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The challenge of degradation of natural ecosystems because of human activity is considered by the world community to the most serious problems facing mankind. As a result of mineral extraction, man-made landscapes and environmentally ruined areas replace natural habitats and agroecosystems; a whole spectrum of man-made processes are typical for such landscapes, which leads to a decrease in species richness and biological diversity within such areas. Degraded territories formed in the process of coal mining are often partially restored through remediation measures. During the implementation of the technical stage of remediation, substrates with different potential fertility having different environmental properties and quality are used. Specific features of distribution total, available nitrogen concentrations and levels of urease enzymatic activity at the layers of artificial soil, sod-lithogenic soils onto gray-green and red-brown clays and on loess-like loams in the Nikopol manganese ore basin are established. It is presented general assessment of technosol status by concentration of general easily hydrolysed nitrogen enzyme activity of urease and this enzyme enriches the soil with mineral nitrogen in the process of mineralization of organic substances. The level of activity of urease, investigated soils, determines the intensity of the direction of biochemical processes that affect soil fertility.High correlation between concentrations of soluble nitrogen and urease activity values by layers of artificial soil (r = 0.81), sod-lithogenic soils onto gray-green (r = 0.98), red-brown clays (r = 0.72) and onto loess-like loam (r = 0.85) were found. Tendency of decreasing hydrolytic enzyme activity, urease, with depth in all types of artificial soil studied was established. It has been established that biochemical diagnostics of technozem processes beyond the level of activity of the hydrolytic enzyme urease makes it possible to estimate the direction of changes at the layers of artificial soil, sod-lithogenic soils onto gray-green and red-brown clays and on loess-like loams. The recultivated soil has some what lower fertility and greater salimity at the lower horizons, but is capable of performing ecological functions and can not only be used for economic purposes, but also perform ecological functions.

The article presents the results of the analysis of the problem of digitalization of ed-ucation. Interrelations of digitalization of ecological education with noospheric essence of modern civilization and realization of the concept of sustainable development are established. Possibilities of use of developments of the Russian and foreign scientists and teachers are con-sidered. The importance and main directions of development of digitalization of environmental education are shown. Attention is drawn to the need for digitalization of environmental educa-tion in the preparation of not only environmental specialists, but also specialists in other areas of training. Digitalization of education should be aimed at the formation of eco-cultural compe-tencies. The article presents the results of an experimental study of the use of modern IT by various participants of the educational process. The studies were conducted by questionnaire method and allow to indicate the current directions of further development of digitalization of education, including environmental education.

Specific features of distribution total, available phosphorus concentrations and levels of phosphatase enzymatic activity at the layers of artificial soil, sod-lithogenic soils onto gray-green and red-brown clays and on loess-like loams in the Nikopol manganese ore basin are established. It is presented general assessment of technosoil status by evaluation of phosphatase enzyme activity; this enzyme enriches the soil with mineral phosphorus and thereby improves its availability for living organisms. Among current bioindication methodology, soil enzymatic method is the most reliable and promising because enzymatic activity serves a stable indicator of soil biogenicity in comparison with other indicators. Soil enzymatic activity determines both intensity and targeting of biogeochemical processes. High correlation between concentrations of soluble phosphorus and phosphatase activity values by layers of artificial soil (r = 0.87), sod-lithogenic soils onto gray-green (r = 0.77), red-brown clays (r = 0.62) and onto loess-like loam (r = 0.95) was determined. Tendency of decreasing hydrolytic enzyme activity, phosphatase, with depth in all types of artificial soil studied was established. High efficiency of the enzymatic activity study in diagnostics of soil fertility dynamics under impact of various anthropogenic and natural ecosystems was determined. Advantages of using this method are capability to determine rapidly the changes occurring in ecosystems in the early stages of degradation processes and prediction of their targeting and, accordingly, their intensity. It has been found that levels of phosphatase activity and values of mobile phosphorus compounds in complex biogeocoenotic systems are sensitive quantitative indicators of changes in environmental conditions in man-made environment, and they generate good data about processes occurred within the soil column. The use of phosphatase activity level can be a reliable and promising method on biomonitoring of technogenic edaphotops.

The University of British Columbia (UBC) in collaboration with a software developer (Planmeca Oy, Finland) created an electronic oral health record based on the principles of cognitive ergonomics rooted in the European research and development project 'ORQUEST' to guide students through medical, dental, social histories, examinations, treatment planning and progress notes. Clinicians in each dental specialty of the Faculty of Dentistry and software engineers cooperated to define the clinical content and workflow of clinical procedures in three phases: (i) development of a radiographic module, (ii) development of medical, dental, social and family histories, intra- and extra-oral examinations, progress notes and treatment planning and (iii) development of the orthodontic section accompanied by an optimisation phase to correct technical problems and clinical content issues. From a practical perspective, this EOHR enhances the clinical performance of students and the quality assurance capacity of the institution. It facilitates audits of clinical productivity and research, and it can be modified with relative ease to suit similar educational and clinical environments in either public or private healthcare settings.

Usually, a 'computerised dental practice' has included a series of diagnostic instruments, intra-oral cameras, digital radiographic systems, treatment planning systems, CAD-CAM systems, management systems etc. However, these 'island solutions' have not been integrated into one system. Nevertheless, it is possible to produce fully integrated systems for digital clinical records, based on established physiologic and cognitive-ergonomic concepts. The first part of this paper outlines the philosophy behind the development of such a totally integrated system for digital clinical records. The second – digital practice administration – considers how the 'digital revolution' has impacted upon practice administration.

The process of pubertal development is only partly understood and is influenced by many different factors. During the twentieth century there was a general trend toward earlier pubertal development. Fat mass is thought to be a major inducer of puberty. Owing to the rising epidemic of childhood obesity, the relationship between body composition in children and the rate and timing of puberty needs to be investigated. Some studies suggest that central obesity is associated with an earlier onset of pubertal development. Rapid weight gain in early life is linked to advanced puberty in both sexes. A clear correlation exists between increasing body mass index (BMI) and earlier pubertal development in girls. In boys the data are controversial: The majority of studies propose that there is an earlier puberty and voice break in obese boys, but some studies show the opposite. There are several factors and mechanisms that seem to link obesity and puberty, for example, leptin, adipocytokines, and gut peptides. Important players include genetic variation and environmental factors (e.g., endocrine-disrupting chemicals). This article presents the latest studies and evidence on this topic, underlining the inconsistencies in the data and, therefore, the need for further research in this area.

Clinical documentation, including medical/dental history, oral status findings, treatment planning, and progress notes, are prerequisites for the use of retrospective evaluation procedures as well as for quality assessment and enhancement. A substantial condition for making full profit of these advantages of digital clinical records is that their design is based on established physiologic- and cognitive-ergonomic concepts.

Domain specific knowledge is often not static but continuously evolving. This is especially true for the medical domain. Furthermore, the lack of standardized structures for presenting knowledge makes it difficult or often impossible to assess new knowledge in the context of existing knowledge. Possibilities to compare knowledge easily and directly are often not given. It is therefore of utmost importance to create a model that allows for comparability, consistency and quality assurance of medical knowledge in specific work situations. For this purpose, we have designed on object-relational model based on structured knowledge elements that are dynamically reusable by different multi-media-based tools for case-based documentation, disease course simulation, and decision support. With this model, high-level components, such as patient case reports or simulations of the course of a disease, and low-level components (e.g., diagnoses, symptoms or treatments) as well as the relationships between these components are modeled. The resulting schema has been implemented in AMOS II, on object-relational multi-database system supporting different views with regard to search and analysis depending on different work situations.

During the last years, the number of commercially available digital radiographic systems has increased rapidly. Nevertheless, they are hardly used in practice because several drawbacks still hinder dental practitioners from using digital radiography effectively in their routine work. In order to allow effective use of such systems in the dental practice, they must be integrated into the daily routine in an ergonomically optimal way and be driven by software following the rules of cognitive ergonomy and perception. The most important prerequisite for meaningful use of digital radiography in the dental practice is that it supports instead of disturbs daily clinical work. The underlying software should be easily comprehensible and intuitively applicable. This paper discusses advantages and disadvantages of digital compared to conventional radiography and how the introduction of digital radiography in dental practice affects clinical work. A concept is introduced that enables effective and quality-controlled use of digital radiographic systems in the dental practice by taking cognitive ergonomic aspects of the clinical work situation into account. This concept comprises the design of image databases for efficient storage and retrieval, the quality-controlled use of image manipulation methods adapted to the clinical requirements during diagnostic interpretation, and the usage of decision support systems for diagnosis and therapy of radiographic lesions.

The recent technological advances in the area of image processing and interactive computer graphics have lead to many sophisticated systems which support clinical experts in diagnosis and treatment planning tasks. In dentistry, the treatment with implants becomes more and more important. Although in the near future there will be increased demand for dentists who are trained in dental implantology, little effort has been made to introduce technologically new teaching methods into the curriculum of dentists. This paper describes the design of a virtual implant treatment planning system which is based on the concept of a three-dimensional horizontal display. The system is utilizing different VR and multimedia techniques to achieve a highly interactive virtual workbench environment which is suited for class-room experimental education in dental implantology.

During the last five years, quality development has become a most important issue in oral health care. In every day practice, quality development meets, however, a considerable number of objective obstacles, mainly due to the lack of direct access to the information necessary in a specific clinical work situation and due to the absence of knowledge on own performance in relation to quality goals. The EU-TAP project ORQUEST has identified different clinical work situations and built up an integrated ITT-platform composed of different software modules and hardware components for each clinical work situation in order to allow for adequate ITT-support in specific clinical situations.

The aim of the present investigation was to perform an international multicenter comparison of dental appearance as evaluated by dentists, dental technicians, and nondental subjects.The participants were drawn from three groups: 203 dentists, 197 dental technicians and 254 nondental subjects. The methods developed in a previous study in Sweden were applied again in seven centers located in six countries. A questionnaire, accompanied by five sets of computer-manipulated images portraying one man and one woman, was used to prompt and record responses to different aspects of dental appearance and function.The questionnaire revealed that both the dental appearance and function of teeth were important to most of the participants, but three quarters of the participants did indicate that good dental function was more important that esthetics. More women (30%) than men (18%), however, placed greater importance on appearance. Age or gender did not influence judgments of the computer-manipulated images, although judgments did vary greatly within the three groups and between the centers. Nonetheless, highly colored teeth were preferred more often by nondental subjects than by dentists or dental technicians.Computer-aided image manipulation shows promise as a method for investigating the significance of dental-related beliefs, especially those relating to esthetics, in different population groups. The evaluation of dental appearance and function in this study indicated that dental function is held in greater regard, and that the significance of dental appearance varies widely among dentists, dental technicians, and nondental subjects.

The quality of clinical decision making is limited by the performance of human cognitive processing of complex visual information. In the field of oral implantology, treatment planning is still based on the holistic interpretation and mental reconstruction of cross sectional 2d-image data. This surpasses widely human cognitive competence and hampers treatment planning in three dimensions that are essential in implantology. To overcome these problems, a virtual reality environment for enhanced treatment planning in oral implantology is presented, which provides a fully three-dimensional perception of an individual clinical situation. It enables the clinician to perceive and handle the objects of her work in a virtual world as needed for the task of diagnosis and treatment. Human visual decoding effort is thus reduced, and estimating the real position and orientation of implants during planning is enabled in any direction. Immersive three-dimensional perception is achieved by hybrid stereoscopic rendering techniques combined with large screen projections. The virtual world in which treatment planning takes place allows the clinician to move and interact with the individual anatomy simultaneously with three degrees of freedom. A set of virtual tools enables the clinician to perform a virtual treatment "in advance." The design and placement of implants, as it is interactively controlled by the clinician, is simulated in real-time. Thus the results of actions become immediately visible and provide visible feedback for interactive adjustment. In addition, the presented virtual reality environment for oral implant treatment planning includes algorithms for detection of inappropriate treatment in the concerned bone regions, according to the current design of the implant. These algorithms take both the individual properties of a patient's bone and the type of implants used into account.

The reported poor diagnostic quality of 30-50% of all radiographs made in dental practices suggests the need for standardized quality measures and appropriate image improvement procedures. We propose a new method to evaluate the quality of digital/digitized radiographs using feature vectors. This method assures the separation of over- and under-exposed radiographs from well exposed ones as clusters of "good image quality" and "poor image quality" in the resulting feature space. Automatic image improvement is accomplished by adaptive, piece-wise linear grayvalue transformation with regard to the image quality being measured. In particular, our method automatically detects grayvalue intervals which are likely to represent relevant diagnostic information as well as grayvalue intervals which are irrelevant for diagnostic purposes. Based on those intervals, a piece-wise linear grayvalue mapping function is calculated. These procedures may be used both on whole images and for the interactive improvement of suspected pathological regions of interest. Actual image quality is indicated by the simultaneous display of the defined cluster of "good image quality" and the position of the image within the feature space for visual control.

The concept of a decision-support oriented, interactive, multimedia technique-based dental workstation is presented from the viewpoint of improved quality assurance. Special emphasis is given to the modules for handling and interpretation of radiographs.

Work analyses in dental practices have revealed a need for improvements especially in regard to patient dental record, decision support for diagnosis and therapy and patient recall. An adequate decision support for diagnosis, therapy and prevention requires the use of the most advanced methods of informatics and computer bases interactive multimedia technology as well as of advanced human-computer interface techniques.

Information concerning initial pellicle forming (dental cuticle) are possible via contact-angle determination. Not only the type of the restorative material but also its surface processing (structure) influence the initial forming of the pellicle. The higher the surface energy of a material, the more complete and quicker the masking of the surface by the initial pellicle.

Selected material properties of hot and cold polymerized denture basic materials (polymethylmethacrylate) were investigated after different methods of isolation: alginate, tin foil and silicone. Both tin foil and silicone isolation the handling of which is much easier result in a decreased portion of porosities and an increased microhardness in the PMMA.

In the present paper hot and cold polymerized denture basic materials were investigated after isolation by means of alginate, tin foil and silicone. Measurements of roughness and internal stresses after polymerization show that the advantages of a silicone isolation correspond to those of a tin foil isolation, where the clinically important smoothing effect of a silicone isolation is convincing using simple laboratory handling.

As the conventional diagnostic methods are largely dependent upon the subjective power of judgment, despite the good recognizability of the mucosa which lines the oral cavity, the present day possibilities of extended diagnostics are discussed and commented upon. Neither the ultrasonic diagnostic methods for determining the thickness of the mucosa, nor the cytologic and histologic methods may be considered practice-relevant. But it is of interest that the specialized, lining and masticatory mucosae show specific reactions. The masticatory mucosa which comprises also the rests of the gingiva propria, is as well individually determined, which explains the different responses to mechanical, chemical and bacterial-toxic stimuli. A choice of clinical examples serves to demonstrate that such empirical values may be useful in clinical diagnostics and, thus, that they are of great importance in preparation of prosthetic-therapeutic measures.

Due to differences in the aetiology, diagnosis, therapy, and prognosis, it is necessary to delimitate the clinic picture of stomatitis prothetica against the syndromes of glossalgia and stomatodynia.

A culturological perspective of problems of ecology of childhood; approaches to formation of a problem field of childhood ecology in the context of development of ideas about the phenomenon of childhood and its transformation in the global world conditions, importance of cultural factors, education and professional competence of teachers in ecologization of childhood space, implementation of subjective potential of childhood in the big cultural creativity process on the basis of eco-cultural values have been grounded. It has been emphasized that environmental problems are not limited to the problem of childhood, environmental security, which in themselves are paradoxical (the need to protect people from the consequences of the environmental crisis generated by them). The problems make obvious the need to find causes of environmental problems in human culture and society, and their solution - in formation of a new cultural code based on interiorization by personalities and society of ecocultural values, their ecological culture.