Canal Transportation after Instrumentation Utilizing Different Endodontic Access Design; A Comparative Study with Micro-CT.

Introduction Access cavity design is known to affect theefficiency of instrumentation. Canal transportation occurs primarily in the apical region and to the outside of curvature when dentin is removed in a single direction. The goal of all cleaning and shaping procedures is to preserve the original root canal anatomy while removing sufficient amounts of injured pulp tissue, microorganisms, toxins and instrumentation byproducts. It is understood that the desired shape of the finished root canal is a continuous tapering funnel from the coronal to the apex. The aim of this study is to construct detailed three-dimensional images of root canal systems and measure the change in canal anatomy based on varying the access cavity designs, using WaveOne Gold®(WOG) and ProTaper NEXT®(PTN) files. Materials and Methods All teeth used were 3D printed maxillary first molar teeth purchased from Dental Education Laboratories. One unaltered tooth was scanned with a SkyScan 1272 microCT to be used as the control when gathering pre-instrumentation measurements of root thickness. Images were transferred to corresponding Bruker imaging software platforms to evaluate the pre-instrumentation root thickness of the mesial buccal at 1.0, 3.0, 5.0mm’s from the apex. Access stents for traditional and contracted access were then created using a microCT scan and 3D printer based on previously accessed molar teeth with traditional and contracted endodontic access. One hundred teeth were evenly divided into file and access combination groups A)WOG/Traditional access B)WOG/Contracted access C)PTN/Traditional access and D)PTN/Contracted access. Each tooth was then imaged and measured for root thickness of the mesial buccal at 1.0, 3.0, 5.0mm’s from the apex manor identical to the pre-instrumentation measurement. After data collection a two-way ANOVA was carried out to assess how drill, access, and the interaction between drill and access affect canal transportation and centering ratio. Since canal transport at 3.0 and 5.0mm’s have significant interaction p-values a Tukey HSD was done to see where the difference lies. Results For canal transport at 1 mm from the root apex, contracted access design demonstrated higher canal transport than the traditional access type regardless of the file tested. At depths of 3mm and 5mm, the traditional access type has a higher centering ratio than the contracted access type regardless of file iii utilized. At a depth of 5mm, the PTN file has a higher centering ratio than the WOG file regardless of access type. Conclusion The current study did not show benefits for contracted endodontic cavity using either a continuously rotating or reciprocating file in the mesial buccal root of maxillary first molars. This access modality resulted in greater canal transportation at 1mm, 3mm and 5mm from the apex. The ProTaper NEXT® file resulted in less canal transportation than WaveOne Gold® in all scenarios evaluated. However, the difference is only statistically significant at 3.0 and 5.0mm’s from the apex when WaveOne Gold® used with a contracted endodontic access. The greatest amount of canal transportation was seen with a combination of WaveOne Gold® and contracted access while the least amount of canal transportation was seen with a combination of ProTaper NEXT® and a traditional endodontic cavity. This difference was statistically significant

Cloning, Purification, and Biochemical Characterization of Human Prolyl Endopeptidase

Eurygaster integriceps Puton, common name sunn Pest, is one of the primary sources of wheat crop wastes in North Africa, Middle East, and Eastern Europe. It feeds by injecting the wheat grain with an enzyme characterized as prolyl endoprotease (spPEP) that breaks down Gluten, the wheat’s main constitutive protein necessary for bread production (Darkoh et al., 2010). Previously, it has been shown that peptides isolated from Lactobacillus hydrolysates of caseins in bovine milk are able to inhibit mammalian PEP in colon cells, as well as bacterial PEP (Juillerat-Jeanneret et al., 2010). While recombinant versions of these peptides are also potential inhibitors of the spPEP, their specificity must be tested also against hPEP. The primary objective of this study was to clone hPEP into the same expression vector as spPEP in order to compare hPEP to spPEP with regards to substrate binding, recognition, and inhibition. Initially, hPEP was PCR amplified in order to incorporate the 5’ and 3’ ends necessary for ligation independent cloning (LIC) into the expression vector. This was then expressed in BL21(DE3)/pTFs and purified on a nickel column. Future studies will include comparing inhibition between hPEP and spPEP using 16 PCR amplified fragments of varying length that contain the non-allergenic (as demonstrated by Ruiter, 2005) inhibitory sequence LNENLLRFFVAPFPEVFG, isolated from bovine αS1 casein

An Assessment of the Restaurant Grease Collection and Rendering Industry in South Carolina

The purpose of this report was to document the potential for using waste restaurant grease as a feedstock, to locate where the grease was located, and how much was available in South Carolina. Currently one facility, Southeast Biodiesel, plans to produce some of its biodiesel from waste grease and will go through an extensive cleaning process to ensure the feedstock is as pure as possible. Where documented it was found that 100 percent of the used waste grease was sold to the feed industry for between 12 – 15 cents per pound

Social Responses to Environmental Degradation in Northwest Rural China

This article joins the debate over factors which affect sustainability in China’s rural areas at both the village and individual level. It assesses gender-based differences in response to environmental problems, effects of farmer innovation circles on village sustainability, and development of environmental consciousness. We find that both sexes have low environmental consciousness, but women are more likely to be environmentally aware. Despite an increase in labor from agriculture reforms, women’s status does not increase within the family, limiting their ability to act on their environmentalism. Education, income, and age are additional demographic factors related to environmental consciousness. Villagers feel the village is most responsible for environmental protection. The importance of governmental sources of agricultural information was highlighted, as was the impact increasing wealth has on environmental consciousness. In the future women must be vital participants in future sustainability programs, due to high incidence of male migrant city workers, and women’s deep connectedness and dependence on the land

Trophic Dynamics and Feeding Ecology of the Southeast Florida Coastal Pelagic Fish Community

The combined methods of stomach content analysis and stable 15N and 13C isotope biochemistry analysis were used to investigate the trophic dynamics and feeding ecology of coastal pelagic fishes in the waters off southeastern Florida, USA. The coastal pelagic fish complex includes blackfin tuna Thunnus atlanticus, dolphinfish Coryphaena hippurus, king mackerel Scomberomorus cavalla, little tunny Euthynnus alletteratus, skipjack tuna Katsuwonus pelamis, and wahoo Acanthocybium solandri. These coastal teleosts, particularly the tunas and wahoo, are primarily targeted by recreational anglers. However, there is a shortage of available trophic and diet composition data concerning these fishes of the coastal pelagic ecosystem. Stomach and muscle tissue samples were collected from the species of various lengths over a three-year period from March 2010 and March 2013. Across all six species, teleost fishes dominated the prey with an average 64.5% by occurrence, 63.7% by number, and 89.9% by weight. There were two dominant prey families: Clupeidae and Carangidae. Dolphinfish showed the lowest diet overlap among the six species, due to the highly diverse diet. The highest diet overlap occurred between king mackerel and little tunny. The mean δ15N ranged from 8.21 ‰ (wahoo) to 13.18 ‰ (king mackerel), and the mean δ13C ranged from -18.41 ‰ (king mackerel) to -16.70 ‰ (dolphinfish). Blackfin tuna exhibited the largest δ15N range (7.22 to 13.21 ‰), as well as the largest δ13C range (-19.13 to -12.99 ‰). The δ15N and δ13C signatures in the muscle tissue showed evidence of shifts to higher trophic levels with an increase in fish size and the formation of distinct trophic groups among the coastal pelagic predators. The δ13C also suggested an inshore-offshore spatial relationship among the coastal pelagic fish. The trophic dynamics and feeding ecology data generated by this study will provide valuable baseline data for the coastal pelagic complex and future ecosystem studies

Quantifying the extent of change in extreme weather events in response to global warming

Weather extremes have been documented in the context of a warming climate in association with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. However, there remains much uncertainty as to how these extreme events will respond to future climate warming. In particular, climate modeling studies have predicted changes in the frequency and severity of weather extremes, and the range of changes reported in the literature is very large, and sometimes contradictory, as the nature of many extreme weather phenomena is not fully understood. This uncertainty stems, in part, from the limited ability of coarse resolution climate models to accurately measure and simulate weather events that occur at the microscale level, such as tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. However, some of the range of results reported originates simply from a wide variety of scenarios of future climate change used to drive climate model simulations, which hampers our ability to make generalizations about predicted changes in extreme weather events. The goal of this study is to conduct a meta-analysis of the literature on projected future extreme weather events, so as to identify trends, using global mean temperature change as a common frame of reference. Results indicate that global warming could significantly alter the behavior of multiple extreme weather events, such as mid-latitude drought, severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, as well as the selected important meteorological variables that engender them, into the 21st century