Effect of extreme low and high temperatures on the almond moth, Ephestia cautella (Walker) (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae)

he different immature stages of the almond moth, Ephestia cautella (Walker) were exposed to low temperature of -5ºC for different exposure times. Exposure of eggs to 240 to 360 minutes is sufficient to achieve 100% mortality for this stage. Exposed early larval instar to -5ºC for 180 minutes is sufficient to achieve 100% mortality. Exposure of the late larval instars to 300 and/or 360 minutes is effective to achieve a complete mortality for the late larval instars of the pest. The calculated LT50 and LT95 were 113.73 and 208.64 minutes. Exposure of pupae to 300 minutes or more is effective to get a complete mortality for the pupal stage. High temperatures of 45º, 50º, 55º and 60ºC were tested against egg, late larval instars and pupal stages of E. cautella. Mortality tended to be increased with the increasing of temperature and exposure time. Exposure time for more than one hour at 45ºC, 15 minutes at 50ºC and 10 minutes at 55ºC were more effective and led to more than 95% mortality for the egg stage of E. cautella. Exposure of the late larval instars for more than 97.22, 72.17, 17.65 minutes at 45, 50 and 55ºC is sufficient to achieve more than 95% mortality for the late larval instars as indicated by LT95 values. Exposing the pupae to 25 minutes at high temperatures of 50ºC and to 15 minutes at 55ºC is an effective to get complete mortality for the pupal stage. Thus exposure times for more than 90 minutes at high temperature of 45ºC; 33 minutes at 50ºC and/or 11.67 minutes at 55ºC were more effective to achieve more than 95% mortality of the pupal stage of E. cautella.

Variations in certain biological aspects of the cotton aphid, Aphis gossypii Glover (Homoptera: Aphididae) in relation to color of its forms

The stock populations of two groups of Aphis gossypii Glover (Homoptera: Aphididae) were collected from cucurbitaceous plant leaves cultivated in Assiut and the New Valley Governorates, Egypt. Both aphid groups were brought into the laboratory and used as base line of pirimicarb resistance. Pirimicarb LC50 base line was determined by the dipping technique in successive concentrations of the trade form of pirimicarb mixed in water. The LC25 was determined monthly throughout two years and used in the selection.. This procedure resulted four aphid forms at each location (i.e., base line, mixed, light color, and dark color).  It was found that the total nymphal duration of dark forms collected from both locations did not vary significantly from the base line forms. Data of the reproductive biology of aphids from both locations showed that the fecundity period, longevity and productivity of the dark morphs were significantly higher than those of the base line ones

ICH guidelines-compliant HPLC-UV method for pharmaceutical quality control and therapeutic drug monitoring of the multi-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor pazopanib

In this study, an HPLC method with ultraviolet (UV) detection was developed and validated for determination of pazopanib (PAZ), a multi-targeted tyrosine kinase (TK) inhibitor in bulk drug, tablets formulation, and in human plasma. Oxamniquine (OXA) was used as internal standard (IS). The analytical column used for the separation was Nucleosil CN with dimensions (i.d. 250 × 4.6 mm and particle size 5 μm). The separation was carried out in isocratic mode with mobile phase constituting acetonitrile:100 mM sodium acetate buffer (pH 4.5); 40:60, v/v. The developed method was linear in the concentration range of 2–12 μg mL–1 and had a correlation coefficient (r = 0.9998, n = 6). The limits of detection and quantitation (LOD and LOQ) were 0.27 and 0.82 μg mL–1, respectively. The relative standard deviations for the inter- and intra-assay precisions were below 3.61 % and the accuracy of the method was 96.69–104.15 %. The degradation products were resolved from the intact drug, proving the stability-indicating property of the proposed method. The recovery values were 100.17–103.98 % (± 1.81–4.02) for determination of PAZ in human plasma. The results indicated the versatility of the new method in estimation of PAZ during pharmaceutical quality control (QC) and therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM).Keywords: Tyrosine kinase inhibitors, pazopanib, HPLC, UV detection, quality control, therapeutic drug monitorin

Relationships between selectivity of Aphis gossypii Glover and Aphis craccivora Koch to sucrose and maltose and their resistance to pirimicarb

Pirimicarb LC50 base line was determined by the dipping technique in successive concentrations of the trade form of pirimicarb in water. The LC25 was used for the selection every month through a year. In case of 10 sucrose solutions versus water, 8 counts indicated that aphids did not prefer the sucrose solution. After 6 hours the cotton aphid could not discriminate between the sugar solution and water. The discrimination between sugars was enhanced by adding 10% maltose. It was observed that the dark forms of the cotton aphid, A. gossypii and light forms of the cowpea aphid, A. craccivora attracted to the higher sucrose solution than the other forms. The cotton aphid, A. gossypii has a light color as the basic color, transforming under reversible condition to dark green, whereas, the basic color of cowpea aphid, A. craccivora usually black in color, transforming under stress to light brownish. This reversed evidence explained the differences in response towards sugar of the two aphid species.It may be concluded that the dark morphs of A. gossypii, and light morphs of A. craccivora which are considered pirimicarb resistant preferred high sugar levels. In other meaning, the present study proved that dark morphs of the cotton aphid and light forms of the cowpea aphid were resistant to pirimicarb and this resistance was positively correlated with the levels of sugars in the plants. Therefore, plant breeders are requested to pay efforts in screening process of resistant plants to produce plants with low sugar contents to increase the effectiveness of pirimicarb against both species of aphids. 

Selective Spectrophotometric and Spectrofluorometric Methods for the Determination of Amantadine Hydrochloride in Capsules and Plasma via Derivatization with 1,2-Naphthoquinone-4-sulphonate

New selective and sensitive spectrophotometric and spectrofluorometric methods have been developed and validated for the determination of amantadine hydrochloride (AMD) in capsules and plasma. The methods were based on the condensation of AMD with 1,2-naphthoquinone-4-sulphonate (NQS) in an alkaline medium to form an orange-colored product. The spectrophotometric method involved the measurement of the colored product at 460  nm. The spectrofluorometric method involved the reduction of the product with potassium borohydride, and the subsequent measurement of the formed fluorescent reduced AMD-NQS product at 382  nm after excitation at 293  nm. The variables that affected the reaction were carefully studied and optimized. Under the optimum conditions, linear relationships with good correlation coefficients (0.9972–0.9974) and low LOD (1.39 and 0.013 μg mL−1) were obtained in the ranges of 5–80 and 0.05–10  μg mL−1 for the spectrophotometric and spectrofluorometric methods, respectively. The precisions of the methods were satisfactory; RSD ≤2.04%. Both methods were successfully applied to the determination of AMD in capsules. As its higher sensitivity, the spectrofluorometric method was applied to the determination of AMD in plasma; the recovery was 96.3–101.2 ± 0.57–4.2%. The results obtained by the proposed methods were comparable with those obtained by the official metho

Novel microwell-based spectrophotometric assay for determination of atorvastatin calcium in its pharmaceutical formulations

The formation of a colored charge-transfer (CT) complex between atorvastatin calcium (ATR-Ca) as a n-electron donor and 2, 3-dichloro-5,6-dicyano-1,4-benzoquinone (DDQ) as a π-electron acceptor was investigated, for the first time. The spectral characteristics of the CT complex have been described, and the reaction mechanism has been proved by computational molecular modeling. The reaction was employed in the development of a novel microwell-based spectrophotometric assay for determination of ATR-Ca in its pharmaceutical formulations. The proposed assay was carried out in 96-microwell plates. The absorbance of the colored-CT complex was measured at 460 nm by microwell-plate absorbance reader. The optimum conditions of the reaction and the analytical procedures of the assay were established. Under the optimum conditions, linear relationship with good correlation coefficient (0.9995) was found between the absorbance and the concentration of ATR-Ca in the range of 10-150 μg/well. The limits of detection and quantitation were 5.3 and 15.8 μg/well, respectively. No interference was observed from the additives that are present in the pharmaceutical formulation or from the drugs that are co-formulated with ATR-Ca in its combined formulations. The assay was successfully applied to the analysis of ATR-Ca in its pharmaceutical dosage forms with good accuracy and precision. The assay described herein has great practical value in the routine analysis of ATR-Ca in quality control laboratories, as it has high throughput property, consumes minimum volume of organic solvent thus it offers the reduction in the exposures of the analysts to the toxic effects of organic solvents, and reduction in the analysis cost by 50-fold. Although the proposed assay was validated for ATR-Ca, however, the same methodology could be used for any electron-donating analyte for which a CT reaction can be performed

Water Absorption Enhancement Of Sodium Poly Acrylate And Poly(2-Acrylamido-2-Methylpropane Sulphonic Acid) Based Hydrogel Mixtures

Introduction: Hydrogels are hydrophilic polymers which are cross-linked to form three-dimensional structures, which can absorb, swell and retain huge amounts of water or aqueous fluids. Objective: This paper reports the preparation and characterization of Poly (2-Acrylamido-2-Methylpropane Sulphonic Acid) (PAMPS) hydrogel with different crosslinking intensities. Methodology: 2-Acrylamido-2-methylpropane sulfonic acid (AMPS) monomer was purchased from Alfa Aesar Company as reagent grade. It was used as received (\u3e98% purity) without any further purification. PAMPS hydrogel was prepared by free radical crosslinking solution polymerization of AMPS in water at room temperature under a nitrogen blanket in cylindrical glass tubes. The characteristics of the obtained PAMPS hydrogel were compared with those of commercial sodium polyacrylates hydrogel. Results: It was found that decreasing the crosslinker weight improved the absorbance capacity but to a limit. The suggested reasons were discussed. The mixture showed higher absorbance rate than PAMPS, and bigger absorbance capacity than sodium polyacrylates. Conclusion: This paper investigates the effect of crosslinker ratio on the swelling capacity of PAMPS. It was found that as the crosslinking ratio decreases, the porosity of the hydrogel increases, thus improving the swelling capacity

Epidemiological Characteristics and Survival Studies of Rhabdomyosarcoma in East Egypt: A Five-Year Multicenter Study

Background. Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is the most common soft tissue sarcoma in children, it represents 5–8% of childhood malignancies. Aim of the Work. To evaluate the epidemiological characteristics and treatment outcome in two pediatric oncology centers. Patients and Method. A retrospective analysis was performed on 41 medical records of children with RMS during 6 years period. Results. The median age of patients was 6 years with 80.4% below 10 years. Head and neck was the most common primary site. Embryonal RMS was the most frequent histopathologic subtype. Stage IV was the most frequent stage. According to IRS postsurgical grouping classification, group 4 was the most frequent group. There was a significant relationship between histopathologic subtypes of tumor and metastasis, primary site of tumor and histopathologic subtype, age, metastasis, IRS presurgical stage and IRS postsurgical group and outcome. The overall survival rate was 56.9% ± 8.4 and the failure free survival rate was 68.3% ± 7.6. Conclusion. The epidemiological characteristics of our patients are quite near to the worldwide data, apart from the higher prevalence of stage IV and group 4 with most of the primary tumor site in the extremities. CWS2002 protocol of therapy had led to improvement in the curability of the disease

Some subordination and superordination results with an integral operator

In this article, we obtain some subordination and superordination preserving properties of meromorphic univalent functions in the punctured open unit disk associated with an integral operator. Some Sandwich-type results are also presented

Subclass of harmonic starlike functions associated with salagean derivative

The purpose of the present paper is to establish some results involving coefficient conditions, distortion bounds, extreme points, convolution, and convex combinations for a new class of harmonic univalent functions in the open unit disc \ associated with the Salagean operator. We also discuss a class preserving integral operator. Relevant connections of the results presented here with various known results are briefly indicated