Making quieter dental drills to reduce dental anxiety
Reports and Proceedings
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 20-Dec-2025 09:11 ET (20-Dec-2025 14:11 GMT/UTC)
To understand the aerodynamics of a dental drill, which can contribute to odontophobia, Tomomi Yamada and her collaborators used Japan’s flagship supercomputer to conduct large-scale aeroacoustics simulations. They analyzed the internal and external airflow of the dental drill, which can generate high-pitched sounds reaching nearly 20 kilohertz, and tested its psychological effects with children and adults. Now, Yamada and her colleagues are working on optimizing the blade geometry and exhaust port of the drill to minimize the noise while maintaining the performance.
To a human, microplastics are very small at less than 5 millimeters (mm) wide. But to an insect, microplastics might be the same size as the food they usually eat. Researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology have shown that crickets can and will consume polyethylene microplastics if their mouth is larger than the plastic particle. The study suggests that crickets — and likely many other insects — cannot distinguish plastic from food.