DEVELOPMENT OF A PROLONGD RELEASE GASTRORETENTIVE TABLET FORMULATION OF LEVOFLOXACIN

Objective: The present investigation concerns the design and evaluation of floating tablets of Levofloxacin, which after oral administration prolong the gastric residence time and increased drug bioavailability. Methods: Levofloxacin is a synthetic chemotherapeutic agent used to treat severe or life-threatening bacterial infections. The present work was designed to formulate floating tablet of Levofloxacin with various swelling agents. Formulations were prepared using various concentrations of Guar gum, Carbopol, hydroxy propyl methyl cellulose and Ethyl Cellulose by direct compression technique. The selected batches were evaluated for various parameters like weight variation, thickness, diameter, friability, floating lag time, duration of floating, swelling index, content uniformity and in-vitro drug release. The data obtained from the in-vitro dissolution studies of optimized batch F7 were fitted in different models. Results: The optimized formulation F7 showed 99.25% drug content, floating lag time of 10 min and swelling index of 40%. Drug release mechanism was found to be zero order along with higuchi release kinetics exhibiting diffusion along with dissolution of the drug from the tablet by non fickian mechanism. Conclusion: Levofloxacin floating tablets exhibited increased gastric residence time, there by improved bioavailability and therapeutic effect of the drug. Keywords: Levofloxacin, Gastro retentive, Guar gum, Hydroxy propyl methyl cellulose, Ethyl Cellulose, Carbopol

Constant Velocity Constraints for Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation

We present a new method for self-supervised monocular depth estimation. Contemporary monocular depth estimation methods use a triplet of consecutive video frames to estimate the central depth image. We make the assumption that the ego-centric view progresses linearly in the scene, based on the kinematic and physical properties of the camera. During the training phase, we can exploit this assumption to create a depth estimation for each image in the triplet. We then apply a new geometry constraint that supports novel synthetic views, thus providing a strong supervisory signal. Our contribution is simple to implement, requires no additional trainable parameter, and produces competitive results when compared with other state-of-the-art methods on the popular KITTI corpus

Pre-Fibrillar α-Synuclein Mutants Cause Parkinson's Disease-Like Non-Motor Symptoms in Drosophila

Parkinson's disease (PD) is linked to the formation of insoluble fibrillar aggregates of the presynaptic protein α-Synuclein (αS) in neurons. The appearance of such aggregates coincides with severe motor deficits in human patients. These deficits are often preceded by non-motor symptoms such as sleep-related problems in the patients. PD-like motor deficits can be recapitulated in model organisms such as Drosophila melanogaster when αS is pan-neurally expressed. Interestingly, both these deficits are more severe when αS mutants with reduced aggregation properties are expressed in flies. This indicates that that αS aggregation is not the primary cause of the PD-like motor symptoms. Here we describe a model for PD in Drosophila which utilizes the targeted expression of αS mutants in a subset of dopadecarboxylase expressing serotonergic and dopaminergic (DA) neurons. Our results show that targeted expression of pre-fibrillar αS mutants not only recapitulates PD-like motor symptoms but also the preceding non-motor symptoms such as an abnormal sleep-like behavior, altered locomotor activity and abnormal circadian periodicity. Further, the results suggest that the observed non-motor symptoms in flies are caused by an early impairment of neuronal functions rather than by the loss of neurons due to cell death

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

IMPLEMENTATION OF MULTIOPERAND REDUNDANT ADDERS USING COMPRESSOR TREES

Although redundant addition is widely used to design parallel multi operand adders for ASIC implementations, the use of redundant adders on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) has generally been avoided. The main reasons are the efficient implementation of carry propagate adders (CPAs) on these devices (due to their specialized carry-chain resources) as well as the area overhead of the redundant adders when they are implemented on FPGAs. This paper presents different approaches to the efficient implementation of generic carry-save compressor trees on FPGAs. They present a fast critical path, independent of bit width, with practically no area overhead compared to CPA trees. Along with the classic carry-save compressor tree, we present a novel linear array structure, which efficiently uses the fast carry-chain resources. This approach is defined in a parameterizable HDL code based on CPAs, which makes it compatible with any FPGA family or vendor. A detailed study is provided for a wide range of bit widths and large number of operands. Compared to binary and ternary CPA trees, speedups of up to 2.29 and 2.14 are achieved for 16-bit width and up to 3.81 and 3.11 for 64-bit width

Extremely small dispersion whistlers and VLF emissions recorded during daytime at Jammu

216-220Using an improved system, a unique type of whistlers in addition to the usual types of VLF emissions has been recorded, for the first time in India, in February 1998 during daytime at Jammu (geomagn. lat., 22° 26'N; geomagn. long., 147°10'E; L- l.17). From the dispersion analysis of the daytime whistlers recorded at Jammu it is found that all the whistlers have extremely small dispersion (ESD) in the range of 5-10 s1/2, which clearly supports the nonducted propagation of daytime whistlers at low latitudes, completely in contrast with the earlier findings of ducted propagation of daytime whistlers in the presence of equatorial anomaly

Awareness of Farmers on Weather Based Agro Advisory Services in Telangana State, India

Agriculture production is significantly influenced by the weather. From seeding to crop harvest, it has a significant impact on all aspects of farming. Crop germination, establishment, growth, development and yield are all affected. Extreme weather conditions including drought, floods, heavy rains, heat waves, frost, hailstorms, cyclones, etc. may cause the farming community to suffer significant crop yield losses. Since the farming community will be aware of the upcoming weather conditions in advance, required adjustments may be made to farm level agricultural operations and decisions to lessen the consequences of unfavorable weather conditions. Therefore, Integrated Agro met Advisory Services will make it possible for the farmer to be informed of current and expected weather as well as advice to the farmer the best course of action to reduce losses caused by unfavorable weather conditions and increase the output of agricultural systems. A study was conducted in Telangana state to ascertain the degree of farmer’s awareness on weather-based agro advisory services. Random sampling technique employed to collect data from 120 farmers. Ex-post facto research design was used for the investigation. The data with regards to level of awareness possessed by farmers about weather based agro advisory services, it is revealed that 38.33 % of them had the medium level of awareness followed by low level 35.01 % and high level 26.66% of awareness, respectively. All profile characteristics of respondents showed a significant correlation with the degree to which farmers were aware of weather-based agro advisory services, with the exception of education, annual income, farming experience, mass media exposure, and cropping pattern. Multiple linear regression value 77.61 per cent contributed to the extent of variation towards independent variables

Robust perfluorophenylboronic acid-catalyzed stereoselective synthesis of 2,3-unsaturated O-, C-, N- and S-linked glycosides

A convenient protocol was developed for the synthesis of 2,3-unsaturated C-, O-, N- and S-linked glycosides (enosides) using 20 mol % perflurophenylboronic acid catalyst via Ferrier rearrangement. Using this protocol, D-glucals and L-rhamnals reacted with various C-, O-, N- and S-nucleophiles to give a wide range of glycosides in up to 98% yields with mainly α-anomeric selectivity. The perflurophenylboronic acid successfully catalyzed a wide range of substrates (both glucals and nucleophiles) under very mild reaction conditions.Published versio

A Probe into Shifts in Cropping Pattern in Telangana State, India: A Markov Chain Approach

Assessing variations in cropping patterns across various locations is crucial for a better understanding of the agricultural development plan. The goal of the current study was to look at Telangana state's changing cropping patterns. Data spanning the years 2000-01 to 2020-21 were gathered from the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Government of Telangana and they were then evaluated using the Markov chain method. The research's key findings showed that none of the crops in Telangana kept their acreage; instead, the area devoted to each crop changed continually during the course of the study, from one crop to another. The area under crops other than cereals, major oil seeds, pulses has more retention while it lost area to rice, cotton, black gram, chillies, cow gram, ground nut, jowar and mesta. This indicated that there was greater shift in cropping pattern in Telangana State. The selection of crops holds immense potential to elevate agriculture to the forefront of property growth, and it should be a focal point in research and extension programmes