Factors influencing patient satisfaction with dental appearance and treatments they desire to improve aesthetics

Background: We assessed factors influencing patients’ satisfaction with their dental appearance and the treatments they desired to improve dental aesthetics. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed out among 235 adult patients who visited the Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia dental clinic. A structured, interviewer-guided questionnaire was used to identify patient satisfaction with their general dental appearance, cosmetic elements and desired treatments. Results: The 235 patients consisted of 70 males (29.8%) and 165 females (70.2%), of mean age 31.5 years (SD 13.0). Of these patients, 124 (52.8%) were not satisfied with their general dental appearance. In addition, 132 patients (56.2%) were not happy with the color of their teeth, 76 (32.3%), regarded their teeth were poorly aligned, 62 (26.4%), as crowded and 56 (23.4%) protruded. Dissatisfaction with tooth color was significantly higher in female than in male patients (odds ratio [OR] of 1.99 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.13-3.50). Tooth whitening was the treatment most desired by patients (48.1%). Results of multiple logistic regression analysis showed that patient dissatisfaction with general dental appearance was significantly associated with female gender (OR = 2.18; 95% CI: 1.18-4.03), unhappiness with tooth color (OR = 3.05; 95% CI: 1.74-5.34) and the opinion that their teeth protruded (OR = 2.91, 95% CI: 1.44-5.91)

Lateral Orbitofrontal Cortex Involvement in Initial Negative Aesthetic Impression Formation

It is well established that aesthetic appreciation is related with activity in several different brain regions. The identification of the neural correlates of beauty or liking ratings has been the focus of most prior studies. Not much attention has been directed towards the fact that humans are surrounded by objects that lead them to experience aesthetic indifference or leave them with a negative aesthetic impression. Here we explore the neural substrate of such experiences. Given the neuroimaging techniques that have been used, little is known about the temporal features of such brain activity. By means of magnetoencephalography we registered the moment at which brain activity differed while participants viewed images they considered to be beautiful or not. Results show that the first differential activity appears between 300 and 400 ms after stimulus onset. During this period activity in right lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) was greater while participants rated visual stimuli as not beautiful than when they rated them as beautiful. We argue that this activity is associated with an initial negative aesthetic impression formation, driven by the relative hedonic value of stimuli regarded as not beautiful. Additionally, our results contribute to the understanding of the nature of the functional roles of the lOFC

Observation of impurity accumulation and its compatibility with high plasma performance in W7-X

At the W7-X stellarator, the bolometer system has measured an intensive radiation zone in the inner plasma region (at a normalized radius ρ ∼ 0.3–0.4) in the hydrogen plasma generated by electron cyclotron resonance heating; it differs from the normal plasma radiation distribution with an edge-localized emission zone. Spectroscopic diagnostics have recorded high-Z elements such as iron. This phenomenon happens in the plasma phases after gas supply turn-off, which results in all impurity relevant diagnostic signals increasing for several seconds. Despite the enhancement of the core radiation, the plasma energy confinement is improved. A transport analysis shows that this impurity radiation behavior is associated with a low diffusion coefficient (D∼ 0.02 m2 s−1) and a reversal of the convection around the radial position of the emission peak, which, under normal conditions, separates the zones of outward convection in the central (|V| ∼ 0.1 m s−1) and inward convection in the outer region (|V| ∼ 0.3 m s−1). An impurity accumulation around this radial position has been identified. The transport coefficients obtained are comparable with the theoretical predictions of collisional impurity transport. In the plasma phases studied, both impurity and energy confinement are enhanced. The mechanism responsible for the improvement is believed to be a reduction of micro-instabilities associated with the observed steepening of the density profile, initiated by a low edge plasma density (<1.0 × 1019 m−3) after switching off the gas fueling. The normalized temperature and density gradients fulfil the condition for the suppression of ITG turbulence