Advances of Proteomic Sciences in Dentistry

Applications of proteomics tools revolutionized various biomedical disciplines such as genetics, molecular biology, medicine, and dentistry. The aim of this review is to highlight the major milestones in proteomics in dentistry during the last fifteen years. Human oral cavity contains hard and soft tissues and various biofluids including saliva and crevicular fluid. Proteomics has brought revolution in dentistry by helping in the early diagnosis of various diseases identified by the detection of numerous biomarkers present in the oral fluids. This paper covers the role of proteomics tools for the analysis of oral tissues. In addition, dental materials proteomics and their future directions are discussed.     

Coulometric sodium chloride removal system with Nafion membrane for seawater sample treatment

Seawater analysis is one of the most challenging in the field of environmental monitoring, mainly due to disparate concentration levels between the analyte and the salt matrix causing interferences in a variety of analytical techniques. We propose here a miniature electrochemical sample pretreatment system for a rapid removal of NaCl utilizing the coaxial arrangement of an electrode and a tubular Nafion membrane. Upon electrolysis, chloride is deposited at the Ag electrode as AgCl and the sodium counterions are transported across the membrane. This cell was found to work efficiently at potentials higher than 400 mV in both stationary and flow injection mode. Substantial residual currents observed during electrolysis were found to be a result of NaCl back diffusion from the outer side of the membrane due to insufficient permselectivity of the Nafion membrane. It was demonstrated that the residual current can be significantly reduced by adjusting the concentration of the outer solution. On the basis of ion chromatography results, it was found that the designed cell used in flow injection electrolysis mode reduced the NaCl concentration from 0.6 M to 3 mM. This attempt is very important in view of nutrient analysis in seawater where NaCl is a major interfering agent. We demonstrate that the pretreatment of artificial seawater samples does not reduce the content of nitrite or nitrate ions upon electrolysis. A simple diffusion/extraction steady state model is proposed for the optimization of the electrolysis cell characteristics.     

Physical and tribological properties of PTFE micropowder-filled EPDM rubber

The physical and tribological properties of ethylene-propylene-diene-rubber (EPDM) filled with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) micropowders, i.e. MP1100 and MP1200 having chemically similar but distinctive microstructural morphology have been investigated. EPDM-PTFE micropowder blends filled with MP1200 having a solid granular structure, showed poor tensile strength and elongation at break but significantly improved tribological properties. It attained both the lowest steady-state friction coefficient and specific wear rate. However, EPDM-PTFE blends containing a fine agglomerated PTFE micropowder of MP1100 showed enhanced physical properties. Its increasing tensile strength and elongation at break with PTFE micropowder loading compared to MP1200-filled EPDM blend was essentially due to its characteristic morphology, which enhanced its dispersion and compatibility with EPDM. It showed specific wear rate similar to MP1200-filled EPDM but resulted in high friction coefficient. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of the PTFE micropowders and the corresponding PTFE micropowder-filled EPDM blends suggest that agglomerates morphology, dispersion and interfacial compatibility with EPDM are the key factors influencing physical and tribological properties of these compounds.     

Implementation of an operating procedure for quality control at production level in a RMG industry and assessment of quality improvement

Appropriate operating procedure plays a vital role in any production process for improving the quality of the final product An export oriented knit apparel manufacturing industry in Bangladesh was assessed initially and an Operating Procedure for Quality Conformation (OPQC) was applied at production process for quality improvement. The improvements were assessed twice. First assessment was done at seventh month and second assessment at ninth month after implementation of OPQC. Actions were taken considering the feedbacks from each assessment. As a result fabric (in terms of garment) loss % from cutting to final inspection was reduced and found 5.42, 4.65 and 1.19 at initial, first and second assessment, respectively. Assessment by process capability analysis shows the improvements of C_p and C_pk from 0.38 to 0.78 and ?0.35 to 0.44 from start to end of process at second assessment. Similarly Taguchi quality loss (% of order value) was reduced in each assessment and was found 10.88, 9.66 and 3.98% at initial, first and second assessment respectively. Moreover, process capability analysis and Taguchi quality loss analysis directed the manufacturer to the next steps for quality improvement.     

Effect of ceramic nanofiller silicon nitride on polyethylene productivity and properties

Polyethylene nano‐composites, with different loading of Silicon Nitride (SiN) (0, 0.5, 1.6 and 5.6 wt %) as filler were prepared by polymerization of ethylene, using zirconocene as catalyst. Experimental results showed that activity of zirconocene catalyst activity was higher for the composites having filler loading of 0.5 wt %. The thermal studies using differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and thermo‐gravimetric analysis (TGA) indicated that crystallinity & thermal stability was also influenced with the variation of filler loading. Combustibility studies using Micro‐calorimeter showed that increase in the filler loading will decrease the combustibility of polyethylene nano‐composites. Wide angle X‐ray diffraction (WAXD) results indicated a decrease in the percentage of crystallinity with increase in filler wt %. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images revealed that morphology of the composites having 0.5 and 1.6 wt % of SiN are more fibrous when compared to control and composites having 5.6 wt % filler loading. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 54:1941–1946, 2014. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Laser cutting of thick-section circular blanks: thermal stress prediction and microstructural analysis

Laser cutting of thick-section circular mild-steel blanks of 10 mm thickness is examined. Thermal and stress fields developed in the cutting zone are predicted using finite element method and the simulation conditions are selected in line with the experimental parameters. An experiment is carried out to assess the geometric features of the cut surfaces. The morphology of the cut sections are examined using optical and scanning electron microscopes and energy dispersive spectroscopy is carried out for elemental composition of the cut surface. It is found that laser cutting of thick steel blanks results in substantial conduction loss from the cutting zone, which results in high-temperature gradients and large stress levels in the cutting section. The cut edge features such as local dross attachment, striation patterns, and microcrack formation in the cut section are also examined.     

Security threats to critical infrastructure: the human factor

In the twenty-first century, globalisation made corporate boundaries invisible and difficult to manage. This new macroeconomic transformation caused by globalisation introduced new challenges for critical infrastructure management. By replacing manual tasks with automated decision making and sophisticated technology, no doubt we feel much more secure than half a century ago. As the technological advancement takes root, so does the maturity of security threats. It is common that today’s critical infrastructures are operated by non-computer experts, e.g. nurses in health care, soldiers in military or firefighters in emergency services. In such challenging applications, protecting against insider attacks is often neither feasible nor economically possible, but these threats can be managed using suitable risk management strategies. Security technologies, e.g. firewalls, help protect data assets and computer systems against unauthorised entry. However, one area which is often largely ignored is the human factor of system security. Through social engineering techniques, malicious attackers are able to breach organisational security via people interactions. This paper presents a security awareness training framework, which can be used to train operators of critical infrastructure, on various social engineering security threats such as spear phishing, baiting, pretexting, among others.     

Design and implementation of an attestation protocol for measured dynamic behavior

Security of applications running on remote devices has become an essential need of enterprises. For this purpose, several software-based solutions have been proposed. However, it has been observed that software solutions are vulnerable to several kinds of attacks. Moreover, they cannot protect and monitor all parts of the system. To overcome this problem, researchers have proposed to monitor a target system from an isolated hardware and store system’s sensitive information in its tamper-proof memory locations. To realize such a solution, Trusted Computing Group (TCG) has proposed the specifications of a co-processor called Trusted Platform Module which is widely available in commodity hardware. Integrity Measurement Architecture is one of the well-known static techniques that brings TCG’s attestation from kernel to the application level. However, this method cannot measure runtime behavior of applications, which is necessary to detect runtime attacks such as buffer overflow and return-oriented programming. In this paper, we have extended the base work which aims to detect runtime vulnerabilities. Current high-level-based attestation protocol has been extended for dynamic behavior collection and verification, and the dynamic behavior is verified via several machine learning algorithms. Our results justify the use of this approach and show that a high rate detection was achieved for datasets of real-world vulnerabilities in the popular Firefox browser.     

Multimedia based qualitative assessment methodology in eLearning: student teacher engagement analysis

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Multimedia-based Electronic learning (eLearning) is an effective method of knowledge transfer. Multimedia-based eLearning provides the opportunity to the...