Powered Toothbrushes: An Opportunity for Biofilm and Gingival Inflammation Control.

The present review aimed at a broad investigation on the potential of powered as compared to manual toothbrushes in different aspects of clinical dentistry. Studies evaluating plaque and gingival inflammatory parameters were included, as well as those that investigated adverse effects. Emphasis was given separately to adults, youngsters, special-needs patients, and those under fixed orthodontic therapy.

Re-examining the spectra of macromolecules. Current practice of spectral quasi B-factor flattening.

The analysis of structure factors in 3D cryo-EM Coulomb potential maps and their "enhancement" at the end of the reconstruction process is a well-established practice, normally referred to as sharpening. The aim is to increase contrast and, in this way, to help tracing the atomic model. The most common way to accomplish this enhancement is by means of the so-called B-factor correction, which applies a global filter to boost high frequencies with some dampening considerations related to noise amplification.

"It Was a Different Environment": Evaluating a Cultural Exchange Program.

Background: As nursing colleges seek to respond to the demands of the profession for nurses who are globally engaged and of the students for global health educational experiences, Riner's Globally Engaged Nursing Education framework is an effective tool for developing and evaluating an experience.

Method: Using Riner's framework, faculty and students at a nursing college evaluate an inaugural cultural exchange program between their U.S.

P300 Detection Based on EEG Shape Features.

We present a novel approach to describe a P300 by a shape-feature vector, which offers several advantages over the feature vector used by the BCI2000 system. Additionally, we present a calibration algorithm that reduces the dimensionality of the shape-feature vector, the number of trials, and the electrodes needed by a Brain Computer Interface to accurately detect P300s; we also define a method to find a template that best represents, for a given electrode, the subject's P300 based on his/her own acquired signals. Our experiments with 21 subjects showed that the SWLDA's performance using our shape-feature vector was 93%, that is, 10% higher than the one obtained with BCI2000-feature's vector.

Frequency analysis for an extended photoacoustic transport model.

In photoacoustic imaging, the signal attenuation is a well-known source of artifacts over the image reconstruction. It is recognized that this is caused by optical absorption effects and by the ultrasound broadband scattering. However, the sound dispersion is generally neglected, although it appears notably in thick or heterogeneous tissues.

Seroprevalence survey of zoonoses in Extremadura, southwestern Spain, 2002-2003.

Our aims were to determine the seroprevalence rates for the most common types of zoonosis among the population of Extremadura (southwestern Spain) and to identify the associated risk factors. We conducted a seroepidemiological survey to collect information on family background and the habits of people residing in Extremadura between 2002 and 2003. Antibodies to Brucella were determined by Rose Bengal staining and a standard tube agglutination test; a titer of 1/80 was considered to be positive.

No one likes a copycat: a cross-cultural investigation of children's response to plagiarism.

Copying other people's ideas is evaluated negatively by American children and adults. The current study investigated the influence of culture on children's evaluations of plagiarism by comparing children from three countries--the United States, Mexico, and China--that differ in terms of their emphasis on the protection of intellectual property and ideas. Children (3- to 6-year-olds) were presented with videos involving two characters drawing pictures and were asked to evaluate the character who drew unique work or the character who copied someone else's drawing.

Superiorization: an optimization heuristic for medical physics.

Purpose: To describe and mathematically validate the superiorization methodology, which is a recently developed heuristic approach to optimization, and to discuss its applicability to medical physics problem formulations that specify the desired solution (of physically given or otherwise obtained constraints) by an optimization criterion.

Methods: The superiorization methodology is presented as a heuristic solver for a large class of constrained optimization problems. The constraints come from the desire to produce a solution that is constraints-compatible, in the sense of meeting requirements provided by physically or otherwise obtained constraints.

Reconstruction from a Few Projections by ℓ(1)-Minimization of the Haar Transform.

Much recent activity is aimed at reconstructing images from a few projections. Images in any application area are not random samples of all possible images, but have some common attributes. If these attributes are reflected in the smallness of an objective function, then the aim of satisfying the projections can be complemented with the aim of having a small objective value.

Computer assisted biopsy of breast tumors.

In this paper we report our preliminary results of the development of a computer assisted system for breast biopsy. The system is based on tracked ultrasound images of the breast. A three dimensional ultrasound volume is constructed from a set of tracked B-scan images acquired with a calibrated probe.

[Activity of daptomycin, ciprofloxacin, clindamycin and cotrimoxazole against coagulase-negative Staphylococcus strains with diminished susceptibility to vancomycin].

Introduction: Coagulase Negative Staphylococci (CNS) have become one of the most common nosocomial pathogens and it has a high mortality rate due to the increased of seriously ill patients survival, long states immunosuppression and presence of foreign bodies, such as catheters, prostheses, pacemakers, etc. In addition, there is a significant increase in resistance to antimicrobial drugs, especially beta-lactams, and the increase in the MIC for vancomycin leads to a loss of clinical efficacy. This necessitates the search for new therapeutic alternatives, such as daptomycin.

Application of an immunoaffinity-based preconcentration method for mass spectrometric analysis of the O-chain polysaccharide of Aeromonas salmonicida from in vitro- and in vivo-grown cells.

In this study, application of magnetic beads (Dynabeads) coated with Aeromonas salmonicida lipopolysaccharide-specific polyclonal antisera to MS-based characterization of bacterial lipopolysaccharides has been evaluated. The results showed that the affinity-based preconcentration strategy resulted in at least a 100-fold increase in the detection of sensitivity, affording direct capillary electrophoresis (CE)-MS analysis of A. salmonicida lipopolysaccharide O-chain polysaccharide from in vitro-cultured cells.

Influence of testing methodology on the tigecycline activity profile against presumably tigecycline-non-susceptible Acinetobacter spp.

Objectives: To compare the tigecycline activity profile against Acinetobacter spp. by Etest versus broth microdilution in isolates with high Etest MIC.

Methods: Acinetobacter spp.

Passage through Tetrahymena tropicalis triggers a rapid morphological differentiation in Legionella pneumophila.

The intracellular bacterial pathogen Legionella pneumophila follows a developmental cycle in which replicative forms (RFs) differentiate into infectious stationary-phase forms (SPFs) in vitro and in vivo into highly infectious mature intracellular forms (MIFs). The potential relationships between SPFs and MIFs remain uncharacterized. Previously we determined that L.

Segmentation of electron tomographic data sets using fuzzy set theory principles.

In electron tomography the reconstructed density function is typically corrupted by noise and artifacts. Under those conditions, separating the meaningful regions of the reconstructed density function is not trivial. Despite development efforts that specifically target electron tomography manual segmentation continues to be the preferred method.

Packaging of live Legionella pneumophila into pellets expelled by Tetrahymena spp. does not require bacterial replication and depends on a Dot/Icm-mediated survival mechanism.

The freshwater ciliate Tetrahymena sp. efficiently ingested, but poorly digested, virulent strains of the gram-negative intracellular pathogen Legionella pneumophila. Ciliates expelled live legionellae packaged in free spherical pellets.

Parallel Fuzzy Segmentation of Multiple Objects.

The usefulness of fuzzy segmentation algorithms based on fuzzy connectedness principles has been established in numerous publications. New technologies are capable of producing larger-and-larger datasets and this causes the sequential implementations of fuzzy segmentation algorithms to be time-consuming. We have adapted a sequential fuzzy segmentation algorithm to multi-processor machines.