Pretreatment with High Mobility Group Box-1 Monoclonal Antibody Prevents the Onset of Trigeminal Neuropathy in Mice with a Distal Infraorbital Nerve Chronic Constriction Injury

Persistent pain following orofacial surgery is not uncommon. High mobility group box 1 (HMGB1), an alarmin, is released by peripheral immune cells following nerve injury and could be related to pain associated with trigeminal nerve injury. Distal infraorbital nerve chronic constriction injury (dIoN-CCI) evokes pain-related behaviors including increased facial grooming and hyper-responsiveness to acetone (cutaneous cooling) after dIoN-CCI surgery in mice. In addition, dIoN-CCI mice developed conditioned place preference to mirogabalin, suggesting increased neuropathic pain-related aversion. Treatment of the infraorbital nerve with neutralizing antibody HMGB1 (anti-HMGB1 nAb) before dIoN-CCI prevented both facial grooming and hyper-responsiveness to cooling. Pretreatment with anti-HMGB1 nAb also blocked immune cell activation associated with trigeminal nerve injury including the accumulation of macrophage around the injured IoN and increased microglia activation in the ipsilateral spinal trigeminal nucleus caudalis. The current findings demonstrated that blocking of HMGB1 prior to nerve injury prevents the onset of pain-related behaviors, possibly through blocking the activation of immune cells associated with the nerve injury, both within the CNS and on peripheral nerves. The current findings further suggest that blocking HMGB1 before tissue injury could be a novel strategy to prevent the induction of chronic pain following orofacial surgeries.     

Interfacial aggregate growth process of Fe(II) and Fe(III) complexes with pyridylazophenol in solvent extraction system

The complexation mechanism and aggregate formation of bis[2-(5-bromo-2-pyridylazo)-5-diethylaminophenolate] iron(II) and iron(III) complexes at the heptane-water interface were studied spectrophotometrically by the high-speed stirring method and the centrifugal liquid membrane method. Furthermore, the reduction process of the Fe(III) complex with ascorbic acid at the interface was spectrophotometrically observed. The chemical compositions of the interfacial aggregate of complexes have been proved by the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The aggregation of the complex at the interface was observed as a red-shifted, very strong and narrower absorption band with respect to the absorption band of the monomer complex. The aggregate of Fe(III) complex showed more shifted spectrum than that of Fe(II) complex, which proposed the larger aggregation number of Fe(III) aggregate (n = 8) than that of Fe(II) aggregate (n = 3). The obtained rate constants of interfacial aggregation were smaller than rate constants of interfacial monomer complexation, because the formation of aggregate required the assembly of the monomers.     

Structural,optical and electrical properties of europium picrate tetraethylene glycol complex as emissive material for OLED

A new europium complex [Eu(Pic)₂(H₂O)(EO4)](Pic)·0.75H₂O was synthesized and used as the emission material for the single layer device structure of ITO/EO4–Eu–Pic/Al, using a spin-coating technique. Study on the optical properties of the [Eu(Pic)₂(H₂O)(EO4)](Pic)·0.75H₂O complex where EO4=tetraethylene glycol and Pic=picrate anion, had to be undertaken before being applicable to the study of an organic light emitting diode (OLED). The electrical property of an OLED using current–voltage (I–V) measurement was also studied. In complex, the Eu(III) ion was coordinated with the EO4 ligand as a pentadentate mode, one water molecule, and with two Pic anions as bidentate and monodentate modes, forming a nine-coordination number. The photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the crystalline complex in the solid state and its thin film showed a hypersensitive peak at 613.5–614.9 nm that assigned to the ⁵D₀→⁷F₂ transition. A narrow band emission from the thin film EO4–Eu–Pic was obtained. The typical semiconductor I–V curve of device ITO/EO4–Eu–Pic/Al showed the threshold and turn on voltages at 1.08 and 4.6 V, respectively. The energy transfer process from the ligand to the Eu(III) ion was discussed by investigating the excitation and PL characteristics. Effect of the picrate anion on the device performance was also studied.     

Neutral pion production with respect to reaction plane in Au+Au collisions at RHIC-PHENIX

We have measured azimuthal anisotropy of neutral pion in $ \sqrt {s_{NN} } $ \sqrt {s_{NN} } = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). In 2007, we have installed a new detector to measure reaction plane of collisions more precisely. This new detector is called reaction plane detector (RxNP). We report the results for azimuthal anisotropy of neutral pion for each 3 centrality steps. The determination of reaction plane achieved twice better resolution than Year-2004 run.