Analyses of Apollo 11 and 12 rocks and soils by neutron activation

Neutron activation analysis of Apollo 11 and 12 rocks and soils, and X ray fluorescence and radiochemistry dat

Business environment in Uganda – Key areas with opportunities

LSE alumna Prajakta Kharkar says Uganda must improve her business competitiveness in order to tap into the eastward-moving centre of economic gravity

Reducing tax avoidance must be a key priority for the Uganda government

LSE alumna, Prajakta Kharkar Nigam, currently posted to Uganda as an Economist on the Overseas Development Institute (UK) Fellowship, examines the challenges and possible solutions to tax avoidance in Uganda

Chinese Development in Uganda: Grant or Loan?

LSE alumna Prajakta Kharkar Nigam warns that closer scrutiny should be given to China’s largesse towards Uganda

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationInadequate care coordination has been identified as a significant problem in patient care, resulting in diminished satisfaction, increased cost, and reduced quality of care. Comprising an estimated 15.6% (approximately 11 million) of the pediatric population, children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) are "those who have or are at increased risk for a chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional condition and who also require health and related services of a type or amount beyond that required by children generally". Caring for CYSHCN is often highly complex, time-, effort-, and resource-intensive, due to complex healthcare conditions, comorbidities, and age of patients. Current electronic health record (EHR) and personal health record (PHR) systems do not adequately support the needs of care coordination. The reasons for this include lack of appropriate tools to support complex care coordination tasks, poor usability, and gaps in information essential for providing team-based patient care. The issues are further amplified while coordinating care for CYSHCN because their health records tend to be voluminous, involve a large care team, and are distributed over multiple systems typically with little to no interoperability. To develop tools that promote effective and efficient care coordination, designers must first understand what information is needed, who needs it, when they need it, and how it can be made available. Our first study focused on identifying and describing information needs and associated goals related to coordinating care for CYSHCN. We found that a critical information goal for care coordination is care networking, which includes building a patient's care team; knowing team member identities, roles, and contact information; and sharing pertinent information with the team to coordinate care. In our second study, we designed and developed two versions of a patient-, family-, and clinician-facing tool to support care networking. We then conducted a formative evaluation and compared the usability, usefulness, and efficiency of the two versions. To enable such tools to help with management of information critical to care coordination, information for care networking needs to be obtained from all information sources involved in the patient's care. In our third study, we identified and assessed prevalent and emerging national data standards to support electronic exchange and extraction of patient care team related data. The findings and innovations from this research are envisioned to help guide the design and development of next generation clinician- and patient-/family-facing applications to support care coordination of complex pediatric patients

Regulation is not the panacea we are looking for to cure ills of savings co-operatives

LSE alumna Prajakta Kharkar Nigam argues that education, not regulation, is what is needed for savings and credit co-operatives to be successful. This post draws upon research Prajakta pursued as part of her Masters’ thesis on microcredit contracts, titled ‘Cash-flow constraints: Impact on borrowers facing frequent repayment obligations’ and later as a research assistant at LSE STICERD

Drugs acting on central nervous system (CNS) targets as leads for non-CNS targets

Out-of-the-box approaches are currently needed to replenish the souring pipelines of pharmaceutical companies across the globe. Here a theme is presented – the use of central nervous system (CNS) drugs as leads for non-CNS targets. The approach is related to the use of existing drugs for new indications. Suitable chemical modifications of the CNS drugs abolish their CNS penetration. These novel analogs may then be screened for activity against non-CNS targets. Careful selection of the appropriate structural modifications remains the key to success

Utilization of cotton plant ash and char for removal of 2, 4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid

Cotton is a common Indian crop grown on a considerable portion of farmland across the country. After separating the useful product (cotton fibers), the other parts of the plant (stalks, leaves, etc.) are discarded as wastes. In most cases, these plant materials are used as fuel in boilers or households. Cotton wastes when ignited in the presence and absence of air produce cotton plant ash (CPA) and cotton plant char (CPC), respectively. However, CPA and CPC produced pose environmental problems such as safe disposal. Thus, there is an urgent need to characterize the physical and chemical properties of these derivatives and to identify their potential uses. This study highlights the potential utilization of CPA and CPC as adsorbents of 2,4-D. The main components in CPA, namely, CaO and K2O, provide micronutrients to the soil and are thus useful as a biofertilizers. Moreover, low manufacturing cost and higher availability favor the use of CPA as an efficient, low-cost adsorbent as well as a potential source of vital micronutrients. The adsorption capacity of CPA and CPC was tested using 2,4 dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) as the representative herbicide. Experimental data were analyzed by Freundlich and Langmuir adsorption isotherms, and these fitted well with the Langmuir model. The adsorption capacity q0 was found to be 0.64 mg/g for CPA and 3.93 mg/g for CPC. Pseudo-first-order pseudo-second-order and intraparticle diffusion kinetic models were applied to experimental data, and the pseudo second order kinetics model showed best fit for the adsorption of 2,4-D on CPA and CPC. Both CPA and CPC were characterized using proximate analysis, SEM images, BET surface area, XRF, FTIR, and CHNS. The BET surface area was found to be 2 and 109 m2 /g, respectively, for CPA and CPC. Adsorption study results indicated that both CPA and CPC are very effective cheap adsorbent for 2,4-D removal

PHARMACOPHORE MODELLING FOR THE DISCOVERY OF SYSTEM XC- ANTIPORTER INHIBITORS

Cancer is one of the major disorders with increasing rates of morbidity and mortality. Recent drug discovery of anti cancer drug has identified several molecular targets and tried to achieve a goal of therapeutic effecative and safe molecule. Amongst these, system xc- antiporter is a novel promising target to control cancer progression. This antiporter is found to be over expressed in majority of cancer cells and functions by transporting amino acids, cystine and glutamate, in opposite directions. System xc- antiporter uptakes one molecule of cystine with the release of one molecule of glutamate in extracellular space. As already known cystine is precursor for the synthesis of glutathione, an in vivo antioxidant which is utilized by cancer cells to combat oxidative stress. At the other side the released glutamate (an excitatory neurotransmitter), when released in higher concentration, may over excite neurones (specifically and brain tumour) causing cell death to metastasise cancer cells. Therefore, through inhibition of system xc- antiporter, it is possible to kill cancer cells by disturbing their redox status along with through prevention of excitotoxcity by glutamate. In context to this, several researches have reported diverse molecules having system xc- antiporter inhibition potential. Amongst these molecules, erastin and its analogues are most potent system xc- antiporter inhibitors but it lacks preclinical data. Moreover, sulfasalazine, a FDA approved drug also showed good inhibition potential against this antiporter and therefore in our study we have attempted to construct pharmacophore model using this series to aid in the discovery of potent inhibitors with desirable safety. Results of this study exhibited successful development of pharmacophore model with phase survival score. Additionally, fit scores of sulfasalazine analogues were also in acceptable range. Hence, the developed pharmacophore model may be used for design of potent System xc- antiporter inhibitors