Classification of pleasantness of wind by electroencephalography.

Thermal comfort of humans depends on the surrounding environment and affects their productivity. Several environmental factors, such as air temperature, relative humidity, wind or airflow, and radiation, have considerable influence on the thermal comfort or pleasantness; hence, these are generally controlled by electrical devices. Lately, the development of objective measurement methods for thermal comfort or pleasantness using physiological signals is receiving attention to realize a personalized comfortable environment through the automatic control of electrical devices. In this study, we focused on electroencephalography (EEG) and investigated whether EEG signals contain information related to the pleasantness of ambient airflow reproducing natural wind fluctuations using machine learning methods. In a hot and humid artificial climate chamber, we measured EEG signals while the participants were exposed to airflow at four different velocities. Based on the reported pleasantness levels, we performed within-participant classification from the source activity of the EEG and obtained a classification accuracy higher than the chance level using both linear and nonlinear support vector machine classifiers as well as an artificial neural network. The results of this study showed that EEG is useful in identifying people's transient pleasantness when exposed to wind.

Management of the Nasopalatine Canal and Foramen Associated With Dental Implant Therapy.

In some patients, the contents of the nasopalatine canal must be removed to facilitate placement of a dental implant into the canal. Reasons to enucleate the canal in preparation for a bone graft or a dental implant include inadvertent perforation into the canal when creating an osteotomy for an implant, severe atrophy of the maxilla, and a large foramen that precludes placing an implant into the desired location along the bony ridge. The authors searched the dental literature for clinical reports in humans that addressed placement of dental implants into or adjacent to the nasopalatine canal. They found that the nasopalatine canal is usually around 10-mm long and 4-mm wide and slants from the horizontal plane at a 66-degree angle, and there is considerable variation regarding these measurements. Several clinical reports demonstrate that the canal can be enucleated and bone grafted before successful implant placement. It is also possible to place an implant into the canal at the time of surgery and this procedure may or may not be combined with an adjunctive bone graft. Numerous case reports indicate there is usually no permanent loss of sensation of the anterior palate when an implant is placed into the nasopalatine canal. The authors concluded that placing an implant into the nasopalatine canal is a viable procedure as part of a surgical and prosthetic treatment plan when there is a dearth of alternate sites for implant placement. In patients with severe atrophy of the maxilla, combination syndrome, or who have a large or malpositioned nasopalatine canal, the canal can be used as a site to place a dental implant to support a fixed or removable dental prosthesis.