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AbstractAimsTo assess dental pain among male Saudi schoolchildren with intellectual learning disabilities (ILD) compared with controls and evaluate parents' perceptions of their children's dental pain and dental status.Methods and ResultsA mixed‐method cross‐sectional study of 92 male schoolchildren aged 12‐16 years was conducted at schools in Albaha, Saudi Arabia between March and May 2018. Participants were clinically examined for dental caries. Parents' perspectives on their children's dental pain were explored using interviews and a questionnaire. Chi‐square, Mann‐Whitney, Kendall's tau‐b, and t‐test analyses were run using SPSS® version 20.0. Children with and without ILD had a high prevalence of dental caries (77% and 86%, respectively). Participants with ILD had significantly higher Dental Discomfort Questionnaire (DDQ) scores than healthy controls (0.75 ± 0.27 and 0.59 ± 0.11, respectively), and their decayed teeth (DT) scores were higher. Parents' ability to determine the complexity of dental treatment needed was significantly related to oral pain in both groups.ConclusionChildren with ILD had more dental caries and pain than children without disabilities. Future research may use longitudinal studies to examine dental pain and caries in younger children with ILD and assess their parental perspectives. Implementation of oral educational programmes targeting parents of those children may be recommended.

This article reports the first meta-analysis of the L2 motivational self system (Dörnyei, 2005, 2009). A total of 32 research reports, involving 39 unique samples and 32,078 language learners, were meta-analyzed. The results showed that the three components of the L2 motivational self system (the ideal L2 self, the ought-to L2 self, and the L2 learning experience) were significant predictors of subjective intended effort (rs = .61, .38, and .41, respectively), though weaker predictors of objective measures of achievement (rs = .20, -.05, and .17). Substantial heterogeneity was also observed in most of these correlations. The results also suggest that the strong correlation between the L2 learning experience and intended effort reported in the literature is, due to substantial wording overlap, partly an artifact of lack of discriminant validity between these two scales. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.

This paper investigates the attitudinal/motivational predictors of second language (L2) academic achievement. Young adult learners of English as a foreign language (N = 311) completed several self-report measures and the Single-Target Implicit Association Test. Examination of the motivational profiles of high and low achievers revealed that attachment to the L1 community and the ought-to L2 self were negatively associated with achievement, while explicit attitudes toward the L2 course and implicit attitudes toward L2 speakers were positively associated with it. The relationship between implicit attitudes and achievement could not be explained either by social desirability or by other cognitive confounds, and remained significant after controlling for explicit self-report measures. Explicit–implicit congruence also revealed a similar pattern, in that congruent learners were more open to the L2 community and obtained higher achievement. The results also showed that neither the ideal L2 self nor intended effort had any association with actual L2 achievement, and that intended effort was particularly prone to social desirability biases. Implications of these findings are discussed.

This paper reports the first investigation in the second language acquisition field assessing learners' implicit attitudes using the Implicit Association Test, a computerized reaction-time measure. Examination of the explicit and implicit attitudes of Arab learners of English (N = 365) showed that, particularly for males, implicit attitudes toward L2 speakers are associated with self-reported openness to the L2 group and with strength of correlations among attitudinal and motivational variables. Implicit attitudes also moderated important paths in the L2 Motivational Self System. The paper concludes that implicit attitudes seem to be a meaningful individual difference variable, adding a new dimension to our understanding of language motivation.

Surface wettability plays a significant role in determining the function of the wound dressing. They should have hydrophobic surfaces for the adsorption of bacteria and a hydrophilic surface necessary to improve cell attachment for most anchorage-dependent cell types. Furthermore, the Hydrophobicity / Hydrophilicity of the surface can be used to direct cellular processes such as cell initial correlation, adhesion, and migration during wound healing, as a result such surface can change its surface wettability which increases the dressing's usefulness.
In this research, nanomembres were prepared from polycaprolactone and chitosan solution (with different amounts of CS (0.05, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.4) % (w/w)) by the electrospinning method. These membranes were characterized by Fourier-transform infrared FTIR spectroscopy and their wettability, contact angle, porosity and swelling values were determined. These were improved by plasma treating the electrospun nanomebranes. Best results were obtained for the plasma treated electrospum nanomembranes at 4% chitosan. It resulted in a surface with a combination of hydrophobic and hydrophilic patterns, which has a lot of promise in the realm of tissue engineering for things like cell patterning and guiding.