Encapsulation of Bifidobacterium longum in alginate-dairy matrices and survival in simulated gastrointestinal conditions, refrigeration, cow milk and goat milk

The aim of this study was to microencapsulate Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis CCUG 52486 using the extrusion method in a variety of matrices, namely sodium alginate (SA), sodium alginate-cow milk (SACM), sodium alginate-goat milk (SAGM) and sodium alginate-casein hydrolysate (SACH), and to evaluate the survival of free and encapsulated bacterial cells under different conditions. The encapsulation yield, size and surface morphology of the microcapsules were evaluated. The survival of microencapsulated bacterial cells and free bacterial cells were evaluated under simulated gastrointestinal conditions as well as in refrigeration, cow milk and goat milk during storage at 4 oC for 28 days. The average size of SACM capsules and SAGM capsules was 2.8±0.3 mm and 3.1±0.2 mm respectively. Goat milk and cow milk based matrices resulted in dense microcapsules which led to better performances in simulated gastrointestinal conditions than SA and SACH microcapsules. The bacterial cells encapsulated in SAGM showed the highest survival rate in cow milk (7.61 log cfu g-1) and goat milk (8.10 log cfu g-1) after the storage of 28 d. The cells encapsulated in SA and SACH and the free cells performed poorly under the simulated gastrointestinal conditions and in all different storage conditions. This study showed that SACM and SAGM are suitable to encapsulate B. longum subsp. infantis CCUG 52486 using the extrusion technique and more specifically, SAGM has a potential to be used as a new encapsulation material for encapsulating probiotic bacteria, resulting milk and goat milk-based products with higher probiotic cell concentrations during refrigerated storage

Backaction-Driven Transport of Bloch Oscillating Atoms in Ring Cavities

We predict that an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate strongly coupled to an intracavity optical lattice can undergo resonant tunneling and directed transport when a constant and uniform bias force is applied. The bias force induces Bloch oscillations, causing amplitude and phase modulation of the lattice which resonantly modifies the site-to-site tunneling. For the right choice of parameters a net atomic current is generated. The transport velocity can be oriented oppositely to the bias force, with its amplitude and direction controlled by the detuning between the pump laser and the cavity. The transport can also be enhanced through imbalanced pumping of the two counter-propagating running wave cavity modes. Our results add to the cold atoms quantum simulation toolbox, with implications for quantum sensing and metrology.Comment: Published version: 5 pages, 4 figures; Supplementary Material include

Particle motion around magnetized black holes: Preston-Poisson space-time

We analyze motion of massless and massive particles around black holes immersed in an asymptotically uniform magnetic field and surrounded by some mechanical structure, which provides the magnetic field. The space-time is described by Preston-Poisson metric, which is the generalization of the well-known Ernst metric with a new parameter, tidal force, characterizing the surrounding structure. The Hamilton-Jacobi equations allow separation of variables in the equatorial plane. The presence of tidal force from surroundings considerably changes parameters of the test particle motion: it increases the radius of circular orbits of particles, increases the binding energy of massive particles going from a given circular orbits to the innermost stable orbit near black hole. In addition, it increases the distance of minimal approach, time delay and bending angle for a ray of light propagating near black hole.Comment: 6 pages, RevTex, the version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Parallel Processing for Range Assignment Problem in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor network is a collection of autonomous devices called sensor nodes which sense the environmental factors such as temperature, pressure, humidity, moisture, etc. The nodes sense the data, process it and transmit to the other nodes within their transmission range through radio propagation. Energy minimization in wireless sensor networks is a significant problem since the nodes are powered by a small battery of limited capacity. In case of networks with several thousand nodes, the simulation of algorithms can be very slow. The parallel computing model provides significantly faster simulation time for larger networks. Parallel processing involves executing the program instructions by dividing them among multiple processors with the objective of reducing the running time. So, we propose algorithms for the range assignment problem in wireless sensor networks using the parallel processing techniques. We also discuss the complexity of the proposed algorithms and significance of the parallel processing techniques in detail. The proposed techniques will be useful for implementing the distributed algorithms in WSNs

Drug utilization study of anti-hypertensive drugs in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Hypertension is a major non-communicable disease and a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. The antihypertensive drugs used for its management constitute a significant portion of the medicines prescribed in a health care centre. The aim of our study was to analyse the utilization pattern of anti-hypertensive drugs at a tertiary care hospital in accordance with the WHO prescription indicators.Methods: A prospective cross sectional observational study was carried out in the outpatient of general medicine department of Osmania General Hospital. The prescriptions of the hypertensive patients visiting the outpatient were monitored. From the data collected, the prescription pattern of antihypertensive drugs, and WHO prescription indicators, were analysed.Results: Out of the 301study subjects, 134 (44.51%) were males and 167 (55.48%) were females, with the maximum number of patients (197) falling in the age group 51-70 years. Among the antihypertensive drugs prescribed, Amlodipine was most frequently prescribed (53.15%). The frequently used drugs for monotherapy - amlodipine (26.91%) and for two drug therapy - amlodipine+enalapril (17.27%), and for three drug therapy - atenolol+enalapril+nifedipine (2.32%). The WHO prescribing indicators as analyzed from the data collected are; Average number of drugs prescribed per encounter - 5.64/prescription, Percentage of medicines prescribed by generic name - 89.22%, Percentage of medicines prescribed from essential drug list -90.17% .Conclusions: The study provides an insight into antihypertensive drug usage pattern in tertiary care hospital and their rational use. The study emphasizes the need for preventive measures and effective educative measures in the population about hypertension

PRESCRIBING PATTERN OF ANTIHYPERTENSIVE DRUGS BASED ON COMPELLING INDICATIONS WITH HYPERTENSION

Objective: The aim of the study is to assess the various prescribing patterns in hypertension with different compelling indications.Methods: It is a prospective observational study and carried out for a period of 1 y from Feb-2014 to Feb-2015. All the required data was collected from patients through personal interview and prescriptions. The data collected from the participants was entered into Microsoft excel spreadsheet and descriptive statistics were used. The mean and standard deviation (SD) were calculated.Results: A total of 394 hypertensive patients with different comorbidities were included in which 251(63.70%) males and 143(36.29%) females were present with a mean (SD) age of 59.21±1.54. The most commonly reported first three co-morbidities along with hypertension were diabetes mellitus 191 (48.47%), stroke accounts for 57 (14.46%) and coronary artery disease in 32 (8.12%). Monotherapy was given in almost 200 (50.76%) patients and dual drug therapy was indicated in 166 (42.13%) patients, triple therapy was used only in 24 (6.09%) patients in the total sample size. Quadruple therapy is the least preferred combination therapy accounts only in 4 (1.01%) patients.Conclusion: We conclude that calcium channel blockers and angiotensin II receptor blockers were the most commonly prescribed class of drugs either alone or in combination with other class of drugs for effective control of blood pressure patients with different compelling indications. Monotherapy was preferred than combination therapy.Â