Evaluation of trabecular bone microstructure of mandibular condyle in edentulous, unilateral edentulous and fully dentate patients using cone-beam computed tomography

Background: The aim of this study was to compare the trabecular bone microstructure of the mandibular condyle in edentulous, unilateral edentulous (Kennedy Class II), and fully dentate patients.Materials and methods: The study used the cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) images of 17 fully dentate (34 condyles), 16 edentulous (32 condyles), and 17 unilateral edentulous patients (34 condyles) aged 19 to 80 years. The trabecular bone microstructure of the mandibular condyle was evaluated on 8 consecutive cross-sectional images of these patients. In the microstructure analysis, structural model index (SMI), ellipsoid factor (EF), bone volume fraction (BV/TV), trabecular thickness (Tb.Th) and trabecular seperation (Tb.Sp) were measured.Results: There was no significant difference between the mean SMI, BV/TV, EF and Tb.Th microstructure values of each group (p = 0.243, p = 0.095, p = 0.962, p = 0.095, respectively). However, there was significant difference in terms of mean Tb.Sp between the groups (p = 0.021). The trabecular structure in all three groups was more rod-shaped. No correlation was found between age factor and microstructure values.Conclusions: Considering the in vivo microstructure analysis of CBCT images, it can be said that teeth loss does not have a significant effect on the microstructure parameters excluding Tb.Sp of mandible condyles and does not affect mandibular condyle trabecular endurance

The effects of nitrogen deficiencies on the lipid and protein contents of Spirulina platensis

Nitrogen deficiencies were studied in Spirulina platensis (Cyanophyceae) with the aim of determining the effects of the 50 and 100% deficient nitrogen on the lipid and protein contents of the cell under laboratory conditions. S. platensis cultures were grown in Spirulina medium and kept at the constantroom temperature of 26 ± 2°C, illuminated with fluorescent lamps at an irradiance level of 80 ìmol m-2 s-1 with photoperiod 16:8 (L:D) and aerated continuously. In the Spirulina biomass harvested at the stationary phase, 67.4, 53.5, 5.6% protein and 5.78, 13.66, 17.05% lipid were recorded for the groups of control, 50% N(-) and 100% N(-), respectively. The highest lipid content and 1.00 gL-1 dry-weight were recorded from the culture to which treated 100% N(-).Key words: Spirulina platensis, lipid, nitrogen deficiencies, protein

Algorithms for sink mobility in wireless sensor networks to improve network lifetime

Sink mobility is an effective solution in the literature for wireless sensor network lifetime improvement. In this paper, we propose a set of algorithms for sink site determination (SSD) and movement strategy problems of sink mobility. We also present experiment results that compare the performance of our algorithms with other approaches in the literature. © 2012 Springer-Verlag London Limited

Traffic-and energy-load-based sink mobility algorithms for wireless sensor networks

Moving the sink node is an effective solution for improving the lifetime of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This paper provides another solution to the sink mobility problem in WSNs by incorporating node-load parameters into a matrix based on alternative sink positions and using this matrix to determine the next sink site to visit in each round.We first present a packet-load based sink movement algorithm that considers how many packets each node would receive and transmit for each different sink position. We extend this algorithm by also considering the distances the packets are transmitted, and in this manner obtain an energy-load based algorithm. We also provide an integer programming (IP) model to compute the optimal results. Our extensive simulations show that our packet-and energy-load based algorithms significantly improve network lifetime without introducing much overhead and only remain around 5% behind the optimal solution. Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd

Coordination of inbound and outbound transportation schedules with the production schedule

This paper studies the coordination of production and shipment schedules for a single stage in the supply chain. The production scheduling problem at the facility is modeled as belonging to a single process. Jobs that are located at a distant origin are carried to this facility making use of a finite number of capacitated vehicles. These vehicles, which are initially stationed close to the origin, are also used for the return of the jobs upon completion of their processing. In the paper, a model is developed to find the schedules of the facility and the vehicles jointly, allowing for effective utilization of the vehicles both in the inbound and the outbound. The objective of the proposed model is to minimize the sum of transportation costs and inventory holding costs. Issues related to transportation such as travel times, vehicle capacities, and waiting limits are explicitly accounted for. Inventories of the unprocessed and processed jobs at the facility are penalized. The paper contributes to the literature on supply chain scheduling under transportation considerations by modeling a practically motivated problem, proving that it is strongly NP-Hard, and developing an analytical and a numerical investigation for its solution. In particular, properties of the solution space are explored, lower bounds are developed on the optimal costs of the general and the special cases, and a computationally-efficient heuristic is proposed for solving large-size instances. The qualities of the heuristic and the lower bounds are demonstrated over an extensive numerical analysis. © 2016 Elsevier Lt

Deformed shape invariance and exactly solvable Hamiltonians with position-dependent effective mass

Known shape-invariant potentials for the constant-mass Schrodinger equation are taken as effective potentials in a position-dependent effective mass (PDEM) one. The corresponding shape-invariance condition turns out to be deformed. Its solvability imposes the form of both the deformed superpotential and the PDEM. A lot of new exactly solvable potentials associated with a PDEM background are generated in this way. A novel and important condition restricting the existence of bound states whenever the PDEM vanishes at an end point of the interval is identified. In some cases, the bound-state spectrum results from a smooth deformation of that of the conventional shape-invariant potential used in the construction. In others, one observes a generation or suppression of bound states, depending on the mass-parameter values. The corresponding wavefunctions are given in terms of some deformed classical orthogonal polynomials.Comment: 26 pages, no figure, reduced secs. 4 and 5, final version to appear in JP

Deformed algebras, position-dependent effective masses and curved spaces: An exactly solvable Coulomb problem

We show that there exist some intimate connections between three unconventional Schr\"odinger equations based on the use of deformed canonical commutation relations, of a position-dependent effective mass or of a curved space, respectively. This occurs whenever a specific relation between the deforming function, the position-dependent mass and the (diagonal) metric tensor holds true. We illustrate these three equivalent approaches by considering a new Coulomb problem and solving it by means of supersymmetric quantum mechanical and shape invariance techniques. We show that in contrast with the conventional Coulomb problem, the new one gives rise to only a finite number of bound states.Comment: 22 pages, no figure. Archive version is already official. Published by JPA at http://stacks.iop.org/0305-4470/37/426

The role of explicit contrast in adjective acquisition: a cross-linguistic longitudinal study of adjective production in spontaneous child speech and parental input

Experimental studies demonstrate that contrast helps toddlers to extend the meanings of novel adjectives. This study explores whether antonym co-occurrence in spontaneous speech also has an effect on adjective use by the child. The authors studied adjective production in longitudinal speech samples from 16 children (16–36 months) acquiring eight different languages. Adjectives in child speech and child-directed speech were coded as either unrelated or related to a contrastive term in the preceding context. Results show large differences between children in the growth of adjective production. These differences are strongly related to contrast use. High contrast users not only increase adjective use earlier, but also reach a stable level of adjective production in the investigated period. Average or low contrast users increase their adjective production more slowly and do not reach a plateau in the period covered by this study. Initially there is a strong relation between contrast use in child speech and child-directed speech, but this relation diminishes with age. </jats:p

Expedition 302 summary

The first scientific drilling expedition to the central Arctic Ocean was completed in September 2004. Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 302, Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), recovered sediment cores to 428 meters below seafloor (mbsf) in water depths of ~1300 m, 250 km from the North Pole.Expedition 302's destination was the Lomonosov Ridge, hypothesized to be a sliver of continental crust that broke away from the Eurasian plate at ~56 Ma. As the ridge moved northward and subsided, marine sedimentation occurred and continues to the present, resulting in what was anticipated from seismic data to be a continuous paleoceanographic record. The elevation of the ridge above the surrounding abyssal plains (~3 km) ensured that sediments atop the ridge were free of turbidites. The primary scientific objective of Expedition 302 was to continuously recover this sediment record and to sample the underlying sedimentary bedrock by drilling and coring from a stationary drillship.The biggest challenge during Expedition 302 was maintaining the drillship's location while drilling and coring in 2–4 m thick sea ice that moved at speeds approaching 0.5 kt. Sea-ice cover over the Lomonosov Ridge moves with one of the two major Arctic sea-ice circulation systems, the Transpolar Drift, and responds locally to wind, tides, and currents. Until now, the high Arctic Ocean Basin, known as "mare incognitum" within the scientific community, had never before been deeply cored because of these challenging sea-ice conditions.Initial results reveal that biogenic carbonate is present only in the Holocene–Pleistocene interval. The upper 198 mbsf represents a relatively high sedimentation rate record of the past 18 m.y. and is composed of sediment with ice-rafted debris and dropstones, suggesting that ice-covered conditions extended at least this far back in time. Details of the ice type (e.g., iceberg versus sea ice), timing, and characteristics (e.g., perennial versus seasonal) await further study. A hiatus occurs at 193.13 mbsf, spanning a 25 m.y. interval from the early Miocene to the middle Eocene between ~18 Ma and 43 Ma. The sediment record during the middle Eocene is of dark, organic-rich biosiliceous composition. Isolated pebbles, interpreted as ice-rafted dropstones, are present down to 239 mbsf, well into this middle Eocene interval. Around the lower/middle Eocene boundary an abundance of Azolla spp. occurs, suggesting that a fresh and/or low-salinity surface water setting dominated the region during this time period. Although predrilling predictions based on geophysical data had placed the base of the sediment column at 50 Ma, drilling revealed that the uppermost Paleocene to lowermost Eocene boundary interval, well known as the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), was recovered. During the PETM, the temperature of the Arctic Ocean surface waters exceeded 20°C.Drilling during Expedition 302 also penetrated into the underlying sedimentary bedrock, revealing a shallow-water depositional environment of Late Cretaceous age