunity to “tweak” the wild-type activity of a protein to create a recombinant protein with required attributes. Of the various approaches available, saturation mutagenesis is one of the core techniques employed by protein engineers and in recent times, nondegenerate saturation mutagenesis is emerging as the approach of choice. This review compares the current methodologies available for conducting nondegenerate saturation mutagenesis with traditional, degenerate saturation and briefly outlines the options available for screening the resulting libraries, to discover a novel protein with the required activity and/or specificity

Perceived Conflict of Interest in Health Science Partnerships

University scientists conducting research on topics of potential health concern often want to partner with a range of actors, including government entities, non-governmental organizations, and private enterprises. Such partnerships can provide access to needed resources, including funding. However, those who observe the results of such partnerships may judge those results based on who is involved. This set of studies seeks to assess how people perceive two hypothetical health science research collaborations. In doing so, it also tests the utility of using procedural justice concepts to assess perceptions of research legitimacy as a theoretical way to investigate conflict of interest perceptions. Findings show that including an industry collaborator has clear negative repercussions for how people see a research partnership and that these perceptions shape people’s willingness to see the research as a legitimate source of knowledge. Additional research aimed at further communicating procedures that might mitigate the impact of industry collaboration is suggested

Introducing the PURE User Community in Belgium

29 slides.-- Presentation delivered within the "National session (I)"The presentation introduces the Belgium Pure User Group, which includes the Free University of Brussels (VUB), the Institute for Nature and Forest Research (INBO), the Institute of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Research (ILVO), the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp (ITG), the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCKEN) and the University of Namur besides a group of Pure users via the multitenant instance at EWI in Flanders (Botanic Garden Meise, Department of Environment and Health, ZOO-Koninklijke Maatschappij voor Dierkunde van Antwerpen and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp). Most of these Pure instances are in Flanders and have research information exchange mechanisms in place with FRIS, the Flemish Research Information Space, via a FRIS module in Pure developed by Elsevier. The Flemish discipline codes are also regularly used across all CRIS instances in Flanders

Milk losses resulting from clinical mastitis on robot farms – are they related to farm management?

status: publishe

In-line detection of clinical mastitis by identifying clots in milk using images and a neural network approach

Automated milking systems (AMS) already incorporate a variety of milk monitoring and sensing equipment, but the sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value of clinical mastitis (CM) detection remain low. A typical symptom of CM is the presence of clot(s) in the milk during pre-milking. The objective of this study is the development and evaluation of a neural network (NN) that can detect these clot(s) on pictures of the filters of the milking system after the pre-milking phase. The data for this study was generated by adding debris and/or clot(s) from used milk filters of AMS to milk and passing this milk through a blue circular milk filter mounted in a PVC tube. A camera was mounted in the PVC pipe to take a photo after each pass of milk. In total 696 pictures were taken with clot(s), and 586 pictures without. These were randomly divided into a 60/20/20 training, validation, and testing datasets, respectively, for the training and validation of the NN. A convolutional NN with residual connections was trained and the hyperparameters were optimized based on the validation dataset using a genetic algorithm. The integrated gradients were calculated to explain the interpretation of the NN. The accuracy, specificity, and sensitivity of the NN on the testing dataset were 100%. The integrated gradients showed that the NN identified the clot(s). Further validation and integration on farm in AMS are necessary, but the proposed method is very promising for the inline detection of CM on AMS farms

Short communication : barrier characteristics of 3 external teat sealants to prevent bacterial penetration under in vitro conditions using rubber calf -feeding nipples

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the barrier characteristics of 3 external teat sealants for dry cows in preventing bacterial penetration by 3 common major mastitis pathogens (Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus uberis) via a novel in vitro simulation model using rubber calf-feeding nipples. All feeding nipples were filled with a sterile cotton plug soaked in sterile broth heart infusion medium and were treated as follows: rubber teats 1 and 5 were sealed with Ubera Dry (Inovet, Arendonk, Belgium); rubber teats 2 and 6 were sealed with T-Hexx Dry (Huvepharma Livestock, St. Louis, MO); rubber teats 3 and 7 were sealed with Uddergold Dry (Ecolab Food and Beverage Division, St. Paul, MN); and rubber teats 4 and 8 remained unsealed and served as positive and negative controls, respectively. After the dips had dried, rubber teats 1 to 4 were immersed in a suspension of E. coli (experiment 1), Staph. aureus (experiment 2), or Strep. uberis (experiment 3; ≥1.5 × 108 cfu/mL) for 24 h, whereas rubber teats 5 to 8 were not exposed to the bacterial suspensions. All external teat sealants adhered well to the rubber teats. All cotton plugs collected from the teats that were not exposed to E. coli, Staph. aureus, or Strep. uberis (rubber teats 5 to 8) remained culture-negative, except for 1 (due to contamination). Of the rubber teats that were exposed to the major mastitis pathogens, all cotton plugs collected from the teats dipped with Ubera Dry and T-Hexx Dry remained culture-negative for the mastitis pathogen they were exposed to. The cotton plugs of the rubber teats that were sealed with Uddergold Dry and exposed to E. coli and Strep. uberis showed positive cultures for the respective bacteria, as demonstrated using strain-typing. The cotton plugs collected from the rubber teats that were not sealed with an external teat sealant and that served as positive controls became culture-positive for the mastitis pathogens they were exposed to. We conclude that Ubera Dry showed comparable and superior barrier performance against penetration of E. coli, Staph. aureus, and Strep. uberis compared with T-Hexx Dry and Uddergold Dry, respectively, under in vitro conditions using a novel in vitro simulation model. Although one should be aware that the method has not yet been validated to predict risk of intramammary infections, the proposed technique can be a meaningful starting point to evaluate and compare the barrier characteristics of external teat sealants in preventing bacterial penetration. A large-scale clinical trial is needed before any definite conclusions can be drawn as to the adherence, duration of adherence, barrier performance, and efficacy in protection against intramammary infections of the 3 external teat sealants under field conditions

Milk losses linked to mastitis treatments at dairy farms with automatic milking systems

Mastitis-associated milk losses in dairy cows have a massive impact on farm profitability and sustainability. In this study, we analyzed milk losses from 4 553 treated mastitis cases as recorded via treatment registers at 41 AMS dairy farms. Milk losses were estimated based on the difference between the expected and the actual production. To estimate the unperturbed lactation curve, we applied an iterative procedure using the Wood model and a variance-dependent threshold on the milk yield residuals. We calculated milk losses both in a fixed window around the first treatment day of each mastitis case and in the perturbations corresponding to this day, at the cow level as well as at the quarter level. In a fixed time window of day-5 to 30 around the first treatment, the absolute median milk losses per case were 101.5 kg, highly dependent on the parity and the lactation stage with absolute milk losses being highest in multiparous cows and at peak lactation. Relative milk losses expressed in percentage were highest on the first treatment day, and full recovery was often not reached within 30 days from treatment onset. In 62 % of the cases, we found a perturbation in milk yield at the cow level at the time of treatment. On average, perturbations started 8.7 days before the first treatment and median absolute milk losses increased to 128 kg of milk per perturbation. Mastitis is not expected to have equal effects on the four quarters so this study additionally investigated losses in the individual udder quarters. We used a data-based method leveraging milk yield and electrical conductivity to project the presumably inflamed quarter. Next, we compared losses with the average of presumably non-inflamed quarters. Median absolute losses in a fixed 36-day window around treatment varied between 50.2 kg for front and 59.3 kg for hind inflamed quarters compared to respectively 24.7 and 26.3 kg for the median losses in the non-inflamed quarters. Also here, these losses differed between lactation stages and parities. Expressed proportionally to expected yield, the relative median milk losses in inflamed quarters on the treatment day were 20 % higher in inflamed quarters with a higher variability and slower recovery. In 86 % of the treated mastitis cases, at least one perturbation was found at the quarter level. This analysis confirms the high impact of mastitis on milk production, and the large variation between quarter losses illustrates the potential of quarter analysis for on-farm monitoring at farms with an automated milking system