Search

Management of a hard and soft tissue defect with an acrylic prosthesis has been proved to be very successful in the esthetic zone. The gingival prosthesis is provided when surgical management is either difficult or failed. In the present case report is an innovative method of management of Kennedy's Class I maxillary arch with gingival recession in the anterior teeth with a combined prosthesis.

The Hydra nervous system is the paradigm of a simple nerve net. Nerve cells in Hydra, as in many cnidarian polyps, are organized in a nerve net extending throughout the body column. This nerve net is required for control of spontaneous behavior: elimination of nerve cells leads to polyps that do not move and are incapable of capturing and ingesting prey (Campbell, 1976). We have re-examined the structure of the Hydra nerve net by immunostaining fixed polyps with a novel antibody that stains all nerve cells in Hydra. Confocal imaging shows that there are two distinct nerve nets, one in the ectoderm and one in the endoderm, with the unexpected absence of nerve cells in the endoderm of the tentacles. The nerve nets in the ectoderm and endoderm do not contact each other. High-resolution TEM (transmission electron microscopy) and serial block face SEM (scanning electron microscopy) show that the nerve nets consist of bundles of parallel overlapping neurites. Results from transgenic lines show that neurite bundles include different neural circuits and hence that neurites in bundles require circuit-specific recognition. Nerve cell-specific innexins indicate that gap junctions can provide this specificity. The occurrence of bundles of neurites supports a model for continuous growth and differentiation of the nerve net by lateral addition of new nerve cells to the existing net. This model was confirmed by tracking newly differentiated nerve cells.

Statement of Problem: The osseointegration of dental implant is related to their composition and surface treatment. Titanium zirconium (TiZr) has been introduced as an alternative to the commercially pure titanium and its alloys as dental implant material, which is attributed to its superior mechanical and biological properties. Surface treatments of TiZr have been introduced to enhance their osseointegration ability; however, reliable, easy to use surface modification technique has not been established. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the effect of neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd-YAG) laser surface treatment of TiZr implant alloy on their osteogenic potential. Materials and Methods: Twenty disc-shaped samples of 5 mm diameter and 2 mm height were milled from the TiZr alloy ingot. The polished discs were ultrasonically cleaned in distilled water. Ten samples each were randomly selected as Group A control samples and Group B consisted of Nd-YAG laser surface etched and conditioned test samples. These were evaluated for cellular response. Cellular adhesion and proliferation were quantified, and the results were statistically analyzed using nonparametric analysis. Cellular morphology was observed using electron and epiflurosence microscopy. Results: Nd-YAG laser surface modified and conditioned TiZr samples increased the osteogenic potential. Conclusion: Nd-YAG laser surface modification of TiZr, improves the cellular activity, surface roughness, and wettability, thereby increasing the osteogenic potential.

Abstract We recently showed that the gain of the pupillary light response depends on numerosity, with weaker responses to fewer items. Here we show that this effect holds when the stimuli are physically identical but are perceived as less numerous due to numerosity adaptation. Twenty-eight participants adapted to low (10 dots) or high (160 dots) numerosities and subsequently watched arrays of 10–40 dots, with variable or homogeneous dot size. Luminance was constant across all stimuli. Pupil size was measured with passive viewing, and the effects of adaptation were checked in a separate psychophysical session. We found that perceived numerosity was systematically lower, and pupillary light responses correspondingly smaller, following adaptation to high rather than low numerosities. This is consistent with numerosity being a primary visual feature, spontaneously encoded even when task irrelevant, and affecting automatic and unconscious behaviours like the pupillary light response.

Although deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the basal ganglia improves motor outcomes in Parkinson's disease (PD), its effects on cognition, including language, remain unclear. This study examined the impact of subthalamic nucleus (STN) DBS on two fundamental capacities of language, grammatical and lexical functions. These functions were tested with the production of regular and irregular past-tenses, which contrast aspects of grammatical (regulars) and lexical (irregulars) processing while controlling for multiple potentially confounding factors. Aspects of the motor system were tested by contrasting the naming of manipulated (motor) and non-manipulated (non-motor) objects. Performance was compared between healthy controls and early-stage PD patients treated with either DBS/medications or medications alone. Patients were assessed on and off treatment, with controls following a parallel testing schedule. STN-DBS improved naming of manipulated (motor) but not non-manipulated (non-motor) objects, as compared to both controls and patients with just medications, who did not differ from each other across assessment sessions. In contrast, STN-DBS led to worse performance at regulars (grammar) but not irregulars (lexicon), as compared to the other two subject groups, who again did not differ. The results suggest that STN-DBS negatively impacts language in early PD, but may be specific in depressing aspects of grammatical and not lexical processing. The finding that STN-DBS affects both motor and grammar (but not lexical) functions strengthens the view that both depend on basal ganglia circuitry, although the mechanisms for its differential impact on the two (improved motor, impaired grammar) remain to be elucidated.

Takotsubo or stress cardiomyopathy is a syndrome of transient left ventricular systolic dysfunction seen in the absence of obstructive coronary artery disease. We describe a case of stress cardiomyopathy diagnosed in the emergency department (ED) using point of care ultrasound (POCUS) associated with traumatic hand amputation.  The patient suffered a near-complete amputation of the right hand while using a circular saw, subsequently complicated by brief cardiac arrest with rapid return of spontaneous circulation. Point-of-care ultrasonography in the ED revealed the classic findings of takotsubo cardiomyopathy, including apical ballooning of the left ventricle and hyperkinesis of the basal walls with a severely reduced ejection fraction. After formalization of the amputation and cardiovascular evaluation, the patient was discharged from the hospital in stable condition ten days later. Emergency physicians should be aware of the possibility of stress cardiomyopathy as a cause for acute decompensation, even in isolated extremity trauma.

Black student activism in the 21st century has gained international notoriety with popular movements such as #StudentBlackOut, #FeesMustFall, and #ConcernedStudent1950 (Alfonzo & Foust, 2019; Turner, 2016). Between 2014 and 2017, Black students manipulated the momentum of a larger social movement--the Movement for Black Lives--in order to secure organizing victories for racial justice, both on and off their college campuses (Ransby, 2018; Williams, 2016). In this article, I explore the meaning-making processes of Black student activists who participated in on-campus or off-campus activism between 2014 and 2017. Themes from the interviews demonstrated that Black student activists were both politicized and entered movement organizing because of catalytic events, and that they saw themselves as resource brokers who funnel university resources, labor, and energy into dispossessed communities. In addition to arguing that participants used their racialized subjectivities to leverage resources and make changes for racial justice, I also assert that Black students were highly aware of their positionality; they raised critiques of their class-fluid positions as college students and the protections that their student identity provided them.

There has been demand in many countries for the establishment of small campuses in more rural locations to spread the benefits of higher education both through the provision of university courses and through the positive economic spill-overs for these communities. Evaluations of the impacts of these universities according to current models show limited effects due to their small scale and specialization. Yet whilst there are clearly spill-over benefits from rural campuses into local communities, these are not only of the traditional (knowledge and economic) variety. Rather, regional campuses create social infrastructure that supports these places' quality of life. This article seeks to develop a proposal for how such social impacts of regional campuses could be evaluated by creating a conceptual framework that articulates how university-region learning communities contribute to socio-economic development trajectories of rural regions. Our overarching hypothesis is that social rural campuses are places where local learning communities work with globally sourced knowledge to make it useful and usable in particular local contexts. Over time, these activities form the basis of regular contact networks, and the benefits they bring become woven into the provision of place-specific welfare services. As a result, the university's contributions play a more structural role, and the students are involved in creating more lasting benefits by providing the interaction underpinning these structural collaborations. Our model is exemplified through an exploration of the context of the status of rural university campuses in Norway, and a case study of the Academy of Music, an outpost of the multi-campus University of Tromsø (UiT The Arctic University of Norway).

Animal genomes show networks of deeply conserved gene linkages whose phylogenetic scope and chromosomal context remain unclear. Here, we report chromosome-scale conservation of synteny among bilaterians, cnidarians, and sponges and use comparative analysis to reconstruct ancestral chromosomes across major animal groups. Comparisons among diverse metazoans reveal the processes of chromosome evolution that produced contemporary karyotypes from their Precambrian progenitors. On the basis of these findings, we introduce a simple algebraic representation of chromosomal change and use it to establish a unified systematic framework for metazoan chromosome evolution. We find that fusion-with-mixing, a previously unappreciated mode of chromosome change, has played a central role. We find that relicts of several metazoan chromosomal units are preserved in unicellular eukaryotes. These conserved pre-metazoan linkages include the chromosomal unit that encodes the most diverse set of metazoan homeobox genes, suggesting a candidate genomic context for the early diversification of this key gene family.

With Bacillus species, about 30% of extracellular proteins are translocated through the cytoplasmic membrane, coordinated by the Sec translocase. This system mainly consists of the cytoplasmic ATPase SecA and the membrane-embedded SecYEG channel. The purpose of this work was to investigate the effects of the SecYEG export system on the production of industrial biomolecules, such as biosurfactants, proteases, amylases, and cellulases. Fifty-two isolates of Bacillus species were obtained from traditional fermented foods and then characterized using molecular microbiology methods. The isolates secreted exoenzymes that included cellulases, amylases, and proteases. We present evidence that a biosurfactant-like molecule requires the SecA ATPase and the SecYEG membrane channel for its secretion. In addition, we showed that biomolecules involved in biofilm formation required the SecYEG pathway. This work presents a novel seven-target fragment multiplex PCR assay capable of identification at the species level of Bacillus through a unique SecDF chromosomal gene. The bacterial membrane protein SecDF allowed the discrimination of Bacillus subtilis, B. licheniformis, B. amyloliquefaciens, and B. sonorensis. SecA was able to interact with AprE, AmyE, and TasA. The Rose Bengal inhibitor of SecA crucially affected the interaction of AprE, AmyE, TapA, and TasA with recombinant Gst-SecA. The Rose Bengal prevented Bacillus species from secreting and producing proteases, cellulases, amylases, and biosurfactant-like molecules. It also inhibited the formation of biofilm cell communities. The data support, for the first time, that the SecYEG translocon mediates the secretion of a biosurfactant-like molecule.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder are thought to have a more local than global perceptual style. We used a novel paradigm to investigate how grouping-induced response biases in numerosity judgments depend on autistic-like personality traits in neurotypical adults. Participants judged the numerosity of clouds of dot-pairs connected by thin lines, known to cause underestimation of numerosity. The underestimation bias correlated strongly with autism-spectrum quotient (r = 0.72, Bayes factor > 100), being weaker for participants with high autistic traits. As connecting dots probably activates global grouping mechanisms, causing dot-pairs to be processed as an integrated whole rather than as individual dots, the results suggest that these grouping mechanisms may be weaker in individuals self-reporting high levels of autistic-like traits.

A global rise in HVAC-R utilization requires a deeper understanding of the industry's effect on electricity consumptions and greenhouse gas emissions. The Total Equivalent Warming Impact (TEWI) methodology was designed to analyze emissions from direct release of refrigerant and indirect emissions through electricity consumption of HVAC-R systems to increase the understanding of system design on emissions, and to guide refrigerant replacement. However, the original TEWI calculation neglects the system degradation due to corrosion. This paper studies on the impact of corrosion and highlights how the original TEWI method underrepresents the lifetime emissions due to energy efficiency decrease and refrigerant release. Corrosion impacts direct emissions by increasing refrigerant leakage rates over time and indirect emissions through heat exchanger efficiency degradation and suboptimal refrigerant level. A modified TEWI equation is proposed to capture the dynamic corrosion impacts over the lifetime of HVAC operations. Three scenarios (low corrosivity, conservative and moderate corrosivity) are examined to analyze different corrosion environments. This analysis indicates 6%-27% increase in TEWI emissions based on a typical residential air conditioner (AC), when the impacts of corrosion are included, with the greatest emissions increase from reduced electrical efficiency. The impact of several current and future corrosion protection scenarios on TEWI are also included. Appropriate corrosion mitigation can reduce total lifecycle emissions of systems by 6% ~ 10%. The proposed modified TEWI method is expected to provide a more accurate emission estimation for AC sustainability and policy making.

Visual crowding is a phenomenon where objects presented in the visual periphery are not resolved efficiently. Here the authors show that crowding may derive from an optimizing strategy that blends information when it is similar and preserves it when it is dissimilar.

Transposable elements are one of the major contributors to genome-size differences in metazoans. Despite this, relatively little is known about the evolutionary patterns of element expansions and the element families involved. Here we report a broad genomic sampling within the genus Hydra, a freshwater cnidarian at the focal point of diverse research in regeneration, symbiosis, biogeography, and aging. We find that the genome of Hydra is the result of an expansion event involving long interspersed nuclear elements and in particular a single family of the chicken repeat 1 (CR1) class. This expansion is unique to a subgroup of the genus Hydra, the brown hydras, and is absent in the green hydra, which has a repeat landscape similar to that of other cnidarians. These features of the genome make Hydra attractive for studies of transposon-driven genome expansions and speciation.

Abstract Background The immune response against tuberculosis in lions is still poorly defined and our understanding is hampered by the lack of lion specific reagents. The process for producing antibodies against a specific antigen is laborious and not available to many research laboratories. As the search for antibody cross-reactivity is an important strategy for immunological studies in veterinary medicine, we have investigated the use of commercially available antibodies to characterize T cell subsets in African lions (Panthera leo). Results Commercially available antibodies were screened and investigated the influence of two different sample processing methods, as well as the effect of time delay on cell surface marker expression on lion lymphocytes. Using commercially available antibodies, we were able to identify CD4+, CD5+, CD8+, CD14+, CD25+, CD44+ and CD45+ T lymphocytes in samples obtained by density gradient centrifugation as well as red cell lysis of lion whole blood. Two distinct lymphocyte populations, which differed in size and phenotype, were observed in the samples processed by density gradient centrifugation. Conclusion Commercially available antibodies are able to differentiate between T lymphocyte subsets including immune effector cells in African lion whole blood, and possibly give insight into unique specie phenotypes.

We measured the modulation of pupil size (in constant lighting) elicited by observing transparent surfaces of black and white moving dots, perceived as a cylinder rotating about its vertical axis. The direction of rotation was swapped periodically by flipping stereo-depth of the two surfaces. Pupil size modulated in synchrony with the changes in front-surface color (dilating when black). The magnitude of pupillary modulation was larger for human participants with higher Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), consistent with a local perceptual style, with attention focused on the front surface. The modulation with surface color, and its correlation with AQ, was equally strong when participants passively viewed the stimulus. No other indicator, including involuntary pursuit eye movements, covaried with AQ. These results reinforce our previous report with a similar bistable stimulus (Turi, Burr, & Binda, 2018), and go on to show that bistable illusory motion is not necessary for the effect, or its dependence on AQ.

Los fundamentos teóricos que tradicionalmente han sido aprovechados para el estudio de los lenguajes visuales están relacionados, a menudo, con perspectivas y conceptos que difícilmente resisten la confrontación con los avances recientes en las ciencias cognitivas, de manera particular con el paradigma emergente de la cognición corporeizada o encarnada. En el presente trabajo hago una presentación sintética de los conceptos esenciales de este paradigma, con sugerencias para su aplicación al estudio de los sistemas de comunicación visual. Estos conceptos incluyen la cognición, la corporeización o encarnación, la enacción, la cognición embebida o incrustada, la cognición extendida, la dimensión afectiva, la cognición socialmente situada o distribuida, y la simulación corporeizada. Luego menciono varios casos de la aplicación de este paradigma en mi trabajo como facilitador del aprendizaje e investigador. Finalmente trazo una agenda que nos permitirá comprender, de una manera más profunda, el uso de los signos visuales para la comunicación de las experiencias, tomando en cuenta que la cognición emerge de la interacción dinámica de los organismos biológicos con sus medios ambientes y que, en el caso de los seres humanos, estos ambientes incluyen una dimensión sociocultural, en la cual se tejen sistemas complejos de significados simbólicos.

Blepharospasm and oromandibular dystonia are focal dystonias characterized by involuntary and often patterned, repetitive muscle contractions. There is a long history of medical and surgical therapies, with the current first-line therapy, botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT), becoming standard of care in 1989. This comprehensive review utilized MEDLINE and PubMed and provides an overview of the history of these focal dystonias, BoNT, and the use of toxin to treat them. We present the levels of clinical evidence for each toxin for both, focal dystonias and offer guidance for muscle and site selection as well as dosing.

The pupil is primarily regulated by prevailing light levels but is also modulated by perceptual and attentional factors. We measured pupil-size in typical adult humans viewing a bistable-rotating cylinder, constructed so the luminance of the front surface changes with perceived direction of rotation. In some participants, pupil diameter oscillated in phase with the ambiguous perception, more dilated when the black surface was in front. Importantly, the magnitude of oscillation predicts autistic traits of participants, assessed by the Autism-Spectrum Quotient AQ. Further experiments suggest that these results are driven by differences in perceptual styles: high AQ participants focus on the front surface of the rotating cylinder, while those with low AQ distribute attention to both surfaces in a more global, holistic style. This is the first evidence that pupillometry reliably tracks inter-individual differences in perceptual styles; it does so quickly and objectively, without interfering with spontaneous perceptual strategies.

Previous studies suggest that deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) for Parkinson’s disease (PD) leads to weight gain. This study analyzes changes in body mass index (BMI) in 29 subjects from a prospective, single-blind trial of DBS in early stage PD (age 50–75, Hoehn & Yahr stage II off medication, treated with antiparkinsonian medications for ≥6 months but 0.05). BMI change over two years was not different between the groups (p=0.62, ODT = −0.89; DBS+ODT = −0.17). This study suggests that STN-DBS is not associated with weight gain in subjects with early stage PD. This finding will be tested in an upcoming FDA-approved phase III multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, pivotal clinical trial evaluating DBS in early stage PD (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT00282152).