Denture Bottle Opener – $9.95

Do you know someone who has a penchant for opening things with their teeth? Encourage them to protect those precious choppers while still allowing them to be true to themselves with the Denture Bottle Opener from the NeatoShop.  Your friends will be chomping at the bit to know where you got such a cool gift.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more  jaw-dropping and bitingly funny Barware & Cocktail items.

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Erica has a sweet tooth, and that’s a good thing because she’s a dental student. She made these cupcakes and you can, too, by following her instructions at the link. When you see the Baron, remember the tooth! The tooth!

Link -via Bit Rebels

Men, want to go swimming in Papua New Guinea? Pray you don't encounter this lil' fella, lovingly named the "ball cutter" fish by the locals for the obvious reason:

This is the ferocious 'Ball Cutter' fish which has killed two men by biting off their testicles. A British angler has told how he snared a predator known to feast on the testicles of men.

Jeremy Wade, 53, spent weeks fishing in remote Papua New Guinea after locals told him how a mysterious beast was castrating young men in the area's waters. He finally caught the perpetrator: the Pacu fish, known locally as The Ball Cutter. Jeremy wrestled the 40lb monster on the floor of his boat and opened its snapping jaws with his bare hands to discover a set of human-like teeth. The Ball Cutter boasts an impressive set of gnashers, which tear off the testicles of unwitting anglers and swimmers, leaving them to bleed to death.

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During June, both patients had participated in a multiday event to castrate and dock tails of 1,600 lambs. Both men reported having used their teeth to castrate some of the lambs. Among the 12 persons who participated in the event, the patients are the only two known to have used their teeth to castrate lambs. During the multiday event, a few lambs reportedly had a mild diarrheal illness. Neither patient with laboratory-confirmed illness reported consumption of poultry or unpasteurized dairy products, which are common sources of exposure to C. jejuni (1). The patients resided in separate houses and did not share food or water; none of their contacts became ill.

Ranch owners and workers were advised to use only standard techniques for lamb castration. Link -via Improbable Research

(Unrelated image credit: Flickr user EssjayNZ)

Link Via BoingBoing

Dr. Levin's golden grid.

A mathematical gauging of a smile

by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff

Dr. Eddy Levin of Harley Street puts a golden ratio, not just golden teeth, into his patients’ mouths. Dr. Levin has been at this for a while. It was he who in 1978 wrote a study called “Dental Esthetics and the Golden Proportion,” which graced pages 244–52 of that year’s September issue of The Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry.¹

The golden ratio is a special number that has caught the eye and imagination of mathematicians, of artists, and now, thanks to Dr. Levin, of dentists. Some call it the “golden mean” (philosophers, though, use that phrase to mean something else). Some call it the “golden section.” Some Germans call it, evocatively, the “goldener Schnitt.” Almost everyone calls it beautiful.

The golden ratio is the number you get when you compare the lengths of certain parts of certain perfectly beautiful things (among them: snail shell spirals, the Parthenon in Athens, and Da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper”). You’ll find that the ratio of the bigger part to the smaller equals the ratio of the combined length to the bigger. That ratio, that number, is always the same, ever so slightly bigger than 1.6180339.

If doing sums causes you pain, just go find someone who has perfect teeth and who won’t mind you staring into his or her mouth.

Dr. Levin explains on his website² that many years ago he was both studying math and trying to find out what made teeth look beautiful. “It was at a moment,” he writes, “like when Archimedes got into his bath, that I suddenly realized that the two were connected — the Golden Proportion and the beauty of teeth. I began to put this into practise and started testing my ideas on my patients. My first case was a young girl in a hospital, where I was teaching, whose front teeth were in a terrible state and needed crowning. Despite the scepticism of the other members of staff and the unenthusiastic technicians with whom I had to work and whose co-operation I depended upon, I crowned all her front teeth, using the principles of the Golden Proportion. Everybody, including the young lady herself, agreed that her teeth now looked magnificent.”

Most important, in Dr. Levin’s reckoning, is the simple tooth-to-tooth ratio: “The four front teeth, from central incisor to premolar are the most significant part of the smile and they are in the Golden Proportion to each other.”

Dr. Levin created an instrument called the “golden mean gauge.” Made of stainless steel 1.5 millimeters thick, and retailing for £85, it shows whether the numerous major dental landmarks “are in the Golden Proportion,” and it is suitable for autoclaving.

Dr. Levin also offers a larger version that is “useful for full face measurements” and “useful to measure larger objects or bigger pictures of furniture etc.”

(Thanks to Stanley Eigen for bringing this to our attention.)

References

1. “Dental Esthetics and the Golden Proportion,” E.I. Levin, Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry, vol. 40, no. 3, September 1978, pp. 244–52.

2. Golden Mean Gauge

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The article above is from the May-June 2009 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

Slowly snacking on Halloween candy every few hours, day after day, keeps your teeth bathed in enamel-corroding acid, the byproduct of bacteria feeding on sugar and other carbohydrates in your mouth. This leads to dental caries, or cavities.

So I guess even if you’re a candy stealer, it’s still better to steal it all in one night than stretch your thievery out.

Link Via The Mary Sue

Those funny false teeth that move on their own -it seems like they’ve been around forever. But they were the invention of Eddie Goldfarb in the 1940s. They were called Yakity-Yak Talking Teeth. Collector’s Weekly has everything you ever needed to know about chattering teeth, from their inspiration, how they work, and how they became a hit. Link -Thanks, Ben!

Welcome to my nightmare tonight, o fanged cake. Hi Fructose showcases the latest work of sculptor Scott Hove, whose new series aptly titled "Your Deadly Desserts" is all about cakes with fangs, tongues and teeth, and even a dismembered limb or two.

Yum! Link - via Laughing Squid

Are you on the hunt for a way to look like a Zombie without having to go to the trouble of becoming a member of the undead? You need Zombie Teeth from the NeatoShop? This great set of reusable rotten teeth will have you blending in with your Zombie friends in no time.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Halloween and Zombie fun!

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Even adorable farting monsters want straight teeth.  Don’t believe me? Check out the Domo With Braces plush toy from the NeatoShop.  Hmmm … I wonder if he has to sleep in orthodontic headgear?

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fabulous Plush Toys.

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A young boy comes up with a scheme to get some carnival money. A short film featuring traditional hand-drawn animation by Izabela Melamed. -via Metafilter

BRACES ON THE BLACK MARKET

In the early 2000s, an unusual fashion craze hit Thailand after magazines there began featuring pics of teenage girls sporting colorful braces. Suddenly, every girl on the block wanted to strap metal to her teeth, even if she already had a perfect smile. But because most orthodontists refuse to apply braces to flawless teeth, the girls took their concerns to the black market, where hucksters and swindlers happily slapped on fake braces -sometimes using superglue. (Not the best idea, as the glue’s side effects can include blood poisoning and nerve damage.) By early 2006, the craze had become so popular, and so dangerous, that authorities announced steep fines and jail time for anyone caught producing or selling fake braces. Unfortunately, neither the legal penalties nor the physical risks have done anything to diminish the fad. It looks like anxious parents will just have to wait for braces to stop being cool again.

NOTHING TO FEAR… EXCEPT TRUMPETS

The American Association of Orthodontists wants to put a few schoolyard rumors to bed. First off, wearing braces in a thunderstorm doesn’t increase your chances of being struck by lightning. Also, braces don’t set off metal detectors at airports or disrupt radio signals. But that doesn’t mean braces are completely harmless. In fact, the corrective metal reserves a special terror for trumpet players, notoriously chafing kids’ lips when they play. Thankfully, University of South Carolina music professor Dr. Keith Amstutz has a solution: the BRACEGUARD. The invention uses a piece of custom-molded plastic to separate players’ lips from the metal, allowing teens to toot their own horns pain-free.

CELEBRITIES STRAIGHTEN UP

In early 2002, Tom Cruise took his children to the orthodontist and found out that his own bite was askew. So, he did what any other world-famous movie star would do: He got braces. Instead of a mouthful of metal, Cruise opted for ceramic braces, which use bone-color brackets linked by one arch wire resting in front of the teeth. Cruise wore his braces for the next year, flashing them at movie premieres and award shows, and in doing so, he helped make it acceptable for adults to wear them. By 2004, one in five Americans with braces was an adult- a 37 percent increase from a decade earlier. During the past few years, stars from Danny Glover to Alyssa Milano have followed in Cruise’s toothsteps, changing what it means to smile like a movie star.

THE WIRELESS AGE

Recent advances in braces have made them less noticeable and more efficient. The latest development is “smart brackets,” which are embedded with microelectronic chip to measure the movement of each tooth and reduce the amount of time teenagers spend under the wire. But the future of orthodontics involves getting rid of braces altogether. Scientists are busy developing a new kind of tooth-straightening device called an eruption guidance appliance, or EGA. Designed for childen between the ages of 8 and 11, and EGA is a retainer-like tray that works at night to guide teeth as they grow in, making braces unnecessary later on.

ORTHODONTICS BY THE NUMBERS

5 Million: Number of Americans with braces.

5,410: Number of orthodontists in the United States.

650: Number of orthodontists in Caifornia (the most of any U.S. state).

30: Number of orthodontists in West Virginia (the fewest of any U.S. state).

$206, 190: Mean annual income for an orthodontist in the United States.

81: Number of Ugly Betty episodes that aired before Betty got her braces removed.

1: Number of The Brady Bunch episodes in which Marcia wore braces.

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The article above, written by Adam K. Raymond, is reprinted with permission from the March-April 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

The men taped Lester’s legs to his kitchen chair.

But after the thieves snatched his money and his truck, Lester chewed through the tape with his false teeth!

“It took me about two hours,” Lester said with a grin. “Boy, it was sticky!”

Lester was then able to call the police.

The robbers got away with about $400 cash and Matteson’s Ford Ranger. Link -via Arbroath

At model casting calls for New York’s fashion week, which begins today, one of the most coveted attributes is an affront to modern orthodontics: gapped teeth.

The look is a bold departure from recent standards of idealized beauty that have rewarded curvaceous and perfect-smile models… In editorial spreads in Vogue and W, as well as ads for high-end brands like Chanel and Marc Jacobs, gaptoothed gals are having a moment…

“It’s a love for the imperfect, and the authentic,” says Stefano Tonchi, editor-in-chief of W magazine. “These are values that are more and more important for younger generations. Originality, authenticity…in a world that is more and more digitally enhanced.”

Don’t have a gap between your teeth?  Don’t despair.  You can have one created: “…fashion designer David Delfin asked an orthodontist to insert a bracket to open a space between his two front teeth.”

Link.

Dr Kertesz is one of only a few specialist zoo dentists in the world, a sideline to his day job of treating humans at his surgery in London’s West End.

His animal career began more than 20 years ago when someone brought in their cat for treatment and he has carried out dental work on exotic species including whales, pandas and elephants.

Zoo curator Will Walker said: “We have had him twice before over the last couple of years to do all our bears and other tigers.”

Dr. Kertesz is paid well for his bravery and expertise, as the bill for the two tigers was £4,500. Link -via Arbroath

Dr. Jeremy Mao, a research physician at Columbia University, has developed a technique for regrowing teeth in a patient’s mouth.

An animal-model study has shown that by homing stem cells to a scaffold made of natural materials and integrated in surrounding tissue, there is no need to use harvested stem cell lines, or create an environment outside of the body (e.g., a Petri dish) where the tooth is grown and then implanted once it has matured. The tooth instead can be grown “orthotopically,” or in the socket where the tooth will integrate with surrounding tissue in ways that are impossible with hard metals or other materials.

The procedure could eliminate the need for dentures and conventional dental implants.

Link, via Popsci.

We’ve been trying to preserve, repair, or remove our teeth for thousands of years. From the manual bow drill to modern veneers, this post shows how far we have come in the quest for good, or at least functional, teeth. There are no drill sounds, but some pictures may make someone with dental sensitivity uncomfortable. In other words, they may set your teeth on edge. Link -via mental_floss

YouTube user TheJediCharles made a time-lapse video of a young girl losing her baby teeth and growing in her adult teeth over a seven month period. It consists of seventy frames with a photo taken about every three days.

via Urlesque

This photo of a specimen from the Louvre was not accompanied by any explanatory text, and just a modicum of identifying information.

Bridge consists of a gold wire ligature of female human teeth.
Place of discovery: Sayda.
Period: 6th century BC

There is a town in Saxony, Germany called Sayda, but since this specimen comes from a “Near Eastern Antiquities” fund, the Sayda referred to is apparently the one in Lebanon.  Regarding the work itself, one presumes that the two outermost teeth were still embedded in the jaw, since the gold wire wraps around them, and that the four center teeth with wire underneath them were fashioned into a bridge to serve a cosmetic (?and masticatory?) function.  Perhaps someone with dental restorative experience can offer a more enlightened opinion.

The mind-numbing aspect of the specimen is, of course, the prehistoric date.  One doesn’t expect this degree of sophistication in 500 BC, although two-and-a-half millennia ago dental implants were being performed in Mesoamerica by the Maya.

Link (and a photo of other side of teeth), via Titam.

Working in the 1890s during the height of ‘humbugs,’ ‘dime museums’, and rational amusements, Parker did what any natural-born-showman would do. He took a cue from the best and hired one of P.T. Barnam’s ex-managers to help him take his practice on the road. From his horse drawn office, amid his show girls and buglers, Parker promised that he would painlessly extract a rotten tooth for 50 cents. And if the extraction wasn’t painless, he would give the customer $5.00, the equivalent of roughly $115 today. Parker’s band actually served a three way purpose. First it drew a crowd. Second, it distracted the patient whose tooth was being pulled (along with a healthy cup of whiskey or an aqueous solution of cocaine he called “hydrocaine,”) and third, it drowned out any possible moans of pain emitted from a patient.

Parker even legally changed his first name to Painless. Link

Silversmith and offbeat artist Polly van der Glas creates jewelry made from human teeth, hair, and sterling silver.  Aside from rings, she also makes necklaces, earrings, purses and more.

All works are handmade in Melbourne, with sterling silver, human hair and human teeth. Human teeth are locally donated and sterilised, and human hair is either locally donated or sourced from India and China.

Teeth are particularly difficult to come by, so any donations are gratefully accepted.

Link (Photo via OddityCentral.)

The procedure is fairly simple. Doctors take stem cells from the patient. These are unique in their ability to form any of the tissues that make up the body. By carefully nurturing the stem cells in a laboratory, scientists can nudge the cells down a path that will make them grow into a tooth. After a couple of weeks, the ball of cells, known as a bud, is ready to be implanted. Tests reveal what type of tooth – for example, a molar or an incisor – the bud will form.

The procedure holds great promise in the U.K., where “the average Briton over 50 has lost 12 teeth from a set of 32.”

Link.  Image credit to Coverbrowser, which has a collection of 470 Mad covers.

If you’re the sort of person who’s always wanted an image of Amy Winehouse tattooed on your teeth, then I have some good news for you. Heward Dental Lab, a combination tattoo parlor and dental office, can do the job:

Normally this artwork is created on the back teeth, the molars or bicuspids. Most people prefer having it on the cheek side of the tooth, some on the tongue side. Most considered these as some what a white collar tattoo. They are seen only when the person that has one wants to share what they have, by pulling their cheek out so it could be seen. The other advantage to these tattoos is that they can easily be removed in five minutes in the dentist’s office with just a little grinding with a rubber wheel.

Gallery at the link.

Link via DudeCraft | Image: Steve Heward

In the lab, adult teeth soaked in white wine for a day had a loss of both calcium and another mineral called phosphorus to depths of up to 60 micrometers in the enamel surface, which the researchers say is significant.

The effect is pH-mediated, and is most noticeable with Riesling wines, and was exacerbated by brushing the teeth soon after drinking wine.  Red wines were noted to be much less damaging to teeth, and the researchers suggest that the deleterious effect of white wine might be mitigated by the ingestion of calcium-rich cheese.

BBC link.  Photo: Bacchus (Caravaggio)

YouTube Link

Quite possibly the best Halloween prop ever.

via UniqueDaily.

This dentist no doubt inspires confidence in his patients with his tower made from 28,000 teeth from previous patients:

This 8ft tower of teeth is foul, and the summit of 15 years work by Yu Qian, a Chinese dentist who is trying to raise awareness about dental hygiene by word of mouth. Or, as it turns out, an awesome viral film gone global.

His piece of art is made from 28,000 human teeth (URGH). So far he has treated 100,000 patients, and ‘harvested’ 28,000 diseased teeth from his patients.

Link via The Presurfer

The researchers, who repeated the experiment many times, also showed that the new, bioengineered teeth were fully-functional.

Dr Kazuhisa Nakao said: ‘Every bio- engineered tooth erupted through the gum and had every tooth component such as dentine, enamel, pulp, blood vessels, nerve fibres, crown and root.’

Importantly, the rodent recipients had no trouble eating.

If the technique can be used in humans, dentures may eventually be obsolete. The tooth shown in the picture also had a green fluorescent gene so it could be seen easily. Link -via Digg

Remember Daito Manabe from his painful looking face dance video? Well, he’s back with what in my honest opinion will replace all those god awful gold/silver/platinum/tin foil grills you see the young kids flashing about with a toothy grin these days. So, the next time you’re in a club or at a fancy soiree and the music picks up…keep an eye out for the hip kids to be flashing their multi-colored grills all up in your face.

These soaps are really cool, in a disturbing, nursing home kinda way. Apparently, they even have a nice minty scent.

Link – via blog