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3D-Printed Teeth Can Kill 99% of Dental Bacteria (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A research group in the Netherlands has developed a new plastic resin that can destroy most dental bacteria when used for the creation of dental appliances via 3D-printing. The process involves embedding antimicrobial quaternary ammonium salts inside extant dental resin polymers. Since the salts are positively charged, these disrupt negatively-charged bacterial membranes. The process is also being mooted for use in the creation of knee arthroplasties, and in the manufacture of children's toys and food packaging.
I think by the time you *need* printed teeth, the bacteria pretty much has done its thing.
... you can work 3d printing into a higher percentage of your stories than this. Here, let me help:
Experts Chime In To Explain Fukushima Thryoid Cancer Concerns; Possibility To 3D Print New Thyroids?
Samsung Demos PCIe NVMe SSD At 5.6 GB Per Second, 1 Million IOPS - Can Store Over 100k Printable 3D Models
DARPA Program Targets Image Doctoring, Hasn't Yet Tackled 3D Printed Duplicates
Oracle Fixes Java Vulnerability Used By Russian Cyberspies With 3D-Printed Keyboard We Assume Based On No Evidence
Should Japan Restart More Nuclear Power Plants And Retrofit Them With 3D-Printed Control Rods?
Only 8% of the Universe's Habitable Worlds Have Formed So Far; Remainder Awaiting Jumbo-Sized MakerBot.
Come on, Slashdot, you can do it!
The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.
This technique will clearly work forever, because we all know that bacteria populations do not evolve to take advantage of useful niches when other populations wane.
After all, there's no real advantage to taking over a nice warm, wet, mobile and highly interacting environment that accounts for a large percentage of the entire planet's land mammal biomass.
The role(s) played by bacteria in the ecosystem that is a mammalian body are even now not completely understood...
and microorganisms show a valiant ability to evolve around attempts to exterminate them.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It's the other 1% that you have to worry about. Seriously, killing 99% of the mouth bacteria could leave the way for a harmful partially resistant bacteria to multiply, like c difficile can do in people treated with antibiotics.
We have a lot of bacteria in our gut that, as it turns out, are quite beneficial and even necessary to our well-being. I would be surprised if killing 99% of dental bacteria does not come with ill effects.
The manufacture of kids toys and packaging is a ridiculous and wasteful usage for an anti-bacterial product.
The more common things you put this in.... the more organisms are likely to adapt so that this method is no longer beneficial, assuming the resources (such as food) exist for organisms to survive.
It's best to allow the use of anti-bio technologies in only limited applications where it is truly beneficial, so you minimize the effects of natural selection.
Otherwise, you will again have things growing on this new type of surface, and so it will most likely be rendered ineffective at some point in the future.
The bad news is, you need to knock your teeth out and replace it with plastic substitutes.
BTW, which 99% of the bacteria this thing kills? The 99% of the bacteria in our bodies that are beneficial, symbiotic ones or the 1% malicious rebellious anti-eukaryote alliance bacteria? The 99% of the bacteria that is odorless?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Will these teeth be used by Russian CyberSpies or Bond Villains?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If you give me a place to stand, then I can 3D print the world!
-- With apologies to Archimedes.
I haven't had my first cup of coffee yet, so, I don't feel so bad about having to lookup "quaternary ", "extant " and "mooted" this early in the a.m.! Come on.....admit it....a lot of you had to do the same thing.....
I want bond villain stainless steel teeth.. Why cant we have those?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Quaternary ammonium salts are used as disinfectants, surfactants, fabric softeners, and as antistatic agents (e.g. in shampoos). In liquid fabric softeners, the chloride salts are often used. In dryer anticling strips, the sulfate salts are often used. Spermicidal jellies also contain quaternary ammonium salts.
Are we sure this is safe to have in your mouth 24/7/365? Long-term studies done?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I would love to have all my teeth pulled and replaced with 3D printed versions. I also want them to be running Windows 10 IoT so that instead of bacterial infections, I get malware infections, AND I get 2 trendy buzzwords with one simple operation!
With harmful bacteria you have to be 100% efficient, or you're just contributing to their evolutionary progression. This still leaves the question of whether harmful bacteria are really 100% harmful. There are nasty bacteria on the ground that prevent us from getting overwhelmed by an avalanche of rotting corpses. Some of the dental bacteria might be there for a similar reason. Maybe a better solution is not to kill the bacteria but to develop decay-resistant teeth or teeth coating.
I'm sure that tastes great.
Lets say you kill 99% of the bacteria
Lets say that the doubling time is 2 hours (in optimal conditions, bacteria can double in ~ 18 minutes)
do the math: after a few days, at most, you are back to start, but with bacteria that are resistant to common dis infectants
also, if you have like a basic knowledge of bacteria and human health, you know that "health" for exposed surfaces, like skin teeth gums, is a *balance* between good an bad bacteria: if the plastic tooth kills off good bacteria, you are much worse off
(this is how most C difficile infections start: the antibiotic, like vancomyin, kills most of the bacteria in your gut; the normal low level of C diff, which is resistant, can then grow unimpeded by competition with other species...)
this is progress ?
= fresh, white teeth. ;}
Jack of all trades,master of none
moot
moot/Submit
verb
past tense: mooted; past participle: mooted
raise (a question or topic) for discussion; suggest (an idea or possibility). "Sylvia needed a vacation, and a trip to Ireland had been mooted"
TIL
San Francisco Photographers
So to summarize, a type of plastic is not bacteria friendly. To make it more interesting, they made an article saying that it could be used as fake teeth. And to make that more interesting, they had to add that it could be 3-D printed. Why didn't they go for the hat trick and say it could be delivered to your mouth by a drone?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
That 1% will grow unchecked. And how much of the 99% is good for us?
In any case, there is another alternative and that is to go on a ketogenic diet. Within a few months, the bacteria are gone because you are no longer feeding them. And along with the bacteria the plaque is also gone. It also works wonders for gingivitis and bleeding gums and it is all but free - no visit to the dentist required.
I was born without one of the genes that allows enamel formation. After root canals, post and cores, and crowns, I still lost them (as expected). Now they can just 3d print me up some? AWESOME! I'd rather have implants but don't have $20K.
What is the possibility of mouth bacteria evolving to mouth super-bacteria? Bacteria are very adaptive creatures, and we continue to find out with many baterial diseases that were once wiped out, only tocome back stronger and meaner than before. Look at the FAIL in anti-bacterial soap - same thing.
This dang code. It is buggy and crashes at unexpected time. Good thing I didn't write the code, it just evolved over time. Surely this poor code wasn't a result of intelligent design. :-)
Your assumption is flawed: Intelligent design != flawless design
Also, you are mocking God and intelligent design but perhaps you really only meant to mock God. The idea of a perfect flawless being who can do anything and makes no mistakes. Of course the original word that translated to the word "perfect" in the Bible would arguably translate close to "complete".
"The fact that human's can observe evidence of evolution and now can manipulate DNA and change evolution proves that intelligent design couldn't have happened because . . . oh, wait. We humans have proved intelligent design already? We proved it because we have done it? Wow. I didn't know. I was too busy being blinded by my overzealous, religious love of the theory of evolution.
Evidence of evolution only shows that evolution happened. It does not disprove intelligent design. We humans have already used our knowledge of evolution and DNA and a lot of other knowledge to alter evolution. Are human's intelligent? Do we design? Yeah, we've moved beyond the point of proving intelligent design. It is proven. We are now looking to go to Mars. Do you think we will do any intelligent designing there? I do.
Evolution is only a theory with very strong evidence. Intelligent Design is proven by humans practicing intelligent design.
100% of the species we know have that have enough knowledge to practice intelligence design, do practice intelligent design. Sure it is a small sample size. But until we have a greater sample size, it is all we've got.
How is it that you jump to believe something that is only a scientific theory. But you fail to believe in something that has moved beyond a theory and is actually proven? It kind of makes you look foolish.
Personally, I believe God setup teeth for us to learn from. Let me give you some teeth. Then let me give you a second set. God thought: "Giving you a third set is easy but I'm not going to. Once you advanced in science and technology, I want to see you genetically create a 3rd set yourself. It will make you more "complete." I know. Your welcome. :-)"
Maybe our Intellgent Designers come back every few thousand years to improve our race. Hasn't science found evidence of evolutionary jumps? Why yes, yes they have.
You know, I was certain this was a bad idea due to the fact that you need the bacteria in your mouth, but damn, I had no idea just how bad of an idea it was.