Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
The lack of an effective method for teaching oral hygiene procedures;
to parents of handicapped children prompted this investigation. ...Seventy-nine;
preschool cerebral palsy children were randomly distributed according;
to age and sex into three groups. The parents of these groups received;
the following instruction: Group I - written instructions for a detailed;
approach to oral hygiene maintenance in the home as if the child were;
without handicap; Group II - written instructions for a specialized;
approach to home oral hygiene maintenance with emphasis on two people;
providing the care, and mouth propping for access and stability of the;
arms and legs; Group III - no specific oral hygiene instructions.;
Each child in each group received a thorough oral examination and;
deposits of dental plaque were disclosed, numerically scored and recorded.;
Each parent of the three study groups participated in a written examination;
of dental knowledge at each visit. After each examination, the correct;
answers were given to the parent by both a verbal and written response.;
Parents and children returned at 90-day intervals.;
Variables such as transportation, surgery performed during the period;
of study, deteriorating health in the child, parental apathy about dental;
problems, and change in family job or location, reduced the sample from;
seventy-nine to fifty-four subjects, with data being obtained for pre- and;
post- examination periods. Both test group of parents significantly improved;
their dental knowledge scores after ninety days. However, none of;
the children decreased their plaque enough to show statistical significance.;
Perhaps there was some motivational improvement in the Group II parents,;
as they returned for the examination at a better rate, judged to be significant;
as compared to the other groups.;
Further investigation is recommended either to study the technique by;
itself without a time interval between scores or to evaluate the factors;
of intelligence, economic level, gravity of medical situation, and sibling;
support as they offset changes in behavior. Until then, it appears on the;
basis of this study that it is possible to increase the parent's knowledge;
of oral health but that changing the behavior of the parent actually performing;
the task is much more difficult.
Biomass burning is a large source of uncontrolled air
pollutants, including particulate matter (i.e., PM2.5), black carbon
(BC), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and carbon monoxide (CO), which
...have significant effects on air quality, human health, and climate.
Measurements of PM2.5, BC, and CO made at the Yale Coastal Field
Station in Guilford, CT, and five other sites in the metropolitan New York
City (NYC) area indicate long-distance transport of pollutants from
wildfires and other biomass burning to surface-level sites in the region.
Here, we examine two such events occurring on 16–17 and 27–29 August 2018. In addition to regionally consistent enhancements
in the surface concentrations of gases and particulates associated with
biomass burning, satellite imagery confirms the presence of smoke plumes in
the NYC–Connecticut region during these events. Back-trajectory modeling
indicates that air masses arriving at surface-level sites in coastal
Connecticut on 16–17 August passed over the western coast of
Canada, near multiple large wildfires. In contrast, air parcels arriving on
27–29 August passed over active fires in the southeastern
United States. The results of this study demonstrate that biomass burning
events throughout the US and Canada (at times more than 4000 km away),
which are increasing in frequency, impact surface-level air quality beyond
regional scales, including in NYC and the northeastern US.
Nitrogen-containing organic compounds, which may be directly emitted into the atmosphere or which may form via reactions with prevalent reactive nitrogen species (e.g., NH3, NOx, NO3), have important ...but uncertain
effects on climate and human health. Using gas and liquid chromatography
with soft ionization and high-resolution mass spectrometry, we performed a
molecular-level speciation of functionalized organic compounds at a coastal site on the Long Island Sound in summer (during the 2018 Long Island Sound Tropospheric Ozone Study – LISTOS – campaign) and winter. This region often experiences poor air quality due to the
emissions of reactive anthropogenic, biogenic, and marine-derived compounds
and their chemical transformation products. We observed a range of
functionalized compounds containing oxygen, nitrogen, and/or sulfur atoms
resulting from these direct emissions and chemical transformations,
including photochemical and aqueous-phase processing that was more pronounced in summer and winter, respectively. In both summer and winter, nitrogen-containing organic aerosols dominated the observed distribution of
functionalized particle-phase species ionized by our analytical techniques,
with 85 % and 68 % of total measured ion abundance containing a nitrogen
atom, respectively. Nitrogen-containing particles included reduced nitrogen functional groups (e.g., amines, imines, azoles) and common NOz contributors (e.g., organonitrates). Reduced nitrogen functional groups observed in the particle phase were frequently paired with oxygen-containing groups elsewhere on the molecule, and their prevalence often rivaled that of oxidized nitrogen groups detected by our methods. Supplemental gas-phase
measurements, collected on adsorptive samplers and analyzed with a novel
liquid chromatography-based method, suggest that gas-phase reduced nitrogen compounds are possible contributing precursors to the observed nitrogen-containing particles. Altogether, this work highlights the
prevalence of reduced nitrogen-containing compounds in the less-studied northeastern US and potentially in other regions with similar anthropogenic, biogenic, and marine source signatures.
Trauma with an accompanying fracture to the anterior teeth gives an agonizing experience for a young individual due to the physical disfigurement and the psychological impact that is imposed on them. ...This paper reports a case of complicated crown-root fracture in a young child that was treated by extra-oral fragment reattachment followed by the intentional reimplantation. The tooth was endodontically-treated followed by the placement of fiber-reinforced composite post. The fragments were reattached extra orally following an atraumatic extraction. The tooth was then reimplanted back into the socket followed by splinting. Clinical results were successful after 2 years. This case report demonstrates the importance of modifying a treatment protocol to maintain esthetics up to the completion of the developmental period.
The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a member of the ErbB family of receptor tyrosine kinases, is expressed in up to 70% of epithelial ovarian cancers (EOCs), where it correlates with poor ...prognosis. The majority of EOCs are diagnosed at an advanced stage, and at least 50% present malignant ascites. High levels of IL-6 have been found in the ascites of EOC patients and correlate with shorter survival. Herein, we investigated the signaling cascade led by EGFR activation in EOC and assessed whether EGFR activation could induce an EOC microenvironment characterized by pro-inflammatory molecules. In vitro analysis of EOC cell lines revealed that ligand-stimulated EGFR activated NFkB-dependent transcription and induced secretion of IL-6 and plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI-1). IL-6/PAI-1 expression and secretion were strongly inhibited by the tyrosine kinase inhibitor AG1478 and EGFR silencing. A significant reduction of EGF-stimulated IL-6/PAI-1 secretion was also obtained with the NFkB inhibitor dehydroxymethylepoxyquinomicin. Of 23 primary EOC tumors from advanced-stage patients with malignant ascites at surgery, 12 co-expressed membrane EGFR, IL-6 and PAI-1 by immunohistochemistry; both IL-6 and PAI-1 were present in 83% of the corresponding ascites. Analysis of a publicly available gene-expression data set from 204 EOCs confirmed a significant correlation between IL-6 and PAI-1 expression, and patients with the highest IL-6 and PAI-1 co-expression showed a significantly shorter progression-free survival time (P=0.028). This suggests that EGFR/NFkB/IL-6-PAI-1 may have a significant impact on the therapy of a particular subset of EOC, and that IL-6/PAI-1 co-expression may be a novel prognostic marker.
The response of a noisy nonlinear system to deterministic input signals can be enhanced by cooperative phenomena. We show that when one presents two square waves as input to a two-state system, the ...response of the system can produce a logical output (NOR/OR) with a probability controlled by the noise intensity. As one increases the noise (for fixed threshold or nonlinearity), the probability of the output reflecting a NOR/OR operation increases to unity and then decreases. Changing the nonlinearity (or the thresholds) of the system changes the output into another logic operation (NAND/AND) whose probability displays analogous behavior. The interplay of nonlinearity and noise can yield logic behavior, and the emergent outcome of such systems is a logic gate. This "logical stochastic resonance" is demonstrated via an experimental realization of a two-state system with two (adjustable) thresholds.
Forest fires are major contributors of reactive gas- and particle-phase organic compounds to the atmosphere. We used offline high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry to perform a molecular-level ...speciation of gas- and particle-phase compounds sampled via aircraft from an evolving boreal forest fire smoke plume in Saskatchewan, Canada. We observed diverse multifunctional compounds containing oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur (CHONS), whose structures, formation, and impacts are understudied. The dilution-corrected absolute ion abundance of particle-phase CHONS compounds increased with plume age by a factor of 6.4 over the first 4 h of downwind transport, and their relative contribution to the observed functionalized organic aerosol (OA) mixture increased from 19 % to 40 %. The dilution-corrected absolute ion abundance of particle-phase compounds with sulfide functional groups increased by a factor of 13 with plume age, and their relative contribution to observed OA increased from 4 % to 40 %. Sulfides were present in up to 75 % of CHONS compounds and the increases in sulfides were accompanied by increases in ring-bound nitrogen; both increased together with CHONS prevalence. A complex mixture of intermediate- and semi-volatile gas-phase organic sulfur species was observed in emissions from the fire and depleted downwind, representing potential precursors to particle-phase CHONS compounds. These results demonstrate CHONS formation from nitrogen- and oxygen-containing biomass burning emissions in the presence of reduced sulfur species. In addition, they highlight chemical pathways that may also be relevant in situations with elevated emissions of nitrogen- and sulfur-containing organic compounds from residential biomass burning and fossil fuel use (e.g., coal), respectively.
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