BACKGROUND The cleaning of endodontic and all dental instruments prior to sterilization is a prerequisite for their processing for re-use. This study aimed to develop a clinically practical cleaning protocol for rotary nickel-titanium (NiTi) endodontic files prior to sterilization. METHODS Cleaning experiments were conducted on six different types of files that had been used on human teeth. T...

Organic matter leads to one of the biggest problems in membranes: fouling. Developing efficient cleaning processes is therefore crucial. This study systematically examines how alginic acid fouling formed under different physical and chemical conditions affect osmotic backwashing cleaning efficiency in forward osmosis (FO). The fouling layer thickness before and after osmotic backwashing was mea...

BACKGROUND Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs) are one of the most frequent complications occurring in healthcare facilities. Contaminated environmental surfaces provide an important potential source for transmission of many healthcare-associated pathogens, thus indicating the need for new and sustainable strategies. AIM This study aims to evaluate the effect of a novel cleaning procedure...

Cleaning is one of the most important processes for the conservation of cultural heritage artifacts, but also one of the most delicate and potentially damaging to the original materials. Nowadays, aqueous cleaning is usually preferred to cleaning with organic solvents, because it is environmental friendly and less aggressive to artifact’s materials. However, in some circumstances, such as clean...

BACKGROUND Breath odor is a nuisance problem for many people around the world. Bad breath affects social interactions of people in daily life by causing personal discomfort and emotional stress. There are chemical and mechanical methods for controlling oral malodor. Many studies of various mouth rinse applications and tongue cleaning procedures have been conducted. However, few studies have com...

We demonstrate the p-type doping of Ge nanowires (NWs) and p-n junction arrays in a scalable vertically aligned structure with all processing performed below 400 °C. These structures are advantageous for the large scale production of parallel arrays of devices for nanoelectronics and sensing applications. Efficient methods for the oxide encapsulation, chemical mechanical polishing and cleaning ...

A pilot-scale study of pharmaceutical wastewater treatment by a membrane bioreactor (MBR) process in southern Taiwan is presented in this paper. A 10 m/day capacity MBR plant consisting of an aeration tank and a membrane bioreactor was installed to remove organic matter (measured in terms of chemical oxygen demand (COD)). The performance of the MBR was monitored for a period of 140 days. The re...