Background: Teachers are considered as dynamic force who take a pivotal position in any educational system. Since they may play a significant role in passing the preventive information and health promotion, it is important that their own oral health knowledge, attitude, and practices conform to the professional recommendations. The aim of this study was to evaluate oral health knowledge, attitude and practices among kindergarten teachers, and their impact on teachers’ oral health condition in Al-Rusafa Sector, Baghdad, Iraq. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional survey was conducted among 80 kindergarten teachers. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed among these teach¬ers. This questionnaire format contains two parts that deals with oral health knowledge, attitude and practices of teachers, and this was followed by clinical oral examination for all the teachers. Simple random sampling technique was employed for the selection of the study participants. Descriptive analysis was done and data was analyzed using Bonferonni t-test and ANOVA test. Results: Teachers demonstrated adequate but incomplete knowledge regarding oral health. More than 85.0% of teachers were aware of preventive measures to keep good oral health and knew the bad influence of neglecting the oral hygiene. About 65.0% of teachers had the awareness about dental plaque composition and its bad effects. Meanwhile, 45.0% of them were aware about the signs of tooth decay, also 32.5% were aware about the benefits of regular correct brushing on the gingiva. No obvious differences were noticed regarding teachers’ DMFS, plaque and gingival indices mean values in association to the level of teachers’ knowledge, however, a positive relation were found between favorite attitude and practices and mean values of DMFS, plaque and gingival indices. Conclusions: The studied kindergarten teachers demonstrated adequate but incomplete oral health knowledge with many of them adopting poor attitude and practices. There is a definite and immediate need for an integral educational program for kindergarten teachers on basic oral health knowledge and favorable practices. Moreover, teachers’ healthy practices can affect their oral health condition positively.
Abstract Background: This in-vitro study was to evaluated bitewing radiograph and tactile examination for detection secondary caries adjacent to amalgam restorations. Material and method: Sixty primary extracted molars with class I and class II amalgam restorations were selected from children, and examined by bitewing radiographs were taken by using film holders and interpreted on a backlit screen without magnification. Then, we used tactile examination with blunt probe. Result: The result of this study showed that the best cut-off points for the sample were found by a Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) analysis, and the area under the ROC curve and the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the techniques were calculated for enamel (
... Show MoreIn high-dimensional semiparametric regression, balancing accuracy and interpretability often requires combining dimension reduction with variable selection. This study intro- duces two novel methods for dimension reduction in additive partial linear models: (i) minimum average variance estimation (MAVE) combined with the adaptive least abso- lute shrinkage and selection operator (MAVE-ALASSO) and (ii) MAVE with smoothly clipped absolute deviation (MAVE-SCAD). These methods leverage the flexibility of MAVE for sufficient dimension reduction while incorporating adaptive penalties to en- sure sparse and interpretable models. The performance of both methods is evaluated through simulations using the mean squared error and variable selection cri
... Show MoreA potential alternative energy resource to meet energy demands is the vast amount of gas stored in hydrate reserves. However, major challenges in terms of exploration and production surround profitable and effective exploitation of these reserves. The measurement of acoustic velocity is a useful method for exploration of gas hydrate reserves and can be an efficient method to characterize the hydrate-bearing sediments. In this study, the compressional wave velocity (P-wave velocity) of consolidated sediments (Bentheimer) with and without tetrahydrofuran hydrate-bearing pore fillings were measured using the pulse transmission method. The study has found that the P-wave velocity of consolidated sediments increase with increasing hydrate format
... Show MoreAs one type of resistance furnace, the electrical tube furnace (ETF) typically experiences input noise, measurement noise, system uncertainties, unmodeled dynamics and external disturbances, which significantly degrade its temperature control performance. To provide precise, and robust temperature tracking performance for the ETF, a robust composite control (RCC) method is proposed in this paper. The overall RCC method consists of four elements: First, the mathematical model of the ETF system is deduced, then a state feedback control (SFC) is constructed. Third, a novel disturbance observer (DO) is designed to estimate the lumped disturbance with one observer parameter. Moreover, the stability of the closed loop system including controller
... Show MoreIn this paper, the Active Suspension System (ASS) of road vehicles was investigated. In addition to the conventional stiffness and damper, the proposed ASS includes a fuzzy controller, a hydraulic actuator, and an LVDT position sensor. Furthermore, this paper presents a nonlinear model describing the operation of the hydraulic actuator as a part of the suspension system. Additionally, the detailed steps of the fuzzy controller design for such a system are introduced. A MATLAB/Simulink model was constructed to study the proposed ASS at different profiles of road irregularities. The results have shown that the proposed ASS has superior performance compared to the conventional Passive Suspension System (PSS), where the body displacemen
... Show MoreTitanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) samples were nitrided in low pressure (1.3, 3 mbar) dc-glow discharge plasmas of nitrogen. The treating time was 5, 10 and 15 hour and the temperatures range of the samples during the nitriding process was close to 800oC. The obtained microstructures of the nitride layers were studied by x-ray diffraction and optical microscopy. The ε –Ti2N, ζ-Ti3N3-x and η-Ti3N2-x.phases were formed and addition to the solid solution of nitrogen in titanium, α (Ti,N). Micro hardness measurements exhibit an increment for the Ti-alloy specimens which nitrided at 800oC for 10 and 15h.Corrosion measurements were obtained for the Ti-6Al-4V alloy in Ringer solution after plasma nitriding. The clear improving in the corrosion r
... Show MoreThe coefficient of charge transfer at heterogeneous devices of Au metal with a well-known dyeis investigations using quantum model.Four different solvent are used to estimation the effective transition energy. The potential barrier at interface of Au and dye has been determined using effective transition energy and difference between the Fermi energy of Au metal and ionization energy of dye. A possible transfer mechanism cross the potential barrier dyeand coupling strength interaction between the electronic levels in systems of Au and is discussed.Differentdata of effective transition energy and potential barrier calculations suggest that solvent is more suitable to binds Au with dye.
The applications of hot plasma are many and numerous applications require high values of the temperature of the electrons within the plasma region. Improving electron temperature values is one of the important processes for using this specification in plasma for being adopted in several modern applications such as nuclear fusion, plating operations and in industrial applications. In this work, theoretical computations were performed to enhance electron temperature under dense homogeneous plasma. The effect of power and duration time of pulsed Nd:YAG laser was studied on the heating of plasmas by inverse bremsstrahlung for several values for the electron density ratio. There results for these ca
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