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At-home tooth whitening solutions with good efficacy and biosafety are highly desirable to meet the ever-growing demand for aesthetic dentistry. As a promising alternative to the classic peroxide bleaching that may damage tooth enamel and gums, piezocatalysis has been recently proposed to realize non-destructive whitening by toothbrushing with piezoelectrical particles. However, traditional particles either pose potential threats to human health or exhibit low piezoresponse to weak mechanical stimuli in the toothbrushing. Here, biocompatible and biodegradable polylactide particles constructed from interlocking crystalline lamellae have been hierarchically designed as next-generation whitening materials with ultra-high piezocatalytic activity and biosafety. By simultaneously controlling the chain conformation within lamellae and the porosity of such unique lamellae network at the nano- and microscales, the particles possessing unprecedented piezoelectricity have been successfully prepared due to the markedly increased dipole alignment, mechanical deformability, and specific surface area. The piezoelectric output can reach as high as 18.8 V, nearly 50 times higher than that of common solid polylactide particles. Consequently, their piezocatalytic effect can be readily activated by a toothbrush to rapidly clean the teeth stained with black tea and coffee, without causing detectable enamel damage. Furthermore, these particles have no cytotoxicity. This work presents a paradigm for achieving high piezoelectric activity in polylactide, which enables its practical application in tooth whitening.

This study was designed to explore the effects and mechanism of isoliensinine (isolie) from embryos of Nelumbo nuciferaon type 2 diabetes and dyslipidemia in vivo and in vitro. The in vitro study showed that isolie increased the GLUT4 translocation by 2.5-fold in L6 cells. Furthermore, after 4 weeks of treatment, the in vivo biochemical study indexes revealed that isolie had a positive effect on decreasing serum insulin level (42.2 ± 5.10 vs 55.7 ± 6.33 mU/L, P< 0.05) and reducing fast blood glucose (9.4 ± 1.5 vs 18.7 ± 2.3 mmol/L, P< 0.001) and body weight (37.8 ± 2.9 vs 46.9 ± 5.4 g, P< 0.05) compared with the KK-Ay model mice. Isolie treatment led to significant increases in GLUT4 proteins (∼2.7-fold in skeletal muscle and ∼2.4-fold in WAT) and phosphorylated AMP-activated protein kinase (∼1.4-fold in skeletal muscle, ∼3.1-fold in WAT, and ∼2.3-fold in liver). However, isolie caused a significant decrease in lipogenesis protein expressions of PPARγ and SREBP-1c, and decreased the activity of ACC by increasing the phospho-ACC level. Our findings showed that isolie has the potential to alleviate type 2 diabetes associated with hyperlipidemia in KK-Ay mice. Regulation of GLUT4, SREBP-1c, PPARγ, AMPK phosphorylation, and ACC phosphorylation is implicated in the antidiabetic effects of isolie.

The inadequacy of tactile perception systems in humanoid robotic manipulators limits the breadth of available robotic applications. Here, we designed a multifunctional flexible tactile sensor for robotic fingers that provides capabilities similar to those of human skin sensing modalities. This sensor utilizes a novel PI-MXene/SrTiO3hybrid aerogel developed as a sensing unit with the additional abilities of electromagnetic transmission and thermal insulation to adapt to certain complex environments. Moreover, polyimide (PI) provides a high-strength skeleton, MXene realizes a pressure-sensing function, and MXene/SrTiO3achieves both thermoelectric and infrared radiation response behaviors. Furthermore, via the pressure response mechanism and unsteady-state heat transfer, these aerogel-derived flexible sensors realize multimodal sensing and recognition capabilities with minimal cross-coupling. They can differentiate among 13 types of hardness and four types of material from objects with accuracies of 94% and 85%, respectively, using a decision tree algorithm. In addition, based on the infrared radiation-sensing function, a sensory array was assembled, and different shapes of objects were successfully recognized. These findings demonstrate that this PI-MXene/SrTiO3aerogel provides a new concept for expanding the multifunctionality of flexible sensors such that the manipulator can more closely reach the tactile level of the human hand. This advancement reduces the difficulty of integrating humanoid robots and provides a new breadth of application scenarios for their possibility.

Stereocomplexation of enantiomeric poly(l-lactide)/poly(d-lactide) (PLLA/PDLA) chains opens up a great opportunity toward sustainable PLA engineering plastic with exceptional heat resistance and durability. However, the processing and applications of stereocomplex-type PLA (SC-PLA) are significantly blocked by its inferior melt stability (i.e., the weak melt memory effect in triggering complete SC crystallization, which makes it hard to obtain exclusive formation of SC crystallites in melt-processed products) and inherent brittleness. In this contribution, we demonstrate an unprecedented strategy to address these obstacles by one-pot reactive melt blending of the equimolar PLLA/PDLA blend with reactive poly(ethylene–methyl acrylate–glycidyl methacrylate) (E-MA-GMA) in the presence of catalyst, where both the stereocomplexation and the grafting of some PLLA/PDLA chains onto E-MA-GMA backbones take place simultaneously and competitively. Intriguingly, the E-MA-graft-PLA copolymer in situformed can substantially improve the melt stability of SC-PLA matrix as compatibilizer, and thus highly crystalline SC-PLA/E-MA-GMA blend products with exclusive SC crystallites can be readily obtained by injection molding. Moreover, some E-MA-graft-PLA can also strengthen the blend interface as interfacial enhancer, which gives rise to an increase in the toughening efficiency. As a result, the obtained SC-PLA/E-MA-GMA blends exhibits impressive heat resistance (the Vicat softening temperature and heat deflection temperature are as high as 201 and 174 °C, respectively) and impact toughness (the notched Izod impact strength is close to 65 kJ/m2). Notably, their comprehensive performance is superior to some commercial petroleum-derived engineering plastics. Overall, the one-pot syntheses of copolymer by in situgrafting could open up a new horizon for creating super-robust SC-PLA-based engineering plastic using industrial melt-processing technologies.

Multi shape memory polymers (multi-SMPs) exhibit many potential applications such as aerospace, soft robotics, and biomedical devices because of their unique abilities. Although many works are done to broaden the preparations of multi-SMPs, the desire to a simple and versatile strategy as well as more complex shapes still exists. Moreover, a light-induced SMP shows more advantages than a thermal-induced one in many practical working circumstances. Herein, inspired by strong adhesion and efficient photothermal conversion of polydopamine (PDA) coating, we report a more simple and facile approach to prepare light-induced multi-SMPs by introducing a gradient PDA coating on a dual-SMP through time-controlled dipping. The photothermal converting properties with varying thicknesses of PDA under the tunable near-infrared light source are investigated. Then, light-induced multishape memory effects based on gradient PDA coatings are illustrated, where three designs of multi-SMPs — rectangle, triangle, and cross are prepared and demonstrated. Also, the evolutions of coating morphology during shape shifting are carefully studied. Finally, we present few complex designs of patterns and shapes as well as a design of potential application for the highly controllable smart devices. This strategy demonstrates a very simple and general strategy to design and prepare the light-induced multi-SMPs with complex shapes based on any thermal-responsive dual-SMPs.

Chemical purification of the ethyl acetate extract from the seeds of Sophora alopecuroidesyielded a new natural product, ethyl 2-(4-hydroxybenzyl) malic acid (1), along with 7 known compounds, methyl eucomate (2), eucomic acid (3), piscidic acid (4) and ethyl 2-(4-hydroxybenzyl) tartrate (5), butein-4'-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (6), iso-liquiritigenin (7), and butein (8). The structure of 1was determined by spectroscopic analyses including extensive 1D (1H NMR, 13C NMR) and 2D NMR spectra (COSY, HSQC and HMBC) as well as MS data. All compounds were evaluated for their cytotoxic activities against hepato-cellular carcinoma (HCC) cell lines, HepG2 andHep3B. Compound 8significantly inhibited the cancer cell growth in a concentration-dependent manner.

ABSTRACTThe present study investigated the anti-diabetic activity and potential mechanism of stigmasterol (SMR), which is a kind of phytosterols derived from the edible soybean oil in vitroand in vivo. SMR displayed a mild GLUT4 translocation activity by 1.44-fold in L6 cells. L6 cells were treated with different concentration of SMR, showing significant effects on the enhancing glucose uptake. SMR administrated orally to the KK-Ay mice significantly alleviated their insulin resistance and oral glucose tolerance with reducing fasting blood-glucose levels and blood lipid indexes such as triglyceride and cholesterol. Moreover, the GLUT4 expression in L6 cells, skeletal muscle and white adipose tissue had been also enhanced. In this paper we conclude that, stigmasterol seems to have potential beneficial effects on the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus with the probable mechanism of targeting GLUT4 glucose transporter included increasing GLUT4 translocation and expression.