Unconventional use of Invisalign® in the treatment of ectopic palatal maxillary canines.

Background: The proper development of the dental arches, including the eruption and correct positioning of the canines in the arch, is essential for the oral health of growing patients. Impacted canines not only give rise to functional challenges but also pose esthetic issues for patients. The aim of this article is to show if it is possible to benefit from the exclusive use of transparent aligners to guide the eruption of ectopic upper canines into the arch in the correct position.

Crystal Polymorph Selection Mechanism of Hard Spheres Hidden in the Fluid.

Nucleation plays a critical role in the birth of crystals and is associated with a vast array of phenomena, such as protein crystallization and ice formation in clouds. Despite numerous experimental and theoretical studies, many aspects of the nucleation process, such as the polymorph selection mechanism in the early stages, are far from being understood. Here, we show that the hitherto unexplained excess of particles in a face-centered-cubic (fcc)-like environment, as compared to those in a hexagonal-close-packed (hcp)-like environment, in a crystal nucleus of hard spheres can be explained by the higher order structure in the fluid phase.

Inverse design of soft materials via a deep learning-based evolutionary strategy.

Colloidal self-assembly—the spontaneous organization of colloids into ordered structures—has been considered key to produce next-generation materials. However, the present-day staggering variety of colloidal building blocks and the limitless number of thermodynamic conditions make a systematic exploration intractable. The true challenge in this field is to turn this logic around and to develop a robust, versatile algorithm to inverse design colloids that self-assemble into a target structure.

An Artificial Neural Network Reveals the Nucleation Mechanism of a Binary Colloidal AB Crystal.

Colloidal suspensions of two species have the ability to form binary crystals under certain conditions. The hunt for these functional materials and the countless investigations on their formation process are justified by the plethora of synergetic and collective properties these binary superlattices show. Among the many crystal structures observed over the past decades, the highly exotic colloidal AB crystal was predicted to be stable in binary hard-sphere mixtures nearly 30 years ago, yet the kinetic pathway of how homogeneous nucleation occurs in this system is still unknown.

Classifying Crystals of Rounded Tetrahedra and Determining Their Order Parameters Using Dimensionality Reduction.

Using simulations we study the phase behavior of a family of hard spherotetrahedra, a shape that interpolates between tetrahedra and spheres. We identify 13 close-packed structures, some with packings that are significantly denser than previously reported. Twelve of these are crystals with unit cells of = 2 or = 4 particles, but in the shape regime of slightly rounded tetrahedra we find that the densest structure is a quasicrystal approximant with a unit cell of = 82 particles.