Dr Dillner's health dilemmas: will a mouthguard stop me grinding my teeth?

Teeth grinding is not only annoying but fairly common. It's a condition in which you grind or gnash your teeth, especially in your sleep. It may not cause any problems but can give you headaches, a sore face and jaw pain. Persistent teeth grinding may damage the joints in the jaw, which will make it painful to yawn or chew.

No one knows what causes teeth-grinding. Children do it more often than adults, possibly because their baby teeth are smoother and more amenable to grinding. It is common if you are stressed or anxious. Occasionally it can be due to your upper and lower teeth not being aligned properly or because of medications, including some antidepressants.

There is no magic cure, but mouthguards are often recommended to protect the teeth at night. Think sports guard for when you're playing rugby or hockey and you'll get the look. But do they work or is there anything just as effective but less intrusive?

"Mouthguards work well but they are best fitted professionally," says Damien Walmsley, scientific adviser to the British Dental Association. "You should see your dentist, who will take an impression and usually fit one on the top teeth. They're plastic and can be soft, although people can chew through them, in which case they'll need a harder guard. If you get one from the chemist and mould it yourself it won't fit well enough."

They work by separating the teeth and preventing grinding. You can then see if you're still grinding by checking the wear and tear on the guard. They can take some time to get used to but but they stop your face and jaw aching and reduce the likelihood of you breaking your teeth. You only have to wear the guard at night but you may need to continually use it if your grinding has become an intractable habit.

If you don't fancy a mouthguard and suspect stress is making you grind your teeth, you can try relaxation techniques and meditation. You should rest your tongue upwards, with your teeth apart and lips closed, which reduces the tendency to stiffen your jaw and grind. Children who do it can be helped by getting them to relax before they go to sleep with a bath and story.

It's worth going to the dentist if you grind your teeth, not only for a fitted guard but to check your teeth are not misaligned. Sometimes reshaping the surface of teeth will help. But if it's an ongoing problem, forget the cosmetic drawbacks and get yourself a mouthguard.

IAC plant plays key role in greening of 2013 Ford Escape

When Ford Motor Co. wanted to make the 2013 Ford Escape more eco-friendly, didn't it make perfect sense to turn to a plant in Greencastle, a city named Indiana's Green City of the Year three times?

Perhaps the city's track record had nothing to do with the local International Automotive Components plant producing the lightweight, eco-friendly door bolsters for the new Escapes.

In truth, Greencastle is IAC's best-equipped plant for the new project.

"Our Greencastle plant is equipped with the necessary machinery designed for handling natural material components," said IAC Executive Director of Marketing and Communications Dave Ladd. "Also, Greencastle is one of our high-volume door panel producers. So they have the equipment and the experience that made them the best choice for producing this particular product."

However, the plant's involvement in the project should certainly be exciting to the residents who have been a part of Greencastle's sustainability initiatives in recent years.

Kenaf, a tropical plant related to cotton and okra plants, is being used to replace oil-based materials in the doors of the new Escape. The use of kenaf in the door bolsters should reduce the use of petroleum in two ways.

On the manufacturing end, it is anticipated to offset the use 300,000 pounds of oil-based resin annually in North America.

"Oil-based resins, for many reasons, are something we like to reduce," Ladd said. "We want to be less dependent on oil. Oil is not good for the environment. Natural materials are made from renewable resources, unlike oil. Kenaf and many of the others we are using in the auto industry do not compete with food sources, so that's not an issue."

Kenaf also reduces the weight of the bolsters by 25 percent, which in turn improves fuel economy.

"Right now lightweight is one of the biggest buzzwords in the auto industry because lightweight equals fuel efficiency. Anything we can do in any component of the vehicle to reduce weight is a big, big plus," Ladd said.

The other important element of kenaf is its strength. Because the bolster is part of the door, it must withstand stringent federal guidelines for side-impact crashes. At the end of a long process of testing several natural materials, IAC and Ford found kenaf to be the strongest material that also met their other guidelines.

"Kenaf was the one natural material that really fit the strength specifications that are required," Ladd said. "In federal requirements for side-impact crashes, the doors are a very important part."

One key to the economics of producing the door bolsters is they do not represent a major change for the production process at the Greencastle plant. The line that will produce the bolsters will function essentially the same way it has previously.

"Greencastle happens to be our one plant in North America that has injection-molding machinery that is specially equipped for natural materials. The previous materials they would have used in this machinery was wood stock," Ladd said.

He added that building an entirely new line would have made the project cost-prohibitive.

"The machinery we have there is specially modified for handling and heating natural materials so they are molded correctly," Ladd said. "Otherwise, the process is pretty much the same."

The new Escape, which will be available to customers this spring, features several eco-friendly components in addition to the kenaf inside the doors.

Materials that are recycled, renewable and that reduce impact on the environment include soy foam in the seats and head restraints; plastic bottles and other post-consumer and post-industrial materials in the carpeting; climate control gaskets made from recycled tires; and more than 10 pounds of scrap cotton from the making of denim jeans.

"Kenaf and the other renewable materials in the Escape have made the vehicle more environmentally friendly and fuel efficient," said Laura Sinclair, materials engineer for Escape.

Wide use of more environmentally friendly, recycled and recyclable materials complements the fuel economy of the Ford Escape, further boosting the vehicle's environmentally responsible credentials. The new Escape meets the USCAR Vehicle Recycling Partnership goal that 85 percent of the vehicle be recyclable.

India’s chronic water shortages mean growth for rotomoulders

India’s persistent water shortages could mean rapid growth for its rotational moulding industry, with one new study saying spending on new water-related projects will help the industry shrug off the worldwide economic slowdown and grow 12% a year over the next five years.

The study, from Indian resin maker Reliance Industries, suggests that the population growth in the world’s second-most populous country will continue to stress its water supplies, putting it close to critical levels of water scarcity by 2025.

While that’s a huge societal challenge, rotomoulding executives from India and around the world meeting at a recent conference in New Delhi looked at the business opportunities it presents.

“We believe underground water storage could provide the next big breakthrough, and this could be the catalyst for the next phase of growth for this industry,” said Puneet Madan, business head of polyethylenes for Reliance, who delivered the study. “Water storage will provide significant demand for this industry because of the needs in India.”

India’s rotomoulding industry is currently the world’s second-largest, after the US, Reliance estimates.

It grew more than 10% a year between 2006 and 2011, driven by rising consumer demand, although 2011 saw a marked drop to about 3% growth amid problems in both the world economy and India’s real estate market, Madan said.

But Reliance and other industry executives at the Society of Asian Rotomoulders conference, held 29-31 January in New Delhi, said they believe the underlying demand from India’s development will continue to push rapid growth and any slowdown will be short-lived.

Reliance, citing figures from Houston-based consulting firm Chemical Market Associates Inc., said India’s rotomoulding sector is projected to grow from 260 million pounds of plastic consumption last year to 474 million pounds in 2016.

Indian rotomoulders added 88 million pounds of capacity in both 2010 and 2011, in anticipation of growth in consumption, Reliance said.

The United States, by comparison, will grow much more slowly, from 653 million pounds to 697 million pounds of consumption in the same period, after being flat from 2006 to 2011. And the third-largest market, China, will grow from 243 million pounds to 403 million pounds between 2011 and 2016.

Statistics make the scope of India’s water crisis clear. Reliance said the country had more than 528,000 gallons of water available per person annually in 1991, but by 2001 that had dipped to just below that number and reached the “water stress line.”

By 2025, water availability will fall to about 343,000 gallons per person, close to the more severe “water scarcity level” of about 291,000 gallons a person.

By 2050, when India’s population hits a projected 1.66 billion from its current 1.22 billion, it will officially reach “water scarcity,” Reliance said. In 1951, by comparison, India had more than 1.3 million gallons of water available annually per person.

“What can we all do given this statistic that is staring us in the face,” Madan asked the conference attendees.

In an interview after his speech, he said many Indian homes only have running water part of the day, so they buy rotomoulded tanks to collect water and store it for use later.

Indian rotomoulders have historically specialized in above-ground tanks for that market, and that application still accounts for about 70% of their production, much higher than in many other countries.

But the industry is looking to modernize and move away from those tanks, which are relatively simple to manufacture, and diversify into other more complicated products like underground tanks and new markets like automotive and agriculture.

To do that, the biggest challenge they face is technology, some participants said.

“The rotomoulders need to upgrade themselves to the latest technology, processes and systems,” said Venkit Mahadevan, Mumbai-based national sales manager for American materials supplier A. Schulman Plastics India and its Ico Polymers division.

Mukesh Ambani, president of the Society of Asian Rotomoulders in New Delhi and managing director of Mumbai-based rotomoulder Infra Industries, said there is significant interest from foreign rotomoulders to invest in India’s sector. There are opportunities for both sides, with Indian firms needing technology, he said.

One new partnership was announced at the conference. Italian mould maker Roto Moulds srl announced a technology transfer and sales partnership with mould maker and machinery manufacturer M. Plast (India).

One of the reasons for the tie-up, M. Plast executives said, was because the Italian firm had a lot of experience in the underground water storage tank market.

Industrial Plastics Co. considering moving 140 jobs to Kentucky

Industrial Plastics Co. in Valley City is considering closing its plastic injection molding facility and moving about 140 jobs to Kentucky, a company official said Tuesday.

The company and the Workers United union began to meet Monday to discuss the possibility of a move. Industrial Plastics Co. is part of MTD, which makes lawn mowers and other equipment, including the Yard-Man brand.

Mark Milko, the area director for Workers United, said he will not comment about the discussions until both sides meet again, which is scheduled for later this week.

A move would not affect the roughly 500 jobs at the MTD headquarters and customer call center, also in Valley City, in Medina County, said Kristee Mahler, director of organizational development.

If the facility moves, she said, it would take place before the end of the year. The plan would be to shift the work to a company plant in Leitchfield, Kentucky. The Valley City facility would be sold.

"The existing facility in Leitchfield has excess capacity, which is one of the prime drivers in the movement of work there," Mahler said. "They have the available square footage to pretty much pick up what we have in this facility, and put it in there. And they still have room to grow."

Mahler said the company could save money by moving operations to Kentucky, where the company makes other product.

"We're consistently looking for opportunities to improve efficiencies to save costs and eliminate excess capacity and produce significant cost savings," she said.

Autism: a puzzling disorder

LOS ANGELES When autism researchers arrived at Norristown State Hospital near Philadelphia a few years ago, they found a 63-year-old man who rambled on about Elvis Presley, compulsively rocked in his chair and patted the corridor walls.

Ben Perrick, a resident of the psychiatric institution for most of his life, displayed what the University of Pennsylvania researchers considered classic symptoms of autism. His chart, however, said he was schizophrenic and mentally retarded.

Delving into the file, the researchers learned that as a 10-year-old, Perrick had seen Dr. Leo Kanner, the psychiatrist who discovered autism. In his notes from 1954, Kanner described Perrick as “a child who is self centered, withdrawn, and unable to relate to other people,” and recommended that he be committed.

Later, other doctors relabelled Perrick. The autism diagnosis was forgotten.

The researchers found 13 other patients with unrecognized autism in the Norristown hospital — about 10 per cent of the residents they evaluated. It was a sign of how medical standards and social attitudes toward the disorder have shifted.

Over the last two decades, estimates of the autism rate in children in the U.S. and Canada have climbed twentyfold. Many scientists believe the increase has been driven largely by an expanded definition of the disorder and more vigorous efforts to identify it.

Scientists are just beginning to find cases that were overlooked or called something else in an earlier era. If their research shows that autism has always been present at roughly the same rate as today, it could ease worries that an epidemic is on the loose.

By looking into the past, scientists also hope to deepen their understanding of how autism unfolds over a lifetime.

What happened to all the people who never got diagnosed? Where are they?

Like Perrick, who died in 2009, some spent their lives in institutions. Mental hospitals have largely been emptied over the last four decades, but the remaining population in the U.S. probably includes about 5,000 people with undiagnosed autism, said David Mandell, a psychiatric epidemiologist who led the Norristown study.

Many more are thought to be in prisons, homeless shelters and wherever else social misfits are clustered.

But evidence suggests the vast majority are not segregated from society — they are hiding in plain sight. Most probably never will be identified, but a picture of their lives is starting to emerge from those who have been.

They live in households, sometimes alone, sometimes with the support of their parents, sometimes even with spouses. Many were bullied as children and still struggle to connect with others. Some were able to find jobs that fit their strengths and partners who understand them.

If modern estimates of autism rates apply to past generations, about two million U.S. adults and more than 220,000 adult Canadians have various forms of it — and society has long absorbed the emotional and financial toll, mostly without realizing it.

Stats the same for adultsThe search for the missing millions is just beginning.

The only study to look for autistic adults in a national population was conducted in Britain and published in 2009. Investigators interviewed 7,461 adults selected as a representative sample of the country and conducted 618 intensive evaluations.

The conclusion: one per cent of people living in British households had some form of autism, roughly the same rate the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates for children in America today.

The British study found it didn’t matter whether the adults were in their 20s or their 80s. The rate of autism was the same for both groups.

“That would seem to imply the incidence has not changed very much,” said Dr. Terry Brugha, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Leicester who led the study. He added the findings were not conclusive and more research is needed.

None of the adults included in the study had an existing diagnosis of autism, though in a few instances relatives told researchers they had suspected it.

In one case, a man said he had asked his doctor about the possibility but was told that a diagnosis in middle age would be useless. After all, he had got this far without it.

Still, as more children are being diagnosed with autism, more adults are wondering if they have it, too.

Karl Wittig, a retired engineer from New York, had always questioned why so few social skills came naturally to him.

A diary his mother kept in the 1950s suggests he was not an ordinary child. “This last few weeks, he doesn’t pile the blocks any more,” she wrote when he was two. “He likes to put one next to the other, making a big row of 48.”

Two years later, he talked non-stop about wires, switches, light bulbs and Thomas Edison.

Wittig went on to earn undergraduate and master’s degrees from Cornell University and New York University in physics, electrical engineering and computer science. In the research laboratories where he worked, he felt he fit in.

“I went into a field full of eccentric people,” Witting recalled. “I was just another eccentric person.”

Wittig said he eventually figured out how to behave in social situations — to refrain from correcting other people’s mistakes, flaunting his math abilities or rambling on about his own interests. He married a former nun 18 years his senior. She died of cancer after two decades together. Wittig described the marriage as happy.

A most atypical Israeli business

Israel is known for its software prowess in high technology – the “new” tech where programmers lead the way into a clean, bright future full of new innovations and inventions. “Old tech,” the kind you find in factories and assembly plants, isn’t really associated with Israel; the country was established well after the end of the Industrial Revolution, and factories were never a major feature of the Israeli workplace.

With all that, though, an Israeli company is deeply involved in industrial production, developing software to create molds, dies and machines.

Good software is absolutely necessary to build plastic-injection molds, for example, which can have up to 5,000 parts, including pins, screws and plates.

Usually one person designs the product, but another person – often in another company – designs the molds for each part. It’s up to the software to make sure that everyone follows the same design plan; the more precise the design program, the more precise the final product will come out.

Cimatron, indeed, is an anomaly in the Israeli hi-tech world, concentrating on applications and technology for what is generally thought to be “low-tech” purposes, Cimatron CEO Dan Haran says. “But it’s not really low-tech because the design of almost everything today is very sophisticated.”

It’s not Internet-type hi-tech, but it’s hi-tech in the sense that the design and execution of almost all manufacturing processes today is very advanced and sophisticated. Call it “post-industrial,” he says.

Take, for example, a car dashboard, an area that Cimatron has quite a lot of experience in.

“There are hundreds of parts that go into making a dashboard, and they all have to be precisely designed and built, so that they can work together,” Haran says. “Most of the parts are made out of plastic and metal, and for each part to work together, you need precise design, and that’s based on the kind of software we produce.”

There are few businesses that are more all-encompassing than mold and die design, and Cimatron’s technology is being used by companies large and small from very diverse backgrounds and in almost any manufacturing capacity you can imagine.

For example, one company using Cimatron’s CAD/CAM system is China’s Haier Mould, a subsidiary of the Haier Group, which controls nearly 35 percent of China’s household appliance market (imagine how many coffee makers that is!) and boasts a sales network spanning 31 countries.

With an annual production capacity of 1,200 standard mold sets and capability to build molds over 40 tons, Haier Mould services global companies such as Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen, Mitsubishi, Honda, Nissan, Samsung, LG, Canon and Sanyo.

Vaupell, another Cimatron customer, makes molded products and assemblies for medical, defense, aerospace, electronics and transportation industries. Here, too, precision is essential; the parts that US-based Vaupell makes need to be just so – sometimes to the thousandth of a centimeter – to fulfill engineering and legal requirements.

UK-based DLS Plastics makes all sorts of plastic caps, covers and connectors for use in plumbing and water systems.

Once again, if the connection is off by even a little, things just won’t screw together properly, resulting in wastewater flooding homes and neighborhoods.

Once again, its Cimatron to the rescue, with tools that cut down training time and automate the design process.

You can’t get more industrial than little plastic connectors to keep water flowing through pipes. That an Israeli company has been able to compete with the top companies in the world working in CAD/CAM design for manufacturing is an untold Israeli hi-tech success story. And the same applies to far more sophisticated products, Haran says.

“Blades and turbines for many planes, for example, are made out of titanium and other metals and cannot be made with a die, but are made one at a time,” he says, and Cimatron has that covered as well.

While China has seemingly become the “world’s factory,” there are many higher-end items that cannot be made there, and there is plenty of manufacturing going on in Europe and the US, he says, and it is in there – among the mold makers, die makers, parts manufacturers or subcontractors – where Cimatron’s sophisticated software is most appreciated.

Lowell looks to brighter future

Just as its famous mills are a symbol of the Industrial Revolution, Lowell officials hope the state-of-the-art UMass Emerging Technologies and Innovation Center — set to open in fall 2012 — will put the struggling city back on the map and at the forefront of the coming revolution in high-tech manufacturing.

“We’re looking forward to this center being able to expand the breadth of the university’s ability to do research that spins off new companies, as well as the depth and sophistication of their ability to do that in certain fields,” said Adam Baacke, Lowell’s assistant city manager for planning and development. “We definitely think that it bodes well for the city.”

The center is a building that will “serve big ideas,” according to University of Massachusetts at Lowell’s Chancellor Marty Meehan.


“We believe the next industrial revolution will be fueled by the work that goes on at the Emerging Technologies and Innovation Center,” he said.

The university last month raised the final steel beam on the four-story, 84,000-square-foot, $70 mil-lion center, which will house clean-room space, wet labs, engineering labs and plastics processing facilities for research and development in the fields of plastics engineering, nanotechnology, electro-optics and biomedicine.

Last September, UMass- Lowell was designated as a National Science Foundation Center for High-Rate Nanomanufacturing – one of four in the country – in collaboration with Northeastern University and the University of New Hampshire. The result has been more than $25 million in funding, according to Meehan. In partnership with the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, the center will focus on helping companies safely manufacture nano products.

“That’s part of the reason why we really need a new cutting-edge research building that will house numerous labs for both bio- and nano-manufacturing research,” Meehan said. “Nano products are likely to fuel the next economic boom. Existing products can be made more useful, cost-effective and durable through the use of nano elements.”

The first floor of the Emerging Technologies and Innovation Center will serve as the new home for a national plastics museum, tying in with the school’s internationally known plastics engineering program, according to Meehan.

Two-story bay rooms, meanwhile, will accommodate oversized equipment such as extruders and injection molding machines, and the center’s clean rooms will be equipped to filter air at a very high level for sensitive research equipment including biochemical sensors to measure toxins.

The new facility will help UMass-Lowell attract additional researchers and further collaborate with industry, academic and government partners. University researchers already are working with 30 businesses and institutes in Massachusetts, and Meehan expects that to expand to 50 or 60.

“We expect to draw researchers from around the world to collaborate with faculty and students at the center, as well as work hand in hand with industry,” Meehan said. “The opportunity for business to have access to this kind of research building will be key to us developing our partners.”

The university is borrowing $25 million to build the center, which also will be financed with $35 million in state funding, and $10 million in federal and private money.

UMass-Lowell is talking to companies interested in naming rights for the building, its labs and lobby.

“This building is going to create revenue by bringing in more research, roughly 300 jobs and partnerships established with companies that will rent space and work with us,” Meehan said.

A number of companies already have recently moved to the city in part because of their ability to partner with the university, tapping its graduate students as employees, its technical facilities and research expertise, according to Baacke.

“We fully anticipate that this new facility will broaden our ability to do that and businesses’ ability to do that,” he said.