Biological effects of IL-33/ST2 axis on oral diseases: autoimmune diseases and periodontal diseases.

IL-33 is a relatively new member of the IL-1 cytokine family, which plays a unique role in autoimmune diseases, particularly some oral diseases dominated by immune factors. The IL-33/ST2 axis is the main pathway by which IL-33 signals affect downstream cells to produce an inflammatory response or tissue repair. As a newly discovered pro-inflammatory cytokine, IL-33 can participate in the pathogenesis of autoimmune oral diseases such as Sjogren's syndrome and Behcet's disease. Moreover, the IL-33/ST2 axis also recruits and activates mast cells in periodontitis, producing inflammatory chemokines and mediating gingival inflammation and alveolar bone destruction. Interestingly, the high expression of IL-33 in the alveolar bone, which exhibits anti-osteoclast effects under appropriate mechanical loading, also confirms its dual role of destruction and repair in an immune-mediated periodontal environment. This study reviewed the biological effects of IL-33 in autoimmune oral diseases, periodontitis and periodontal bone metabolism, and elaborated its potential role and impact as a disease enhancer or a repair factor.

Flip to Regular Triangulation and Convex Hull.

Flip is a simple and local operation to transform one triangulation to another. It makes changes only to some neighboring simplices, without considering any attribute or configuration global in nature to the triangulation. Thanks to this characteristic, several flips can be independently applied to different small, non-overlapping regions of one triangulation. Such operation is favored when designing algorithms for data-parallel, massively multithreaded hardware, such as the GPU. However, most existing flip algorithms are designed to be executed sequentially, and usually need some restrictions on the execution order of flips, making them hard to be adapted to parallel computation. In this paper, we present an in depth study of flip algorithms in low dimensions, with the emphasis on the flexibility of their execution order. In particular, we propose a series of provably correct flip algorithms for regular triangulation and convex hull in 2D and 3D, with implementations for both CPUs and GPUs. Our experiment shows that our GPU implementation for constructing these structures from a given point set achieves up to two orders of magnitude of speedup over other popular single-threaded CPU implementation of existing algorithms.

Separation of curcuminoids using ionic liquid based aqueous two-phase system coupled with in situ dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction.

An aqueous two-phase extraction system (ATPS) combined with an in situ dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) method using imidazolium ionic liquids (ILs) for the separation of curcuminoids is developed. The influence of structure of IL, the type of metathesis reagents, and the back extraction agents on the extraction efficiency is investigated. 2.0mg of curcuminoids are extracted by an IL ATPS composed of 0.4g 1,3-diethylimidazolium iodine (EeimI), 0.6g potassium hydrogen phosphate, 1.0g water. Then the bis[(trifluoromethyl)sulfonyl]imide lithium (LiNTf2) aqueous solution is added to the EeimI-rich phase of the ATPS. The water-immiscible ionic liquids, 1,3-diethylimidazole bis[(trifluoromethyl)sulfonyl]imide (EeimNTf2), forms by the metathesis reaction. The in situ DLLME is triggered simultaneously and further purifies the curcuminoids. 92% of EeimI transforms into EeimNTf2 and thus the Eeim(+) cation is used for twice in this method. Finally, 0.1mol/L NaOH aqueous solution is used as the back extraction reagent. The curcuminoids precipitate is achieved with 93% of recovery when the aqueous solution is adjusted to pH 3.0. This ATPS-DLLME method is successfully applied to the separation of curcuminoids from Curcuma Longa (0.96±0.02% of extraction yield, a purity of >51% with respect to the total dry mass of the product).

[Separations of four groups of analogues on cyclofructan based columns].

The separations of the immunosuppressive reagents, capsaicinoids, vitamin E, curcumins on cyclofructan based stationary phases containing polystyrene supported native cyclofructan (MCI Gel CRS100), silica supported native cyclofructan (Frulic N), silica supported isopropyl carbamate cyclofructan 6 (Larihc P), silica supported R-naphthylethyl carbamate cyclofructan 6 (Larihc RN) in normal phase HPLC mode were studied. From the investigation it showed that the column MCI Gel CRS100 was more suitable for the separation in normal phase than in hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography. Derivatized cyclofructan stationary phases, Larihc P and Larihc RN, showed better selectivities in comparison with the native cyclofructan stationary phases. Trifluoroacetic acid had less influence on resolution on cyclofructan based stationary phases in normal phase mode.