Plasma Jets Could Replace Dental Drills

Hugh Pickens writes "The first electric dental drill was patented in 1875; modern drills grind the diseased portions of teeth away at up to 500,000 rpm. But dentists have been seeking less invasive ways of wiping out stubborn, tooth-decaying bacteria. Now Live Science reports that bacteria-killing jets of plasma could soon replace the drills used to treat cavities in our teeth. Researchers recently demonstrated that a small, blowtorch-like device emitting a relatively cool beam of purple plasma could eliminate oral bacteria in cavities, leaving more tooth structure intact than a drill does. To test how well 'cold' plasma jets (about 100F or 38C) sterilize tooth material, researchers took slices of dentin from extracted human molars, doused them with bacteria, and torched them with the plasma jet. An inspection via a scanning electron microscope of the damage done to the germs shows bacterial remnants had holes in their cell walls. When the plasma jet fires, it charges oxygen in the surrounding air, creating highly reactive molecules that can break down the bacteria's defenses. Researchers believe the technique could be available to general dentistry in three to five years."

Comments

Re:Hard coating?

[vadim_t]

In a way it kind of reminds me of the problems non-technology people have with computers that technology people don't suffer from; these issues don't really get addressed within technology itself very aggressively because to the people who don't have these issues, they aren't considered serious problems or are considered side effects of other problems (general ignorance or lack of intelligence, etc).

Actually, forgot to say, the solution to this exists, it's known as a "console", or a "cell phone". I mean purpose limited machines, where all running code is either heavily sandboxed, or manually vetted by some party.

On general purpose machines such tactics are much less successful, because users actively fight such measures. At some point the user runs into a conflict between that they want to do something that the firewall/permissions/etc don't want to allow. And in such a case the security system is never seen as a good thing, and actively fought, disabled and worked around. Even if what the user wants to do is a seriously bad idea.

It's like trying to protect somebody who insists on that yes, they really want to cut the branch they're sitting on, and if their tool prevents committing suicide they get another that doesn't.

Re:right...

[algormortis]

Dentists in the US sometimes lie for money. I remember when I went to one in Florida, and he said he had "found" a cavity and wanted to charge a ridiculous amount to fill it. Not even a week later, a relative of mine in New York checked my teeth (yes, she was a dentist) and said I didn't have any cavities.

We should've had them by now

[Anonymous Coward]

/. had an article about very similar research about 4 years ago...