MAROKO133 Breaking ai: Scientists create fluoride-free gel that restores lost enamel withi

📌 MAROKO133 Breaking ai: Scientists create fluoride-free gel that restores lost en

Losing tooth enamel has long been a one-way street. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. But that may soon change.

Scientists have developed a new gel that can repair and regenerate enamel, offering a glimpse of a future where teeth can heal themselves.

The breakthrough, led by researchers at the University of Nottingham’s School of Pharmacy and Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, could revolutionize preventive and restorative dental care.

Their bioinspired material mimics the proteins that guide enamel growth in infancy — only this time, it helps adults regain what time and decay have taken away.

The study details how this fluoride-free, protein-based gel creates a thin, durable layer that seeps into microscopic cracks and holes in teeth.

Acting as a scaffold, it pulls calcium and phosphate ions from saliva and promotes the organized growth of new minerals in a process known as epitaxial mineralization.

The result? Newly grown enamel that restores both the structure and properties of natural teeth.

Unlike standard fluoride varnishes that merely slow down decay, this gel could actively rebuild tooth enamel, something dentistry has never achieved before.

Nature’s blueprint, reimagined

The new material is applied in the same way as conventional fluoride treatments, but with far more regenerative potential. It can even be used to grow enamel-like layers on exposed dentine, addressing issues like tooth sensitivity and improving the bonding of dental restorations.

“Dental enamel has a unique structure, which gives enamel its remarkable properties that protect our teeth throughout life against physical, chemical, and thermal insults,” said Dr. Abshar Hasan, the study’s lead author and postdoctoral fellow at Nottingham.

“When our material is applied to demineralized or eroded enamel, or exposed dentine, the material promotes the growth of crystals in an integrated and organized manner, recovering the architecture of our natural healthy enamel.”

Enamel degradation affects nearly half of the world’s population, contributing to cavities, infections, and even systemic health issues such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Current solutions can only manage symptoms, none can restore lost enamel.

Hasan’s team tested the regenerated tissue under real-world conditions such as brushing, chewing, and exposure to acidic foods.

“We have tested the mechanical properties of these regenerated tissues under conditions simulating ‘real-life situations’… and found that the regenerated enamel behaves just like healthy enamel,” he said.

Ready for the real world

The research team believes their innovation could be available to patients soon. “We are very excited because the technology has been designed with the clinician and patient in mind. It is safe, can be easily and rapidly applied, and it is scalable,” said Professor Alvaro Mata, Chair in Biomedical Engineering & Biomaterials.

“Also, the technology is versatile, which opens the opportunity to be translated into multiple types of products to help patients of all ages suffering from a variety of dental problems.”

Through their startup, Mintech-Bio, the researchers are already working to bring the product to market, possibly as early as next year. If successful, this could mark the biggest leap in dental care since the advent of fluoride toothpaste.

The study appears in Nature Communications.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 MAROKO133 Hot ai: Professors Aghast as Class Caught Cheating “Sincerely” Apologi

If you get caught cheating by your professor, you would be wise to beg for mercy, grovel at their feet, and pour every ounce of your soul into putting on the contrite performance of a lifetime. You’ll never do it again, you vow, after reminding them of your recently deceased distant relative. If there was ever a moment to put some real effort into your education, this big apology would be it.

In an age of ChatGPT, however, even that might be a lot to ask.

After catching dozens of their students cheating in a data science course, two professors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were inundated with what they thought were nearly a hundred heartfelt emails from the students apologizing for their mistakes.

But you probably see where this is going. The overwhelming majority of those emails, the professors noticed, appeared to themselves be written by an AI chatbot. The duo, Karle Flanagan and Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider, confronted their students about it in class, projecting their similarly worded apologies on screen. The phrase “sincerely apologize” is highlighted in all of the dozens of examples.  

“They said, ‘Dear Professor Flanagan, I want to sincerely apologize,’” Flanagan told the New York Times. “And I was like, Thank you. They’re owning up to it. They’re apologizing.” 

“And then I got another email, the second email, and then the third,” Flanagan added. “And then everybody sort of sincerely apologizing, and suddenly it became a little less sincere.”

It’s the latest stupefying example of how AI has irreversibly transformed education, and undoubtedly for the worse. It’s not just the tech’s effortless automation that’s so alarming, robbing students of the challenge of actually having to use their brain to think through a problem; its very existence has fostered a climate of distrust, where the relationship between pupil and professor is clouded by suspicion and resentment. The professor must constantly be suspicious of a student using AI to cheat. And the student resents being subjected to this scrutiny, sometimes unfairly. Many have been wrongly accused of using AI — accusations that themselves are sometimes made with AI tools.

Flanagan and Fagen-Ulmschneider said they were on the lookout for cheating after they noticed that students who skipped class were still answering time-sensitive questions that were designed to only be accessed through an app while physically in attendance to scan a QR code, they told the NYT. Answering these went to their participation grade. After some digging, the professors realized that the truants were getting tipped off by their peers about when to answer the questions.

Their confrontation with the students about the “sincere” apologies went mega-viral on Reddit, after a student posted a photo of the scene. Going viral, though, wasn’t the professors intent. “We were ready to move past it but then we woke up the next day and it was on the front page of Twitter and Reddit!” Flanagan said in a video.

The embarrassment, it seems, was ample punishment. No disciplinary action was taken against the students — but they definitely got a schooling.

“Life lesson: if you’re going to apologize, don’t use ChatGPT to do it,” Flanagan said in the video.

More on AI: University Using AI to Falsely Accuse Students of Cheating With AI

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🔗 Sumber: futurism.com