Efficacy of Two Caries Detector Dyes in the Diagnosis of Dental Caries

Objective: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of two caries detector dyes in the diagnosis of dental caries.Materials and Methods: Twenty extracted human posterior teeth without pulpal exposure were sectioned mesiodistally through the center of the lesions using a water-cooled disk.The tooth halves were randomly divided into two groups and treated with Caries Detector (CD) and Caries Check (CC) detector dyes. Access cavities were prepared followed by caries removal and dye application. All cavities were arbitrarily divided into two right and left sections and excavation of the stained areas was performed on the left parts, while the right sections remained untouched. Bacterial penetration into dentinal tubules was evaluated using Gram-stained decalcified sections under light microscopy. Sensitivity and specificity of both dyes were calculated.Results: The sensitivity of CD and CC were 74% and 71%,respectively. The specificity obtained for both dyes was 100%.Conclusion: Considering the low sensitivity of the dyes evaluated in the present study, it seems that they may not be reliable when used as the sole diagnostic technique for detection of carious lesions in posterior teeth

Assessment of Composite Restorations and Their Unique Features in Forensic Identification of Unidentified Human Beings

Background: Dental identification mainly involves the comparison of antemortem and postmortem records. Keiser-Nielson (1980) recommended restored tooth surfaces as the smallest unit to consider in the comparison of dental restorations for identification purposes. Unique appearance of radiographic images of amalgam has led to their application in dental forensic. The present study aimed to investigate the value of composite restorations and their features in forensic identification.Methods: The antemortem sample included 40 periapical radiographs of anterior teeth with class III composite restorations which had been taken at least one year before the study. Ten randomly selected recent radiographs of the same subjects along with two radiographs from other patients were regarded as postmortem samples. Afterward, 12 dentally trained examiners were asked to match the 12 radiographs of group 2 with those of group 1 and to determine which features of the teeth (e.g. shape, contour, and surface) had helped them.Results: Ten examiners were able to correctly match all of the 12 images. According to kappa coefficient, the inter-rater agreement was high (0.8-1.0). The shape of the restoration was the most useful feature in identification.Conclusion: A composite restoration has a unique radiographic morphology that can be used for human identification. Therefore, if the antemortem radiograph of a single composite restoration is available, its comparison with a postmortem radiograph can help identify unidentified human beings

UTJECAJ ČELIČNIH VLAKANA NA POBOLJŠANJE MEHANIČKIH SVOJSTAVA BETONSKE SEGMENTNE OBLOGE

The lining system, used in tunnel boring machines, is made of precast concrete segments. The use of steel fibers in this kind of support system can not only decrease production time and costs but also can improve compressive, tensile as well as flexural behaviors. A study has been carried out to examine the mechanical properties of segments in the Tabriz metro line-2 project using three types of steel fibers: 3D, 4D, and 5D. Various experiments were investigated to monitor the workability of Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete (SFRC) under various loads. The results confirmed an improvement in the specimens’ mechanical properties because of these types of steel fibers. 5D, 4D, and 3D fibers provided the greatest effect on the tensile and flexural strength of steel fiber-reinforced concrete, respectively. The 28-day compressive, tensile, and flexural strengths of the specimens are incremented by 13%, 68%, and 154%, respectively. In addition, by conducting tests on the orientation of steel fibers, placing the fibers perpendicular to the load can improve the compressive strength of concrete by almost 18%.Sustav obloge koji se koristi u strojevima za bušenje tunela izrađen je od predgotovljenih betonskih segmenata. Upotreba čeličnih vlakana u ovoj vrsti potpornoga sustava ne samo da može smanjiti vrijeme i troškove proizvodnje, već također može poboljšati tlačna, vlačna i savojna svojstva. U ovoj studiji istražen je učinak triju vrsta (3D, 4D i 5D) čeličnih vlakana na mehanička svojstva segmenata u projektu linije 2 metroa Tabriz. U tu svrhu provedeni su pokusi tlačne, vlačne i savojne čvrstoće te test slijeganja. Rezultati su potvrdili poboljšanje mehaničkih svojstava uzoraka zbog prisutnosti ove vrste čeličnih vlakana, a također povećanjem sadržaja vlakana 28-dnevna tlačna, vlačna i savojna čvrstoća uzoraka povećava se za 13 %, 68 % odnosno 154 %. Osim toga, provođenjem ispitivanja orijentacije čeličnih vlakana utvrđeno je da se pomoću njih može povećati tlačna čvrstoća betona za oko 18 %, tako da postavljanje vlakana u smjeru okomitom na opterećenje ima najveći učinak

Graph-based Visual Saliency Model using Background Color

Visual saliency is a cognitive psychology concept that makes some stimuli of a scene stand out relative to their neighbors and attract our attention. Computing visual saliency is a topic of recent interest. Here, we propose a graph-based method for saliency detection, which contains three stages: pre-processing, initial saliency detection and final saliency detection. The initial saliency map is obtained by putting adaptive threshold on color differences relative to the background. In final saliency detection, a graph is constructed, and the ranking technique is exploited. In the proposed method, the background is suppressed effectively, and often salient regions are selected correctly. Experimental results on the MSRA-1000 database demonstrate excellent performance and low computational complexity in comparison with the state-of-the-art methods

Religious attitudes and spiritual health among elderly inpatient adults in Shahrekord hospitals

Background and Objectives: Human is a multidimensional creature and spiritual domain is the central dimension which has an undeniable effect on gaining health. The most important part of nursing care with family based approach is to help people in achieving optimal level of health. On the other hand, religious attitudes and spiritual health is an important domain of life in ageing period. Therefore, this study was conducted to assess the religious attitudes and spiritual health among elderly inpatients in Shahrekord hospitals. Methods: This descriptive correlational study was conducted in 1392 in Shahrekord hospitals. A total of 308 geriatric patients who were admitted to a surgical ward, were recruited through random sampling. Two sets of questionnaires regarding religious and spiritual health were used as the instruments. After collecting the data, descriptive (frequency, mean, variance, standard deviation) and analytical (independent t test, Pearson correlation) statistics were used by SPSS statistical software. Results: The results showed that 68.8% of patients possessed large religious attitude with an average of 140.68 ±30.14. Spiritual health in 51.3 percent of samples was described to be low while the obtained average score was 86.18 ± 16.61. However, Pearson test showed that there is a positive significant correlation between religious attitudes and spiritual health (r =0.83, P =0.05). Conclusions: The present study revealed that there is a significant relationship between religious attitudes and spiritual health and people with high religious attitudes have high spiritual health

Subclinical eating disorder, polycystic ovary syndrome - Is there any connection between these two conditions through leptin - A twin study

The genetic property of subclinical eating behaviour (SEB) and the link between SEB and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) has been studied before but the role of leptin within this connection has never been investigated. The objective of this study was 1). to study the genetic property of SEB. 2). To find a link between leptin, SEB and PCOS. One hundred and fifty four (77 pairs) female-female Iranian twins including 96 MZ individuals (48 pairs) and 58 DZ individuals (29 pairs) participated in the study. Clinical, biochemical and ultrasound tools were used to diagnose polycystic ovary syndrome. BITE questionnaire was filled out for subjects. Eight percent of subjects were diagnosed for subclinical eating disorder. No significant difference was found between intraclass correlation of MZ and DZ (z = 0.57, P = 0.569). Serum leptin level correlated significantly with bulimia score (P<0.007). The mean (±SD) value for bulimia score was found to be higher among PCOS positive subjects (3.27 ± 5.51) in comparison with PCOS negative subjects (2.06 ± 4.48) (P<0.001). The genetic property of subclinical eating disorder was not confirmed as shared environment might have played a major role in likeliness of DZ twins as well as MZ. Leptin is linked with both subclinical eating disorder and PCOS

A facile route for preparation of CdS nanoparticles

CdS nanoparticles have been synthesized by a chemical reaction route using ethylenediamine as a complexing agent. The nanoparticles were characterized using techniques such as X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), UV–VIS absorption spectroscopy, and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The absorption edge for the bulk hexagonal CdS is at 512 nm (2.42 eV). Comparing with the bulk CdS, it is believed that the blue shift in the absorption peak was caused by the quantum confinement effect. Photoluminescence measurements indicate CdS nanoparticles show fluorescence band with a maximum close to 315 nm

MRI-based radiomics for prognosis of pediatric diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma: an international study.

Background: Diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPGs) are lethal pediatric brain tumors. Presently, MRI is the mainstay of disease diagnosis and surveillance. We identify clinically significant computational features from MRI and create a prognostic machine learning model. Methods: We isolated tumor volumes of T1-post-contrast (T1) and T2-weighted (T2) MRIs from 177 treatment-naïve DIPG patients from an international cohort for model training and testing. The Quantitative Image Feature Pipeline and PyRadiomics was used for feature extraction. Ten-fold cross-validation of least absolute shrinkage and selection operator Cox regression selected optimal features to predict overall survival in the training dataset and tested in the independent testing dataset. We analyzed model performance using clinical variables (age at diagnosis and sex) only, radiomics only, and radiomics plus clinical variables. Results: All selected features were intensity and texture-based on the wavelet-filtered images (3 T1 gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) texture features, T2 GLCM texture feature, and T2 first-order mean). This multivariable Cox model demonstrated a concordance of 0.68 (95% CI: 0.61-0.74) in the training dataset, significantly outperforming the clinical-only model (C = 0.57 [95% CI: 0.49-0.64]). Adding clinical features to radiomics slightly improved performance (C = 0.70 [95% CI: 0.64-0.77]). The combined radiomics and clinical model was validated in the independent testing dataset (C = 0.59 [95% CI: 0.51-0.67], Noether's test P = .02). Conclusions: In this international study, we demonstrate the use of radiomic signatures to create a machine learning model for DIPG prognostication. Standardized, quantitative approaches that objectively measure DIPG changes, including computational MRI evaluation, could offer new approaches to assessing tumor phenotype and serve a future role for optimizing clinical trial eligibility and tumor surveillance