EFFECT OF GRAPE SEED EXTRACT ON REMINERALIZATION OF ARTIFICIAL CARIES: AN IN-VITRO STUDY

Objective: Grape seeds are gaining more importance because the Proanthocyanidins†present in them have excellent anticaries, remineralizing, and antibacterial properties. Although many preventive measures have been tried, dental caries remains one of the most prevalent diseases in humans.The ultimate goal of any intervention is the preservation of tooth structure, prevention of lesion progression and inducing remineralization. Thepresent in-vitro study was done to investigate the effect of grape seed extract (GSE) on artificial enamel caries in human teeth.Methods: A total of 50 sound premolars extracted from patients undergoing orthodontic treatment were used in the study. The teeth were cleanedand were immersed in a demineralizing solution for 96 hrs at 37°C and 50% relative humidity to create artificial lesions. The samples were randomlydivided into two groups of 25 each. Half of the samples were immersed in the GSE solution (test) and the other half in saline (control), respectively, for8 days. The samples were measured by microhardness tester to obtain values in Vickers hardness scale. Data were entered into Microsoft Excel andwere analyzed using independent t-test for inter-group comparison and paired t-test for intra-group comparison using SPSS version 21.Results: The mean±SD microhardness values after remineralization for the test and control groups were 357.56±5.53 and 337.60±6.38. GSE groupsignificantly increased the microhardness of the lesions (p≤0.001).Conclusion: GSE is a potential remineralizing agent and can be used to prevent progression of dental caries.Keywords: Grape seed extract, Remineralization, Dental caries

A cross-sectional study of the temporal evolution of electricity consumption of six commercial buildings

Current approaches to building efficiency diagnoses include conventional energy audit techniques that can be expensive and time consuming. In contrast, virtual energy audits of readily available 15-minute-interval building electricity consumption are being explored to provide quick, inexpensive, and useful insights into building operation characteristics. A cross sectional analysis of six buildings in two different climate zones provides methods for data cleaning, population-based building comparisons, and relationships (correlations) of weather and electricity consumption. Data cleaning methods have been developed to categorize and appropriately filter or correct anomalous data including outliers, missing data, and erroneous values (resulting in < 0.5% anomalies). The utility of a cross-sectional analysis of a sample set of building's electricity consumption is found through comparisons of baseload, daily consumption variance, and energy use intensity. Correlations of weather and electricity consumption 15-minute interval datasets show important relationships for the heating and cooling seasons using computed correlations of a Time-Specific-Averaged-Ordered Variable (exterior temperature) and corresponding averaged variables (electricity consumption)(TSAOV method). The TSAOV method is unique as it introduces time of day as a third variable while also minimizing randomness in both correlated variables through averaging. This study found that many of the pair-wise linear correlation analyses lacked strong relationships, prompting the development of the new TSAOV method to uncover the causal relationship between electricity and weather. We conclude that a combination of varied HVAC system operations, building thermal mass, plug load use, and building set point temperatures are likely responsible for the poor correlations in the prior studies, while the correlation of time-specific-averaged-ordered temperature and corresponding averaged variables method developed herein adequately accounts for these issues and enables discovery of strong linear pair-wise correlation R values. TSAOV correlations lay the foundation for a new approach to building studies, that mitigates plug load interferences and identifies more accurate insights into weather-energy relationship for all building types. Over all six buildings analyzed the TSAOV method reported very significant average correlations per building of 0.94 to 0.82 in magnitude. Our rigorous statistics-based methods applied to 15-minute-interval electricity data further enables virtual energy audits of buildings to quickly and inexpensively inform energy savings measures

Bax, Bcl2, and p53 Differentially Regulate Neomycin- and Gentamicin-Induced Hair Cell Death in the Zebrafish Lateral Line

Sensorineural hearing loss is a normal consequence of aging and results from a variety of extrinsic challenges such as excessive noise exposure and certain therapeutic drugs, including the aminoglycoside antibiotics. The proximal cause of hearing loss is often death of inner ear hair cells. The signaling pathways necessary for hair cell death are not fully understood and may be specific for each type of insult. In the lateral line, the closely related aminoglycoside antibiotics neomycin and gentamicin appear to kill hair cells by activating a partially overlapping suite of cell death pathways. The lateral line is a system of hair cell-containing sense organs found on the head and body of aquatic vertebrates. In the present study, we use a combination of pharmacologic and genetic manipulations to assess the contributions of p53, Bax, and Bcl2 in the death of zebrafish lateral line hair cells. Bax inhibition significantly protects hair cells from neomycin but not from gentamicin toxicity. Conversely, transgenic overexpression of Bcl2 attenuates hair cell death due to gentamicin but not neomycin, suggesting a complex interplay of pro-death and pro-survival proteins in drug-treated hair cells. p53 inhibition protects hair cells from damage due to either aminoglycoside, with more robust protection seen against gentamicin. Further experiments evaluating p53 suggest that inhibition of mitochondrial-specific p53 activity confers significant hair cell protection from either aminoglycoside. These results suggest a role for mitochondrial p53 activity in promoting hair cell death due to aminoglycosides, likely upstream of Bax and Bcl2