Making diamonds with sticky tape
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Assessing pain and analgesic consumption after the use of Kinesio tape in web strip technique comparing with cryotherapy after impacted third molar extraction: a randomized clinical split-mouth study
There are various methods to improve the patient’s quality of life and alleviate complications after surgical extraction of the lower third molar. The use of Kinesiotape is one of the most important methods used recently. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of Kinesiotape in alleviating complications after surgical extraction of the lower third molar compared to cryotherapy.
Development of accessible and scalable maize pollen storage technology
The inherent short lifespan of Zea mays (maize, corn) pollen hinders crop improvement and challenges the hybrid seed production required to produce food, fuel, and feed. Decades of scientific effort on maize pollen storage technology have been unable to deliver a widely accessible protocol that works for liters of pollen at a hybrid seed production scale. Here we show how suppressing the pollen cellular respiration rate through refrigeration and optimizing gas exchange within the storage environment are the critical combination of factors for maintaining pollen viability in storage. The common practice of preserving maize pollen by mixing the pollen with talcum powder is critically examined using pollen tube germination testing, electron microscopy of pollen-silk (stigma) interaction, and test pollinations in production environments. These techniques lead to mixing maize pollen collected for storage with anti-clumping carrier compounds, including microcrystalline cellulose. These carriers improve stored pollen flowability during pollination and enable increased seed sets to be obtained from stored pollen. Field testing in maize seed production demonstrates that a wide range of pollen volumes can be stored for up to seven days using low-cost, globally available materials and that stored pollen can achieve seed-set equivalency to fresh pollen.
Prenatal exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals and the association with behavioural difficulties in 7-year-old children in the SELMA study
Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can cross the placenta and thereby expose the fetus, which may lead to developmental consequences. It is still unclear which chemicals are of concern regarding neurodevelopment and specifically behaviour, when being exposed to a mixture.
Finite element-based nonlinear dynamic optimization of nanomechanical resonators
Nonlinear dynamic simulations of mechanical resonators have been facilitated by the advent of computational techniques that generate nonlinear reduced order models (ROMs) using the finite element (FE) method. However, designing devices with specific nonlinear characteristics remains inefficient since it requires manual adjustment of the design parameters and can result in suboptimal designs. Here, we integrate an FE-based nonlinear ROM technique with a derivative-free optimization algorithm to enable the design of nonlinear mechanical resonators. The resulting methodology is used to optimize the support design of high-stress nanomechanical Si3N4 string resonators, in the presence of conflicting objectives such as simultaneous enhancement of Q-factor and nonlinear Duffing constant. To that end, we generate Pareto frontiers that highlight the trade-offs between optimization objectives and validate the results both numerically and experimentally. To further demonstrate the capability of multi-objective optimization for practical design challenges, we simultaneously optimize the design of nanoresonators for three key figure-of-merits in resonant sensing: power consumption, sensitivity and response time. The presented methodology can facilitate and accelerate designing (nano) mechanical resonators with optimized performance for a wide variety of applications.
Rapid growth rate responses of terrestrial bacteria to field warming on the Antarctic Peninsula
Ice-free terrestrial environments of the western Antarctic Peninsula are expanding and subject to colonization by new microorganisms and plants, which control biogeochemical cycling. Measuring growth rates of microbial populations and ecosystem carbon flux is critical for understanding how terrestrial ecosystems in Antarctica will respond to future warming. We implemented a field warming experiment in early (bare soil; +2 °C) and late (peat moss-dominated; +1.2 °C) successional glacier forefield sites on the western Antarctica Peninsula. We used quantitative stable isotope probing with H218O using intact cores in situ to determine growth rate responses of bacterial taxa to short-term (1 month) warming. Warming increased the growth rates of bacterial communities at both sites, even doubling the number of taxa exhibiting significant growth at the early site. Growth responses varied among taxa. Despite that warming induced a similar response for bacterial relative growth rates overall, the warming effect on ecosystem carbon fluxes was stronger at the early successional site—likely driven by increased activity of autotrophs which switched the ecosystem from a carbon source to a carbon sink. At the late-successional site, warming caused a significant increase in growth rate of many Alphaproteobacteria, but a weaker and opposite gross ecosystem productivity response that decreased the carbon sink—indicating that the carbon flux rates were driven more strongly by the plant communities. Such changes to bacterial growth and ecosystem carbon cycling suggest that the terrestrial Antarctic Peninsula can respond fast to increases in temperature, which can have repercussions for long-term elemental cycling and carbon storage.
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