Psychophysical and Rheological Investigation of Toothpaste Tube Squeezability: A People-Centric Approach.

In this work, toothpaste tube squeezability was tested by three different methods: assessment by a human panel, a tactile glove, and several purely instrumental tests. The panelists characterized squeezability in terms of the acceptability of the product. The tactile glove was utilized to determine the maximum grip forces (G) applied by the same panelists during their assessment.

Pilot clinical study to evaluate the efficacy of a professionally delivered high fluoride varnish on erosive tooth wear in an in-situ model.

Objectives: The aim for this pilot study was to investigate the effect of a sodium fluoride varnish on step height measured by a profilometer from human enamel worn by healthy volunteers with a novel in situ/ex vivo erosion design.

Method: Healthy volunteers aged 18-70 years wore a palatal splint containing 8 human enamel samples and underwent two 3-day treatment periods for 6 h a day with a varnish containing sodium fluoride at 22,600 ppm and the control with the same ingredients but without fluoride. Each splint contained 4 polished and 4 unpolished samples.

Dopamine-mediated striatal activity and function is enhanced in GlyRα2 knockout animals.

The glycine receptor alpha 2 (GlyRα2) is a ligand-gated ion channel which upon activation induces a chloride conductance. Here, we investigated the role of GlyRα2 in dopamine-stimulated striatal cell activity and behavior. We show that depletion of GlyRα2 enhances dopamine-induced increases in the activity of putative dopamine D1 receptor-expressing striatal projection neurons, but does not alter midbrain dopamine neuron activity.

The influence of age, gender and race/ethnicity on the composition of the human axillary microbiome.

Objective: The microbial community plays an important role in the generation of human axillary odour by transforming odourless natural secretions into volatile odorous molecules. A limited number of traditional culturing methods and molecular based research have been performed to characterize the human axillary microbiome in small collection sample sizes. Moreover, only a few have considered the interpersonal variations across age, gender or race/ethnicity, and none have included all three variables within one single study.