NASAL DRUG DELIVERY: SUCCESS THROUGH INTEGRATED DEVICE DEVELOPMENT

Transmucosal nasal delivery is a promising drug delivery option where common drug administrations (e.g., intravenous, intramuscular, or oral) are inapplicable. Recently, it has been shown that many drugs have better bioavailability by nasal route than by oral route. This has been attributed to rich vasculature and a highly permeable structure of the nasal mucosa coupled with avoidance of hepatic first-pass elimination, gut wall metabolism and/or destruction in the gastrointestinal tract. The physiology of the nose presents obstacles, but offers a promising route for non-invasive systemic delivery of numerous therapies and debatably drug delivery route to the brain.  Intranasal microemulsions, gels and microspheres have gained increased interest in recent years as a delivery system for protein and peptides through nasal route. Since building a more efficient nasal drug delivery device requires not only better device design but  a far more versatile technology platform; one that delivers optimal nasal deposition, with formulation flexibility to work successfully with the many variables of the formulation itself. Thus present review focuses on innovations in nasal drug delivery devices

Explaining the supply-side constraints to export-led growth in selected Pacific island countries

Over the past two decades, an integral part of some Pacific island countries (PICs’) economic policy rhetoric has been export-led growth. However, despite the policy and technical support provided by many international organizations and bilateral donors, and an abundance of natural resources, their export sectors remain narrow and, with few exceptions, export industries have experienced little growth. Therefore, if these countries are to do better, it is critical to understand the supply- side constraints to export-led growth. Hence, the objective of this study was to identify and subsequently analyse the impact of supply-side constraints on export receipts for selected PICs, using Linear Programming (LP) models of export receipts. . The study also provides estimates of the magnitude of the increase in export receipts that may be achieved if some of these constraints are removed.The results show the maximum export receipts that these PICs can achieve, given the supply-side constraints that they face. Finally, the paper provides some policy recommendations for the removal of some of the supply-side constraints

An overview of sea cucumber fishery management in the Fiji Islands

The Fijian sea cucumber fishery began in the early 1800's in response to demand from Asian markets for bêche-de-mer. The fishery has shown classic 'boom and bust' production cycles for much of its life. From 1984-2012 a total of 8,620 t of bêche-de-mer were exported from Fiji. Particularly large volumes were exported in 1987 (>600 t), 1988 (>700 t) and 1996 (>600 t) and declines in export volumes are notable following these peaks. Subsequent export peaks of around 400 t in 2005 and 2011, are considerably lower than those in the 1980s and 1990s and after 2005, annual exports averaged 243 t. Between 2003 and 2012 export volumes of high value species declined from 14-8%, while that of medium value species increased from 50-59%. Sandfish (Holothuria scabra) appeared on export manifests in 2003 and 2004 despite an export moratorium for this species. Despite numerous recommendations to improved sustainability of the Fijian sea cucumber fishery, management measures consist primarily of an export size limit of 7.62 cm for bêche-de-mer. Over-exploitation of the resource and declining sea cucumber stocks have resulted. A historic overview of the Fijian sea cucumber fishery was provided within the context of the various fishery management approached adopted by other South Pacific Island nations. It includes data gathered by interviews with sea cucumber fishermen, bêche-de-mer processors and other stakeholders and makes recommendations for an effective management plan for a fishery that is an important livelihood activity for coastal communities in Fiji

The Efficacy of Ketamine Gargle in Attenuating Postoperative Sore Throat

Introduction: Postoperative sore throat (POST) is a common complication of general anesthesia with endotracheal intubation that affects the patient satisfaction after surgery. The aim of the study was to compare the effectiveness of ketamine gargle with placebo in preventing POST after endotracheal intubation. Methods: Sixty eight patients scheduled for elective surgery under general anesthesia were enrolled in this study. Patients were randomly allocated into two groups, 33 in study group and 35 in control group. Study group patients were asked to gargle with ketamine (50 mg in 1 ml mixed with 29 ml of drinking water) 10 minutes before induction for 30 seconds. Controls were made to do so with 30 ml of drinking water. POST was graded at one, two, four, and 24 hrs after operation on a four-point scale (0-3). The outcome measures were compared between two groups in terms of occurrence of POST and severity of POST at one, two, four, and 24 hr to determine the efficacy of ketamine. Results: Occurrence of POST was significantly less in study group at four hours. Severity of POST was significantly low in study group at one, two and four hours as compared to that in controls. It was comparable at 24 hours. Conclusion: Ketamine gargle significantly reduced the occurrence and severity of POST

“Buoyancy” in granular medium: how deep can an object sink in sand?

The behavior of granular matter is different from either fluids or solids. One may not be able to answer even a naive question such as how deep an object can sink in sand. Answers to the depth of footprints on sand beach and its dependence on grain size have never been seriously studied before and may deserve a closer look and better understanding. Laying a ball of fixed size onto granules, we have measured the sinking depth (SD) of the ball into granules of different sizes and studied the dependence of SD on the sizes of the ball and granules. We find that the SD is very sensitive to the size of granules and the variation of SD on granule size is not monotonic. The maximum SD occurs at r ≈ 1/20 R, where r and R are the radii of granules and the ball, respectively. This ratio does not depend on the density of the ball and the volume fraction of granules. An empirical formula of SD on densities and sizes of the ball and granules are obtained based on the experimental results

CapsFlow: Optical Flow Estimation with Capsule Networks

We present a framework to use recently introduced Capsule Networks for solving the problem of Optical Flow, one of the fundamental computer vision tasks. Most of the existing state of the art deep architectures either uses a correlation oepration to match features from them. While correlation layer is sensitive to the choice of hyperparameters and does not put a prior on the underlying structure of the object, spatio temporal features will be limited by the network's receptive field. Also, we as humans look at moving objects as whole, something which cannot be encoded by correlation or spatio temporal features. Capsules, on the other hand, are specialized to model seperate entities and their pose as a continuous matrix. Thus, we show that a simpler linear operation over poses of the objects detected by the capsules in enough to model flow. We show reslts on a small toy dataset where we outperform FlowNetC and PWC-Net models.Comment: Newer version added to correct issue in the conference name of the previous version uploaded on April 1s

Experiments on Luminous Vapours from Mercury Arc

@IAC

A review on factors affecting the design of nasal drug delivery system

Transmucosal nasal delivery is a promising drug delivery option where common drug administrations (e.g., intravenous, intramuscular, or oral) are inapplicable. Recently, it has been shown that many drugs have better bioavailability by nasal route than by oral route. This has been attributed to rich vasculature and a highly permeable structure of the nasal mucosa coupled with avoidance of hepatic first-pass elimination, gut wall metabolism and/or destruction in the gastrointestinal tract. The physiology of the nose presents obstacles, but offers a promising route for non-invasive systemic delivery of numerous therapies and debatably drug delivery route to the brain. To overcoming problems in nasal drug delivery requires deep understanding of the various factors affecting nasal delivery. Thus present review focuses on various aspects of nasal drug delivery with special emphasis to factors affecting nasal drug administration.Keywords: Transmucosal nasal delivery, hepatic first-pass metabolism, non-invasive, microemulsions, microspheres

Iterative schemes involving several mutual contractions

In this paper, we introduce the new concept of mutual Reich contraction that involves a pair of operators acting on a distance space. We chose the framework of strong b-metric spaces (generalizing the standard metric spaces) in order to add a more extended underlying structure. We provide sufficient conditions for two mutually Reich contractive maps in order to have a common fixed point. The result is extended to a family of operators of any cardinality. The dynamics of iterative discrete systems involving this type of self-maps is studied. In the case of normed spaces, we establish some relations between mutual Reich contractivity and classical contractivity for linear operators. Then, we introduce the new concept of mutual functional contractivity that generalizes the concept of classical Banach contraction, and perform a similar study to the Reich case. We also establish some relations between mutual functional contractions and Banach contractivity in the framework of quasinormed spaces and linear mappings. Lastly, we apply the obtained results to convolutional operators that had been defined by the first author acting on Bochner spaces of integrable Banach-valued curves

Fusarium Wilt: A Destructive Disease of Banana and Their Sustainable Management

Banana is one of the most important fruit crops. The major losses in banana mainly due to the fungal wilt disease which is caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense. The pathogen is mainly soil bone and saprotrophic in nature that’s why its management is very difficult. The yearly losses of banana by this disease in the world is ranging from 60 to 90% and in India 30–40%. Sustainable management of panama wilt is must to overcome these losses occur in banana. The management strategies for longer duration through crop rotation, organic amendment, application of micronutrient like silicon (Si), borax, host-pathogen interaction, hormonal induction of defence response, biological control, transgenic approach, disease resistance developed by somaclonal variation. These approaches are mainly emphasized for long term management of the panama wilt disease