Can Type of Instrumentation and Activation of the Final Irrigant Improve the Obturation Quality in Oval Root Canals? A Push-Out Bond Strength Study

To appraise the outcome of file systems and activation of the final irrigant on the push-out bond strength of root fillings in oval canals. Single-rooted mandibular premolars (n = 180) with oval canals were divided into three groups (n = 60) for instrumentation: ProTaper Next (PTN), WaveOne (WO), and Self-adjusting File (SAF). The specimens were further divided into subgroups (n = 20) and subjected to final irrigation with activation by EndoActivator or passive ultrasonic irrigation or without activation. Then, the specimens were again subdivided (n = 10) and obturated with gutta-percha and AH Plus (GP-AH) or C-Point with EndoSequence bioceramic sealer (C-EBC). One-millimeter-thick horizontal slices were cut from the apical third of the root, 5 mm from the apex, and subjected to push-out bond strength (BS) testing. Specimens for which SAF was used exhibited higher BS values than those for which PTN or WO was used (p < 0.05). Activation of the final irrigation did not affect the BS of the root fillings. Root fillings made of C-EBC presented a higher BS than those made of GP-AH (p < 0.05). Adhesive failure was more common with specimens instrumented using PTN and WO. Root canals instrumented with SAF, showed the highest bond strength values for both root filling materials. The C-EBC produced significantly higher bond strength values than those of the GP-AH.

Evaluation of Postoperative Pain Following Single-Visit Root Canal Treatment with Rotary and Reciprocal Ni–Ti File Systems in Children

Background and Objectives: Postoperative pain is a common symptom of a flare-up after root canal treatments (RCTs). Insufficient instrumentation, extrusion of irrigation solutions and debris, and the existence of a periapical lesion are the factors affecting postoperative pain after root canal treatments. The aim of this study was to evaluate the postoperative pain and instrumentation time of the single-file reciprocating system and multiple-file Ni–Ti rotary system in children ages 9–12 years old. Materials and Methods: Our study was conducted on 51 permanent mandibular molars with the diagnosis of irreversible pulpitis. Patients were randomly assigned into two groups, and RCTs were completed with either the Reciproc Blue or Protaper NEXT file systems. Instrumentation time for each system was noted, and patients were given a pain scale that included a visual analog scale for 6, 24, 48, and 72 h after treatment. Postoperative pain scores and instrumentation times were analyzed statistically with a chi-square test and Student’s t-test. Results: There was no statistically significant difference in postoperative pain between the Reciproc Blue and Protaper NEXT systems at all time intervals. Instrumentation time was significantly shorter in the Reciproc Blue group in comparison with the Protaper NEXT group. Conclusions: Postoperative pain findings following RCT using single-file reciprocating systems were similar to the rotary system group. However, chair time in the reciprocating system group was significantly lower. This provided a comfortable and patient-friendly treatment approach for children, and could enhance their cooperation.

Cluster Appearance Glyphs: A Methodology for Illustrating High-Dimensional Data Patterns in 2-D Data Layouts

Two-dimensional space embeddings such as Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) are a popular means to gain insight into high-dimensional data relationships. However, in all but the simplest cases these embeddings suffer from significant distortions, which can lead to misinterpretations of the high-dimensional data. These distortions occur both at the global inter-cluster and the local intra-cluster levels. The former leads to misinterpretation of the distances between the various N-D cluster populations, while the latter hampers the appreciation of their individual shapes and composition, which we call cluster appearance. The distortion of cluster appearance incurred in the 2-D embedding is unavoidable since such low-dimensional embeddings always come at the loss of some of the intra-cluster variance. In this paper, we propose techniques to overcome these limitations by conveying the N-D cluster appearance via a framework inspired by illustrative design. Here we make use of Scagnostics which offers a set of intuitive feature descriptors to describe the appearance of 2-D scatterplots. We extend the Scagnostics analysis to N-D and then devise and test via crowd-sourced user studies a set of parameterizable texture patterns that map to the various Scagnostics descriptors. Finally, we embed these N-D Scagnostics-informed texture patterns into shapes derived from N-D statistics to yield what we call Cluster Appearance Glyphs. We demonstrate our framework with a dataset acquired to analyze program execution times in file systems.

Effectiveness of different rotary file systems in removing the root canal filling material: A micro-computed tomography study

Background. This study aimed to examine the retreatment efficiency of four NiTi rotary file systems with micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). Methods. Forty premolar teeth were shaped up to F2 using the ProTaper Universal rotary file system and obturated with MTA Fillapex. The root canals were scanned with micro-CT to evaluate the volume of root canal filling before retreatment. The samples were randomly divided into four groups according to the file system used to remove root canal filling material (n=10): ProTaper Universal Retreatment, ProTaper NEXT, EdgeFile XR, and EdgeFile® X3 NiTi system. All the samples were scanned with a micro-CT device for the second time to evaluate the amount of residual filling material in the root canals. The percentages of filling material removed from root canals were calculated. Additionally, the time spent on the removal of the root canal filling material was recorded. The data were analyzed using the Shapiro-Wilk and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Results. There were no significant differences between the groups in the percentage of root canal filling material removal. However, a statistically significant difference was found between the groups in the time required to reach the apex and remove the entire filling material. The time required to remove the root canal filling material was higher in the EdgeFile® X3 group. Conclusion. NiTi files manufactured for root canal preparation can be used effectively and safely to remove root canal filling materials. EdgeFile XR produced for retreatment can be used as an alternative to ProTaper Universal Retreatment files.

Performance-efficient Recommendation and Prediction Service for Big Data frameworks focusing on Data Compression and In-memory Data Storage Indicators

The MapReduce framework manages Big Data sets by splitting the large datasets into a set of distributed blocks and processes them in parallel. Data compression and in-memory file systems are widely used methods in Big Data processing to reduce resource-intensive I/O operations and improve I/O rate correspondingly. The article presents a performance-efficient modular and configurable decision-making robust service relying on data compression and in-memory data storage indicators. The service consists of Recommendation and Prediction modules, predicts the execution time of a given job based on metrics, and recommends the best configuration parameters to improve Hadoop and Spark frameworks' performance. Several CPU and data-intensive applications and micro-benchmarks have been evaluated to improve the performance, including Log Analyzer, WordCount, and K-Means.