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The purpose of this article is to report the findings of a pilot study using the Well-being Picture Scale (WPS) to appraise well-being in pregnancy among an ethnically diverse group of women. The WPS is a 10-item non-language pictorial scale based on Rogerian science that measures general well-being within the unique human-environmental field process. Since the WPS had not been used previously to measure well-being in pregnancy or in Hispanic populations, inquiry was broadly focused on how multi-cultural women would report well-being in general and whether or not well-being, as reflected by WPS mean scores, would be influenced by trimester of pregnancy. Fifty-five African American, Native American, Hispanic, and Caucasian women from three prenatal clinics in southeastern North Carolina participated in the study. Differences in WPS mean scores between the ethnic groups were not statistically significant, however a trend toward lower WPS mean scores was noted among Hispanic women and among all women with increasing gestation. The WPS was reported by all participants to be easily understood. This pilot study supports the need for further exploration of the unitary concept of well-being in diverse populations from a Rogerian science perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Pathways to Prevention panel on postpartum health provides a consensus statement on the evidence, research gaps, and future priorities to prevent maternal morbidity and mortality. The panel reviewed an NIH-commissioned evidence review and workshop that included epidemiologic studies, demonstration interventions, and other maternal morbidity and mortality research to create these national recommendations. The panel concludes that a maternal morbidity and mortality crisis reflects a systemic failure of current U.S. health care, research efforts, and social policies. The panel recommends improving maternal health through a "maternal morbidity and mortality prevention moonshot" that adopts a comprehensive, multilevel life course conceptual framework; strengthens the research methods used within the science of maternal health; establishes and conducts national prevention, treatment, and policy interventions; and reimburses evidence-informed clinical approaches to improve maternal health across the life course. Without a national focus on fundamentally transformative interventions and other initiatives aimed at redressing structural racism and inequities in health care, current interventions and clinical advances in maternal morbidity and mortality prevention will remain tragically insufficient., Competing Interests: Financial Disclosure The authors did not report any potential conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)

Aims: To understand the patient and family perceptions of teamwork by synthesising existing evidence using the Interprofessional Education Collaborative Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice as a guiding framework., Background: Advances in healthcare have resulted in more people living longer with health conditions, and patients and families have become the primary caregivers. The role of the interprofessional collaborative team supports a paradigm shift to a care model with the patient and family at the centre of healthcare decisions. However, patient and family views of interprofessional collaborative team care have rarely been studied., Methods: The authors applied Whittmore and Knafl's methodology to conduct an integrative review of the literature. Databases searched included Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, PubMed and PsycINFO along with reference searches. The studies included were those related to patient and family perceptions of teamwork published from 2000 to 2020. The IPEC Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice served as the guiding framework for analysis. A PRISMA flow chart documented the search, inclusion and exclusion criteria for the review., Results: Seventeen articles met the inclusion criteria. The findings identified differing perspectives by patients of the impact of the interprofessional collaborative team in their care which suggests that interventions to increase knowledge about interprofessional collaborative team care from the patient and family perspective may be beneficial., Conclusions: There is limited research on understanding IPC teams from the patient and family viewpoint. This review reveals incongruencies in patient and provider perspectives of IPC teams and suggests the need for additional research about patient and family perspectives of teamwork. To fully implement the IPC team vision, perceptions of teamwork must be fully understood., (© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Clinical Nursing published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Petroleum is, at present, still the main energy source in the world. Most of it is stored in carbonate rock reservoirs with complex inner structures and pores ranging from nanometers to dozens of meters. Knowing the rock's entire pore network is indispensable to perform an effective petroleum extraction. X-ray microtomography, a technique that generates images from samples' inner structure and a powerful tool to evaluate the 3D pore network, was employed in this scientific research to scan four kinds of carbonate rocks (Dolomite, Desert Pink, Indiana, and Winterset) in five different pore scales (90 µm, 13 µm, 5.5 µm, 1.0 µm, and 65 nm). A multi-scale approach based on the number of pores was applied to integrate different pore scale data and assess the total porosity as well as each sample pore size distribution. The results were compared to classical Mercury Injection Capillary Pressure (MICP) results, demonstrating a fair agreement in total porosity in the two samples. Multi-scale porosity of the Dolomite sample was 17.7% against (18.9 ± 2.1)% of the MICP porosity. The Winterset sample had multi-scale porosity of 26.2%, while MICP porosity was (31.2 ± 0.6)%. Pore size distribution results were rather satisfactory, especially when overlapping regions in different scales were compared. In general, the multi-scale approach showed good potential. It still needs further evaluation to fine-tune some procedures and fluid flow simulation tests but might become a useful tool to study reservoir rocks with a wide range of pore sizes, such as carbonate rocks., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This research aimed to obtain the depth dependence of polymerization contraction and microporosity from irradiated dental resin cements by X-ray computed microtomography (μCT). Samples (n = 5) of commercial Relyx U200 (RU) and AllCem Core (AC) dual-cure resin cements were injected in a cylindrical Teflon sampler (25 mm 3 ) and separated according to polymerization mechanism: self-cured (not irradiated) and dual-cured (irradiated from the top surface with a LED device). The cement's volume was scanned with the μCT scanning conditions kept constant. To assess the depth dependence of polymerization contraction, it was measured the displacement of the cement mass from the sample holder at 30 vertical cuts (0.1 mm distant). To probe the microporosity, the percentage of area with presence of porosity by slice was obtained. All data were statistically treated. It was observed a positive linear correlation between depth and polymerization contraction in the irradiated groups. In the other hand, the concentration of micropores decreased with increasing depth. Furthermore, the composition of the resin cement was determinant for the correlation's coefficients of these physical properties with depth. The μCT technique showed to be useful to probe physical properties of dental restorative materials that influence in the clinical outcomes, revealing that, for thin specimens, when light cured the RU cement presented mechanical behavior more favorable for clinical applications., (© 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Introduction: This in vitro study compared the performance of the XP-endo Shaper (XP; FKG, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland) in curved canals when used with a higher speed (3000 rpm) without a glide path with the manufacturer's protocol., Methods: Twenty extracted mandibular molars with separate mesial curved canals were matched to obtain 2 standardized groups (n = 20). For the XP 1000 group, a glide path up to a size 15 hand file was performed followed by rotary instrumentation with the XP shaper at 1000 rpm, following the manufacturer's recommendations. For the canals in the XP 3000 group, the file was rotated at 3000 rpm after only negotiation the canal with a size 8 hand file (patency file). The operating time and the number of strokes taken to reach the working length (WL) and fit a 30/.04 gutta-percha cone to the WL were recorded. The shaping abilities were evaluated by micro-computed tomographic imaging and file deformation by scanning electron microscopy. Data were analyzed using analysis of variance and chi-square tests at a 5% significance level., Results: The XP 3000 group required less time and strokes to reach the WL (P < .05) and resulted in a higher percentage of adequate cone fit (P < .05). No difference was found between groups regarding the micro-CT parameters, except for the taper, which was larger in the XP 3000 group in the apical and middle thirds (P < .05). No difference was found regarding file deformation between the 2 groups., Conclusions: The suggested protocol for the use of the XP (3000 rpm without a glide path) appears to be more efficient than the manufacturer's recommended protocol to prepare curved canals in vitro., (Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus are vectors of several arboviruses responsible for causing dengue, chikungunya, Zika, and yellow fever viruses and microcephaly, resulting in a public health problem in several countries worldwide. Even in this scenario, studies on the morphology of mosquito eggs are still lacking. In this paper, X-ray microtomography was used to study mosquito egg morphology. Several parameters such as length, surface area, volume, area-by-volume ratio, eccentricity and center of mass of the eggs were determined. The results obtained showed that micro-CT is an efficient technique for the morphological study of insect eggs and provides information that cannot be obtained with other techniques., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This research aims to probe the porosity profile and polymerization shrinkage of two different dual cure resin cements with different dentin bonding systems. The self-adhesive resin cement RelyX U200 (named RU) and the conventional Allcem Core (named AC) were analyzed by x-ray microtomography (μCT) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Each cement was divided into two groups (n = 5): dual-cured (RUD and ACD) and self-cured (RUC and ACC). μCT demonstrated that the method of polymerization does not influence the porosity profile but the polymerization shrinkage. Fewer concentration of pores was observed for the conventional resin cement (AC), independently the method used for curing the sample. In addition, SEM showed that AC has more uniform surface and smaller particle size. The method of polymerization influenced the polymerization shrinkage, since no contraction for both RUC and ACC was observed, in contrast with results from dual-cured samples. For RUD and ACD the polymerization shrinkage was greater in the lower third of the sample and minor in the upper third. This mechanical behavior is attributed to the polymerization toward the light. µCT showed to be a reliable technique to probe porosity and contraction due to polymerization of dental cements., (© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

In the study of pore size distributions within microtomographic images, there is no consensus in how to group pore size distributions obtained at different spatial resolutions in a single distribution, which represents the properties of the sample in a better way. This work presents a proposition that allows to group pore size distributions obtained by microtomography images in different spatial resolutions. A Shark's Bay oolite was imaged by X-ray microtomography at 4.4μm and 1.1μm spatial resolutions. The pore size distribution and average porosity were determined for each resolution. Through a weight factor obtained from the number of pores measured on those distributions, it is possible to group the pore size distributions in a single distribution. Using the pore size distribution for the grouped function, the average porosity of the sample was determined, which was then compared to the total porosity measured by mercury porosimetry, showing that this distribution characterizes the sample in a more representative way., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

X-ray microtomography is a 3D non-destructive method which, through digital images, enables a view of the internal structure of samples. Recently, researchers have been extensively performing various methods in the attempt to determine the chemical composition of materials. This paper brings further insight into this matter and proposes a new experimental method for determining the internal chemical composition of samples. Using a set of standard samples, calibration curves can be created that allow to relate the average gray scale of a sample obtained through microtomographic images to the value of ρZeff(m). In this model, ρZeff(m) is the parameter that chemically characterizes a material. The exponent m is obtained by the average value obtained with standard samples, which were titanium dioxide (TiO2), calcium chloride (CaCl2), calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2), and calcium nitrate (Ca(NO3)2). For the samples scanning process, a Bruker SkyScan 1172 microCT was used for testing rocks, nylon, graphite, calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and aluminum samples. The experimental results achieved by this method were consistent with the theoretical values., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)