Effects of mirna-155 on inflammatory response and autophagy upon pulpitis through the nlrp3 signal

Pulpitis refers to the inflammation of dental pulp tissues caused by infection with dental caries. We aimed to evaluate the effects of micro ribonucleic acid (miR)-155 on inflammatory response and autophagy upon pulpitis via the nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) signal. Forty rats were randomly assigned to negative control (NC), pulpitis model (PM), anti-miR-155, and anti-miR-155+diethyldithiocarbamate (DDC) groups (n=10). Primary human dental pulp cells were divided into NC, lipopolysaccharide (LPS), anti-miR-155, and DDC groups. Compared with the PM group, the IL-1β, TNF-α, and MDA levels and pulp necrosis rate decreased, while the SOD activity was enhanced in the anti-miR-155 group (P<0.05). Compared to the NC group, the positive expressions of LC3B and Beclin1 and the protein expressions of NLRP3 and Caspase-1 significantly rose in the PM group (P<0.05). Compared with the PM group, the protein expressions of NLRP3 and Caspase-1 significantly decreased, and the positive expressions of LC3B and Beclin1 increased in the anti-miR-155 group (P<0.05). Compared with the anti-miR-155 group, the DDC group had significantly enhanced activity of dental pulp cells, up-regulated mRNA levels of IL-1β, TNF-α, NLRP3, and Caspase-1, and decreased mRNA levels of LC3B and Beclin1 (P<0.05). Suppressing miR-155 expression can relieve inflammatory response and promote autophagy

Symmetry guaranteed Dirac-line semimetals in two-dimensions against strong spin-orbit coupling

Several intriguing electronic phenomena and electric properties were discovered in three-dimensional Dirac nodal line semimetals (3D-DNLSM), which are, however, easy to be perturbed under strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC). While two-dimensional (2D) layers are an emerging material category with many advantages, 2D-DNLSM against SOC is yet to be uncovered. Here, we report a 2D-DNLSM in odd-atomic-layer Bi (the brick phase, another Bi allotrope), whose robustness against SOC is protected by the little co-group C_2v \times Z^T_2, the unique protecting symmetry we found in 2D.Specially, (4n+2) valence electrons fill the electronic bands in the brick phase, so that the Dirac nodal line with fourfold degeneracy locates across the Fermi level. There are almost no other low energy states close to the Fermi level; this allows to feasibly observe the neat DNLSM-induced phenomena in transport measurements without being affected by other bands. In contrast, Other VA-group elements also form the brick phases, but their DNL states are mixed with the extra states around the Fermi level. This unprecedented category of layered materials allows for exploring nearly isolated 2DDNL states in 2D.Comment: Totally 25 pages including main text, methods and supporting information, 4 figures, 8 SI figure

BA-SOT: Boundary-Aware Serialized Output Training for Multi-Talker ASR

The recently proposed serialized output training (SOT) simplifies multi-talker automatic speech recognition (ASR) by generating speaker transcriptions separated by a special token. However, frequent speaker changes can make speaker change prediction difficult. To address this, we propose boundary-aware serialized output training (BA-SOT), which explicitly incorporates boundary knowledge into the decoder via a speaker change detection task and boundary constraint loss. We also introduce a two-stage connectionist temporal classification (CTC) strategy that incorporates token-level SOT CTC to restore temporal context information. Besides typical character error rate (CER), we introduce utterance-dependent character error rate (UD-CER) to further measure the precision of speaker change prediction. Compared to original SOT, BA-SOT reduces CER/UD-CER by 5.1%/14.0%, and leveraging a pre-trained ASR model for BA-SOT model initialization further reduces CER/UD-CER by 8.4%/19.9%.Comment: Accepted by INTERSPEECH 202

Quantum phases of SrCu2(BO3)2 from high-pressure thermodynamics

We report heat capacity measurements of SrCu$_2$(BO$_3$)$_2$ under high pressure along with simulations of relevant quantum spin models and map out the $(P,T)$ phase diagram of the material. We find a first-order quantum phase transition between the low-pressure quantum dimer paramagnet and a phase with signatures of a plaquette-singlet state below T = $2$ K. At higher pressures, we observe a transition into a previously unknown antiferromagnetic state below $4$ K. Our findings can be explained within the two-dimensional Shastry-Sutherland quantum spin model supplemented by weak inter-layer couplings. The possibility to tune SrCu$_2$(BO$_3$)$_2$ between the plaquette-singlet and antiferromagnetic states opens opportunities for experimental tests of quantum field theories and lattice models involving fractionalized excitations, emergent symmetries, and gauge fluctuations.Comment: 6 pages + 8 pages supplemental informatio

Dentin Sialophosphoprotein: A Regulatory Protein for Dental Pulp Stem Cell Identity and Fate

The dentin sialophosphoprotein (dspp) transcript is expressed during tooth development as a DSPP precursor protein, which then undergoes cleavage to form mature dentin sialoprotein (DSP) and phosphophoryn (PP) proteins. Previous studies using DSPP-knockout (KO) mice have reported that these animals have hypomineralized teeth, thin dentin, and a large dental pulp chamber, similar to those from patients with dentinogenesis imperfecta III. However, there is no information about factors that regulate dental pulp stem cell lineage fate, a critical early event in the odontoblast-dentin mineralization scheme. To reveal the role of DSPP in odontoblast lineage differentiation during tooth development, we systematically examined teeth from wild-type (wt) and DSPP-KO C57BL/6 mice between the ages of postnatal day 1 and 3 months. We found developmental abnormalities not previously reported, such as circular dentin formation within dental pulp cells and altered odontoblast differentiation in DSPP-KO mice, even as early as 1 day after birth. Surprisingly, we also identified chondrocyte-like cells in the dental pulp from KO-mice teeth. Thus, these studies that compare wt and DSPP-KO mice suggest that the expression of DSPP precursor protein is required for normal odontoblast lineage differentiation and that the absence of DSPP allows dental pulp cells to differentiate into chondrocyte-like cells, which could negatively impact pulpal wound healing and tissue regeneration.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140203/1/scd.2014.0066.pd

Analysis of Differentially Expressed Proteins in Self-Paired Sera of Advanced Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Patients Responsive to Gefin

Background and objective All the advanced NSCLC patients that received EGFR-TKI therapy will eventually relapse after a period of efficacy. The aim of this study is to investigate the serum biomarkers as potential predictive factors for the efficacy of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) targeted therapy in advanced non-small cell lung cancer. Methods Twenty self-paired serum samples were collected from 9 advanced NSCLC patients that evaluated as disease control (SD or PR) after gefinitib therapy, at the time points of before and after gefinitib treatment but 2 weeks before being evaluated as disease progress. All samples were pre-separated by WCX microbeads, and then detected on the MALDI-TOF-MS platform of Bruker AutoflexTM. ClinProTools (Version: 2.1) was used to analyze the differentially expressed proteins. Results There were 7 protein peaks (m/z), 3242.09, 8 690.36, 2 952.64, 3 224.04, 1 450.51, 1 887.8 and 3 935.73 found statistically differentially expressed between the self-paired samples. Three proteins (3 242.09, 2 952.64 and 3 224.04) were down-regulated and four proteins (8 690.36, 1 450.51, 1 887.8 and 3 935.73) up-regulated in gefinitib treated sera. Conclusion The data here suggest that several specific protein peaks might indicate gefinitib resistance, yet the identities of these proteins and the mechanisms underlying the responsiveness to gefinitib treatment need further investigation