Influence of professional experience on detection and treatment decision of occlusal caries lesions in primary teeth

To evaluate the influence of examiner's clinical experience on detection and treatment decision of caries lesions in primary molars. Design Three experienced dentists (Group A) and three undergraduate students (Group B) used the International Caries Detection and Assessment System (ICDAS) criteria and bitewing radiographs (BW) to perform examinations twice in 77 primary molars that presented a sound or carious occlusal surface. For the treatment decision (TD), the examiners attributed scores, analyzing the teeth in conjunction with the radiographs. The presence and the depth of lesion were validated histologically, and reproducibility was evaluated. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and area under the ROC curve values were calculated for ICDAS and BW. The associations between ICDAS, BW, and TD were analyzed by means of contingency tables. Results Interexaminer agreement for ICDAS, BW, and TD were excellent for Group B and moderate for Group A. The two groups presented similar and satisfactory performance for caries lesion detection using ICDAS and BW. In the treatment decision, Group A was shown to have a less invasive approach than Group B. Conclusion The examiner's experience was not determinant for the clinical and radiographic detection of occlusal lesions in primary teeth but influenced the treatment decision of initial lesions.

Building Leadership: The Knowledge of Principals in Creating Collaborative Communities of Professional Learning

Research literature is replete with the importance of collaboration in schools, the lack of its implementation, the centrality of the role of the principal, and the existence of a gap between knowledge and practice--or a "Knowing-Doing Gap." In other words, there is a set of knowledge that principals must know in order to create a collaborative workplace environment for teachers. This study sought to describe what high school principals know about creating such a culture of collaboration. The researcher combed journal articles, studies and professional literature in order to identify what principals must know in order to create a culture of collaboration. The result was ten elements of principal knowledge: Staff involvement in important decisions, Charismatic leadership not being necessary for success, Effective elements of teacher teams, Administrator‘s modeling professional learning, The allocation of resources, Staff meetings focused on student learning, Elements of continuous improvement, and Principles of Adult Learning, Student Learning and Change. From these ten elements, the researcher developed a web-based survey intended to measure nine of those elements (Charismatic leadership was excluded). Principals of accredited high schools in the state of Nebraska were invited to participate in this survey, as high schools are well-known for the isolation that teachers experience--particularly as a result of departmentalization. The results indicate that principals have knowledge of eight of the nine measured elements. The one that they lacked an understanding of was Principles of Student Learning. Given these two findings of what principals do and do not know, the researcher recommends that professional organizations, intermediate service agencies and district-level support staff engage in systematic and systemic initiatives to increase the knowledge of principals in the element of lacking knowledge. Further, given that eight of the nine elements are understood by principals, it would be wise to examine reasons for the implementation gap (Knowing-Doing Gap) and how to overcome it.

The effects of professional factors on the quality of life of family health team nurses

The objective of this study was to identify the professional factors affecting the quality of life of nurses working in the family health teams in the Macro Health Region, referred to as the South Triangle, in the State of Minas Gerais. This is a descriptive, cross-sectional study. The participants were 90 nurses, who answered a questionnaire containing the professional variables and the Quality of Life assessment instrument - WHOQOL-100. The results showed a negative impact regarding the number of jobs, unstable jobs, excessive workload and job dissatisfaction in the nurses' Quality of Life domains. There is a need to (re)define the public policies that control the working conditions of these professionals. Actions that contribute towards improving nurses' Quality of Life are important, considering their strong influence on the quality of the healthcare that is delivered.

Audiological and electrophysiological assessment of professional pop/rock musicians

In the present study, we evaluated peripheral and central auditory pathways in professional musicians (with and without hearing loss) compared to non-musicians. The goal was to verify if music exposure could affect auditory pathways as a whole. This is a prospective study that compared the results obtained between three groups (musicians with and without hearing loss and non-musicians). Thirty-two male individuals participated and they were assessed by: Immittance measurements, pure-tone air conduction thresholds at all frequencies from 0.25 to 20 kHz, Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions, Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR), and Cognitive Potential. The musicians showed worse hearing thresholds in both conventional and high frequency audiometry when compared to the non-musicians; the mean amplitude of Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions was smaller in the musicians group, but the mean latencies of Auditory Brainstem Response and Cognitive Potential were diminished in the musicians when compared to the non-musicians. Our findings suggest that the population of musicians is at risk for developing music-induced hearing loss. However, the electrophysiological evaluation showed that latency waves of ABR and P300 were diminished in musicians, which may suggest that the auditory training to which these musicians are exposed acts as a facilitator of the acoustic signal transmission to the cortex.

The feeling of fluent perception: A single experience from multiple asynchronous sources

Zeki and co-workers recently proposed that perception can best be described as locally distributed, asynchronous processes that each create a kind of microconsciousness, which condense into an experienced percept. The present article is aimed at extending this theory to metacognitive feelings. We present evidence that perceptual fluency-the subjective feeling of ease during perceptual processing-is based on speed of processing at different stages of the perceptual process. Specifically, detection of briefly presented stimuli was influenced by figure-ground contrast, but not by symmetry (Experiment 1) or the font (Experiment 2) of the stimuli. Conversely, discrimination of these stimuli was influenced by whether they were symmetric (Experiment 1) and by the font they were presented in (Experiment 2), but not by figure-ground contrast. Both tasks however were related with the subjective experience of fluency (Experiments 1 and 2). We conclude that subjective fluency is the conscious phenomenal correlate of different processing stages in visual perception.

Work Experiences and Well-Being in the First Years of Professional Work in Switzerland: A Ten-Year Follow-Up Study

The ÆQUAS (a German acronym for “Work Experiences and Quality of Life in Switzerland”) study followed young workers in five occupations over their first ten years in the labor market. Participants of the study reported on working conditions and well-being at five occasions. Overall, resources at work as well as well-being, health and personal resources remained stable or increased. Concurrently, task-related stressors increased as well. This result may reflect career progress (e.g., gaining more responsibilities may be accompanied by increasing time pressure) but development in task-related stressors as well as resources may also be related to specific occupations. Several trajectories had their turning point after the first or second year of being in the labor market, which may reflect a successful professional socialization. Even though a substantial number of participants did change their occupation over these ten years (with benefits for their well-being), development over the first ten years after vocational training implies a successful transition into labor market.

Gender-fair Language Changes the Social Perception of Professional Groups: The Case of German and Italian.

Gender-fair language, including women and men, such as word pairs has a substantial impact on the mental representation, as a large body of studies have shown. When using exclusively the masculine form as a generic, women are mentally significantly less represented than men. Word pairs, however, lead to a higher cognitive inclusion of women. Surprisingly little research has been conducted to understand how the perception of professional groups is affected by gender-fair language. Providing evidence from an Italian-Austrian cross-cultural study with over 400 participants, we argue that gender-fair language impacts the perception of professional groups, in terms of perceived gender-typicality, number of women and men assumed for a profession, social status and average income. Results hint at a pervasive pay-off: on the one hand, gender-fair language seems to boost the mental representations in favor of women and professions are perceived as being rather gender-neutral. On the other hand professional groups are assigned lower salary and social status with word pairs. Implications of results are discussed.

Cultural models of healing and health: An ethnography of professional nurses and healers

Cultural models of the domains healing and health are important in how people understand health and their behavior regarding it. The biomedicine model has been predominant in Western society. Recent popularity of holistic health and alternative healing modalities contrasts with the biomedical model and the assumptions upon which that model has been practiced. The holistic health movement characterizes an effort by health care providers and others such as nurses to expand the biomedical model and has often incorporated alternative modalities. This research described and compared the cultural models of healing of professional nurses and alternative healers. A group of nursing faculty who promote a holistic model were compared to a group of healers using healing touch. Ethnographic methods of participant observation, free listing and pile sort were used. Theoretical sampling in the free listings reached saturation at 18 in the group of nurses and 21 in the group of healers. Categories consistent for both groups emerged from the data. These were: physical, mental, attitude, relationships, spiritual, self management, and health seeking including biomedical and alternative resources. The healers had little differentiation between the concepts health and healing. The nurses, however, had more elements in self management for health and in health seeking for healing. This reflects the nurse's role in facilitating the shift in locus of responsibility between health and healing. The healers provided more specific information regarding alternative resources. The healer's conceptualization of health was embedded in a spiritual belief system and contrasted dramatically with that of biomedicine. The healer's models also contrasted with holistic health in the areas of holism, locus of responsibility, and dealing with uncertainty. The similarity between the groups and their dissimilarity to biomedicine suggest a larger cultural shift in beliefs regarding health care. ^

The emotional power of music: How music enhances the feeling of affective pictures

Music is an intriguing stimulus widely used in movies to increase the emotional experience. However, no brain imaging study has to date examined this enhancement effect using emotional pictures (the modality mostly used in emotion research) and musical excerpts. Therefore, we designed this functional magnetic resonance imaging study to explore how musical stimuli enhance the feeling of affective pictures. In a classical block design carefully controlling for habituation and order effects, we presented fearful and sad pictures (mostly taken from the IAPS) either alone or combined with congruent emotional musical excerpts (classical pieces). Subjective ratings clearly indicated that the emotional experience was markedly increased in the combined relative to the picture condition. Furthermore, using a second-level analysis and regions of interest approach, we observed a clear functional and structural dissociation between the combined and the picture condition. Besides increased activation in brain areas known to be involved in auditory as well as in neutral and emotional visual-auditory integration processes, the combined condition showed increased activation in many structures known to be involved in emotion processing (including for example amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampus, insula, striatum, medial ventral frontal cortex, cerebellum, fusiform gyrus). In contrast, the picture condition only showed an activation increase in the cognitive part of the prefrontal cortex, mainly in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Based on these findings, we suggest that emotional pictures evoke a more cognitive mode of emotion perception, whereas congruent presentations of emotional visual and musical stimuli rather automatically evoke strong emotional feelings and experiences.

Meta-cognition about biological sex and gender-stereotypic physical appearance: Consequences for the assessment of leadership competence

Previous findings are inconsistent with regard to whether men are judged as being more or less competent leaders than women. However, masculine-relative to feminine-looking persons seem to be judged consistently as more competent leaders. Can this different impact of biological sex and physical appearance be due to the disparate availability of meta-cognitive knowledge about both sources? The results of Study 1 indicated that individuals possess meta-cognitive knowledge about a possible biasing influence of persons’ biological sex, but not for their physical appearance. In Study 2, participants judged the leadership competence of a male versus female stimulus person with either masculine or feminine physical appearance. In addition, the available cognitive capacity was manipulated. When high capacity was available, participants corrected for the influence of stimulus persons’ sex, but they fell prey to this influence under cognitive load. However, the effect of physical appearance was not moderated by cognitive capacity.

Targeting Special Populations for Family Preservation: The Influence of Worker Competence and Organizational Culture

Today there are approximately 581,000 children in the United States foster care system. Children of color, one special population group, are disproportionately represented in the foster care system. Family preservation, a program that aims to improve family functioning and thus decrease the need for foster care, has been examined closely. Some researchers believe that family preservation programs have failed partly due to practitioners' inability to target appropriate families (Feldman, 1990; Schuerman, Rzepnicki & Littell, 1994). Additionally, research confirms that children of color are not the target of family preservation services (Denby, Curtis, & Alford, 1998). Improvements in the effectiveness of family preservation will require many types of reform both internal and external to the program. Among the types of internal reform needed is accurate "targeting of services. " Given the overrepresentation of children of color in the foster care system, this group must be among those who are targeted for services. The results of a national survey of 254 family preservation workers reveal a "profile" of the worker who is likely to target special populations, including children of color, for family preservation services. A case is made for service improvements and training to facilitate the "profiled" workers' competencies.

History of professional guidance in Argentina

Professional guidance has developed in Argentina since 1940, influenced by the guidance which in that time came from Spain, France, Belgium and Switzerland. The paper analyzes the first experiences in professional guidance, developed both in the great industrial cities as Buenos Aires and Rosario, and little urban centres as Tucumán or San Luis. The institutional and political context of such experiences is also analyzed, as well as the State's full support of them.