Relative Positioning Research Articles

Ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities in air pollution exposure: a cross-sectional analysis of nationwide individual-level data from the Netherlands

Air pollution contributes to a large disease burden and some populations are disproportionately exposed. We aimed to evaluate ethnic and socioeconomic differences in exposure to air pollution in the Netherlands. We did a nationwide, cross-sectional analysis of all residents of the Netherlands on Jan 1, 2019. Sociodemographic information was centralised by Statistics Netherlands and mainly originated from the National Population Register, the tax register, and education registers. Concentrations of NO2, PM2·5, PM10, and elemental carbon, modelled by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, were linked to the individual-level demographic data. We assessed differences in air pollution exposures across the 40 largest minority ethnic groups. Evaluation of how ethnicity intersected with socioeconomic position in relation to exposures was done for the ten largest ethnic groups, plus Chinese and Indian groups, in both urban and rural areas using multivariable linear regression analyses. The total study population consisted of 17 251 511 individuals. Minority ethnic groups were consistently exposed to higher levels of air pollution than the ethnic Dutch population. The magnitude of inequalities varied between the minority ethnic groups, with 3-44% higher exposures to NO2 and 1-9% higher exposures to PM2·5 compared with the ethnic Dutch group. Average exposures were highest for the lowest socioeconomic group. Ethnic inequalities in exposure remained after adjustment for socioeconomic position and were of similar magnitude in urban and rural areas. The variability in air pollution exposure across ethnic and socioeconomic subgroups in the Netherlands indicates environmental injustice at the intersection of social characteristics. The health consequences of the observed inequalities and the underlying processes driving them warrant further investigation. The Gravitation programme of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development, and Amsterdam University Medical Center.

ChirpTracker: A Precise-Location-Aware System for Acoustic Tag Using Single Smartphone

The increasing interest in loss prevention devices using the Internet of Things, has been driven by the convenience, low cost, and low power consumption of these devices. However, the existing technologies cannot achieve a balance between high availability over a wide area with a single smartphone and precise location awareness. In this paper, a novel Precise-Location-Aware method that integrates acoustic technology and pedestrian dead reckoning, ChirpTracker, is proposed which most smartphones support without auxiliary equipment. This system can provide wide coverage (30m) and is suitable for many scenarios such as searching for cars in underground parking or finding items indoors. ChirpTracker can detect the distance between the smartphone and a lost tag in real time using acoustic signals, it can monitor the relative position change of the smartphone based on deep learning based pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) and update relative positioning of the lost tag though the observation from single base-station in motion. A technology that combines the local least squares method (LSM) and particle filter (PF) improves the convergence and the robustness of ChirpTracker through an identification strategy for a mirror position. This method was validated in experiments conducted in actual environments. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and positioning accuracy of ChirpTracker.

Helicopter Pilot Performance and Workload in a Following Task in a Degraded Visual Environment.

BACKGROUND: In this study, we investigated the impact of a loss of horizon due to atmospheric conditions on flight performance and workload of helicopter pilots during a low-altitude, dynamic flight task in windy conditions at sea. We also examined the potential benefits of a helmet-mounted display (HMD) for this specific task.METHODS: In a fixed-based helicopter simulator, 16 military helicopter pilots were asked to follow a maneuvering go-fast vessel in a good visual environment (GVE) and in a degraded visual environment (DVE). DVE was simulated by fog, obscuring the horizon and reducing contrast. Both visual conditions were performed once with and once without an HMD, which was simulated by projecting head-slaved symbology in the outside visuals. Objective measures included flight performance, control inputs, gaze direction, and relative positioning. Subjective measures included self-ratings on performance, situation awareness, and workload.RESULTS: The results showed that in DVE the pilots perceived higher workload and were flying closer to the go-fast vessel than in GVE. Consequently, they responded with larger control inputs to maneuvers of the vessel. The availability of an HMD hardly improved flight performance but did allow the pilots to focus their attention more outside, significantly improving their situation awareness and reducing workload. These benefits were found in DVE as well as GVE conditions.DISCUSSION: DVE negatively affects workload and flight performance of helicopter pilots in a dynamic, low-altitude following task. An HMD can help improve situation awareness and lower the workload during such a task, irrespective of the visual conditions.Ledegang WD, van der Burg E, Valk PJL, Houben MMJ, Groen EL. Helicopter pilot performance and workload in a following task in a degraded visual environment. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2024; 95(1):16-24.

TRANSFORMATION OF THE FAMILY INSTITUTION: SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF NEW CHANGES IN MARRIAGE AND FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS

The emergence of new positions on the issues of gender equality and justice, as they arise in the context of social liberalism and economic reconstruction, serve to ensure equality between men and women. Furthermore, they facilitate the advent of novel approaches to the birth and upbringing of children, and accelerate the transformation of the family institution. The reconciliation of new positions in marriage-family relations and the succession of generations represents an urgent problem that requires sociological analysis. The authors of the article conducted an analysis of the system of sociological theoretical and methodological concepts aimed at explaining the changes in the institution of the family. They also conducted a secondary analysis of the sociological research data (N: 1,200 respondent) on the topic “Kazakhstan Families – 2022”, which was conducted by the NJSC “Kazakhstan Institute of Public Development”. This multifaceted approach enabled the identification and analysis of the changes occurring in marriage and family relations in Kazakhstan. The findings of the analysis indicated that the attitudes and stances of Kazakhstani individuals with regard to the family are characterised by a degree of conservatism. Furthermore, the findings of the study indicate that Kazakhstani individuals place a high value on traditional family values and strive to maintain them. Nevertheless, the most significant value for a contemporary family is care and mutual respect, as well as support, which in the modern era is referred to as an “ecological relationship”. A conceptual analysis of the transformation of the family institution and its interpretation in practice through the results of sociological research has the potential to inform theoretical and methodological decisions in the development of proposals for the regulation of marriage-family relations for submission to state structures and research institutes.

Трансформация Арктического совета и Совета Баренцева/Евроарктического региона под воздействием международно-политического кризиса 2022 г.

The international political crisis of 2022 has become one of the most important phenomena within the existing system of international relations (IR) and has had an impact on virtually all international processes, including those in the Arctic region. The Arctic occupies a key position in contemporary international relations, as it is the region where the border between Russia and NATO countries, including the United States, lies. The impact of the crisis on the Arctic subsystem of IR is understudied. Much of the research focuses on reconstructing the events within the processes that took place in the region. Nevertheless, researchers have found that international regimes that are more institutionally rigid have shown greater resilience under crisis conditions. In turn, the Arctic Council and the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, international regimes with a similar institutional structure, differed in their dynamics amid the 2022 crisis. While the Barents Euro-Arctic Council has completely stopped cooperating with Russia, the Arctic Council has seen a recovery trend after a period of ‘freezing’. In order to identify the reasons that determined the observed differences in the dynamics of transformation of these institutions, the paper used the theoretical approach of simple and broader effects of international regimes. The number of positive simple and broader effects of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council was found to be significantly lower than those of the Arctic Council. In the context of simple effects, the reasons for the disparity are: coverage of issue areas according to the participants’ vantage points in terms of participants and geography, along with funding, while in terms of extended effects: the degree of ideologization of an institution and opportunities for political engagement at a relatively high level. A key limitation of the methodology used relates to the fact that, by looking at regimes in a functional logic, other factors are not taken into account. Nevertheless, the differences in the transformation of the Arctic Council and the Barents Euro-Arctic Council as a result of the crisis may also be related to the differences in the Russia-Norway and Russia-Finland relationships.

ФОРМУВАННЯ ТА УПРАВЛІННЯ ІННОВАЦІЙНО-ІНВЕСТИЦІЙНИМ ПОРТФЕЛЕМ В УМОВАХ ПЕРЕТВОРЕННЯ КОМПАНІЇ В ХОЛДИНГОВУ СТРУКТУРУ

The domestic economy, successfully integrated into world market relations, strives to take a leading position in modern world economic relations. The high dynamics of economic and political transformations of the legislative and executive power of our state has a stimulating effect on the activities of economic entities of the national economy. Fast-growing enterprises and companies of various forms of ownership and size are faced with the problem of finding further ways to improve the efficiency of their activities. One of these ways is the transition to innovative development factors. This path involves the development, development and use of a set of product (new products) and process (new technologies) innovations. Creativity of management allows to ensure economic adaptability of the company's management system to rapidly changing conditions of market relations. As a result of changes in the external conditions of business entities, it is the creative team of managers who are able to create a complex of non-standard management solutions for the company and successfully implement these solutions in the process of its development. Such a set of solutions, for example, may contain organizational changes in the company structure or business processes being implemented, redistribution of product and financial flows, development and implementation of investment projects, as well as various combinations of potentially possible elements of a set of management solutions. In order to obtain profit and achieve positive results from investment in innovation, modern organizations create innovation investment portfolios that reduce the risk of losing invested funds. The creation of an innovation-investment portfolio is connected with the selection of the most optimal objects of investment in innovation, that is, the implementation of innovation-investment activities. In order to evaluate the innovation and investment portfolio, various methods are used, in addition, the selection of the optimal option for the creation and regulation of the innovation and investment portfolio is carried out, as well as the analysis of potential risks that the organization will face.

Numerous insertions of mitochondrial DNA in the genome of the northern mole vole, Ellobius talpinus

BackgroundEllobius talpinus is a subterranean rodent representing an attractive model in population ecology studies due to its highly special lifestyle and sociality. In such studies, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is widely used. However, if nuclear copies of mtDNA, aka NUMTs, are present, they may co-amplify with the target mtDNA fragment, generating misleading results. The aim of this study was to determine whether NUMTs are present in E. talpinus.Methods and resultsPCR amplification of the putative mtDNA CytB-D-loop fragment using ‘universal’ primers from 56 E. talpinus samples produced multiple double peaks in 90% of the sequencing chromatograms. To reveal NUMTs, molecular cloning and sequencing of PCR products of three specimens was conducted, followed by phylogenetic analysis. The pseudogene nature of three out of the seven detected haplotypes was confirmed by their basal positions in relation to other Ellobius haplotypes in the phylogenetic tree. Additionally, ‘haplotype B’ was basal in relation to other E. talpinus haplotypes and found present in very distant sampling sites. BLASTN search revealed 195 NUMTs in the E. talpinus nuclear genome, including fragments of all four PCR amplified pseudogenes. Although the majority of the NUMTs studied were short, the entire mtDNA had copies in the nuclear genome. The most numerous NUMTs were found for rrnL, COXI, and D-loop.ConclusionsNumerous NUMTs are present in E. talpinus and can be difficult to discriminate against mtDNA sequences. Thus, in future population or phylogenetic studies in E. talpinus, the possibility of cryptic NUMTs amplification should always be taken into account.

The Concept of a Systemic (Systematic) Interpretation of Law in Domestic Legal Science XIX – Early XX Centuries

The article concentrates on the study of issues of the systemic way of interpreting of legal norms through from the stand-point of pre-revolutionary lawyers. The selection of ways to interpret legal norms began at the end of the 19th century but active research of interpreting legal norms didn’t start until the beginning of the 20th century. At the same time the systemic method of interpretation of legal norms is mentioned only in passing in these studies. The authors of the article have come to the conclusion that in the domestic pre-revolutionary legal science there were two main positions in relation to the systemic interpretation. The first one is that some authors following the position of the famous German lawyer K. Savigny considered it an independent interpretation. The second, other lawyers considered the systematic way of interpreting the legal norms as a part (reception, method, element) of a logical (real) interpretation.

Identifying important drivers of East African October to December rainfall season

Monsoon rainfall plays a crucial part in Africa's socio-economic structure and its year-to-year variability has profound implications for agricultural, energy, and other societal sectors. The current study focuses on two of the major climate drivers of the east African rainy season during October-November-December (OND), which is when the season starts for a large portion of east Africa (e.g. Tanzania and Malawi). Such drivers could be different in early austral summer from the rest of the year, due to the relative positioning of the Intertropical convergence zone, which passes through this region - hence regions of east Africa and OND season are the focus here.The two drivers of Monsoon viz. El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) are considered: both independently indicate strong connections with monsoon OND rain. Not only is there a strong significant positive correlation in the OND season as a simultaneous relation, but the signal is also there even with the lag of a few months. This has been tested using various data sources, detrending data beforehand, analysing either recent time periods or earlier time periods - covering two decades each, and using regression analyses. To further strengthen the results, a compositing approach is applied that can additionally identify strong rainfall signals to that from years when opposite combinations of ENSO and IOD phases act as confounding factors.Results of precipitation anomaly for OND for compositing, when IOD and ENSO are both negative (positive) in July–August-September(JAS) indicate a deficit (excess) in rainfall in that region. The Walker circulation seems to play a major part via altering ascending to descending branch in two situations, when both drivers are in same phase. In the last near thirty years period, a total of 9 years matched the criteria when both drivers were negative and suggested a deficit in OND rainfall; more recently, that criteria occurred also in 2022 (JAS) and was again associated with a rainfall deficit in OND 2022. Based on this analysis, it is possible to deliver an estimation of cumulative rain in terms of median value, range and distribution, one season in advance, at a point location or average over a region.Some results of compositing are confirmed for longer record (1940–2021) too and further classifications based on threshold of drivers are tested. Rainfall (OND) variability at intra-decadal, decadal and multi-decadal scales are studied by applying the method of centered moving averages of 5-year, 11-year and 21-year respectively. Our results have implications for future planning in optimizing agricultural and energy outputs, mitigating severe consequences and losses associated with droughts and excess rain and will impact the livelihoods of millions of east Africans.

U‐Net Segmentation for the Detection of Convective Cold Pools From Cloud and Rainfall Fields

AbstractConvective cold pools (CPs) mediate interactions between convective rain cells and help organize thunderstorm clusters, in particular mesoscale convective systems and extreme rainfall events. Unfortunately, the observational detection of CPs on a large scale has been hampered by the lack of relevant near‐surface data. Unlike numerical studies, where fields, such as virtual temperature or wind, are available at high resolution and frequently used to detect CPs, observational studies mainly identify CPs based on surface time series, for example, from weather stations or research vessels—thus limiting studies to a regional scope. To expand to a global scope, we here develop and evaluate a methodology for CP detection that relies exclusively on data with (a) global availability and (b) high spatiotemporal resolution. We trained convolutional neural networks to segment CPs in high‐resolution cloud‐resolving simulation output by deliberately restricting ourselves to only cloud top temperature and rainfall fields. Apart from simulations, such data are readily available from geostationary satellites that fulfill both (a) and (b). The networks employ a U‐Net architecture, popular with image segmentation, where spatial correlations at various scales must be learned. Despite the restriction imposed, the trained networks systematically identify CP pixels. Looking ahead, our methodology aims to reliably detect CPs over tropical land from space‐borne sensors on a global scale. As it also provides information on the spatial extent and the relative positioning of CPs over time, our method may unveil the role of CPs in convective organization.

Implementation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) among the Member Cities of the “Healthy Cities Network” in Israel

The Israeli Healthy Cities Network (IHCN), as one of the accredited networks of the WHO European Healthy Cities Network in its seventh phase, started mapping the level of adoption and efforts that are being made towards achieving the 17SDGs. Data for all 55 member cities was collected from the most recent online national databases. As not all indicators are available in national data sets, an online questionnaire was distributed to all 55 cities’ health coordinators, via e-mail, to acquire the needed data; 45 of the 55 replied (81.8% response rate). All SDG measures were analyzed by socio-economic cluster (SEC) using one-way ANOVA. Implementation of some indicators was checked for association with population size of municipalities, as well as structure and process measures of the healthy cities’ operation. Cities implement between 4 and 14 SDGs, and 98% implement SDG3, while the lowest implementations are of SDG13 (44%) and SDG12 (28%). Cities in higher SECs are in a better position in relation to most SDGs. However, cities in a low SEC can achieve implementation of at least some of the goals through policy and commitment. This study provides municipalities with a baseline for tracking future progress and a tool for mapping gaps in implementation. The methodology and tools presented here could be used by any municipality, as well as by national networks and other governance bodies.

Assessment Method of Modern Buildings Constructed in a Historical Area; as a Case Study İMÇ Blocks

The addition of new modern layers to the historic urban settings is a significant issue in conserving the historic area's characteristics. Thus, a method of evaluation for modern buildings built in historical areas is being devel oped. The objective includes assessing the maintenance of the historic area's qualities and designing qualified modern buildings. These two issues were evaluated by assessing the example of İstanbul Drapers and Yard Goods Bazaar, İMÇ blocks. First, historical house settlements in the construction area of İMÇ (1933) and then characteristics of İMÇ blocks (1967) were analyzed. In terms of mass proportions, the position of courtyards, circulation areas, street and square relations, and vistas, site plan organizations from 1933 and 1967 were compared, while the proportions and architectural details of the façades were compared. The assessment criteria for the evaluation of modern buildings and their impact on historical areas were determined based on international preservation standards and charters. The conservation criteria include respecting the qualities, vistas, and landmarks of existing historic structures, being recognizable and reversible, responding to the demands of the area, and providing new views, juxtapositions, and textures. Modern heritage criteria include technical, land use, aesthetic, historical, socioeconomic, intangible, canonical, and reference qualities. As a result, it is seen that the İMÇ blocks were designed in harmony with the environment and increased the spatial quality of the area. Even though the İMÇ blocks are large-scale due to architectural constraints, the orientation of the blocks, the placement of courtyards leading to the Süleymaniye Mosque, and the transverse and longitudinal continuous circulation between the blocks respected historical texture. Despite the size of the masses, their heights and architectural elements are consistent with the traditional house layout.

Maximum correentropy-based robust Square-root Cubature Kalman Filter for vehicular cooperative navigation

As the core method of cooperative navigation, relative positioning plays a key role in realizing intelligent vehicle driving and vehicle self-assembling network collaboration algorithms. However, when the contamination rate of measurement noise is high, the performance of filtering will be seriously affected. To better address the filtering performance degradation problem due to noise contamination, this paper proposes a vehicular cooperative localization method based on the Maximum Correentropy Robust Square-root Cubature Kalman Filter (MCSCKF). The algorithm not only retains the advantages of Square-root Cubature Kalman Filter (SCKF) but also has strong robustness to non-Gaussian noise. The experimental results of tightly integrated vehicular cooperative navigation show that compared with the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and Cubature Kalman Filter (CKF), the localization accuracy of MCSCKF is improved by 35.08% and 31.83%, respectively, which verified the effectiveness in improving the accuracy and robustness of the relative position estimation.

An algorithm for flexible transshipments with perfect synchronization

Direct and instant deliveries have gained popularity among customers, but have also increased the burden on cities due to rising transport incidents, especially as delivery vehicles often drive empty when returning to their origin. Flexible transshipments with perfect synchronization would allow loads to be transshiped between these vehicles without the need for storage facilities. This may increase their average proximity to their origin and reduce the proportion of empty rides. We present a problem-specific algorithm with three sub-steps to solve this concept. The first evaluates the relational position between two deliveries and, based on 36 structured cases, decides which pairs to exclude from the solution space. The second formulates the optimization problem to find the best transshipment location while considering time-limit constraints and transfer times. Finally, we apply the request-pair combination problem to graph theory to determine the lowest overall travel time. In our paper, we consider a continuous problem definition which allows flexible transshipments, and assume unit-sized capacity per vehicle and a maximum of one transshipment per request.We show that our algorithm reduces the initial total travel time of direct deliveries by 9.6% in a numerical simulation, and by 11% in a case study using food delivery data from the city of Bordeaux. We also demonstrate that the total time is best reduced by increasing time constraints rather than adding requests to increase the chance of transshipments. Our algorithm not only helps to reduce travel time, but also improves sustainability, mitigates driver shortages and is easy to implement.

Varying particle size selectivity of soil erosion along a cultivated catena

Abstract Sheet erosion is a complex multi-factor-dependent process with high spatial heterogeneity on hillslopes. Although the individual factors have been well studied, their aggregated effect on size-selective erosional processes is highly uncertain. Therefore, this study concentrates on the aggregate size distribution and effective particle size distribution (PSD) of the aggregates in the soil loss, collected from different simulated hillslope positions and surface conditions. These simulated hillslope positions combine moisture content from the extremely dry to the saturated with related slope positions of 2, 5, and 12% steepness and different surface roughness (tilled and crusted surfaces) modelled in a laboratory rainfall simulator. Using hierarchical cluster analysis, the PSD of the aggregates was separated into three groups based on the differences in the 59–116 µm range of the PSD histograms, namely, macro-aggregates, 50–250 µm sized micro-aggregates, and <50 µm sized fractions were classified into distinct groups, although some micro-aggregate samples were classified into the macro-aggregate group. PSDs from the 50–250 µm aggregate size fraction were clustered into a group of macro-aggregates if the PSD changed with time (during the rainfall event), notably on rough surfaces. The role of the specified size range in the classification is believed to be due to the parallel presence of aggregates and single particles in this range. As aggregates have a lower density than mineral particles, they tend to be enriched in soil loss under low-energy runoff conditions. Moreover, all samples in the <50 µm fraction clustered into the macro-aggregate group were eroded from the smooth/crusted surface, probably due to the presence of larger particles. The results indicate that the combined effect of erosional factors is not apparent, and the impact of the crust and extreme moisture content on the selectivity and size distribution of the sediment requires further investigation.

Self-Fashioning and Ambiguities of Revolution in Austin Clarke's "Initiation"

This is a paper on Austin Clarke’s short story from his collection of short stories titled, In This City. The story can be seen as being a part of Diaspora Studies, Immigrant Literature and Black Studies. The paper critically scrutinizes the short story based on the text and the context to argue how there was an absence of sustainable structures in the public sphere for black immigrant masculinities to sufficiently express themselves in a white heteronormative culture. Sociological ideas of Toby Miller and Erving Goffman are used to understand how black immigrant identities could only sufficiently be expressed in alternate sub-structures that remained isolated from the dominant white and heteronormative status quo. The central subject of “white space” of the issue is highly relevant to the paper’s exploration of how the systems of self-fashioning and revolution that exist in the public imagination are “incomplete” in their lack of reliability and sufficiency for black immigrants in Canada. Hence, their position in relation to aspirations of self-fashioning and revolution is one of ambiguity as the title of the paper itself states.
 
 The paper lays bare how these ambiguities are manufactured based on the chasm that exists between the ways in which the characters want to act and the ways of self-fashioning that society approves for them. It also explores how the systems of revolution are incomplete for them as there is an absence in terms of a revolutionary process that ensures stability and self-preservation.
 

Named Entity Recognition in Persian Language based on Self-attention Mechanism with Weighted Relational Position Encoding

Named-entity Recognition (NER) is challenging for languages with low digital resources. The main difficulties arise from the scarcity of annotated corpora and the consequent problematic training of an effective NER Model. We propose a customized model based on linguistic properties to compensate for this lack of resources in low-resource languages like Persian. According to pronoun-dropping and subject-object-verb word order specifications of Persian, we propose new weighted relative positional encoding in the self-attention mechanism. Using the pointwise mutual information factor, we inject co-occurrence information into context representation. We trained and tested our model on three different datasets: Arman, Peyma, and ParsTwiNER, and our method achieved 94.16%, 93.36%, and 84.49% word-level F1 scores, respectively. The experiments showed that our proposed model performs better than other Persian NER models. Ablation Study and Case Study also showed that our method can converge faster and is less prone to overfitting.

Does increasing vertical dimension of occlusion in centric relation affect muscular activity? An electromyographic study.

In many esthetic treatments, clinicians may consider the option to modify the maxillo mandibular position. A raise of the vertical dimension of occlusion (VDO) may help restore esthetics, increase the space for dental materials, and reduce the invasiveness of dental procedures. Traditionally, VDO increases are done by using the centric relation (CR) position. Despite a long history of use, the neuromuscular effects of different maxillo mandibular relations are not fully studied. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of alterations of maxillo-mandibular relation from maximal intercuspal position (MIP) to a raised VDO CR position on jaw-elevator muscle activity. Fifteen healthy individuals were asked to carry out maximal voluntary clenching (MVC) in MIP and in CR on individual splints. Electromyographic (EMG) activity of the masseter and anterior temporalis muscles was assessed in μV as the root mean square of the amplitude. Specific indexes and ratios were also computed. Data analyzed in MIP and CR were compared by paired student's t-tests. MVC levels were not negatively affected by a VDO increase in CR position. On the contrary masseter muscles showed a statistically significant increase (p < 0.005). No significant effect on the anterior temporalis was observed. These results suggest that no immediate negative effect on maximum voluntary clenching was induced by a VDO increase in CR position. A slight increase observed in EMG clenching levels could be explained by the increase in VDO when clenching on the splint. The results of this study support the use of CR position as a pragmatic reference position due to the absence of relevant or negative changes in neuromuscular function.

Evaluation of horizontal lip position using different soft tissue analysis in Shimla population - A cephalometric study

: 1. To study the horizontal lip position in Dentally and Dentoskeletally normal subjects of Shimla adult population using different soft tissue analysis. 2. To study the sexual dimorphism in horizontal lip position of Shimla adult population. 3. To study the differences of horizontal lip position among Dentally and Dentoskeletally normal subjects of Shimla adult population. 4. To compare the horizontal lip position of Dentoskeletally normal subjects of Shimla adult population with established norms. 5. To assess the most consistent esthetic reference line. Pre-treatment lateral cephalograms of 100 subjects aged between 18-25 years were taken, who visited the Department of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopaedics Shimla, Himachal Pradesh for their orthodontic consultation for the study. In Shimla adult population retrusive upper lip in relation to Steiner’s S1 line, Ricketts’ E line and retrusive lower lip in relation to Steiner’s S1 line, Ricketts’ E line, Sushner’s S2 line was found. The norms for upper and lower lip position in relation to Burstone’s B line in Shimla adult population coincide with the established Burstone’s norms. Holdaway’s established norms for lower lip can also be applied to Shimla adult population. Shimla adult population has different cephalometric norms for horizontal lip position in relation to Steiner’s and Ricketts’ line whereas same established norms of Burstone and Holdaway can be applied to Shimla adult population.

CONE BEAM COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY, IMPORTANCE OF EXAMINATION FOR THE STORAGE OF THERAPEUTICAL FAILURES IN IMPLANTOLOGY

CBCT (Cone Beam Computed Tomography) plays a crucial role in implantology, offering significant advantages over traditional two-dimensional imaging techniques, such as X-rays. Here are some of the important benefits of CBCT in implantology. Precise three-dimensional imaging: CBCT provides high-resolution three-dimensional images of the patient's oral and maxillofacial region. This allows a comprehensive assessment of anatomical structures, including bone volume, quality, and density. Precise evaluation of these factors is crucial for successful implant placement. In the analysis of CBCTs, we followed all the parameters of the hard tissues, and depending on them we opted for the insertion of the implants, ensuring their predictability post-resort through rigorous management of each clinical case. Using CBCT, the bone supply at the level of each implant site was examined, corresponding to each tooth at the jaw and mandibular level, subsequently performing a computerized simulation of implant positioning in relation to neighborhood anatomical formations, taking into account the indications of subsequent prosthetic rehabilitation, including as long as clinical cases have allowed patients' aesthetic desires. The CBCT-type investigation is indispensable for complex and complete implantology oral rehabilitation for each clinical case, taking into account, as far as possible, the guided insertion of implants from a prosthetic point of view.