METHODS: Fifty-four heat-cured rectangular DBR specimens (64 × 10 × 3.3 ± 0.2 mm) containing nine concentrations of PTMC between 0 and 5% (wt/wt) were fabricated and subjected to a three-point bending test. A phytoncide release bioassay was developed using DBR containing 0% and 2.5% PTMCs (wt/wt) in a 24 well-plate assay with incubation of Porphyromonas gingivalis at 37 °C for 74 h. The antifungal activity of PTMCs against Candida albicans, in a pH 5.5 acidic environment was determined in a plate assay.
RESULTS: Flexural strength decreased with increasing PTMC concentration from 97.58 ± 4.79 MPa for the DBR alone to 53.66 ± 2.46 MPa for DBR containing 5.0% PTMC. No release of phytoncide from the PTMCs in the DBR was detected at pH 7.4. The PTMCs had a minimal inhibitory concentration of 2.6% (wt/vol) against C. albicans at pH 5.5.
CONCLUSIONS: PTMCs can be added to DBR 2.5% (wt/wt) without adversely affecting flexural strength. PTMCs released the antimicrobial agent at pH 5.5 at concentrations sufficient to inhibit the growth of the C. albicans.
METHOD: The study used an online anonymous survey to collect data including demographics, awareness of the term, experience of microaggression, acts and response. The research findings were analyzed using univariate and multivariate analyses using Chi-square test and binary logistic regression respectively.
RESULT: A total of 443 participants (40.9% males, 59.1% females) included 403 physicians (91%), 21 dentists (4.7%), 15 nurses (3.4%) and 4 pharmacists (0.9%). More than half of the participants (59.8%) were aware of the term micro-aggression. The percentage was significantly higher among respondents from the western region of Saudi Arabia than the Gulf/Middle Eastern countries. Approximately 38.1% of the participants experienced microaggression and more than half (55.62%) did not report experiencing microaggression. The most common form of microaggression was passive-aggressive behavior (80.5%) followed by invalidation of an opinion (73.4%). Among those who experienced microaggression, (12.9%) reported anger as the most predominant emotional response.
CONCLUSION: Microaggression is a universal phenomenon. Further research is necessary to determine its prevalence in other countries to establish a comprehensive understanding of its cultural context.
METHODS: A total of 322 samples of mainly human origin were analysed using eight protocols, applying a wide variety of laboratory components. Several samples (60% of human specimens) were processed using different protocols. In total, 712 sequencing libraries were investigated for viral sequence contamination.
RESULTS: Among sequences showing similarity to viruses, 493 were significantly associated with the use of laboratory components. Each of these viral sequences had sporadic appearance, only being identified in a subset of the samples treated with the linked laboratory component, and some were not identified in the non-template control samples. Remarkably, more than 65% of all viral sequences identified were within viral clusters linked to the use of laboratory components.
CONCLUSIONS: We show that high prevalence of contaminating viral sequences can be expected in HTS-based virome data and provide an extensive list of novel contaminating viral sequences that can be used for evaluation of viral findings in future virome and metagenome studies. Moreover, we show that detection can be problematic due to stochastic appearance and limited non-template controls. Although the exact origin of these viral sequences requires further research, our results support laboratory-component-linked viral sequence contamination of both biological and synthetic origin.