Alveolar Bone Loss on Abutment and Non-Abutment Teeth as Related to Removable Partial Denture Wearing. A Six Month Follow up Study

Loss of interdental alveolar bony septum can be determined directly from a radiograph as a percentage length of the interdental bony crest of the alveolus to the distance from cemento-enamel junction of the tooth to the tooth apex. The aim of this study was to measure the height of interdental alveolar bone around the abutment and nonabutment teeth in removable partial denture wearers (RPD) on dental panoramic radiographs (DPR) through a period of six months. Twenty RPD patients (5 males, 15 females participated in the study. The alveolarbone loss measurement was performed on DPRs, using Shei index, on each mandibular abutment and non-abutment tooth on its mesial and distal side, after the RPD delivery and six months later. Recordings of plaque index (PlI) were made at the mid-buccal, mid-palatal, mesio- and disto-palatal surfaces of each abutment and non-abutment teeth after the RPD delivery and six months later. The results revealed a decrease of Shei index values on both abutment and non-abutment teeth, which reached a statistically significant level for distal Shei index values of the abutment teeth and mesial and distal Shei index values of the non-abutment teeth (p<0.05) in a 6 month period. There was no statistically significant difference in PlI values between the first and the second measurement (p>0.05). We concluded that the decrease in bone support on both abutment and non-abutment teeth was attributed to the high levels of PlI and low level of oral hygiene than to RPD loading. Supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Republic of Croatia, Project No. 065911

Possible Superconducting State up to 210 K in the new Composition of Y-Ba-Cu-O

We have observed the zero resistance state up to 210 K in the mixed system of nominal composition Yj.2BaOSCu04-prepared under simultaneous action oi pulsed electric field up to 30 kV/cm and uniaxial force of 180 kN. The onset of the decrease of the resistance at 281 K in the repeated cycles and preliminary data diamagnetism are understood by us as a possible superconductivity event related to a particular composition

Do gender and torus mandibularis affect mandibular cortical index? A cross-sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The interactions between torus and several factors such as age, gender, and dental status have not been studied comprehensively. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of gender on the mandibular cortical index (MCI) and to investigate a possible association between torus mandibularis (TM) and MCI.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study consisted of 189 consecutive patients referred to Department of Oral Diagnosis and Radiology of Hacettepe University within 30 workdays. Patients who did not have systemic disorders affecting bone density were included; and the age, gender, dental status and existing TM of the patients were recorded. Morphology of the mandibular inferior cortex was determined according to Klemitti's classification on panoramic radiographs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>MCI was affected by age and gender (<it>P </it>< 0.05). No significant relationship was found between TM and MCI (<it>P </it>> 0.05).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In the study population, MCI was affected by age and gender. As age increased, semilunar defects could be seen on the cortex of the mandible and MCI values increased. Women appeared to have higher MCI values than men.</p

Lossless Image Compression Exploiting Streaming Model for Efficient Execution on Multicores

Image and video coding play a critical role in present multimedia systems ranging from entertainment to specialized applications such as telemedicine. Usually, they are hand–customized for every intended architecture in order to meet performance requirements. This approach is neither portable nor scalable. With the advent of multicores new challenges emerged for programmers related to both efficient utilization of additional resources and scalable performance. For image and video processing applications, streaming model of computation showed to be effective in tackling these challenges. In this paper, we report the efforts to improve the execution performance of the CBPC, our compute intensive lossless image compression algorithm described in [1]. The algorithm is based on highly adaptive and predictive modeling, outperforming many other methods in compression efficiency, although with increased complexity. We employ a high–level performance optimization approach which exploits streaming model for scalability and portability. We obtain this by detecting computationally demanding parts of the algorithm and implementing them in StreamIt, an architecture–independent stream language which goal is to improve programming productivity and parallelization efficiency by exposing the parallelism and communication pattern. We developed an interface that enables the integration and hosting of streaming kernels into the host application developed in general–purpose language.Postupci obrade slikovnih podataka su iznimno zastupljeni u postojećim multimedijskim sustavima, počev od zabavnih sustava pa do specijaliziranih aplikacija u telemedicini. Vrlo često, zbog svojih računskih zahtjeva, ovi programski odsječci su iznimno optimirani i to na niskoj razini, što predstavlja poteškoće u prenosivosti i skalabilnosti konačnog rješenja. Nadolaskom višejezgrenih računala pojavljuju se novi izazovi kao što su učinkovito iskorištavanje računskih jezgri i postizanje skalabilnosti rješenja obzirom na povećanje broja jezgri. U ovom radu prikazan je novi pristup poboljšanja izvedbenih performansi metode za kompresiju slika bez gubitaka CBPC koja se odlikuje adaptivnim modelom predviđanja koji omogućuje postizanje boljih stupnjeva kompresije uz povećanje računske složenosti [1]. Pristup koji je primjenjen sastoji se u implementaciji računski zahtjevnog predikcijskog modela u tokovnom programskom jeziku koji omogućuje paralelizaciju izvornog programa. Ovako projektiran predikcijski model može se iskoristiti kroz sučelje koje smo razvili a koje omogućuje pozivanje tokovnih računskih modula i njihovo paralelno izvođenje uz iskorištavanje više jezgri