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Summary Background Lingual exercises are commonly used in clinical practice for swallowing rehabilitation. Associating lingual exercises with computer games increases motivation, which influences tongue motor performance. Objective To investigate the effects of tongue movement direction; resistance force level; repetition number; sustained tongue contraction duration; age and gender on tongue motor performance in healthy adults using computer games. Methods An observational pilot study was carried out at a university laboratory. Nine healthy adults, aged 22 to 38 years, used an intra‐oral joystick controlled by the tongue to play four computer games. The participants had to reach 12 targets that appeared on the computer screen using the intra‐oral joystick. Motor performance was measured by the number of attempts to score and the time during which the target force was maintained. Tongue motor performance was compared among tongue movement direction, resistance force level, game round number, and continuous force application time on the target, age and gender. Results The number of attempts depended significantly on the direction, continuous force application time on the target and age. The time during which the target force was maintained depended significantly on the direction, continuous force application time on the target and game round number. There were no significant differences in the comparisons by gender or by resistance force level. Conclusions It was seen that young adults had their best performance in the downward direction, on the third round, holding the force for a shorter time. The performance deteriorated as age increased.

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The findings indicated diversity in methodologies; 14/15 articles reviewed were limited to the evaluation of the topography of the posterior back. A study, using two-dimensional photogrammetry, presented a whole body postural evaluation. As the asymmetry in AIS can be extended to the whole body, more attention should be given to develop full body assessment techniques to provide important additional data to aid in treatment decisions.

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Thermo-mechanical finite element analyses in 3-D models are described for determination of the stress levels due to thermal and mechanical loads in a healthy and restored tooth. Transient thermo-mechanical analysis simulating the ingestion of cold and hot drinks was performed to determine the temperature distribution in the models of the teeth, followed by linear elastic stress analyses. The thermal loads were applied on the occlusal and lingual surfaces. Subsequently, coupled variation of the temperature and mastication loading was considered. The vertical loading was distributed at occlusal points, adding up to 180 N. Maximum stresses were verified in resin restoration under thermal loads. When studying coupled effect of mechanical loading with that arising from thermal effects, higher tensile stress values occurred in porcelain restorations, especially at the restoration-dentin interface. Regions of high tensile stress were detected and their possible clinical significance with respect to restoration damage and microleakage were discussed.

Bone marrow (BM) is an organ responsible for crucial processes in living organs, e. g., hematopoiesis. In recent years, Organ-on-a-Chip (OoC) devices have been used to satisfy the need for in vitro systems that better mimic the phenomena occurring in the BM microenvironment. Given the growing interest in these systems and the diversity of developed devices, an integrative systematic literature review is required. We have performed this review, following the PRISMA method aiming to identify the main characteristics and assess the effectiveness of the devices that were developed to represent the BM. A search was performed in the Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science and Science Direct databases using the keywords ((“bone marrow” OR “hematopoietic stem cells” OR “haematopoietic stem cells”) AND (“organ in a” OR “lab on a chip” OR “microfluidic” OR “microfluidic*” OR (“bioreactor” AND “microfluidic*”))). Original research articles published between 2009 and 2020 were included in the review, giving a total of 21 papers. The analysis of these papers showed that their main purpose was to study BM cells biology, mimic BM niches, model pathological BM, and run drug assays. Regarding the fabrication protocols, we have observed that polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) material and soft lithography method were the most commonly used. To reproduce the microenvironment of BM, most devices used the type I collagen and alginate. Peristaltic and syringe pumps were mostly used for device perfusion. Regarding the advantages compared to conventional methods, there were identified three groups of OoC devices: perfused 3D BM; co-cultured 3D BM; and perfused co-cultured 3D BM. Cellular behavior and mimicking their processes and responses were the mostly commonly studied parameters. The results have demonstrated the effectiveness of OoC devices for research purposes compared to conventional cell cultures. Furthermore, the devices have a wide range of applicability and the potential to be explored.

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