Effect of Different Surface Treatment Methods on Bond Strength of Dental Ceramics to Dental Hard Tissues: A Systematic Review

For long-term successful use of ceramic materials in dental procedures, it is necessary to ensure reliable bonding of restorations to dental substrates. This can be achieved by the application of a proper luting cement and through additional surface conditioning. The present systematic review summarizes the most up-to-date evidence on the use of different surface modification methods to enhance the bond strength of dental ceramics to the hard tissues of the teeth. The authors of the review searched the Web of Science, Scopus, and MEDLINE databases to identify relevant articles published between 1 January 2010 and 1 January 2020. A total of 4892 records were identified, and after screening, the full text of 159 articles was evaluated, which finally resulted in the inclusion of 19 studies. The available reports were found to be heterogeneous in terms of materials and methodology, and therefore, only within-studies comparison was performed instead of comparison between studies. A statistically significant difference in the bond strength between the samples treated with different methods of surface conditioning, or between conditioned and nonconditioned samples, was revealed by most of the studies. Predominantly, the studies showed that a combination of mechanical and chemical methods was the most effective way of enhancing bond strength. Artificial aging and luting cement were also identified as the factors significantly influencing bond strength.     

First chemoenzymatic synthesis of (R)- and (S)-1-(9H-fluoren-9-yl)ethanol

A simple chemoenzymatic synthesis of 1-(9H-fluoren-9-yl)ethanol stereoisomers is described. The enantiomers were resolved by a kinetically controlled transesterification with vinyl acetate in the presence of commercially available lipases. High-throughput screening and subsequent exhaustive investigation of the utility of the lipases in a stereoselective process of introducing chirality have been carried out. Lipase A from Candida antarctica as a cross-linked aggregate (CAL-A-CLEA) was the most efficient enzyme for the resolution of the title compound providing (S)-1-(9H-fluoren-9-yl)ethanol and its (R)-acetate in enantiopure form (>99% ee). Under mild reaction conditions, excellent enantioselectivity (E = 407), and good isolated yields of the products were obtained.     

Electron beam treatment of high NOx concentration off-gases

High concentration of NO_x removal from simulated off-gases was investigated using electron beam (EB) technology. Simulated off-gases were prepared by combusting Polish light oil or nature gas with addition of NO from a NO gas cylinder. Irradiation was carried out under a ILU-6 accelerator. It was found that removal efficiency of NO_x was influenced by inlet concentration of NO, temperature, SO₂ concentration, absorbed dose and irradiation dose rate. Methods of enhancing NO_x removal efficiency with additives using EB were also discussed.     

Plasmid DNA damage induced by helium atmospheric pressure plasma jet

Recently demonstrated ghost interference using correlated photons of different frequencies, has been theoretically analyzed. The calculation predicts an interesting nonlocal effect: the fringe width of the ghost interference depends not only on the wave-length of the photon involved, but also on the wavelength of the other photon with which it is entangled. This feature, arising because of different frequencies of the entangled photons, was hidden in the original ghost interference experiment. This prediction can be experimentally tested in a slightly modified version of the experiment.     

Decomposition of complete graphs into (0, 2)-prisms

R. Frucht and J.Gallian (1988) proved that bipartite prisms of order 2n have an α-labeling, thus they decompose the complete graph K _6nx+1 for any positive integer x. We use a technique called the ? ⁺-labeling introduced by S. I. El-Zanati, C. Vanden Eynden, and N. Punnim (2001) to show that also some other families of 3-regular bipartite graphs of order 2n called generalized prisms decompose the complete graph K _6nx+1 for any positive integer x.     

Decompositions of pseudographs into closed trails of even sizes

We consider a graph L_n, with n even, which is a complete graph with an additional loop at each vertex and minus a 1-factor and we prove that it is edge-disjointly decomposable into closed trails of even lengths greater than four, whenever these lengths sum up to the size of the graph L_n. We also show that this statement remains true if we remove from L_n two loops attached to nonadjacent vertices. Consequently, we improve P. Wittmann’s result on the upper bound of the irregular coloring number c(G) of a 2-regular graph G of size n, by determining that this number is, with a discrepancy of at most one, equal to if all components of G have even orders.