BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to evaluate the Vickers surface micro-hardness and the depth of cure of two bulk-fill resin composites and one incremental-fill resin composite. MATERIAL AND METHODS Two Bulk-fill dental resin composites (X-tra Fil, Voco; Sonic-FillTM 2, Kerr Corporation) and an incremental-fill dental resin composite (Filtek™ Z250 XT, 3M ESPE) were used. Sixty cylindrical...

Wheat hardness by near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy: New insights by Marena Manley The determination of wheat hardness by the evaluation of whole wheat grain would be of considerable value to the UK Milling Industry. Until now, accurate whole wheat grain hardness predictions by NlR spectroscopy have only been reported for North American wheats. By the evaluation of selected samples of UK and Nor...

BACKGROUND Numerous studies have suggested an inverse relationship between drinking water hardness and cardiovascular disease. However, the weight of evidence is insufficient for the WHO to implement a health-based guideline for water hardness. This study followed WHO recommendations to assess the feasibility of using ecological time series data from areas exposed to step changes in water hardn...

In order to clarify the theoretical basis of the variability in the measurement of tablet hardness by compression pressure, NIR spectroscopic methods were used to predict tablet hardness of the formulations. Tablets (200 mg, 8 mm in diameter) consisting of berberine chloride, lactose, and potato starch were formed at various compression pressures (59, 78, 98, 127, 195 MPa). The hardness and the...

The exact hardness of computing a Nash equilibrium is a fundamental open question in algorithmic game theory. This problem is complete for the complexity class PPAD. It is well known that problems in PPAD cannot be NP-complete unless NP = coNP. Therefore, a natural direction is to reduce the hardness of PPAD to the hardness of problems used in cryptography. Bitansky, Paneth, and Rosen [FOCS 201...

BACKGROUND Studies regarding the effect of various methods to increase the surface hardness of Type IV dental stone are not conclusive. Therefore, this study was carried out to evaluate the effect of air drying, micro oven drying and die hardener on surface hardness of Type IV dental stone. MATERIALS AND METHODS A standard metal die was fabricated; polyvinyl siloxane impression material was u...

BACKGROUND Ground hardness is considered one of the possible risk factors associated with rugby injuries. OBJECTIVES To examine the contribution of ground hardness, rainfall and evapotranspiration to the incidence of injury, and to investigate seasonal injury bias throughout one full season of rugby union. METHODS A prospective epidemiological study of rugby injuries was performed on 271 pl...

"Soft" and "hard" are the two main market classes of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and are distinguished by expression of the Hardness gene. Friabilin, a marker protein for grain softness (Ha), consists of two proteins, puroindoline a and b (pinA and pinB, respectively). We previously demonstrated that a glycine to serine mutation in pinB is linked inseparably to grain hardness. Here, we report ...

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) transmission technique is gaining popularity as a preferred technique in the emerging broadband wireless access standards. Motivated by the OFDMA transmission technique we define the following problem: Let M be a matrix (over R) of size a × b. Given a vector of non-negative integers ~ C = 〈c1, c2, . . . , cb〉 such that ∑ cj = a, we would lik...