The short-term effects of various oral care methods in dependent elderly: comparison between toothbrushing, tongue cleaning with sponge brush and wiping on oral mucous membrane by chlorhexidine Objectives: To explore the short-term effects from toothbrushing, tongue cleaning with sponge brush and wiping on oral mucous membrane by chlorhexidine. Background: Numerous reports have been seen in recent years proving the effectiveness of mouth cleaning with a toothbrush for the prevention of respiratory infections among the dependent elderly. However, the short-term effects from each oral care method have not yet been clarified. Hence, an investigation was conducted by having each subject independently perform various oral care methods for five consecutive days. Materials and Methods: The subjects consisted of 12 assistance-dependent elderly who have difficulties with tooth brushing by themselves, have 10 or more residual teeth and are not yet using plate dentures. After the pre-intervention examination, each of the following oral care methods were performed on the same subject on an approximately three week basis: 1) Tooth brushing 2)Tongue cleaning with sponge brush 3)Wiping on oral mucous with sponge brush by chlorhexidine. Each method was performed independently, once a day for 5 consecutive days and the subjects were reexamined on the sixth day for comparative verification. Results: Consequently, toothbrushing decreased the plaque index and gingival index significantly and an improvement of oral malodour was also acknowledged (p < 0.01). Tongue cleaning with a sponge brush decreased the tongue coat score significantly (p < 0.05) and oral malodour was also improved (p < 0.01). Wiping on oral mucous with a sponge brush soaked in chlorhexidine significantly decreased opportunistic infections in the pharynx region (p < 0.05). Conclusions: It was suggested that the use of not only a toothbrush but also chlorhexidine gluconate may be indicated for dependent elderly people in whom pathogens of opportunistic infection are detected.

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Using Monte Carlo simulations and self-consistent field (SCF) theory we study the surface and interface properties of a coarse grained off-lattice model. In the simulations we employ the grand canonical ensemble together with a reweighting scheme in order to measure surface and interface free energies and discuss various methods for accurately locating the wetting transition. In the SCF theory, we use a partial enumeration scheme to incorporate singlechain properties on all length scales and use a weighted density functional for the excess free energy. The results of various forms of the density functional are compared quantitatively to the simulation results. For the theory to be accurate, it is important to decompose the free energy functional into a repulsive and an attractive part, with different approximations for the two parts.Measuring the effective interface potential for our coarse grained model we explore routes for controlling the equilibrium wetting properties. (i) Coating of the substrate by an oxide layer gives rise to a subtle interplay between shortrange and long-range forces,which may stabilize a film of mesoscopic thickness or result in the formation of nano-droplets. (ii) Coating the substrate with a polymer brush, we observe second-order wetting transitions at intermediate grafting densities, while the wetting transition is of first order at low and high grafting densities. In the latter limit, polymers of the same chemical structure as the brush do not wet the surface (autophobicity). (iii) Surface pattern (stripes) might give rise to unusual adsorption properties, which are related to morphological transitions. We relate our findings to experiments and discuss perspectives and limitations of the computational methods.

The activation behavior of boron and phosphorus implanted into laser-crystallized silicon films were investigated. The ratio of recrystallization of an ion-doping-induced amorphous region by heat treatment at 250 C was 0.35 for a boron concentration lower than 6:4 Â 10 19 cm À3 and 0.5 for a phosphorus concentration lower than 2:5 Â 10 19 cm À3. This ratio decreased as dopant concentration increased. High electrical conductivities of 1:1 Â 10 2 S/cm and 7.3 S/cm were achieved by oxygen plasma treatment at 250 C for 1 h in the cases of 3:2 Â 10 20-cm À3 boron and 5:0 Â 10 19-cm À3-phosphorus doping, respectively. Numerical analysis of the electrical conductivity revealed that the electrical conductivity was governed by recrystallization ratio and the density of the intrinsic defects of polycrystalline films.

The concept, fabrication process, and characterization of a three-axis thermal accelerometer are presented in this paper. A combination of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology with microinjection molding enables the realization of functional, highly complex 3D geometries at the microscale, used here for the fabrication of a fully integrated three-axis accelerometer. While conventional thermal accelerometers are silicon based, using MEMS technologies only, the integration of polymeric materials and technologies into the fabrication process can greatly improve the realization of three-axis devices while diminishing the typical thermal losses. Three-axis thermal accelerometers were successfully fabricated by combining the proposed technologies proving the viability of the concept. Fabricated accelerometers show xy-axis sensitivity around 8 mV g −1 , a z-axis sensitivity of 2.2 mV g −1 for a power of 45 mW and a 4 Hz bandwidth (bandwidth is based on simulations). Thermal tests performed showed that the heater can sustain up to 280 °C without overheating the remaining structures and damaging the device.