Titanium in Dentistry: Historical development, state of the art and future perspectives

Titanium is a metallic element known by several attractive characteristics, such as biocompatibility, excellent corrosion resistance and high mechanical resistance. It is widely used in Dentistry, with high success rates, providing a favorable biological response when in contact with live tissues. Therefore, the objective of this study was to describe the different uses of titanium in Dentistry, reviewing its historical development and discoursing about its state of art and future perspective of its utilization. A search in the MEDLINE/PubMed database was performed using the terms 'titanium', 'dentistry' and 'implants'. The title and abstract of articles were read, and after this first screening 20 articles were selected and their full-texts were downloaded. Additional text books and manual search of reference lists within selected articles were included. Correlated literature showed that titanium is the most used metal in Implantology for manufacturing osseointegrated implants and their systems, with a totally consolidated utilization. Moreover, titanium can be also employed in prosthodontics to obtain frameworks. However, problems related to its machining, casting, welding and ceramic application for dental prosthesis are still limiting its use. In Endodontics, titanium has been used in association to nickel for manufacturing rotatory instruments, providing a higher resistance to deformation. However, although the different possibilities of using titanium in modern Dentistry, its use for prostheses frameworks still needs technological improvements in order to surpass its limitations. © 2012 Indian Prosthodontic Society.

Evaluation of maturity levels in the management of product development: case studies in the capital goods industry

In recent approaches to the management of product development process (PDP), maturity levels have attracted the attention of practitioners and researchers. The CMMI model contributes to evaluate the maturity levels and improvement of the product development process management. This paper, based on CMMI model, analyzes the practices adopted in two companies of the capital goods industry, which develop and manufacture equipment upon request. It was observed that on account of market conditioning factors and different practices adapted to PDP management, these companies are at different maturity levels. One company is at the initial level of maturity while the other at the most advanced one. It was also noted that the application of CMMI model can provide improvement to PDP management, as well as present guidelines to achieve higher maturity levels, adequate to companies' needs.

Historical development of transport coordination & integration in the United States.

"This study was prepared principally by James A. Little ... Henry M. Cunningham...and Chester E. Stiles."

The moral leaders of Israel : studies in the development of Hebrew religion and ethics /

Mode of access: Internet.

The historical development of marionette theatre in Japan /

Mode of access: Internet.

The historical development of religion in China /

Mode of access: Internet.

Where did we come from? The emergence and early development of voluntary sector studies in the UK

This article considers how the field of voluntary sector studies (VSS) in the UK emerged. Drawing on published and unpublished documents as well as on semi-structured interviews with people involved in the early development of VSS, a timeline of key events is suggested. The analysis reveals both social and cognitive elements in the field's development and considers the broader policy and institutional context within which key events of the VSS field occurred.

Historical development of residential segregation and black housing quality in Dade County

This paper examines the relationship between the historical development of residential segregation in Black areas of Dade County and the level of housing quality in those areas. Previous literature studies the effect of hypersegregation on housing quality. Instead, this paper analyzes the nature of each Black community and the social process by which they became segregated in contrast with only hypersegregation being considered. Data were drawn from the 1990 Census of Housing and Population at the block group level for Dade County. Two indicators for housing quality were considered: crowding and rent. Six categories for Black areas in Dade County and one residual category were developed for the analysis. Regression's results show that the effect of each community on housing quality varies. For example, overcrowding goes down in first-ghetto areas when compared to second-ghetto areas, although the percentage of Blacks in both communities is about the same. ^

Validation of reference genes for gene expression studies in the honey bee, Apis mellifera, by quantitative real-time RT-PCR

For obtaining accurate and reliable gene expression results it is essential that quantitative real-time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) data are normalized with appropriate reference genes. The current exponential increase in postgenomic studies on the honey bee, Apis mellifera, makes the standardization of qRT-PCR results an important task for ongoing community efforts. For this aim we selected four candidate reference genes (actin, ribosomal protein 49, elongation factor 1-alpha, tbp-association factor) and used three software-based approaches (geNorm, BestKeeper and NormFinder) to evaluate the suitability of these genes as endogenous controls. Their expression was examined during honey bee development, in different tissues, and after juvenile hormone exposure. Furthermore, the importance of choosing an appropriate reference gene was investigated for two developmentally regulated target genes. The results led us to consider all four candidate genes as suitable genes for normalization in A. mellifera. However, each condition evaluated in this study revealed a specific set of genes as the most appropriated ones.

Eastwards / westwards: which direction for gender studies in the 21st century?

Eastwards / Westwards: Which Direction for Gender Studies in the XXIst Century? is a collection of essays which focus on themes and methods that characterize current research into gender in Asian countries in general. In this collection, ideas derived from Gender Studies elsewhere in the world have been subjected to scrutiny for their utility in helping to describe and understand regional phenomena. But the concepts of Local and Global – with their discoursive productions – have not functioned as a binary opposition: localism and globalism are mutually constitutive and researchers have interrogated those spaces of interaction between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, bearing in mind their own embeddedness in social and cultural structures and their own historical memory. Contributors to this collection provided a critical transnational perspective on some of the complex effects of the dynamics of cultural globalization, by exploring the relation between gender and development, language, historiography, education and culture. We have also given attention to the ideological and rhetorical processes through which gender identity is constructed, by comparing textual grids and patterns of expectation. Likewise, we have discussed the role of ethnography, anthropology, historiography, sociology, fiction, popular culture and colonial and post-colonial sources in (re)inventing old/new male/female identities, their conversion into concepts and circulation through time and space. This multicultural and trans-disciplinary selection of essays is totally written in English, fully edited and revised, therefore, it has a good potential for an immediate international circulation. This project may trace new paths and issues for discussion on what concerns the life, practices and narratives by and about women in Asia, as well as elsewhere in the present day global experience. Academic readership: Researchers, scholars, educators, graduate and post-graduate students, doctoral students and general non-fiction readers, with a special interest in Gender Studies, Asia, Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, History, Historiography, Politics, Race, Feminism, Language, Linguistics, Power, Political and Feminist Agendas, Popular Culture, Education, Women’s Writing, Religion, Multiculturalism, Globalisation, Migration. Chapter summary: 1. “Social Gender Stereotypes and their Implication in Hindi”, Anjali Pande, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. This essay looks at the subtle ways in which gender identities are constructed and reinforced in India through social norms of language use. Language itself becomes a medium for perpetuating gender stereotypes, forcing its speakers to confirm to socially defined gender roles. Using examples from a classroom discussion about a film, this essay will highlight the underlying rigid male-female stereotypes in Indian society with their more obvious expressions in language. For the urban woman in India globalisation meant increased economic equality and exposure to changed lifestyles. On an individual level it also meant redefining gender relations and changing the hierarchy in man-­woman relationships. With the economic independence there is a heightened sense of liberation in all spheres of social life, a confidence to fuzz the rigid boundaries of gender roles. With the new films and media celebrating this liberated woman, who is ready to assert her sexual needs, who is ready to explode those long held notions of morality, one would expect that the changes are not just superficial. But as it soon became obvious in the course of a classroom discussion about relationships and stereotypes related to age, the surface changes can not become part of the common vocabulary, for the obvious reason that there is still a vast gap between the screen image of this new woman and the ground reality. Social considerations define the limits of this assertiveness of women, whereas men are happy to be liberal within the larger frame of social sanctions. The educated urban woman in India speaks in favour of change and the educated urban male supports her, but one just needs to scratch the surface to see the time tested formulae of gender roles firmly in place. The way the urban woman happily balances this emerging promise of independence with her gendered social identity, makes it necessary to rethink some aspects of looking at gender in a gradually changing, traditional society like India. 2. “The Linguistic Dimension of Gender Equality”, Alissa Tolstokorova, Kiev Centre for Gender Information and Education, Ukraine. The subject-matter of this essay is gender justice in language which, as I argue, may be achieved through the development of a gender-related approach to linguistic human rights. The last decades of the 20th century, globally marked by a “gender shift” in attitudes to language policy, gave impetus to the social movement for promoting linguistic gender equality. It was initiated in Western Europe and nowadays is moving eastwards, as ideas of gender democracy progress into developing countries. But, while in western societies gender discrimination through language, or linguistic sexism, was an issue of concern for over three decades, in developing countries efforts to promote gender justice in language are only in their infancy. My argument is that to promote gender justice in language internationally it is necessary to acknowledge the rights of women and men to equal representation of their gender in language and speech and, therefore, raise a question of linguistic rights of the sexes. My understanding is that the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights in 1996 provided this opportunity to address the problem of gender justice in language as a human rights issue, specifically as a gender dimension of linguistic human rights. 3. “The Rebirth of an Old Language: Issues of Gender Equality in Kazakhstan”, Maria Helena Guimarães, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Portugal. The existing language situation in Kazakhstan, while peaceful, is not without some tension. We propose to analyze here some questions we consider relevant in the frame of cultural globalization and gender equality, such as: free from Russian imperialism, could Kazakhstan become an easy prey of Turkey’s “imperialist dream”? Could these traditionally Muslim people be soon facing the end of religious tolerance and gender equality, becoming this new old language an easy instrument for the infiltration in the country of fundamentalism (it has already crossed the boarders of Uzbekistan), leading to a gradual deterioration of its rich multicultural relations? The present structure of the language is still very fragile: there are three main dialects and many academics defend the re-introduction of the Latin alphabet, thus enlarging the possibility of cultural “contamination” by making the transmission of fundamentalist ideas still easier through neighbour countries like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan (their languages belong to the same sub-group of Common Turkic), where the Latin alphabet is already in use, and where the ground for such ideas shown itself very fruitful. 4. “Construction of Womanhood in the Bengali Language of Bangladesh”, Raasheed Mahmood; University of New South Wales, Sydney. The present essay attempts to explore the role of gender-based language differences and of certain markers that reveal the status accorded to women in Bangladesh. Discrimination against women, in its various forms, is endemic in communities and countries around the world, cutting across class, race, age, and religious and national boundaries. One cannot understand the problems of gender discrimination solely by referring to the relationship of power or authority between men and women. Rather one needs to consider the problem by relating it to the specific social formation in which the image of masculinity and femininity is constructed and reconstructed. Following such line of reasoning this essay will examine the nature of gender bias in the Bengali language of Bangladesh, holding the conviction that as a product of social reality language reflects the socio-cultural behaviour of the community who speaks it. This essay will also attempt to shed some light on the processes through which gender based language differences produce actual consequences for women, who become exposed to low self-esteem, depression and systematic exclusion from public discourse. 5. “Marriage in China as an expression of a changing society”, Elisabetta Rosado David, University of Porto, Portugal, and Università Ca’Foscari, Venezia, Italy. In 29 April 2001, the new Marriage Law was promulgated in China. The first law on marriage was proclaimed in 1950 with the objective of freeing women from the feudal matrimonial system. With the second law, in 1981, values and conditions that had been distorted by the Cultural Revolution were recovered. Twenty years later, a new reform was started, intending to update marriage in the view of the social and cultural changes that occurred with Deng Xiaoping’s “open policy”. But the legal reform is only the starting point for this case-study. The rituals that are followed in the wedding ceremony are often hard to understand and very difficult to standardize, especially because China is a vast country, densely populated and characterized by several ethnic minorities. Two key words emerge from this issue: syncretism and continuity. On this basis, we can understand tradition in a better way, and analyse whether or not marriage, as every social manifestation, has evolved in harmony with Chinese culture. 6. “The Other Woman in the Portuguese Colonial Empire: The Case of Portuguese India”, Maria de Deus Manso, University of Évora, Portugal. This essay researches the social, cultural and symbolic history of local women in the Portuguese Indian colonial enclaves. The normative Portuguese overseas history has not paid any attention to the “indigenous” female populations in colonial Portuguese territories, albeit the large social importance of these social segments largely used in matrimonial and even catholic missionary strategies. The first attempt to open fresh windows in the history of this new field was the publication of Charles Boxer’s referential study about Women in lberian Overseas Expansion, edited in Portugal only after the Revolution of 1975. After this research we can only quote some other fragmentary efforts. In fact, research about the social, cultural, religious, political and symbolic situation of women in the Portuguese colonial territories, from the XVI to the XX century, is still a minor historiographic field. In this essay we discuss this problem and we study colonial representations of women in the Portuguese Indian enclaves, mainly in the territory of Goa, using case studies methodologies. 7. “Heading East this Time: Critical Readings on Gender in Southeast Asia”, Clara Sarmento, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Portugal. This essay intends to discuss some critical readings of fictional and theoretical texts on gender condition in Southeast Asian countries. Nowadays, many texts about women in Southeast Asia apply concepts of power in unusual areas. Traditional forms of gender hegemony have been replaced by other powerful, if somewhat more covert, forms. We will discuss some universal values concerning conventional female roles as well as the strategies used to recognize women in political fields traditionally characterized by male dominance. Female empowerment will mean different things at different times in history, as a result of culture, local geography and individual circumstances. Empowerment needs to be perceived as an individual attitude, but it also has to be facilitated at the macro­level by society and the State. Gender is very much at the heart of all these dynamics, strongly related to specificities of historical, cultural, ethnic and class situatedness, requiring an interdisciplinary transnational approach.

A Communication Intervention for Training Southern European Oncologists to Recognize Psychosocial Morbidity in Cancer. I - Development of the Model and Preliminary Results on Physicians' Satisfaction

BACKGROUND: The detection of psychosocial distress is a significant communication problem in Southern Europe and other countries. Work in this area is hampered by a lack of data. Because not much is known about training aimed at improving the recognition of psychosocial disorders in cancer patients, we developed a basic course model for medical oncology professionals. METHODS: A specific educational and experiential model (12 hours divided into 2 modules) involving formal teaching (ie, journal articles, large-group presentations), practice in small groups (ie, small-group exercises and role playing), and discussion in large groups was developed with the aim of improving the ability of oncologists to detect emotional disturbances in cancer patients (ie, depression, anxiety, and adjustment disorders). RESULTS: A total of 30 oncologists from 3 Southern European countries (Italy, Portugal, and Spain) participated in the workshop. The training course was well accepted by most participants who expressed general satisfaction and a positive subjective perception of the utility of the course for clinical practice. Of the total participants, 28 physicians (93.3%) thought that had they been exposed to this material sooner, they would have incorporated the techniques received in the workshop into their practices; 2 participants stated they would likely have done so. Half of the doctors (n = 15) believed that their clinical communication techniques were improved by participating in the workshop, and the remaining half thought that their abilities to communicate with cancer patients had improved. CONCLUSIONS: This model is a feasible approach for oncologists and is easily applicable to various oncology settings. Further studies will demonstrate the effectiveness of this method for improving oncologists skills in recognizing emotional disorders in their patients with cancer.

Epidemiological studies in the information and genomics era: experience of the Clinical Genome of Cancer Project in São Paulo, Brazil

Genomics is expanding the horizons of epidemiology, providing a new dimension for classical epidemiological studies and inspiring the development of large-scale multicenter studies with the statistical power necessary for the assessment of gene-gene and gene-environment interactions in cancer etiology and prognosis. This paper describes the methodology of the Clinical Genome of Cancer Project in São Paulo, Brazil (CGCP), which includes patients with nine types of tumors and controls. Three major epidemiological designs were used to reach specific objectives: cross-sectional studies to examine gene expression, case-control studies to evaluate etiological factors, and follow-up studies to analyze genetic profiles in prognosis. The clinical groups included patients' data in the electronic database through the Internet. Two approaches were used for data quality control: continuous data evaluation and data entry consistency. A total of 1749 cases and 1509 controls were entered into the CGCP database from the first trimester of 2002 to the end of 2004. Continuous evaluation showed that, for all tumors taken together, only 0.5% of the general form fields still included potential inconsistencies by the end of 2004. Regarding data entry consistency, the highest percentage of errors (11.8%) was observed for the follow-up form, followed by 6.7% for the clinical form, 4.0% for the general form, and only 1.1% for the pathology form. Good data quality is required for their transformation into useful information for clinical application and for preventive measures. The use of the Internet for communication among researchers and for data entry is perhaps the most innovative feature of the CGCP. The monitoring of patients' data guaranteed their quality.