This paper is divided into seven main parts. Its purpose is to review the literature to demonstrate the importance of developing bioengineering and global production of biomaterials to care for the level of healthcare in the world. First, the general description of health as a universal human value and assumptions of a long and healthy life policy is presented. The ethical aspects of the mission of medical doctors and dentists were emphasized. The coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic has had a significant impact on health issues, determining the world’s health situation. The scope of the diseases is given, and specific methods of their prevention are discussed. The next part focuses on bioengineering issues, mainly medical engineering and dental engineering, and the need for doctors to use technical solutions supporting medicine and dentistry, taking into account the current stage Industry 4.0 of the industrial revolution. The concept of Dentistry 4.0 was generally presented, and a general Bioengineering 4.0 approach was suggested. The basics of production management and the quality loop of the product life cycle were analyzed. The general classification of medical devices and biomedical materials necessary for their production was presented. The paper contains an analysis of the synthesis and characterization of biomedical materials supporting medicine and dentistry, emphasizing additive manufacturing methods. Numerous examples of clinical applications supported considerations regarding biomedical materials. The economic conditions for implementing various biomedical materials groups were supported by forecasts for developing global markets for biomaterials, regenerative medicine, and tissue engineering. In the seventh part, recapitulation and final remarks against the background of historical retrospection, it was emphasized that the technological processes of production and processing of biomedical materials and the systematic increase in their global production are a determinant of the implementation of a long and healthy policy.

This paper concerns the assessment of the current state of dentistry in the world and the prospects of its sustainable development. A traditional Chinese censer was adopted as the pattern, with a strong and stable support on three legs. The dominant diseases of the oral cavity are caries and periodontal diseases, with the inevitable consequence of toothlessness. From the caries 3.5–5 billion people suffer. Moreover, each of these diseases has a wide influence on the development of systemic complications. The territorial range of these diseases and their significant differentiation in severity in different countries and their impact on disability-adjusted life years index are presented (DALY). Edentulousness has a significant impact on the oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL). The etiology of these diseases is presented, as well as the preventive and therapeutic strategies undertaken as a result of modifying the Deming circle through the fives’ rules idea. The state of development of Dentistry 4.0 is an element of the current stage of the industrial revolution Industry 4.0 and the great achievements of modern dental engineering. Dental treatment examples from the authors’ own clinical practice are given. The systemic safety of a huge number of dentists in the world is discussed, in place of the passive strategy of using more and more advanced personal protective equipment (PPE), introducing our own strategy for the active prevention of the spread of pathogenic microorganisms, including SARS-CoV-2. The ethical aspects of dentists’ activity towards their own patients and the ethical obligations of the dentist community towards society are discussed in detail. This paper is a polemic arguing against the view presented by a group of eminent specialists in the middle of last year in The Lancet. It is impossible to disagree with these views when it comes to waiting for egalitarianism in dental care, increasing the scope of prevention and eliminating discrimination in this area on the basis of scarcity and poverty. The views on the discrimination of dentistry in relation to other branches of medicine are far more debatable. Therefore, relevant world statistics for other branches of medicine are presented. The authors of this paper do not agree with the thesis that interventional dental treatment can be replaced with properly implemented prophylaxis. The final remarks, therefore, present a discussion of the prospects for the development of dentistry based on three pillars, analogous to the traditional Chinese censer obtaining a stable balance thanks to its three legs. The Dentistry Sustainable Development (DSD) > 2020 model, consisting of Global Dental Prevention (GDP), Advanced Interventionist Dentistry 4.0 (AID 4.0), and Dentistry Safety System (DSS), is presented.

The purpose of the article is to discuss the process of oxidation of carbon nanotubes subsequently subjected to the process of decoration with rhenium nanoparticles. The influence of functionalization in an oxidizing medium is presented and the results of investigations using Raman spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy are discussed. Multiwalled carbon nanotubes rhenium-type nanocomposites with the weight percentage of 10%, 20% and 30% of rhenium are also presented in the article. The structural components of such nanocomposites are carbon nanotubes decorated with rhenium nanoparticles. Microscopic examinations under transmission electron microscope and scanning transmission electron microscope using the bright and dark field confirm that nanocomposites containing about 20% of rhenium have the most homogenous structure.

This article presents a comprehensive literature study showing that, starting from the emergence of the species of homo sapiens, the progress of human civilization is strongly dependent on the development of materials, and over time this is mainly development of engineering materials and the accompanying increase in productive forces. There is no close correlation between changes, and especially between the development of the brain and technologies sequentially controlled by humans. The materials science appeared as an independent branch of knowledge only in the late 1950s. Technical aspects of the product launch on the market relate to several technical aspects; engineering design is a significant conceptual phase of this activity, and within it, the material design. The expected functional properties of the product will be assured only if the right expected material is used and is produced in a suitably selected expected technological process that will provide both the expected shape and other geometric features of the product, including assembly and the expected structure of the material, ensuring the expected mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of the material, the use of which ensures the expected application of the product. The given rule defines the paradigm of contemporary materials science and engineering. Without the use of engineering materials and without the development of manufacturing processes, it is impossible to manufacture any product and make it available to consumers. The material design process in history has gone through a long period of changes. Initially, for millions of years and almost a century ago, materials were selected based on the trial and error method, which is stage Materials 1.0. Currently, about 80 % of work in the field of engineering materials development and material design is carried out in accordance with the Materials 2.0 protocol. The Materials 2.0 protocol includes more systematic material research, ranging from conceptualization, systematic laboratory experiments to verify the idea, prototyping in the laboratory and real conditions, and testing and validating prototypes and life cycle assessment to use the results of research in product production. Materials 3.0 use computational materials science materials, and materials are computationally designed with a target functionality. Only the idea of Materials 4.0 overcomes human limitations in applying existing knowledge about the theory of materials, processing, and properties through the use of cyber-physical space. In manufacturing processes generally after the era of water and steam and mass production based on the division of labor with the use of electricity, and then the use of electronics and information technology for the automation of production processes, there is a dynamic use of cyber-physical systems, the Internet of objects, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, currently guaranteeing the production progress at the stage of the Industry 4.0 industrial revolution. So far, nine technologies have been designated as determining the change in industrial production at the Industry 4.0 stage. According to the authors of this article, it is necessary to augment this list by manufacturing processes and engineering materials as well as living and bioengineering machines; therefore, in total, there will be 12 technologies determining the changes in production in the Industry 4.0 stage. Omitting these issues would make it impossible to manufacture any products available on the market, and the idea of Industry 4.0 presented would be incomplete. The importance of carbon-based materials is also presented, and several results of our own research on various materials are presented, with an indication of application possibilities.

This article presents a comprehensive literature study showing contemporary industrial applications of laser processing of materials in the area of surface engineering. Laser remelting, alloying, feathering, and cladding are discussed. The results of our own research on the application of laser technologies for surface treatment, including hot work tool alloy steels, high-speed steels, magnesium and aluminum alloys, are presented. The production of porous titanium microskeletons prepared using the additive selective laser sintering (SLS) method for the production of original biological engineering materials and implants-scaffolds is presented. The laser texturing of polycrystalline silicon is also presented after texturing requiring etching in alkaline solutions and preferably also after applying antireflective coatings. The article also presents the use of SLS for the application of electrical contacts on photovoltaic cells. Identification of the critical surface of engineering technologies has been presented. Attention was paid to select 21 technologies, which were included in the group of laser processing of materials, from 500 critical technologies of surface engineering that were analyzed with our own methodology of technological foresight. In order to determine the strategic position of individual groups of critical technologies, an original set of context matrices was developed, including the dendrological matrix of technology values and the meteorological matrix of environmental impact, and the results were summarized in a sixteen-field strategy matrix for technologies. A 20-year time horizon of heuristic research was established. It has been shown that the analyzed technologies of laser processing of materials are finding wider and wider application in modern technology so that their significant development in the next two decades should be expected. It has been pointed out that laser surface technologies, because of their high development potential demonstrated by the performed foresight research, are some of the important elements of the development of the Industry 4.0 idea.