Nanofeatured surfaces in dental implants: contemporary insights and impending challenges.

Dental implant therapy, established as standard-of-care nearly three decades ago with the advent of microrough titanium surfaces, revolutionized clinical outcomes through enhanced osseointegration. However, despite this pivotal advancement, challenges persist, including prolonged healing times, restricted clinical indications, plateauing success rates, and a notable incidence of peri-implantitis. This review explores the biological merits and constraints of microrough surfaces and evaluates the current landscape of nanofeatured dental implant surfaces, aiming to illuminate strategies for addressing existing impediments in implant therapy. Currently available nanofeatured dental implants incorporated nano-structures onto their predecessor microrough surfaces. While nanofeature integration into microrough surfaces demonstrates potential for enhancing early-stage osseointegration, it falls short of surpassing its predecessors in terms of osseointegration capacity. This discrepancy may be attributed, in part, to the inherent dichotomy kinetics of osteoblasts, wherein increased surface roughness by nanofeatures enhances osteoblast differentiation but concomitantly impedes cell attachment and proliferation. We also showcase a controllable, hybrid micro-nano titanium model surface and contrast it with commercially-available nanofeatured surfaces. Unlike the commercial nanofeatured surfaces, the controllable micro-nano hybrid surface exhibits superior potential for enhancing both cell differentiation and proliferation. Hence, present nanofeatured dental implants represent an evolutionary step from conventional microrough implants, yet they presently lack transformative capacity to surmount existing limitations. Further research and development endeavors are imperative to devise optimized surfaces rooted in fundamental science, thereby propelling technological progress in the field

Provably Secure Password Reset Protocol: Model, Definition, and Generic Construction

Many online services adopt a password-based user authentication system because of its usability. However, several problems have been pointed out on it, and one of the well-known problems is that a user forgets his/her password and cannot login the services. To solve this problem, most online services support a mechanism with which a user can reset a password. In this paper, we consider a provable security treatment for a password reset protocol. We formalize a model and security definitions, propose a generic construction based on a pseudorandom function and public key encryption. In addition, we implement a prototype of our protocol to evaluate its efficiency

Re-encryption Verifiability: How to Detect Malicious Activities of a Proxy in Proxy Re-encryption

In this paper, we introduce a new functionality for proxy re-encryption (PRE) that we call re-encryption verifiability. In a PRE scheme with re-encryption verifiability (which we simply call verifiable PRE, or VPRE), a receiver of a re-encrypted ciphertext can verify whether the received ciphertext is correctly transformed from an original ciphertext by a proxy, and thus can detect illegal activities of the proxy. We formalize the security model for a VPRE scheme, and show that the single-hop uni-directional PRE scheme by Hanaoka et al. (CT-RSA 2012) can be extended to a secure VPRE scheme

Factors affecting the digestibility of raw and gelatinized potato starches.

The enzymatic digestibilities of raw and gelatinized starches in various potato starches, as well as sweet potato, cassava, and yam starches, were estimated, along with other starch properties, such as the phosphorus content, median granule size, and rapid visco analyzer (RVA) pasting properties. Furthermore, correlation coefficients were calculated between the hydrolysis rates (HR) by amylase and other starch quality parameters. A larger granule size was closely associated with a lower HR in raw starch, while the HR in gelatinized starch did not correlate with the median granule size. An increase in phosphorus content resulted in a definitely lower HR in raw starch and tended to decrease the HR in gelatinized starch for the composite of potato and other starches. In contrast, no correlation coefficients of the phosphorus content with the HRs in raw and gelatinized starches were observed within potato starches. Starches with higher peak viscosity and breakdown showed a lower HR in raw starch, while few or no effects of these RVA parameters on the HR in gelatinized starch were observed for the composite of potato and other starches or among potato starches, respectively

Comparison of phenolic compositions between common and tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum) sprouts.

The phenolic compositions of non-germinated/germinated seeds and seed sprouts (at 6–10 day-old) of common (Fagopyrum esculentum Möench) and tartary (Fagopyrum tataricum Gaertn.) buckwheats were investigated. Phenolic compounds, including chlorogenic acid, four C-glycosylflavones (orientin, isoorientin vitexin, isovitexin), rutin and quercetin, were determined in the seed sprouts by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). In the edible parts of common buckwheat sprouts, individual phenolics significantly increased during sprout growth from 6 to 10 days after sowing (DAS), whereas in tartary buckwheat sprouts they did not. While the sum contents of phenolic compounds in the edible part (mean 24.4 mg/g DW at 6–10 DAS) of tartary buckwheat sprouts were similar to those of common buckwheat sprouts, rutin contents in the non-germinated/germinated seeds (mean 14.7 mg/g DW) and edible parts (mean 21.8 mg/g DW) of tartary buckwheat were 49- and 5-fold, respectively, higher than those of common buckwheat. Extracts of the edible parts of both species showed very similar free radical-scavenging activities (mean 1.7 μmol trolox eq/g DW), suggesting that the overall antioxidative activity might be affected by the combination of identified phenolics and unidentified (minor) components. Therefore, buckwheat seed sprouts are recommended for their high antioxidative activity, as well as being an excellent dietary source of phenolic compounds, particularly tartary buckwheat sprouts, being rich in rutin

Yam contributes to improvement of glucose metabolism in rats.

To investigate whether yam improves glucose metabolism, yam-containing diets were given to Wistar rats. In a short-term experiment, fasted-rats were given 1.0 g of a control and 20% yam-containing diets. At 60 min after start of the feeding, glucose level in the yam diet group was lower or tended to be lower than that in the control diet. Insulin levels at 30 min and 60 min were significantly lower than those in the control group. In a long-term experiment, a normal diet (N) or 25% high fat diets with (Y) or without 15% yam powder (HF) were given to rats for 4 weeks. At 4 weeks, in an oral glucose tolerance test, the area under the curve (AUC) of plasma glucose level was higher in the HF group than that in the N group, whereas those in the Y groups did not differ from that in the N group. Glycosylated hemoglobin levels had similar tendency to the AUCs. Plasma leptin levels in the Y groups were significantly higher than that in the N group. In conclusion, yam may contribute to improvement of glucose metabolism. Additionally, we speculated that leptin level is possibly involved in the insulin-response to yam diets

Enzymatic hydrolysis of potato starches containing different amounts of phosphorus.

The rapid hydrolysis of potato starches differing in phosphorus content, as well as sweet potato, cassava and yam starches, was accomplished by treatment of gelatinised starches with bacterial liquefying α-amylase at 50 °C for 1 h, followed by Bacillus licheniformis α-amylase at 55 °C up to 24 h, and then by glucoamylase at 40 °C for a further 24 h. Among the potato starches, the high-phosphorus starches showed higher starch resistant capacity than the medium-phosphorus starches, as well as other tuber and root starches. The hydrolysis rate of tuber and root starches was not greatly influenced by their amylose content and median granule size. Only glucose was detected in the almost completely hydrolysed tuber and root starch samples, indicating that the concomitant enzymes treatment could hydrolyse both the α-1,4 and α-1,6 linkages of the starches examined