Soon, soundwaves may help find early dental decay

October 7th, 2009 Many children still don't get Medicaid dental careWASHINGTON — Two years after a 12-year-old Maryland boy died from an untreated tooth infection, low-income kids continue to face barriers to dental care despite state and federal efforts to improve access, government investigators said Wednesday. "The bottom line: Children's access to Medicaid dental services has been improving but remains low," said Katherine Iritani, health care acting director at the Government Accountability Office.

October 5th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Those small and inconvenient sticky labels in illegible print on consumer items like fruits are likely to be replaced by laser 'tattoo' technology, which is currently undergoing tests. Called laser etching, the new technology puts a tattoo on grapefruit and other produce so it can be identified at the supermarket checkout lines.

September 12th, 2009 SYDNEY - In a new study, scientists have determined that giant gas planets like Jupiter, which orbit close to their parent star, could harbour moons the size of Earth. According to a report by ABC News, the study was led by graduate student Tim Cassidy from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, US.

August 31st, 2009 LONDON - The dentist's dreaded drill may soon be a thing of past, thanks to the laser tests University of Sydney scientists have developed to identify weaknesses in dental enamel. Currently, X-rays and metal probes are used to check cavities, but they fail to detect weaknesses in the enamel in time to repair the surface.

August 26th, 2009 LONDON - In a new study, a team of scientists has described how aluminium radioisotopes can now offer precise timing of events 4.5 billion years ago, and thus have been dubbed as the 'stopwatch for the solar system'. According to a report by BBC News, the study shows that the rate of decay of isotopes can now be relied upon to give accurate measures of time for that period.

July 29th, 2009 WASHINGTON - For years, scientists have debated the exact nature of the worm like structures inside a human tooth. The structures are not worms, but what they are is still in question.

July 15th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An international team of scientists has analyzed the last food that the hominids consumed, in order to establish the length of their occupations at archaeological sites. As part of the research, the scientists analyzed the dental wear of the fossils of herbivorous animals found in the French cave of Arago, which were hunted by Homo heidelbergensis.

July 2nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A novel nanotechnology technique can boost the longevity of dental fillings, claims a Medical College of Georgia (MCG) researcher. The tooth-coloured fillings are usually more attractive than silver ones, but the bonds between the white filling and the tooth quickly age and degrade.

June 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists from University of Bristol have developed what they call a 'chewing robot' that would help in studying dental wear formation on human teeth. Dental elements, such as crowns and bridges, are made from well-known metals, polymers and ceramics but their dental wear properties are often poorly understood.

June 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research, a team of scientists has suggested that humans most likely share a common ancestor with orangutans, not chimpanzees and gorillas. The research, done by scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and the Buffalo Museum of Science, reject as "problematic" the popular suggestion, based on DNA analysis, that humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, which they maintain is not supported by fossil evidence.

June 9th, 2009 LONDON - A prehistoric complex including two 6,000-year-old tombs representing some of the earliest monuments built in Britain has been discovered by a team led by a Kingston University archaeologist. According to a report in Alpha Galileo, Dr Helen Wickstead and her colleagues were stunned and delighted to find the previously undiscovered Neolithic tombs, also known as long barrows at a site at Damerham, Hampshire.

June 2nd, 2009 LONDON - People whose teeth have decayed due to excess sugar could now make them whole again, thanks to a new, non-toxic dental filling derived from bile. Currently used dental fillings contain either mercury or a chemical called bisphenol A, substances that help the fillings harden but are potentially toxic to humans and the environment.

May 25th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists in Canada and China have come up with a new dental filling material that contains natural ingredients from the human body. Julian X.X. Zhu and colleagues said that the new material is stronger, long lasting and has the potential for reducing painful filling cracks and emergency visits to the dentist.

April 14th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Despite all the crunching and munching at every meal, our teeth remain stronger to go under some more tests each day, and now researchers have attributed this resilience to the microscopic "basket-weave" structure of human tooth enamel. Tooth enamel, which forms the outer coating of teeth, is a strong but brittle substance.

April 4th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Kids born to parents under stress-induced by low income, having little education, and being a single parent-are more likely to have tooth decay, according to a study. Researchers from The Ohio State University examined the stress levels of parents whose young children either had no cavities or so many cavities that they had to receive anaesthesia before undergoing dental treatment.