Traditional Medicinal Plant Extracts and Natural Products with Activity against Oral Bacteria: Potential Application in the Prevention and Treatment of Oral Diseases

Oral diseases are major health problems with dental caries and periodontal diseases among the most important preventable global infectious diseases. Oral health influences the general quality of life and poor oral health is linked to chronic conditions and systemic diseases. The association between oral diseases and the oral microbiota is well established. Of the more than 750 species of bacteria that inhabit the oral cavity, a number are implicated in oral diseases. The development of dental caries involves acidogenic and aciduric Gram-positive bacteria (mutans streptococci, lactobacilli and actinomycetes). Periodontal diseases have been linked to anaerobic Gram-negative bacteria (Porphyromonas gingivalis, Actinobacillus, Prevotella and Fusobacterium). Given the incidence of oral disease, increased resistance by bacteria to antibiotics, adverse affects of some antibacterial agents currently used in dentistry and financial considerations in developing countries, there is a need for alternative prevention and treatment options that are safe, effective and economical. While several agents are commercially available, these chemicals can alter oral microbiota and have undesirable side-effects such as vomiting, diarrhea and tooth staining. Hence, the search for alternative products continues and natural phytochemicals isolated from plants used as traditional medicines are considered as good alternatives. In this review, plant extracts or phytochemicals that inhibit the growth of oral pathogens, reduce the development of biofilms and dental plaque, influence the adhesion of bacteria to surfaces and reduce the symptoms of oral diseases will be discussed further. Clinical studies that have investigated the safety and efficacy of such plant-derived medicines will also be described

Re-Curation and Recognition: Addressing The Curation Crisis Through the Garnet Ghost Town

As universities, federal curation facilities, public museums, and private collections struggle to create space on their shelves curators and archaeologists continuously evaluate what must continue to be stored and what needs to be deaccessioned. Utilizing a collection housed at the University of Montana I explore strategies for combating this issue. The collection originates from the Garnet Ghost Town and has been in the university’s care since its excavation. The objectives of this project are to obtain new information and incorporate innovative techniques to learn more about the collection itself and provide an updated analysis to one of Montana’s most complete Ghost Towns. This is achieved through the process of re-curation. The goals of recurating are to create a digital spreadsheet, identify objects of interest for testing or museum exhibition, extensive photography, and identify portions of the collection to be returned to the Ghost Town for interment. Additionally, re-curating the artifacts with newer theoretical frameworks and a better understanding of the hidden heritages within this industrial heritage landscape. The final objective is to prepare the information compiled so it can be made accessible in an effort to create equality in historic interpretation while creating a process that works in junction with the Bureau of Land Management, The University of Montana, and the public to conserve and preserve as much as possible while making room for the continuation of archaeological research

Finding a reflexive voice : -- researching the problems of implementing new learning practices within a New Zealand manufacturing organisation : a 100pt thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Human Resources Management at Massey University

This study explored the social forces mediating manager's participation in a new reflexive participative learning practice designed to improve profitability within a New Zealand manufacturing organisation. Despite a large theoretical and managerial body of literature on organisational learning there has been little empirical investigation of how people experience and engage their reflexivity towards challenging the status-quo to create high level learning and new knowledge. Power was identified as a potential moderator of the reflexive learning experience and the variable relations of power and learning were constructed from a review of literature and these relationships were explored and investigated within the case study. Two prevailing discourses were identified as powerful moderators of public reflexivity, the traditionalist discourse which constructed managers actions and conversations towards insularism and survivalist concerns and the productionist discourse in which institutionalised production practices encircled and mediated managers actions and what constituted legitimacy in conversations. This study used a critical action research method to place the reflexive experience of managers and the researcher at the centre of the study and provide data representative of the social discourses that constructed variable freedoms and constraints upon the reflexive voice

MIVIS image geocoding experience on merging position attitude system data and public domain GPS stream (ASI-GeoDAF)

The use of airborne scanners involves geo-referencing problems, which are difficult because of the need to know the exact platform position and attitude for each scan line. The errors of the onboard navigation system are normally corrected using ground control point on the image. This post-processing correction procedure is too long in case of multiple flight campaigns, and besides it implies the need to have available 1:10000 orthophotoimages or maps in digital format. To optimize the above procedure a new method to correct MIVIS navigational data in the post-processing phase has been implemented. The procedure takes into consideration the GPS stream in Rinex format of common knowledge and findable on the web, acquired at the ground stations of the Geodetic Data Archiving Facilities provided by ASI. The application of this correction entails the assumption that the environmental variables affecting both onboard and geodetic GPS equally affect the position measurements. The airborne data correction was carried out merging the two data sets (onboard and ground station GPS) to achieve a more precise aircraft trajectory. The present study compares the geo-coded images obtained by means of the two post-processing methods

Mapping complex cell morphology in the grey matter with double diffusion encoding MR: A simulation study

This paper investigates the impact of cell body (namely soma) size and branching of cellular projections on diffusion MR imaging (dMRI) and spectroscopy (dMRS) signals for both standard single diffusion encoding (SDE) and more advanced double diffusion encoding (DDE) measurements using numerical simulations. The aim is to investigate the ability of dMRI/dMRS to characterize the complex morphology of brain cells focusing on these two distinctive features of brain grey matter. To this end, we employ a recently developed computational framework to create three dimensional meshes of neuron-like structures for Monte Carlo simulations, using diffusion coefficients typical of water and brain metabolites. Modelling the cellular structure as realistically connected spherical soma and cylindrical cellular projections, we cover a wide range of combinations of sphere radii and branching order of cellular projections, characteristic of various grey matter cells. We assess the impact of spherical soma size and branching order on the b-value dependence of the SDE signal as well as the time dependence of the mean diffusivity (MD) and mean kurtosis (MK). Moreover, we also assess the impact of spherical soma size and branching order on the angular modulation of DDE signal at different mixing times, together with the mixing time dependence of the apparent microscopic anisotropy (μA), a promising contrast derived from DDE measurements. The SDE results show that spherical soma size has a measurable impact on both the b-value dependence of the SDE signal and the MD and MK diffusion time dependence for both water and metabolites. On the other hand, we show that branching order has little impact on either, especially for water. In contrast, the DDE results show that spherical soma size has a measurable impact on the DDE signal's angular modulation at short mixing times and the branching order of cellular projections significantly impacts the mixing time dependence of the DDE signal's angular modulation as well as of the derived μA, for both water and metabolites. Our results confirm that SDE based techniques may be sensitive to spherical soma size, and most importantly, show for the first time that DDE measurements may be more sensitive to the dendritic tree complexity (as parametrized by the branching order of cellular projections), paving the way for new ways of characterizing grey matter morphology, non-invasively using dMRS and potentially dMRI

Advancing sustainability in the maritime sector: energy design and optimization of large ships through information modelling and dynamic simulation

This paper deals with a new energy design approach for ships to reduce the fuel consumption and the related environmental impact. The proposed method is based on the application of the Building Information Modeling (BIM) to Building Energy Modeling (BEM) technique. Specifically, by a BIM model of the ship a 3D physics-based model (BEM) can be suitably created. Then, by BEM the ship energy performance is simulated under real and dynamic operating conditions. By the presented method the whole design-to-delivery process of the ship can be simplified and speeded up with respect to traditional approaches, without losing reliability. As an example, HVAC systems design is easier through BIM since a high number of thermal zones can be effectively handled. Due to BEM, also the optimal design for exploiting waste heat recoveries of on-board combustion engines is easier and faster. To show the capability of the proposed approach a suitable case study was developed. Basically, it concerns the energy performance analysis of the Allure of the Seas, a 6000-passenger cruise ship operating in the Caribbean Sea. Two different scenarios for recovering the waste heat of the ship diesel generators are investigated. Simulation results highlight that significant primary energy saving can be obtained by optimizing the strategy to recover the available thermal energies (up to 600 MWh per trip), with a remarkable amount of avoided pollutant emissions (58, 0.06, 4.0, 0.2, 2.0 kg/km of CO2, PM2.5, NOx, HC, SOx, respectively).The presented new approach can be easily adopted to design and optimize the energy system of any new or existing ships, with the twofold aim to achieve economic savings and to fulfil environmental sustainability standards

In silico investigation of lactone and thiolactone inhibitors in bacterial quorum sensing using molecular modeling

In the present study, the origin of the anti-quorum sensing (QS) activities of several members of a recently synthesized and in vitro tested class of lactone and thiolactone based inhibitors were computationally investigated. Docking and molecular dynamic (MD) simulations and binding free energy calculations were carried out to reveal the exact binding and inhibitory profiles of these compounds. The higher in vitro activity of the lactone series relative to their thiolactone isosteres was verified based on estimating the binding energies, the docking scores and monitoring the stability of the complexes produced in the MD simulations. The strong electrostatic contribution to the binding energies may be responsible for the higher inhibitory activity of the lactone with respect to the thiolactone series. The results of this study help to understand the anti-QS properties of lactone-based inhibitors and provide important information that may assist in the synthesis of novel QS inhibitors

Abundance of cell bodies can explain the stick model’s failure in grey matter at high bvalue

This work investigates the validity of the stick model used in diffusion-weighted MRI for modelling cellular projections in brain tissue. We hypothesize that the model will fail to describe the signals from grey matter due to an abundance of cell bodies. Using high b-value (≥3 ms/µm ) data from rat and human brain, we show that the assumption fails for grey matter. Using diffusion simulation in realistic digital models of neurons/glia, we demonstrate the breakdown of the assumption can be explained by the presence of cell bodies. Our findings suggest that high b-value data may be used to probe cell bodies

A compartment based model for non-invasive cell body imaging by diffusion MRI

This study aims to open a new window onto brain tissue microstructure by proposing a new technique to estimate cell body (namely soma) size/density non-invasively. Using Monte-Carlo simulation and data from rat brain, we show that soma’s size and density have a specific signature on the direction-averaged DW-MRI signal at high b values. Simulation shows that, at reasonably short diffusion times, soma and neurites can be approximated as two non-exchanging compartments, modelled as “sphere” and “sticks” respectively. Fitting this simple compartment model to rat data produces maps with contrast consistent with published histological data

Sorgo para pastejo/corte e cobertura do solo no período de outono/inverno (safrinha) em Mato Grosso do Sul.

Em Mato Grosso do Sul, as principais culturas utilizadas para cobertura de solo na safrinha são o milheto, a aveia e o nabo (Hernani et al., 1995; Machado, 2003). Para pastejo, também são utilizadas essas espécies, com exceção do nabo. Devido ao risco de geadas, as espécies adaptadas ao clima frio, como a aveia e o nabo, são mais utilizadas na região sul do Estado. Na região norte, o milheto e o sorgo são mais produtivos no período de outono, porque o clima, apesar de seco, é quente, favorecendo as espécies tropicais. Em regiões com esta condição, o sorgo é muito utilizado para a produção de grãos, sendo recente sua utilização para a produção de palha e forragem. Pela sua tolerância a déficit hídrico e a baixas temperaturas, a cultura vem ganhando importância econômica no Estado. Este estudo teve como objetivo selecionar genótipos de sorgo para pastejo na safra de outono/inverno, em sucessão a soja.bitstream/item/38771/1/BP-200416.pd