Dental amalgam has been used for more than 150 years due to its beneficial mechanical properties and durability in dentistry. In the past and to date, many questions about amalgam restorations have arisen, especially regarding the mercury content, which has been the subject of global disputes. By presenting the past and present of the ‘amalgam issue’, the aim of our paper is to display the current position of international literature. This summary is based on the publications in the PubMed database, the guidelines of the Council of European Dentists. Although the use of dental amalgam is widespread, concerns have been raised about the adverse effect on human health and the environment, focusing on its heavy metal pollution during waste treatment. In 2017, the European Union (EU) adopted the so-called Mercury Regulation, based on the United Nations Minamata Convention on Mercury, the recommendations of which are presented in the present review. This Regulation includes the requirement for EU Member States to develop a national action plan for the phase-down of amalgam. The feasibility plan for complete phase-out may be guaranteed by 2030. The authors discuss the advantages and disadvantages of possible amalgam alternatives by presenting glass-ionomers and resin-based composites. In the future, more material research programmes and long-term follow-up studies are necessary. In addition to several global health organizations, the Council of European Dentists also draws attention to prevent dental caries, expecting to reduce the number of restorations. Orv Hetil. 2018; 159(42): 1700–1709.

Due to the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, the University of Amsterdam faced a sudden need to shift our education to online learning. We experienced that radical impact given that we were amid efforts to restructure one of our courses in March, 2020. That restructuring, which focused on improved cooperative learning, would have required contact-based education. The sudden COVID-based shift to online learning limited the opportunities for cooperation, mutual knowledge sharing, and inspiration. Students needed more intensive stimulus to stay involved and active. We understood that more focus on evaluation helps educators to obtain better insight into the learning progress of students and to adapt the educational processes to improve students' learning outcomes and their learning journey. We realized that traditional end-of-course evaluation alone does not suffice the new requirements of online education. We saw a need for continuous evaluations during the course to monitor the learning trajectory that students followed. In this paper, we share our experience about the changing role of evaluation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and describe how evaluating effectiveness, success, efficiency impacts the online work with students.

Providing optimal knowledge sharing has become increasingly important during the lockdown starting in early 2020. As a mechanism for sharing knowledge, education is also hugely impacted. Studying from home became feasible. On-campus learning had to change entirely to online within weeks. Besides preventing the spread of the virus, this shift allowed students to follow their courses anywhere. Physical distance to an institution is no longer a barrier to knowledge exchange. Online facilities offer students access to a broader field with an impact on the quality of education. The paper defines an ecosystem for higher education institutions (HEI) based on our own experiences with online learning, interviews, and literature reviews. The goal is to create a theorized environment where students can sign up for higher education (HE) classes, courses, programmes at different institutions across Europe. The ecosystem could create commonly shared quality standards from a decentralised perspective, potentially increasing learning quality and providing students with more freedom in their personal learning experiences. This paper does not serve as a full scientific proof but as a discussion. The proposed ecosystem foresees students to follow courses anywhere. It offers study-abroad programmes and inter-institutional collaborations with a centralised platform for knowledge management. Allowing students to choose classes institution-free would increase specialisation of those institutions and impact the quality of education. We will show that implementing a decentralised education system needs a bottom-up approach with a centrally formulated IT strategy to facilitate education exchange. Common quality standards, resilience, innovation, simplicity, inclusivity, maturity, and specificity are essential. For an adaptive system, governance, resistance, ownership, and communication ownership should adhere. Our proposed ecosystem of institution-free HE would benefit all parties involved. Students can tailor their learning experience and obtain the highest level of education possible. HEI benefit in improving the quality of their programmes due to added competition. They could also drop courses that students better take elsewhere, allowing for specialisation in specific fields. Such an ecosystem holds financial, administrative, and even legal limitations. However, institutions can implement step-by-step, giving affordance to the substantial bureaucracy that will inevitably ensue.

It is evident that for an organisation, the most successful way for operating is being part of business ecosystems and creating more value than on its own. Universities play a specific role in this field. We undertook this research to verify the universities’ role in an innovation ecosystem where they work together with businesses to create and share new cutting-edge knowledge. Our theory-based research offers scientifically underpinned suggestions for innovators and entrepreneurs in developing innovation ecosystems with a specific focus on the altered role of universities. The article focuses on the roles of universities to discovers how it can become more resilient to adapt to the ever-changing demands of an innovation ecosystem. How can it provide professional knowledge sharing on an equal base within the ecosystem whilst remaining its leading role in innovation and knowledge development? This approach breaks with the traditional view of universities as the primary source of knowledge in society. Universities take several roles in a business ecosystem, which we conclude in this paper. To let universities stay strong in innovation, they must adapt their traditional role to suit to the ever-changing demands presented by the ecosystem. They need to focus on knowledge sharing instead of knowledge delivery to achieve a sustainable growth. The changing approach fits better the innovation and entrepreneurship by working within a knowledge ecosystem. Additionally, organisations must stay proactive by evaluating partners better, building meaningful relationships, and adopting a business-like mentality. Organising such a knowledge ecosystem will stimulate innovation and facilitate entrepreneurs in searching for new markets in an increasingly sustainable and circular world.

No abstract