Antimicrobial activity of leaf extracts of Pavetta crassipes (hutch) against some respiratory tract pathogens.

No Abstrac

Pharmacoeconomic analysis of drug expenditure in government medical college and hospital, Vijayawada, India

Background: To conduct economic analysis in tertiary care hospital with a view to identify the categories of drugs needing stringent management control.Methods: The annual consumption and expenditure data is obtained from the drug store of government general hospital, Vijayawada, for the period of April 2015 to March 2016. ABC-VED analysis of the drugs are done based on cost and criticality criteria respectively. ABC-VED matrix analysis was done to classify drugs into category I, II, III.Results: The total annual drug expenditure incurred on 299 drug items for the year 2015-2016 was found to be Rs:4,47,04,446. On ABC analysis, 4%, 9.36%, 86.64% of drugs were found to be Always, Better, and Control category items respectively, amounting to 68.92%, 20.05%, 11.03% of annual drug expenditure. VED analysis showed that 32.10%, 45.5%, 22.4% of drug items were Vital, Essential, and Desirable category items respectively, amounting to 35.3%, 37.1%, 27.6% of annual drug expenditure respectively. By ABC-VED matrix analysis, 34.11%, 46.49%, 19.4% of drug items were found to be category I (high stringent), II (medium stringent), III (low stringent) respectively, amounting to 80.76%, 17.46%, 1.77% of annual drug expenditure respectively.Conclusions: The study identified 34.11% of drug items belonging to category I which require high priority monitoring. Inventory management tools must be routinely used for the better control and judicious use of the resources

Grasslands Classification in Yobe State Nigeria Using Integrated Orderly Classification System of Grassland (IOCSG)

Integrated Orderly Classification System of Grassland (IOCSG) was initiated by Professor Ji-Zhou Ren in the 1960s and it has satisfactorily served to direct theory and practice of grassland classification for the last several decades in China. In this study IOCSG is adopted to classify the grasslands in Yobe state Nigeria, using 30 years (1984-2013) data on precipitation and temperature from 12 satellite stations across the state. Humidity (moisture index) was estimated as the ratio of precipitation per annum to annual temperature. The results revealed a trend of decline in precipitation and moisture index with latitude; from 772.63 mm and 0.72 in the south (110 08\u27 N) to 303.81 mm and 0.32 in the northern part of the state (130 27\u27 N), respectively. The average cumulative annual precipitation and moisture index in ten (10) of the stations ranges from 772.63 mm and 0.72 to 436.50 mm and 0.41 respectively. While the remaining two (2) stations recorded 407.77 and 303.81 mm as cumulative average precipitation as well as 0.38 and 0.28 as cumulative average annual moisture index. The Average cumulative annual temperature in the state was \u3e100000C across the stations. Two grassland class; Tropical arid and Tropical extra-arid grasslands were identified in the state at the first level of IOCSG. Therefore, tropical arid grassland management techniques should be fully employed for efficient utilization of grassland resources in the study area and further classification of the grasslands into subclasses using edaphic conditions, according to the IOCSG should be carried out

A questionnaire-based exploratory study on self medication among second year MBBS students

Background: The practice of self-medication is expected to be higher in health science students due to their exposure to knowledge about different diseases and drugs. This study was done to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of self-medication and to compare the impact of knowledge of Pharmacology on it, among second-year MBBS students.Methods: A semi-structured questionnaire consisting of both open-ended and close-ended questions was prepared and given to second-year medical students of Kurnool medical college, Kurnool. Data was analysed and entered in Microsoft Excel (version 2019), and associations were tested using the Chi-square test. The results are expressed as counts and percentages. Statistical significance was p<0.05.Results: Among the respondents, 37.33% are practising self- medication, 54.66% think knowledge of Pharmacology aids students to practice without any dire consequences. Most of the students take for fever (95.33%), (97.33%) for cough, cold, sore throat.84% were aware that it’s not safe to take drugs pertaining to alternate systems of medicine like Ayurveda, homoeopathy. A statistically significant association between knowledge, attitude, practice and gender and residence has been observed.Conclusions: The study shows that students are aware that self-medication is dangerous when followed by lay people. On the other hand, health professionals with knowledge about medications can take self-medication for common conditions without any dire consequences. They are also aware that it’s not safe to take medications that come under alternate systems of medicines, and WhatsApp consultation is not to be encouraged

On the Oscillation of the Generalized Food-Limited Equations with Delay

- The objective of the paper is to find conditions for the oscillation of the food-limited equation. We established conditions for the oscillation of all solutions of the generalized foodlimited equation by transforming the equation to a non-linear delay differential equation and then to a scalar delay differential equation and using the property of the scalar delay differential equation to obtain our result. Similarly we establish conditions for the oscillation of all solutions of the foodlimited equation with several delays by transforming the equation to a scalar differential equation to obtain the oscillatory property

The effect of magnetic field and disorders on the electronic transport in graphene nanoribbons

We developed a unified mesoscopic transport model for graphene nanoribbons, which combines the non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) formalism with the real-space {\pi}-orbital model. Based on this model, we probe the spatial distributions of electrons under a magnetic field, in order to obtain insights into the various signature Hall effects in disordered armchair graphene nanoribbons (AGNR). In the presence of a uniform perpendicular magnetic field (B\perp-field), a perfect AGNR shows three distinct spatial current profiles at equilibrium, depending on its width. Under non-equilibrium conditions (i.e. in the presence of an applied bias), the net electron flow is restricted to the edges and occurs in opposite directions depending on whether the Fermi level lies within the valence or conduction band. For electrons at energy level below the conduction window, the B\perp-field gives rise to local electron flux circulation, although the global flux is zero. Our study also reveals the suppression of electron backscattering as a result of the edge transport which is induced by the B\perp-field. This phenomenon can potentially mitigate the undesired effects of disorders, such as the bulk and edge vacancies, on the transport properties of AGNR. Lastly, we show that the effect of B\perp-field on electronic transport is less significant in the multimode compared to the single mode electron transport.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure

Preliminary antidiarrhoeal activity of methanolic extracts of Securinega virosa (Euphorbiaceae)

Securinega virosa is used as remedy for diarrhoea in tropical Africa, but has not been investigated for its antidiarrhoeal activity. This study was therefore aimed at investigating the methanolic extracts of theleaves, stem bark and root bark for antidirrhoeal activity, using castor oil-induced diarrhoeal model in mice. The effects of these extracts on perfused isolated rabbit jejunum were also evaluated. Themethanolic leaves extract (8 x 10-5 – 1.6 x 10-3 mgml-1) produced a dose-dependent relaxation of the rabbit jejunum, while the methanolic stem bark and root bark extracts (2 x 10-5 – 3.2 x 10-3 mgml-1)produced contraction of the tissue. The methanolic root bark extract produced a dose-dependent protection against the castor oil- induced diarrhoea with the highest protection (100%), obtained at 100mgkg-1 comparable to that of loperamide (5 mgkg-1), the standard agent. The leaves extract also protected the mice but was not dose-dependent. The highest protection (60%) was obtained at thelowest dose (50 mgkg-1). The stem bark extract did not protect the animal against diarrhoea. The preliminary phytochemical analysis revealed that the three extracts contained similar phytochemicalconstituents which include alkaloids, tannins, saponins, flavonoids and cardiac glycosides. However, only the leaves extract contained anthraquinone glycosides. The acute toxicity test revealed the medianlethal dose (LD50) values for the leaves, stem bark and root bark extracts to be 1265, 288.5 and 774.6 mgkg-1 respectively. This suggests that the stem bark extract is relatively the most toxic. These results obtained revealed that the leaves and root bark extracts possess pharmacological activity against diarrhoea and may possibly explain the use of the plant in traditional medicine

Bioconversion of degraded husked sorghum grains to ethanol

Efficient starch saccharification is an essential step towards achieving improved ethanol yields by fermentation. Sorghum grains are important starch sources for bioconversion to ethanol. In the present study, disease degraded (spoilt) husked grains from Nigerian sorghum cultivars were obtained from field sites and subjected to bioprocessing to ethanol. The crude husked grains (comprising husks, spikelet, awn, rachis and pubescence materials) were hammer milled and each meal separately mashed with enzyme cocktails comprising amylase, glucanase and protease enzymes. The saccharified worts obtained were then fermented with the yeasts, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Pichia stipitis (aka Scheffersomyces stipitis), without exogenous nutrient supplementation. Sugars liberated during mashing were determined and it was found that enzymatic hydrolysis of milled sorghum grains was effective in yielding favourable levels of fermentable sugars up to 70g sugar/100g substrate with one particular cultivar (KSV8). Ethanol and carbon dioxide production was measured from subsequent trial fermentations of the sorghum mash and it was found that S. cerevisiae produced ethanol levels equating to 420 L/t that compares very favourably with yields from wheat and barley. Our findings show that crude degraded sorghum grains represent favourable low-cost feedstocks for bioconversion to ethanol with reduced energy input and without additional costs for nutrient supplementation during fermentation. Consequently, our results suggest some economic benefits could be derived from spoilt or degraded sorghum grains

Deep Manifold Traversal: Changing Labels with Convolutional Features

Many tasks in computer vision can be cast as a "label changing" problem, where the goal is to make a semantic change to the appearance of an image or some subject in an image in order to alter the class membership. Although successful task-specific methods have been developed for some label changing applications, to date no general purpose method exists. Motivated by this we propose deep manifold traversal, a method that addresses the problem in its most general form: it first approximates the manifold of natural images then morphs a test image along a traversal path away from a source class and towards a target class while staying near the manifold throughout. The resulting algorithm is surprisingly effective and versatile. It is completely data driven, requiring only an example set of images from the desired source and target domains. We demonstrate deep manifold traversal on highly diverse label changing tasks: changing an individual's appearance (age and hair color), changing the season of an outdoor image, and transforming a city skyline towards nighttime