Single Versus Multi‑visit Endodontic Treatment of Teeth with Apical Periodontitis: An In vivo Study with 1‑year Evaluation

Background: Apical periodontitis (AP) is one of the most prevalent diseases of the teeth. Treatment of AP is based on the removal of the cause, i.e., bacteria from the root canals. Achievement of adequate bacterial eradication in one appointment treatment remains a controversy.Aim: This prospective study was conducted with the objective to compare the periapical healing of teeth with AP treated in (a) single visit versus (b) two visits, either with or without Vitapex as an intracanal medicament.Subjects and Methods: Patients were selected randomly from the Department of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics. Forty‑three patients (81 teeth) met the inclusion criteria, i.e., AP (both symptomatic and asymptomatic) visible radiographically size ≥2 mm × 2 mm, not suffering from any immune‑compromising disease, age between 16 and 65 years and tooth not accessed previously. Patients were randomly divided into three groups, i.e., single‑visit group (Group 1), multi‑visit group without any intracanal medicament (Group 2), and multi‑visit group with Vitapex as interim intracanal medicament (Group 3). Comparison was done radiographically using periapical index (PAI). The primary outcome measure was the change in periapical radiolucency after 1 year assessed by PAI scores. The Mann–Whitney U‑test was used to evaluate differences between groups at baseline (immediate postoperative) and at the 12‑month follow‑up evaluation. Change in PAI score for each group from baseline to 12‑month follow‑up evaluation was tested with the Wilcoxon signed rank test. The secondary outcome measures, proportion of teeth in each group that could be considered improved (decreased PAI score) or healed (PAI <2), were assessed with the Chi‑square test.Results: No statistically significant difference in periapical healing was found between three groups.Conclusion: After 1‑year evaluation, no difference in periapical healing was found between single‑visit treatment and multi‑visit treatment groups with the given sample size.Keywords: 1‑year evaluation, Apical periodontitis, Multi‑visit treatment, Single visit, Vitape

The {\alpha}-Decay Chains of the 287,288115^{287, 288}115 Isotopes using Relativistic Mean Field Theory

We study the binding energy, root-mean-square radius and quadrupole deformation parameter for the synthesized superheavy element Z = 115, within the formalism of relativistic mean field theory. The calculation is dones for various isotopes of Z = 115 element, starting from A = 272 to A = 292. A systematic comparison between the binding energies and experimental data is made.The calculated binding energies are in good agreement with experimental result. The results show the prolate deformation for the ground state of these nuclei. The most stable isotope is found to be 282115 nucleus (N = 167) in the isotopic chain. We have also studied Q{\alpha} and T{\alpha} for the {\alpha}-decay chains of $^{287, 288}$115.Comment: 12 Pages 6 Figures 3 Table

Relativistic mean field study of the properties of Z=117 nucleus and the decay chains of 293,294^{293,294}117 isotopes

We have calculated the binding energy, root-mean-square radius and quadrupole deformation parameter for the recently synthesized superheavy element Z=117, using the axially deformed relativistic mean field (RMF) model. The calculation is extended to various isotopes of Z=117 element, strarting from A=286 till A=310. We predict almost spherical structures in the ground state for almost all the isotopes. A shape transition appears at about A=292 from prolate to a oblate shape structures of Z=117 nucleus in our mean field approach. The most stable isotope (largest binding energy per nucleon) is found to be the $^{288}$117 nucleus. Also, the Q-value of $\alpha$-decay $Q_\alpha$ and the half-lives $T_{\alpha}$ are calculated for the $\alpha$-decay chains of $^{293}$117 and $^{294}$117, supporting the magic numbers at N=172 and/ or 184.Comment: 6 Pages and 8 Figure

A new microscopic nucleon-nucleon interaction derived from relativistic mean field theory

A new microscopic nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction has been derived for the first time from the popular relativistic mean field theory (RMFT) Lagrangian. The NN interaction so obtained remarkably relate to the inbuilt fundamental parameters of RMFT. Furthermore, by folding it with the RMFT-densities of cluster and daughter nuclei to obtain the optical potential, it's application is also examined to study the exotic cluster radioactive decays, and results obtained found comparable with the successfully used M3Y phenomenological effective NN interactions. The presently derived NN-interaction can also be used to calculate a number of other nuclear observables.Comment: 4 Pages 2 Figure

Enhanced thermoelectric properties in Sb/Ge core/shell nanowires through vacancy modulation

In the present work, we have modified the physical and electronic structure of Sb/Ge core/shell nanowires via vacancy creation and doping with foreign atoms with the aim to improve their thermoelectric energy conversion efficiency. Sb/Ge-NWs having a diameter of 1.5 Å show metallicity with 2Go quantum conductance. The stability of the nanowires is assessed through the calculation of their formation energy. The formation of one vacancy at either the Sb- and Ge-site modifies substantially the electronic properties. From the comparison of the thermoelectric properties of the nanowires with and without the vacancy, we have found that the figure of merit for the Sb/Ge NW with one Sb vacancy increases of 0.18 compared to the pristine NW. The NW doping with different transition metals: Fe, Co, Ni and Cu have been found to also enhance the conversion efficiency. Thus, our calculations show that the thermoelectric performance of metal–semiconductor core–shell NWs can be in principle improved as much as 80% by vacancy formation and doping

A novel set of features for continuous hand gesture recognition

Applications requiring the natural use of the human hand as a human–computer interface motivate research on continuous hand gesture recognition. Gesture recognition depends on gesture segmentation to locate the starting and end points of meaningful gestures while ignoring unintentional movements. Unfortunately, gesture segmentation remains a formidable challenge because of unconstrained spatiotemporal variations in gestures and the coarticulation and movement epenthesis of successive gestures. Furthermore, errors in hand image segmentation cause the estimated hand motion trajectory to deviate from the actual one. This research moves toward addressing these problems. Our approach entails using gesture spotting to distinguish meaningful gestures from unintentional movements. To avoid the effects of variations in a gesture’s motion chain code (MCC), we propose instead to use a novel set of features: the (a) orientation and (b) length of an ellipse least-squares fitted to motion-trajectory points and (c) the position of the hand. The features are designed to support classification using conditional random fields. To evaluate the performance of the system, 10 participants signed 10 gestures several times each, providing a total of 75 instances per gesture. To train the system, 50 instances of each gesture served as training data and 25 as testing data. For isolated gestures, the recognition rate using the MCC as a feature vector was only 69.6 % but rose to 96.0 % using the proposed features, a 26.1 % improvement. For continuous gestures, the recognition rate for the proposed features was 88.9 %. These results show the efficacy of the proposed method

Magic nuclei in superheavy valley

An extensive theoretical search for the proton magic number in the superheavy valley beyond $Z=$82 and corresponding neutron magic number after $N=$126 is carried out. For this we scanned a wide range of elements $Z=112-130$ and their isotopes. The well established non-relativistic Skryme-Hartree-Fock and Relativistic Mean Field formalisms with various force parameters are used. Based on the calculated systematics of pairing gap, two neutron separation energy and the shell correction energy for these nuclei, we find $Z=$120 as the next proton magic and N=172, 182/184, 208 and 258 the subsequent neutron magic numbers.Comment: 5 Pages 3 Figures 2 Tables; Phys. Lett. B (2011) (Communicated