Background: Removing dental plaque is important to maintain a good oral hygiene and prevent periodontal disease; this could not be accomplished by the use of toothbrush alone, it needs the help of interdental aids or intra-oral irrigator devices. The aim of this study was to compare the effect of using Waterpik flosser as adjunct to tooth brushing than using the dental floss with the brushing. Materials and methods: A single blind, six weeks study included 45 subjects divided into three groups of 15 subjects at each group. Group B (brushing) was instructed to use the toothbrush only, group BF (brushing & flossing) was instructed to use dental floss and tooth brushing while group BW (brushing and Waterpik flosser) was instructed to use Waterpik flosser in addition to the toothbrush. Plaque index, gingival index and bleeding on probing were measured at the 1st visit, after 3 weeks (2nd visit) and finally after 6 weeks (3rd visit). Results: The plaque index was significantly reduced in group BF and BW at the 3rd visit, while it showed no significant differences in group B. The mean percentage reduction of gingival index at the 3rd visit was higher in group BW than group B and group BF. Using the chi-square test, bleeding on probing showed no significant difference in group B, while there was significant reduction in group BF and highly significant reduction (p<0.001) in group BW between the visits. Conclusion: Waterpik flosser was more effective in reducing dental plaque and bleeding than dental floss.
Proxy-based sliding mode control PSMC is an improved version of PID control that combines the features of PID and sliding mode control SMC with continuously dynamic behaviour. However, the stability of the control architecture maybe not well addressed. Consequently, this work is focused on modification of the original version of the proxy-based sliding mode control PSMC by adding an adaptive approximation compensator AAC term for vibration control of an Euler-Bernoulli beam. The role of the AAC term is to compensate for unmodelled dynamics and make the stability proof more easily. The stability of the proposed control algorithm is systematically proved using Lyapunov theory. Multi-modal equation of motion is derived using the Galerkin metho
... Show MoreIn this paper, we establish the conditions of the occurrence of the local bifurcations, such as saddle node, transcritical and pitchfork, of all equilibrium points of an eco-epidemiological model consisting of a prey-predator model with SI (susceptible-infected) epidemic diseases in prey population only and a refuge-stage structure in the predators. It is observed that there is a transcritical bifurcation near the axial and free predator equilibrium points, near disease-free equilibrium point is a saddle-node bifurcation and near positive (coexistence) equilibrium point is a saddle-node bifurcation, a transcritical bifurcation and a pitchfork bifurcation. Further investigations for Hopf bifurcation near coexistence equilibrium point
... Show MoreRecently, environmental noise has arisen from various sources, such as those from exhaust mufflers of combustion engines found in cars, trucks, or power generators, which produce significant noise during their operation. Controlling the radiated noise from these mufflers is a major factor in improving acoustic comfort and minimizing the impact on the surrounding communities. Numerous research has been presented for this reason by modification of the internal structure of the exhaust muffler. The main objective of this work is to reduce the noise level emitted from exhaust mufflers. This can be achieved by adjusting structure parameters to attenuate the surrounding environment's radiated noise. Analysis of pressure-wave propagation h
... Show MoreNumerical Investigation was done for steady state laminar mixed convection and thermally and hydrodynamic fully developed flow through horizontal rectangular duct including circular core with two cases of time periodic boundary condition, first case on the rectangular wall while keeping core wall constant and other on both the rectangular duct and core walls. The used governing equations are continuity momentum and energy equations. These equations are normalized and solved using the Vorticity-Stream function and the Body Fitted Coordinates (B.F.C.) methods. The Finite Difference approach with the Line Successive Over Relaxation (LSOR) method is used to obtain all the computational results the (B.F.C.) method is used to generate th
... Show MoreThe research aims to design an electronic program that allows users to assess the possibility of different practices for projects management professional according to the PMBOK methodology)) and using the requirements Data mentioned in the "knowledge and experience in project management Evaluation guide" issued by the professional Institute of project management According to the results of this program will be electronic The possible classification of project management in terms of both (proficiency_ perform tasks) as less than the desired level or within or above average in terms of best practices, and finally a number of recommendations to overcome the possible shortcomings. The most important is the need to enrich the service
... Show MoreImage segmentation using bi-level thresholds works well for straightforward scenarios; however, dealing with complex images that contain multiple objects or colors presents considerable computational difficulties. Multi-level thresholding is crucial for these situations, but it also introduces a challenging optimization problem. This paper presents an improved Reptile Search Algorithm (RSA) that includes a Gbest operator to enhance its performance. The proposed method determines optimal threshold values for both grayscale and color images, utilizing entropy-based objective functions derived from the Otsu and Kapur techniques. Experiments were carried out on 16 benchmark images, which inclu
Flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) is one of the instances in flexible manufacturing systems. It is considered as a very complex to control. Hence generating a control system for this problem domain is difficult. FJSP inherits the job-shop scheduling problem characteristics. It has an additional decision level to the sequencing one which allows the operations to be processed on any machine among a set of available machines at a facility. In this article, we present Artificial Fish Swarm Algorithm with Harmony Search for solving the flexible job shop scheduling problem. It is based on the new harmony improvised from results obtained by artificial fish swarm algorithm. This improvised solution is sent to comparison to an overall best
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