scholarly journals Antimicrobial peptides of human saliva

2005 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 208-216
Author(s):  
Ivan Dozic ◽  
Tatjana Todorovic

Among the many functions of human saliva, its digestive and protective properties have attracted the most interest. Human saliva contains a number of physical, physicochemical and chemical agents that protect oral tissues against by various microorganisms and their metabolic products. Among such protective factors, the flushing effect of saliva flow is the most important one, not only because it so effectively removes exogenous and endogenous microorganisms and their products into the gut but also because a steady supply of saliva guarantees continuous presence of both non-immune and immune factors in the mouth. The most important antimicrobial peptides in saliva are: histatins, defensins, lactoferrin, cathelicidins, mucins, calprotectin, lysozyme, oral peroxidase. Antimicrobial peptides are components of complex host secretions, acting synergisticaly with other innate defence molecules to combat infection and control resident microbial populations throughout the oral cavity.

Author(s):  
David C. Joy

Personal computers (PCs) are a powerful resource in the EM Laboratory, both as a means of automating the monitoring and control of microscopes, and as a tool for quantifying the interpretation of data. Not only is a PC more versatile than a piece of dedicated data logging equipment, but it is also substantially cheaper. In this tutorial the practical principles of using a PC for these types of activities will be discussed.The PC can form the basis of a system to measure, display, record and store the many parameters which characterize the operational conditions of the EM. In this mode it is operating as a data logger. The necessary first step is to find a suitable source from which to measure each of the items of interest. It is usually possible to do this without having to make permanent corrections or modifications to the EM.


Author(s):  
Germaine Halegoua ◽  
Erika Polson

This brief essay introduces the special issue on the topic of ‘digital placemaking’ – a concept describing the use of digital media to create a sense of place for oneself and/or others. As a broad framework that encompasses a variety of practices used to create emotional attachments to place through digital media use, digital placemaking can be examined across a variety of domains. The concept acknowledges that, at its core, a drive to create and control a sense of place is understood as primary to how social actors identify with each other and express their identities and how communities organize to build more meaningful and connected spaces. This idea runs through the articles in the issue, exploring the many ways people use digital media, under varied conditions, to negotiate differential mobilities and become placemakers – practices that may expose or amplify preexisting inequities, exclusions, or erasures in the ways that certain populations experience digital media in place and placemaking.


Author(s):  
James S. Uleman ◽  
S. Adil Saribay

“Initial impressions” bring together personality and social psychology like no other field of study—“personality” because (1) impressions are about personalities, and (2) perceivers’ personalities affect these impressions; and “social” because (3) social cognitive processes of impression formation, and (4) sociocultural contexts have major effects on impressions. To make these points, we first review how people explicitly describe others: the terms we use, how these descriptions reveal our theories about others, the important roles of traits and types (including stereotypes) in these descriptions, and other prominent frameworks (e.g., narratives and social roles). Then we highlight recent research on the social cognitive processes underlying these descriptions: automatic and controlled attention, the many effects of primes (semantic and affective) and their dependence on contexts, the acquisition of valence, spontaneous inferences about others, and the interplay of automatic and control processes. Third, we examine how accurate initial impressions are, and what accuracy means, as well as deception and motivated biases and distortions. Fourth, we review recent research on effects of target features, perceiver features, and relations between targets and perceivers. Finally, we look at frameworks for understanding explanations, as distinct from descriptions: attribution theory, theory of mind, and simulation theory.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 599-605
Author(s):  
Beatriz Martines de Souza ◽  
Daiana Moreli Soares dos Santos ◽  
Ana Carolina Magalhães

Abstract The occurrence of caries lesions adjacent to restorations is a serious problem in Dentistry. Therefore, new antimicrobial restorative materials could help to prevent recurrent carious lesions. This study evaluated the effect of a new glass ionomer cement (Ion Z) on the viability of a microcosm biofilm and on the development of enamel demineralization. Enamel samples were filled with the following materials (n=9): A) Ion-Z (FGM Ltda); B) Maxxion R (FGM Ltda); C) Ketac Fil Plus (3M ESPE) and D) no restoration (control). The samples were then exposed to human saliva mixed with McBain saliva (1:50) containing 0.2% sucrose for 14 days. The live and dead bacteria were quantified by fluorescence using a confocal laser-scanning microscope. The enamel demineralization was analyzed using transverse microradiography (TMR). The data were submitted to ANOVA/Tukey or Kruskal-Wallis/Dunn test (p<0.05). Ion Z induced a higher percentage of dead bacteria (60.96±12.0%) compared to the other groups (Maxxion R: 39.8±6.7%, Ketac Fil Plus: 43.7±9.71% and control 46.3±9.5%). All materials significantly reduced the average mineral loss compared to control (Ion-Z 25.0±4.2%vol, Maxxion R 23.4±8.0%vol, Ketac Fil Plus 30.7±7.7 and control 41.2±6.6%vol). Ion-Z was the only material able to significantly improve the mineral content at the surface layer (Zmax: 63.5±18.2%vol) compared to control (38.9±11.3%vol). Ion-Z shows antimicrobial potential, but its anti-caries effect was similar to the other materials, under this model.


2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (S3) ◽  
pp. s82-s86 ◽  
Author(s):  

AbstractThis Panel Session consisted of five country reports (India, Indonesia, Maldives, Thailand, andNepal) and the common issues identified during the Panel discussions relative to seismic events in the Southeast Asia Region. Important issues identified included the needs for: (1) a legal framework upon which to base preparedness and response; (2) coordination between the many organizations involved; (3) early warning systems within and between countries; (4) command and control; (5) access to resources including logistics; (6) strengthening the health infrastructure; (7) professionalizing the field of disaster medicine and management; (8) management of communications and information; (9) management of dead bodies; and (10) mental health of the survivors and health workers.


2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 207 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Ausband ◽  
Michael S. Mitchell ◽  
Sarah B. Bassing ◽  
Craig White

Context Conserving large carnivores can be challenging because of conflicts with human land use and competition with humans for resources. Predation on domestic stock can have negative economic impacts particularly for owners of small herds, and tools for minimising carnivore depredation of livestock are needed. Canids use scent marking to establish territories and avoid intraspecific conflict. Exploiting scent-marking behaviour may provide a means for manipulating canid movements. Aims We hypothesised that human-deployed scent marks (i.e. ‘biofence’) could be used to manipulate the movements of grey wolves (Canis lupus) in Idaho, USA. Methods We deployed 65 km of biofence within three wolf-pack territories during summer 2010 and 2011 and used location data from satellite-collared wolves and sign surveys to assess the effectiveness of biofencing. Key results Location data provided by satellite-collared wolves and sign surveys in 2010 showed little to no trespass of the biofence, even though the excluded areas were used by the packs in previous summers. We also opportunistically deployed a biofence in between a rendezvous site of a resident pack and a nearby sheep grazing allotment; the pack was not implicated in any depredations in summer 2010, even though they had killed sheep every year since 2006. Location data provided by satellite-collared wolves in summer 2011 showed that wolves did trespass biofences. Conclusions Biofencing effectively manipulated the movements of wolves in the first year of our study, but not the second. Implications Our work suggests that biofencing may be most limited by the apparent necessity to maintain a continuous presence once the biofence is established. The inherent labour and costs associated with such efforts may limit the usefulness of biofencing. Our work can be improved on through further testing that maintains biofencing over a longer timeframe (>3 months), samples several animals per treatment pack, and uses a treatment and control design.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Starosielski

In Media Hot and Cold Nicole Starosielski examines the cultural dimensions of temperature to theorize the ways heat and cold can be used as a means of communication, subjugation, and control. Diving into the history of thermal media, from infrared cameras to thermostats to torture sweatboxes, Starosielski explores the many meanings and messages of temperature. During the twentieth century, heat and cold were broadcast through mass thermal media. Today, digital thermal media such as bodily air conditioners offer personalized forms of thermal communication and comfort. Although these new media promise to help mitigate the uneven effects of climate change, Starosielski shows how they can operate as a form of biopower by determining who has the ability to control their own thermal environment. In this way, thermal media can enact thermal violence in ways that reinforce racialized, colonial, gendered, and sexualized hierarchies. By outlining how the control of temperature reveals power relations, Starosielski offers a framework to better understand the dramatic transformations of hot and cold media in the twenty-first century.


Author(s):  
E. J. de Waard

Decentralized, peer-to-peer command and control is a key principle of network-centric operations that has received a lot of scholarly attention. So far, robust networking, another principle, has remained rather underexposed in the academic debate. This chapter introduces theory on modular organizing to start a discourse on network robustness from an organizational design perspective. Above all, the chapter makes clear that the level of system decomposition influences the command and control process of composite military structures. When military organizations follow a fine-grained modularization approach, the structure of a task force deployed may become complex, asking for extra coordination mechanisms to achieve syntheses between the many contributing functional organizational components. In addition, it is argued that modularity's principle of near-decomposability has to be incorporated into the available mathematical models on network-centric operations. A point of concern, in this respect, is that the current modeling parameters make no clear distinction between the different types of actors—or nodes—in a military network structure, whereas in reality, technological, organizational, and human actors all live by their own specific rules.


Author(s):  
Robert S. Friedman ◽  
Desiree M. Roberts ◽  
Jonathan D. Linton

The articles addressed in this chapter on new product development can be classified in two general categories—papers that address the internal processes that assist or hinder development, and those that focus on factors that contribute to a new product’s success or failure in terms of performance and diffusion. We begin with Cooper and Kleinschmidt (1986), who report on the second phase of the New Prod project. Its goal was to examine the nature of the steps that affect the development process and determine how the step-wise structure was modified by the developer companies in order to improve process performance. Clark (1989) looks at project scope, or the extent to which in-house part development affects new product development and overall project performance. The new product development process, as a comprehensive scope of work, is the subject of Millison, Raj, and Wilemon’s (1992) discussion, specifically what the tensions and trade-offs are that occur among different functional areas and how they affect innovative product development. Wheelwright and Clark (1992) provide insight into strategies to plan, focus, and control a firm’s project development, offering an aggregate project plan that promotes management clearly delineating the roles and steps of each participant’s activities. Griffin and Page (1993) offer a practitioner’s framework that identifies and coordinates the many measures of product development success and failure, and holds them up against existing measures used by academic researchers. We then move to Souder’s (1988) article examining the relationship between R&D groups and marketing groups, the nature of the problems between them, and the structure of potentially effective partnerships.


1978 ◽  
Vol 56 (10) ◽  
pp. 993-997 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Wyndham ◽  
S. Safe

The comparative metabolism of the hydrocarbons, biphenyl and 4-chlorobiphenyl, was investigated using two different preparations of rat hepatic microsomes. The assay was designed to account for all the metabolic products which included the ether soluble lipophilic metabolites, low molecular weight conjugates, and macromolecular adducts, and to determine the effects of induction with Aroclor 1254 and 1248, two commercial polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) preparations. 4-Chlorobiphenyl was the more metabolically active substrate with the induced and control enzymes. In most metabolic fractions biphenyl was less inducible by the PCB's, with the exception of the 2-biphenylol metabolite which was induced ca. 18-fold. Preincubation of the microsomes with carcinogens did not enhance biphenyl 2-hydroxylation. Instead, a general inhibition of metabolic activity was observed for both biphenyl and 4-chlorobiphenyl substrates. Preincubation with phenobarbitone, a noncarcinogen, did not change the microsome-mediated metabolism of biphenyl or 4-chlorobiphenyl. The substitution of a single halogen atom on the biphenyl nucleus altered both the reactivity and pattern of metabolites for these substrates.


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