Summary
Stabilisation splint therapy has long been thought to be effective for the management of temporomandibular disorders (TMD). However, the superiority of stabilisation splint therapy compared ...to other TMD treatments remains controversial. The aim of this study was to determine the efficacy of stabilisation splint therapy combined with non‐splint multimodal therapy for TMD. A total of 181 TMD participants were randomly allocated to a non‐splint multimodal therapy (NS) group (n = 85) or a non‐splint multimodal therapy plus stabilisation splint (NS+S) group (n = 96). Non‐splint multimodal therapy included self‐exercise of the jaw, cognitive–behavioural therapy, self‐management education and additional jaw manipulation. Three outcome measurements were used to assess treatment efficacy: mouth‐opening limitation, oro‐facial pain and temporomandibular joint sounds. A two‐factor repeated‐measures analysis of variance (anova) was used to evaluate the efficacy of the two treatment modalities (NS vs. NS+S), and Scheffe's multiple comparison test was used to compare the treatment periods. Subgroup analyses were performed to disclose the splint effects for each TMD diagnostic group. All three parameters significantly decreased over time in both groups. However, there were no significant differences between the two treatment groups in the total comparison or subgroup analyses; an exception was the group with degenerative joint disease. No significant difference between the NS and NS+S treatment approaches was revealed in this study. Therefore, we conclude that the additional effects of stabilisation splint are not supported for patients with TMD during the application of multimodal therapy.
A search for inelastic boosted dark matter (IBDM) using the COSINE-100 detector with 59.5 days of data is presented. This relativistic dark matter is theorized to interact with the target material ...through inelastic scattering with electrons, creating a heavier state that subsequently produces standard model particles, such as an electron-positron pair. In this study, we search for this electron-positron pair in coincidence with the initially scattered electron as a signature for an IBDM interaction. No excess over the predicted background event rate is observed. Therefore, we present limits on IBDM interactions under various hypotheses, one of which allows us to explore an area of the dark photon parameter space that has not yet been covered by other experiments. This is the first experimental search for IBDM using a terrestrial detector.
We present the first search for a dark matter annual modulation signal in the Southern Hemisphere conducted with NaI(Tl) detectors, performed by the DM-Ice17 experiment. Nuclear recoils from dark ...matter interactions are expected to yield an annually modulated signal independent of location within the Earth’s hemispheres. DM-Ice17, the first step in the DM-Ice experimental program, consists of 17 kg of NaI(Tl) located at the South Pole under 2200 m.w.e. overburden of Antarctic glacial ice. Taken over 3.6 years for a total exposure of 60.8 kg yr, DM-Ice17 data are consistent with no modulation in the energy range of 4–20 keV, providing the strongest limits on weakly interacting massive particle dark matter from a direct detection experiment located in the Southern Hemisphere. The successful deployment and stable long-term operation of DM-Ice17 establishes the South Pole ice as a viable location for future dark matter searches and in particular for a high-sensitivity NaI(Tl) dark matter experiment to directly test the DAMA/LIBRA claim of the observation of dark matter.