FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF ORAL SELF MICROEMULSIFYING DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEM OF CANDESARTAN CILEXETIL

Objective: The objective of our investigation was to formulate a liquid self micro emulsifying drug delivery system (SMEDDS) of candesartan cilexetil that could improve its solubility, stability, and oral bioavailability.Methods: The prepared SMEDDS was the concentrate of drug, oil, surfactant, cosurfactant. The formulation was evaluated for various tests like solubility, Drug-surfactant compatibility, particle size, zeta potential, in vitro dissolution, etc.Results: The optimized formulation C7IIB showed drug release (99.91%), droplet size (9.15 nm), Zeta potential (-23.2), viscosity (0. 8824 cP) and infinite dilution capability. In vitro drug release of the C7IIB was highly significant (p<0.05) as compared to marketed conventional tablet (M).Conclusion: The present investigation shows that candesartan cilexetil Self microemulsifying drug delivery system can be formulated as unit dosage form. The C7IIB can be further used for the preparation of various Solid SMEDDS(S-SMEDDS) formulations.Keywords: Self microemulsifying drug delivery system, Candesartan cilexetil, Drug release, Stability study, Bioavailabilit

Mutual Funds’ Performance Sensitivity to Funds’ Attributes. Case Study: Saudi Mutual Funds

Це дослідження є внеском у наукову літературу про релігійні взаємні інвестиційні фонди, пропонуючи порівняльне дослідження чутливості ефективності ісламських і звичайних фондів до змін у списку сімнадцяти відповідних атрибутів фондів, усі в контексті саудівського ринку. Досліджуваними показниками ефективності є надлишкова віддача, вибірковість і час. Дослідження проводилося з 2011 по 2015 роки з вибіркою 200 активних саудівських фондів, 137 ісламських і 63 звичайних. Висновки показали, що розмір фонду, комісія за управління, співвідношення готівки та ціна-прибуток не мають значення як для ісламських, так і для традиційних фондів. Крім того, ми помітили схожість у чутливості як ісламських, так і звичайних фондів до обороту, несистематичних ризиків, цільового інвестування, минулих показників, віку та перебування в управлінні. Однак вони по-різному реагують на зміну співвідношення ціни та балансу. З іншого боку, систематичний ризик фонду, відношення грошових потоків до балансу та фактори віри є виключно актуальними для ісламських фондів, тоді як зростання фонду та ціль впливають лише на показники традиційного фонду. Нарешті, вибірковість і терміни виявляються взаємовиключними, що свідчить про спеціалізацію управління. Ця робота є першим порівняльним аналізом такого роду. Більша багаторегіональна вибірка та довший період дослідження дадуть кращу інформацію.This study contributes to the academic literature on faith-based mutual funds, by offering a comparative investigation of Islamic vs. conventional funds’ performance sensitivity to changes in a list of seventeen relevant funds’ attributes, all in the context of the Saudi market. The performance measures investigated are the excess return, selectivity and timing. The study took place from 2011 to 2015, with a sample of 200 Active Saudi funds, 137 Islamic and 63 conventional. Findings indicated that fund size, management fees, expense ratio cash and price-earnings ratio were irrelevant to both Islamic and conventional fund performances. In addition, we noticed similarities in both Islamic and conventional funds’ performances sensitivities towards turnover, unsystematic risk, investment target, past performance, age and management tenure. They however react differently towards a change in the price-to-book ratio. On the other hand, fund systematic risk, cashflow-to-book ratio and faith factors are exclusively relevant to Islamic funds, while fund growth and objective only affect conventional fund performance. Finally, selectivity and timing appear to be mutually exclusive, suggesting management specialization. This work appears to be the first comparative analysis of its kind. A larger, multi-regional sample, and a longer study period will provide better insights

A Cooperative and Hybrid Network Intrusion Detection Framework in Cloud Computing Based on Snort and Optimized Back Propagation Neural Network

AbstractCloud computing provides a framework for supporting end users easily attaching powerful services and applications through Internet. To give secure and reliable services in cloud computing environment is an important issue. Providing security requires more than user authentication with passwords or digital certificates and confidentiality in data transmission, because it is vulnerable and prone to network intrusions that affect confidentiality, availability and integrity of Cloud resources and offered services. To detect DoS attack and other network level malicious activities in Cloud, use of only traditional firewall is not an efficient solution. In this paper, we propose a cooperative and hybrid network intrusion detection system (CH-NIDS) to detect network attacks in the Cloud environment by monitoring network traffic, while maintaining performance and service quality. In our NIDS framework, we use Snort as a signature based detection to detect known attacks, while for detecting network anomaly, we use Back-Propagation Neural network (BPN). By applying snort prior to the BPN classifier, BPN has to detect only unknown attacks. So, detection time is reduced. To solve the problem of slow convergence of BPN and being easy to fall into local optimum, we propose to optimize the parameters of it by using an optimization algorithm in order to ensure high detection rate, high accuracy, low false positives and low false negatives with affordable computational cost. In addition, in this framework, the IDSs operate in cooperative way to oppose the DoS and DDoS attacks by sharing alerts stored in central log. In this way, unknown attacks that were detected by any IDS can easily be detected by others IDSs. This also helps to reduce computational cost for detecting intrusions at others IDS, and improve detection rate in overall the Cloud environment

Multiscaling in passive scalar advection as stochastic shape dynamics

The Kraichnan rapid advection model is recast as the stochastic dynamics of tracer trajectories. This framework replaces the random fields with a small set of stochastic ordinary differential equations. Multiscaling of correlation functions arises naturally as a consequence of the geometry described by the evolution of N trajectories. Scaling exponents and scaling structures are interpreted as excited states of the evolution operator. The trajectories become nearly deterministic in high dimensions allowing for perturbation theory in this limit. We calculate perturbatively the anomalous exponent of the third and fourth order correlation functions. The fourth order result agrees with previous calculations.Comment: 14 pages, LaTe

Magnetic properties in amorphous Co95­xDyxZr5 thin films

Amorphous Co95-xDyxZr5 thin films were prepared by RF sputtering and their magnetic properties were studied as a function of temperature and for the composition range 0<x<30. The mean field theory has been used to explain the temperature dependence of the magnetization. The exchange interactions between Co-Co and Dy-Co atom pairs have been evaluated. The magnetic phase diagrams are presented.Amorphous Co95-xDyxZr5 thin films were prepared by RF sputtering and their magnetic properties were studied as a function of temperature and for the composition range 0<x<30. The mean field theory has been used to explain the temperature dependence of the magnetization. The exchange interactions between Co-Co and Dy-Co atom pairs have been evaluated. The magnetic phase diagrams are presented

the significant effect of size and concentrations of iron oxide nanoparticles on magnetic resonance imaging contrast enhancement

In this study, iron oxide (γ-Fe2O3) nanoparticles (IONs) were successfully synthesized using sol-gel method, and characterized by XRD and VSM. The potential application of the differently sized IONs (22 nm and 30 nm) as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents was investigated. The relaxation time (T2) of the IONs was measured at room temperature and concentration range of 9–84 µg/ml using fast spin echo sequence with six echoes. The size was found to affect the contrast enhancement of the MRI image, with the T2 for 22 nm sized γ-Fe2O3 nanoparticles exhibiting a shorter dephasing compared to the 30 nm sized γ-Fe2O3 nanoparticles. The T2 relaxivity also decreased with increasing concentration (9–84 µg/ml) of the γ-Fe2O3 nanoparticles. Based on the T2-weighted analysis, a better signal (i.e. brighter image) was achieved for the 30 nm sized γ-Fe2O3 nanoparticles. Thus, the use of IONs to enhance MR image contrast is dependent on the nanoparticle size and concentration of the IONs. In general, the results indicate that the synthesized γ-Fe2O3 nanoparticles are promising materials for use as MRI contrast agents. Keywords: Magnetic resonance imaging, Iron oxides nanoparticles, T2 relaxivity, XRD, VS

Invading interfaces and blocking surfaces in high dimensional disordered systems

We study the high-dimensional properties of an invading front in a disordered medium with random pinning forces. We concentrate on interfaces described by bounded slope models belonging to the quenched KPZ universality class. We find a number of qualitative transitions in the behavior of the invasion process as dimensionality increases. In low dimensions $d<6$ the system is characterized by two different roughness exponents, the roughness of individual avalanches and the overall interface roughness. We use the similarity of the dynamics of an avalanche with the dynamics of invasion percolation to show that above $d=6$ avalanches become flat and the invasion is well described as an annealed process with correlated noise. In fact, for $d\geq5$ the overall roughness is the same as the annealed roughness. In very large dimensions, strong fluctuations begin to dominate the size distribution of avalanches, and this phenomenon is studied on the Cayley tree, which serves as an infinite dimensional limit. We present numerical simulations in which we measured the values of the critical exponents of the depinning transition, both in finite dimensional lattices with $d\leq6$ and on the Cayley tree, which support our qualitative predictions. We find that the critical exponents in $d=6$ are very close to their values on the Cayley tree, and we conjecture on this basis the existence of a further dimension, where mean field behavior is obtained.Comment: 12 pages, REVTeX with 2 postscript figure

High Levels of Complement Activating Enzyme MASP-2 Are Associated With the Risk of Future Incident Venous Thromboembolism

Background: Experimental studies have shown that the complement activating enzyme MASP-2 (mannose-binding lectin associated serine protease 2) exhibits a thrombin-like activity and that inhibition of MASP-2 protects against thrombosis. In this study, we investigated whether plasma MASP-2 levels were associated with risk of future venous thromboembolism (VTE) and whether genetic variants linked to MASP-2 levels were associated with VTE risk. Methods: We conducted a population-based nested case-control study involving 410 VTE patients and 842 age- and sex-matched controls derived from the Norwegian Tromsø Study. Logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) of VTE across MASP-2 quartiles. Whole-exome sequencing and protein quantitative trait loci analyses were performed to assess genetic variants associated with MASP-2 levels. A 2-sample Mendelian randomization study, also including data from the INVENT consortium (International Network of Venous Thrombosis), was performed to assess causality. Results: Subjects with plasma MASP-2 in the highest quartile had a 48% higher OR of VTE (OR, 1.48 [95% CI, 1.06–2.06]) and 83% higher OR of deep vein thrombosis (OR, 1.83 [95% CI, 1.23–2.73]) compared with those with MASP-2 levels in the lowest quartile. The protein quantitative trait loci analysis revealed that 3 previously described gene variants, rs12711521 (minor allele frequency, 0.153), rs72550870 (minor allele frequency, 0.045; missense variants in the MASP2 gene), and rs2275527 (minor allele frequency, 0.220; exon variant in the adjacent MTOR gene) explained 39% of the variation of MASP-2 plasma concentration. The OR of VTE per 1 SD increase in genetically predicted MASP-2 was 1.03 ([95% CI, 1.01–1.05] P=0.0011). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that high plasma MASP-2 levels are causally associated with risk of future VTE

Les lymphomes de l’anneau de Waldeyer traitement et pronostic

Les lymphomes non Hodgkiniens (LNH) qui prennent naissance au niveau de l’anneau de Waldeyer constituent une entité bien particulière tant sur le plan clinique, thérapeutique que pronostique. Les auteurs rapportent une étude rétrospective de 44 observations de LNH de l’anneau de Waldeyer colligées entre 1995 et 2002. Une chimiothérapie exclusive aété indiquée chez 80,6% des malades et une association chimio-radiothérapie a été réalisée chez 19,4%. Le taux de survie globale était de 42% à 5 ans. Dans notre étude quatre facteurs de mauvais pronostic ont été individualisés : un âge ≥ à 40 ans, les stades d’Ann Arbor II, III et IV, un taux de LDH ≥ 1,5 fois la normale et la survenue de rechute.Mots-clés : Lymphome, anneau de Waldeyer, chimiothérapie, radiothérapie, pronosti

Skewed distribution of proinflammatory CD4+CD28null T cells in rheumatoid arthritis

Expanded populations of CD4+ T cells lacking the co-stimulatory molecule CD28 (CD4+CD28null T cells) have been reported in several inflammatory disorders. In rheumatoid arthritis, increased frequencies of CD4+CD28null T cells in peripheral blood have previously been associated with extra-articular manifestations and human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection, but their presence in and contribution to joint manifestations is not clear. In the present article we investigated the distribution of CD4+CD28null T cells in the synovial membrane, synovial fluid and peripheral blood of RA patients, and analysed the association with erosive disease and anti-citrullinated protein antibodies. CD4+CD28null T cells were infrequent in the synovial membrane and synovial fluid, despite significant frequencies in the circulation. Strikingly, the dominant TCR-Vβ subsets of CD4+CD28null T cells in peripheral blood were often absent in synovial fluid. CD4+CD28null T cells in blood and synovial fluid showed specificity for HCMV antigens, and their presence was clearly associated with HCMV seropositivity but not with anti-citrullinated protein antibodies in the serum or synovial fluid, nor with erosive disease. Together these data imply a primary role for CD4+CD28null T cells in manifestations elsewhere than in the joints of patients with HCMV-seropositive rheumatoid arthritis