SUMMARY Orthodontic tooth movement can be regarded as teeth sliding on a wire like pearls on a string, the force being supplied by springs or elastics. The movement implies friction between wire and bracket, taking up part of the force and leaving an uncontrolled amount to act on the teeth. The friction is likely to depend on bracket construction and wire material. Therefore, in this investigation the friction of self-ligating brackets and beta-titanium wires was evaluated, as opposed to more conventional configurations.Carried by low-friction linear ball bearings, a bracket was made to slide along an outstretched archwire with minimal (and known) basic friction, either parallel or at an angle to the wire. Two self-ligating brackets were used in their closed position without any normal force. Friction was tested against four wires: stainless steel and beta-titanium, both in round and rectangular cross-sections. The force used to overcome friction and to move the bracket was measured on a testing machine at 10 mm/min, and the basic friction was subtracted.The results show that round wires had a lower friction than rectangular wires, the betatitanium wires had a markedly higher friction than stainless steel wires, and friction increased with angulation for all bracket/wire combinations. The self-ligating brackets had a markedly lower friction than conventional brackets at all angulations, and self-ligating brackets, closed by the capping of a conventional design, exhibited a significantly lower friction than self-ligating brackets closed by a spring.The selection of bracket design, wire material, and wire cross-section significantly influences the forces acting in a continuous arch system.

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Objective The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) is a widely used verbal memory measure that provides scores for different aspects of memory. It involves repeated auditory presentation and recall of a 15-item word list (List A) followed by presentation and recall of a distractor list (List B) and then un-cued immediate and delayed recalls (at 15 min and 1 week) of List A as well as recognition testing. Aims of this study are to provide Italian normative data for certain RAVLT Scores and Composite Indices to improve the diagnostic accuracy of the test in clinical settings and to provide further evidence on how RAVLT can differentiate different amnesia profiles due to focal lesions. Methods We enrolled 440 healthy participants and RAVLT Single Scores and Composite Indices have been analyzed by means of multiple regression to verify the influence of age, education, and gender. Results We computed the best linear models with RAVLT Single Scores and Composite Indices, as dependent variables, and the most suitable transformation of independent variables. By reversing the signs of the regression coefficients, the adjustment factors for each level of age and, if needed, education and gender have been computed and the adjusted scores have been standardized into Equivalent Scores. Conclusion Using these standardized measures, we differentiate three profiles of amnesia due to selective hippocampal sclerosis with severe encoding deficit, fornix lesions with source memory problems, and temporal lobe epilepsy with consolidation failure.

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