BACKGROUND Temporo-Mandibular Joint (TMJ) replacement has been used clinically for years. The objective of this study was to evaluate outcomes achieved in patients with two different categories of TMJ prostheses. MATERIAL AND METHODS All patients who had a TMJ replacement (TMJR) implanted during the study period from 2006 through 2012 were included in this 3-year prospective study. All proced...

Long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) require an engine capable of driving a jet of plasma to ultrarelativistic bulk Lorentz factors of up to several hundred and into narrow opening angles of a few degrees. We use global axisymmetric stationary solutions of magnetically dominated (force-free) ultrarelativistic jets to test whether the popular magnetic-driving paradigm can generate the required ...

Rose (Rosa hybrida L.) is one of the mostly cultivated cut flowers in Iran and around the world. The study was carried out to increase the vase life and quality of cut rose ‘Grand Prix` and ‘Avallanche` by using various floral preservative solutions. Floral preservative solutions were AgNO3, 8-HQS, nano silver and distilled water. Treatments were compared with tap water as control. The experime...

In this paper, a class of extended lower and upper levelings is investigated. Here, some conditions are imposed to the criteria for building extended lower and upper levelings in order to generate openings and closings with reconstruction criteria. The idea of building these new openings and closings comes from the notions of morphological filters by reconstruction and levelings. The main goal ...

This paper analyzes the impact of international trade on the quality of institutions, such as contract enforcement, property rights, or investor protection. It presents a model in which institutional differences play two roles: they create rents for some parties within the economy, and they are a source of comparative advantage in trade. Institutional quality is determined as an equilibrium of ...

Recent work shows that transcription factors are necessary for stomatal movements in plants. Different members of the plant-specific R2R3-MYB transcription factor family are required for mediating stomatal opening in response to light and stomatal closure in response to darkness.

In this paper, a class of transformations with reconstruction criteria is investigated. This class of transformations was initially proposed for obtaining intermediate results between the morphological opening and the opening by reconstruction. Here, the transformations are presented in the general case, as in the reconstruction transformations case, by imposing some conditions on the marker. T...

    The combination of horizontal drilling along with hydraulic fracturing has significantly improved the production of hydrocarbon reservoirs and made it possible to extract the relatively impermeable and uneconomical reservoirs. The production rate of oil and gas wells increases proportional to hydraulic fracture aperture or crack opening displacement (COD). This is an important parameter i...

In this paper a novel approach for detecting the defects in weld radiographs is presented by using combinatorial morphological and statistical operations. The proposed method consists of several stages. The procedure first involves the application of wiener for noise removal and enhancing the original image. Then, the morphological opening operation is applied to find the fine interior segments...