Characterization of bilayered matrix-type mucoadhesive buccal films containing tizanidine hydrochloride and piroxicam

Purpose: To formulate and characterize tizanidine hydrochloride (TZN) and piroxicam (PRX)-loaded bilayer mucoadhesive buccal films with an intention to improve the bioavailability and patient compliance in pain management.Methods: Bilayer buccal films were prepared by solvent evaporation technique using hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) 15cps and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP K30 as immediate release (IR) layer forming polymers and HPMC K15 M, PVP K 90 along with various muco adhesive polymers (Carbopol P934, sodium alginate, etc), as sustained release (SR) layer forming polymers. The prepared films werecharacterized for thickness, weight variation, folding endurance, surface pH, swelling index,mucoadhesive strength, in vitro residence time, in vitro drug release, ex vivo permeation and drug release kinetics.Results: The prepared films were of largely uniform thickness, weight and drug content. Moisture loss (%) and folding endurance were satisfactory. Surface pH was compatible with salivary fluid. Disintegration time was 85 s for F1 and 115 s for F2 of IR films. In vitro dissolution studies showed 99.12 ± 1.2 % (F1) and 90.36 ± 1.8 % (F2) were released in 45 min. Based on the above results, F1 was chosen as the optimum formulation to be combined with SR layer of TZN. Amongst the SR layers of TZN in vitro drug release. The findings show that of F2 was 98.38 ± 0.82 % and correlated with ex vivo release. Drug release followed zero order release kinetics and mechanism of drug release was non-Fickian type diffusion. In vitro residence time was greater than 5 h.Conclusion: The findings show that the bilayer buccal films demonstrate the dual impact of deliveringPRX instantly from the IR layer, with good controlled release and permeation of TZN from the SR layer, thus providing enhanced therapeutic efficacy, drug bioavailability and patient compliance

Emic and Etic Perspectives on HR Practice for Managing Human Resource Issues Affected by the Prevalence of Informal Networks in Arab Countries

Whilst research on Wasta has been improving in quantity and quality, there is still much more to know about the interactions between the different parties in Wasta transactions, the role of power in this process and how it impacts HR functions. As such, this research aims to address this gap by exploring the use of Wasta in human resources (HR) functions, drawing on 17 semi-structured interviews with HR, recruitment and line managers working in the Jordanian banking sector. This paper focuses on the roles of trust and power in the organizational transactions in which Wasta is positioned and identifies recruitment and selection (R&S) as one of the main human resource (HR) practices and procedures that are affected by Wasta. The findings shed light on the impact of Wasta on HRM practice on the micro and macro levels, highlighting the complex socio-economic needs for this practice which, whilst they might be beneficial on the micro level in terms of securing employment for job seekers and benefits for organizations in the Wasta exchange process, can also have some substantive negative outcomes in the forms of social and economic exclusion of others outside the Wasta network. By doing so, it develops the conceptualization beyond the often-simplistic view of Wasta as a negative (and sometimes positive) practice as viewed by previous research extending it to a practice that could have either impact on different stakeholder

The Effects of Instrument Lubricants on the Physical and Mechanical Properties of Resin-Based Composites

Ph. D. ThesisUncured resin-based composites (RBCs) tend to stick to the placement instrument instead of cavity walls, potentially increasing void formation and margin discrepancy. Instrument lubricants (ILs) are used to overcome this problem, but they may affect the properties of RBC restorations. One hundred registered UK dentists were surveyed using a bespoke questionnaire to investigate their perspective on IL use and understand why and how they used them. Additionally, different laboratory investigations were conducted, based on the survey data, to test the effects of ILs on the physical and mechanical properties of RBCs. Two RBCs were treated with three classes of ILs —solvents, bonding agents and wetting resins —to investigate the effects different ILs have on the physical and mechanical properties of RBCs. Several areas were tested: degree of conversion, water uptake, Martens hardness, diametral tensile strength, microtensile bonding strength (μTBS), and the appearance of changes at the increment interface. The survey revealed that about 50% of the dentists used lubricants (32% response rate), of which bonding agents (67%) and wetting resins (33%) were most common. These were applied with microbrushes (47%) and by wiping the placement instruments (40%). The solvents, bonding agents and wetting resins created significant reductions in diametral tensile strength and Martens hardness, and increased water uptake compared to control groups fabricated without lubricants. The μTBS significantly reduced following treatment with solvents and bonding agents, but there was no reduction from the wetting resins. The respondents used lubricants to aid manipulation during placement. However, these materials have an impact upon physical and mechanical properties with solvents and bonding agents having the greater effect. Therefore, the use of ILs to manipulate the RBC should be limited or avoided.King Khalid Universit

Evaluation of multiple and single emission peak light emitting diode light curing units effect on the degree of conversion and microhardness of resin-based pit and fissure sealant

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Objective: The objective was to assess a multiple emission peak light-emitting-diode (LED) light-curing unit (LCU) by measuring the polymerization efficiency through the degree of conversion (DC) and Knoop microhardness (KHN) of a resin-based pit and fissure sealant at various light curing times and two distances compared to a single emission peak LED LCU. Method: Sixty disks of resin-based pit and fissure sealant (Delton, DENTSPLY, York, PA) samples (6x1mm) were fabricated (n=5/LCU/group). Prepared samples were polymerized using 10, 20 and 40 second curing time at 2 or 4 mm curing distances. The irradiance and radiant exposure received on the top/bottom surfaces of the samples were measured using the Managing Accurate Resin Curing-Resin Calibrator (MARC-RC) system. The samples were stored at 37°C for one hour. Then, the DC (n=3/surface) and KHN (n=5/surface) measurements were collected on the top and bottom surfaces using Attenuated Total Reflection-Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and a microhardness tester (Instron) utilizing 25-gm at 10 seconds dwell time, respectively. Multiple-way ANOVA was performed followed by Tukey test (α=0.05). Result: The irradiance from the multiple emission peak LED LCU was significantly higher than the single emission peak LED LCU (1312.6 and 768.3 mW/cm2) respectively. Moreover, the multiple emission peak LED LCU displayed significantly higher DC (82.5%) and microhardness (26.2 KHN) compared to the single emission peak LED LCU (75.5% DC and 21.2 KHN) when curing samples at 2 and 4 mm curing distances assessed using 10, 20 and 40-second curing times. The 10 second cure at 4 mm showed significantly lower DC and KHN values compared to the other groups. Conclusion: The multiple emission peak LED LCU demonstrated significantly higher irradiance, DC and KHN compared to the single emission peak LED LCU on a resin-based pit and fissure sealant at 2 and 4 mm curing distances and 10, 20 and 40 second curing times. Therefore, the multiple emission peak LED LCU performed higher than the single emission peak LED LCU

Emotion and polarity prediction from Twitter

Classification of public information from microblogging and social networking services could yield interesting outcomes and insights into the social and public opinions towards different services, products, and events. Microblogging and social networking data are one of the most helpful and proper indicators of public opinion. The aim of this paper is to classify tweets to their classes using cross validation and partitioning the data across cities using supervised machine learning algorithms. Such an approach was used to collect real time Twitter microblogging data tweets towards mentioning iPad and iPhone in different locations in order to analyse and classify data in terms of polarity: positive or negative, and emotion: anger, joy, sadness, disgust, fear, and surprise. We have collected over eighty thousand tweets that have been pre-processed to generate document level ground-truth and labelled according to Emotion and Polarity. We also compared some approaches in order to measures the performance of K-NN, Nave Bayes, and SVM classifiers. We found that the K-NN, Nave Bayes, SVM, and ZeroR have a reasonable accuracy rates, however, the K-NN has outperformed the Nave Bayes, SVM, and ZeroR based on the achieved accuracy rates and trained model time. The K-NN has achieved the highest accuracy rates 96.58% and 99.94% for the iPad and iPhone emotion data sets using cross validation technique respectively. Regarding partitioning the data per city, the K-NN has achieved the highest accuracy rates 98.8% and 99.95% for the iPad and iPhone emotion data sets respectively. Regarding the polarity data sets using both cross validation and partitioning data per city, the K-NN achieved 100% for the all polarity datasets

Source-Routed Multicast Schemes for Large-Scale Cloud Data Center Networks

Data centers (DCs) have been witnessing unprecedented growth in size, number and complexity in recent years. They consist of tens of thousands of servers interconnected by fast network switches, hosting and enabling numerous applications with various traffic characteristics and requirements. As a result, DC networks have been presented with several unique challenges, pertaining to the scaling and allocation of network resources during the forwarding and moving of data across the different DC servers. Traffic routing in general and multicast routing in particular are important functions in DC networks, especially that modern cloud DCs tend to exhibit one-to-many communication traffic patterns. Unfortunately, recent multicast routing approaches that adopt IP multicast suffer from scalability and load balancing issues, and do not scale well with the number of supported multicast groups when used for cloud DC networks. In this thesis, we propose a set of new, complementary schemes that overcome these challenges. More specifically, firstly, we study existing DC network topologies, and propose Circulant Fat-Tree topology, an improvement over the traditional Fat-Tree topology with better properties to suit nowadays DC networks. Then, we review and classify recent studies that investigate and measure the traffic behavior of operational DC networks. We focus on the way they collect the traffic as well as on the key findings made in these studies. Secondly, we propose Bert, a source-initiated multicast routing scheme for DCs. Bert scales well with both the number and the size of multicast groups, and does so through clustering, by dividing the members of the multicast group into a set of clusters with each cluster employing its own forwarding rules. In essence, Bert yields much lesser multicast traffic overhead than state-of-the-art schemes. Thirdly, we propose, Ernie, a scalable and load-balanced multicast source routing scheme. Ernie introduces a novel method for scaling out the number of supported mul- ticast groups. In particular, it appropriately constructs and organizes multicast header information inside packets in a manner that allows core/root switches to only forward down the needed information. Ernie also introduces an effective multicast traffic load balancing technique across downstream links. Specifically, it prudently assigns multicast groups to core switches to ensure the evenness of load distribution across the downstream links

23. Does the maximum allowable contrast dose (MACD) predict the risk of contrast induced nephropathy (CIN) in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD)

BackgroundCIN is associated with high in-hospital mortality. Some studies recommend the utilization of the MACD formula to guide safe contrast dosing, however the evidence supporting use of this measure is limited.ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to determine if MACD is helpful in predicting the risk of CIN in patients with CKD.Methods8670 patients who underwent coronary angiography in our center with or without Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) (2008–2013) were included. Patients with CKD (n=144) were selected. Patients in shock, on intra aortic balloon pump, on prophylactic hemofiltration or on dialysis were excluded.Creatinine was measured 48–72h post procedure. T-test, Chi-Square and multiple regression were used to compare those patients who developed CIN and those who did not develop CIN. CIN was defined as an increase in serum creatinine by ⩾25% or 0.5mg/dL from baseline within 48–72h after contrast exposure.ResultsCIN occurred in 28 patients (19.4%). Only 8 (5.6%) of the 144 patients exceeded MACD and 2 of these patients developed CIN. The use of biplane angiography explains the lower contrast dose. For this reason the impact of exceeding MACD could not be evaluated. Primary PCI was associated with CIN (p=0.012; OR 5.1)).ConclusionOverall it is best to limit contrast dose to the extent possible as this is a known risk factor, however MACD is not a useful variable in a risk model for predicting CIN in our population. Primary PCI was the only predictor of CIN in our population

Molecular docking supported investigation of antioxidant, analgesic and diuretic effects of Costus speciosus rhizome

ABSTRACT. The aim of the current study was to analyze the polyphenols and determines the antioxidant, analgesic and diuretic properties of the methanolic extract of C.speciosus rhizome. DPPH and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assays were used to determine the antioxidant activity. Acetic acid-induced writhing and formalin-induced licking experiments were used to assess the analgesic effect. The total phenolic, flavonoid and flavonol contents were found 51.73± 0.25 mg GAE/g dry weight, 3.41± 0.07mg QE/g dry weights and 44.19± 2.24 mg QE/g dry weight, respectively. The plant extract exhibited weak antioxidant activity in the DPPH and FRAP assays, with an IC50 value of 1699±62 μg/mL and an EC50 value of 125±2 μg/mL, respectively. The extract significantly reduced the number of writhes at both doses (200 and 400 mg/kg body weight) as compared to the control. The extract (400 mg/kg) also significantly reduced the percent inhibition of licking by 31.96 and 62.69% compared to the control in the early and late phase, respectively. Compared to the standard drug furosemide, the plant extract also showed a weak diuretic effect. The docking study supported the analgesic activity of rhizome extract. The potent analgesic activity of the plant extract justifies the traditional and medicinal aspects.   KEY WORDS: Costus speciosus, Analgesic activity, Diuretic effect, Molecular docking Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop. 2022, 36(3), 627-640.                                                                 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/bcse.v36i3.12 &nbsp

Acute Appendicitis among Saudi and Non-Saudi Patients: A Cross-Sectional Based Study

Objective: We conduct this study to discuss the differences between Saudi and non- Saudi patients with acute appendicitis.Background: Acute appendicitis is one of emergency surgeries in developing and developed countries. Its symptoms are vomiting, lower abdominal pain and decreased appetite. Appendicitis needs urgent surgical prouder to avoid its perforation and associated complications which may lead to death. Method: We conduct cross-sectional based study in one of khamis Mushayt, Saudi Araba. 136 patients diagnosed with acute appendicitis were included and their medical records were reviewed after getting their informed consent.Results: We included 136 patients, 90 were non-Saudi and 46 were Saudi. There were no statistically differences in their diagnosis but the distribution of the diagnosis was different.Conclusion: Acute appendicitis was more prevalent among non-Saudi patients, the diagnosis between both was with no significant differences. Keywords: acute appendicitis, Saudi, non-Saudi, diagnosis, cross-sectional, Saudi Arabia and khamis Mushayt

The efficiency of natural plant extracts in improving storage stability, antioxidant activity, sensory evaluation, and physicochemical properties of date juice-based energy drink

Energy drinks (EDs) are a type of sweetened and non-alcoholic beverage with high content of caffeine. EDs were prepared from date juice enriched with different concentrations of ginger rhizomes extract, moringa leaf extract, and caffeine. Physicochemical properties (pH, TSS, and color parameters), total phenolic content (TPC), antioxidant activity, microbiological quality, and sensory characteristics were evaluated for freshly prepared EDs and during storage. The results showed that freshly prepared EDs from date juice and natural extracts revealed lower pH, higher TSS, and lower color parameters than the control. The inclusion of date juice and natural extracts improved the TPC, antioxidant activity, and microbiological quality of freshly prepared EDs. Storage studies exhibited that EDs containing date juice and natural extracts were more stable during storage in terms of all quality parameters estimated. However, the ED made from date juice, ginger extract, moringa extract, and caffeine was the best in terms of all parameters evaluated with higher stability during 3 months of storage at room temperature. In general, by date juice and natural plant extracts addition, a desirable ED can be prepared