A prospective study of pattern of prescription for acne vulgaris in a tertiary care hospital: an observational study

Background: Acne vulgaris is a common dermatological disorder of the pilosebaceous unit affecting younger age groups but presenting usually at puberty and is of cosmetic concern. There are various treatment modalities available ranging from topical/oral anti-acne preparations to hormonal therapy depending on the severity of acne. Use of synthetic retinoid is highly regulated due to its potential for severe adverse events, primarily teratogenicity. There is a need for periodic prescription auditing. By providing feedback to the prescribers to formulate the guidelines enhances therapeutic efficacy by rational use, minimizes the adverse effects and cost of treatment. Objectives: to assess the prescription pattern for Acne vulgaris.Methods: A medication details and prescribers information are collected in pre-designed proforma along with the demographic details from 210 study subjects after personal briefing about the study. The data was analyzed using SPSS.Results: Out of 210 prescriptions of acne patients, majority were in between 21-40 years (48.09%), M:F ratio was1:1.41, female were 58.57% when compared to males 41.43%. Topical agents accounted for 54.13% and 36.36% of oral antibiotics (most common was azithromycin). Fixed dose combinations accounted for 4.39% and concomitantly administered drugs (antihistaminics, proton pump inhibitors, H2 blockers, emollients and skin protective agents) accounted for 53.82% of the prescribed drugs.Conclusions: Drug utilization study periodically can be an eye opener for the prescribers to prescribe the drugs in a rational way and it could reduce the prescription error and minimizing the untoward effects will subsequently reduce the cost of treatment

Use of QR codes for enhancing access to library resources and services: a case study of IIT Gandhinagar library

156-163The Quick Reference (QR) Code is the trademark for two-dimensional barcode (or matrix barcode). This code system has become a popular technology in the present era because of its fast readability and greater storage capacity compared to standard barcode. The QR code is multidimensional barcode with various color, size, and shapes. The main goal of this code is to direct communities to particular products or resources through links. Quick Response Code is, usually developed, for product promotion like the barcodes. This paper attempts to present a quick overview of the technology and how libraries adopted it early, to promote their resources and services. IIT Gandhinagar library has been one of the early users of this technology for promoting its services amongst its user community. It has adopted and demonstrated the benefits of this technology by applying it to over dozen areas of library services. Because of its ease of use and speed, it has been observed that during last two-three years, acceptance and use of this technology among current generation of students has gone up for retrieving and downloading information. In fact, more number of students have been asking for applying QR in other areas of library services. Authors presents here a successful case study of how QR code technology has been implemented at IIT Gandhinagar Library on an Android based mobile phones and how it has now become a part of routine application for enhancing access to library resources and services

Use of QR codes for enhancing access to library resources and services: a case study of IIT Gandhinagar library

The Quick Reference (QR) Code is the trademark for two-dimensional barcode (or matrix barcode). This code system has become a popular technology in the present era because of its fast readability and greater storage capacity compared to the standard barcode. The QR code is a multidimensional barcode with various colour, size, and shapes. The main goal of this code is to direct communities to particular products or resources through links. Quick Response Code is, usually developed, for product promotion like the barcodes. This paper attempts to present a quick overview of the technology and how libraries adopted it early, to promote their resources and services. IIT Gandhinagar library has been one of the early users of this technology for promoting its services amongst its user community. It has adopted and demonstrated the benefits of this technology by applying it to over a dozen areas of library services. Because of its ease of use and speed, it has been observed that during the last two-three years, acceptance and use of this technology among the current generation of students has gone up for retrieving and downloading information. In fact, more number of students have been asking for applying QR in other areas of library services. Authors present here a successful case study of how QR code technology has been implemented at IIT Gandhinagar Library on Android-based mobile phones and how it has now become a part of the routine application for enhancing access to library resources and services

THEORETICAL STUDIES OF BILIPROTEIN CHROMOPHORES AND RELATED BILE PIGMENTS BY MOLECULAR ORBITAL AND RAMACHANDRAN TYPE CALCULATIONS

Ramachandran calculations have been used to gain insight into steric hindrance in bile pigments related to biliprotein chromophores. The high optical activity of denatured phycocyanin, as compared to phycoerythrin, has been related to the asymmetric substitution at ring A, which shifts the equilibrium towards the P-helical form of the chromophore. Geometric effects on the electronic structures and transitions have then been studied by molecular orbital calculations for several conjugation systems including the chromophores of phycocyanin. phytochrome P,, cations, cation radicals and tautomeric forms. For these different chromophores some general trends can be deduced. For instance, for a given change in the gross shape (e.g. either unfolding of the molecule from a cyclic-helical to a fully extended geometry, or upon out-of-plane twists of the pyrrole ring A) of the molecules under study, the predicted absorption spectra all change in a simikar way. Nonetheless, there are characteristic distinctions between the different n-systems, both in the transition energies and the charge distribution, which can be related to their known differences in spectroscopic properties and their reactivity

Nanofiber fabrication in a temperature and humidity controlled environment for improved fibre consistency

To fabricate nanofibers with reproducible characteristics, an important demand for many applications, the effect of controlled atmospheric conditions on resulting electrospun cellulose acetate (CA) nanofibers was evaluated for temperature ranging 17.5 - 35°C and relative humidity ranging 20% - 70%. With the potential application of nanofibers in many industries, especially membrane and filter fabrication, their reproducible production must be established to ensure commercially viability.
Cellulose acetate (CA) solution (0.2 g/ml) in a solvent mixture of acetone/DMF/ethanol (2:2:1) was electrospun into nonwoven fibre mesh with the fibre diameter ranging from 150nm to 1µm.
The resulting nanofibers were observed and analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), showing a correlation of reducing average fibre diameter with increasing atmospheric temperature. A less pronounced correlation was seen with changes in relative humidity regarding fibre diameter, though it was shown that increased humidity reduced the effect of fibre beading yielding a more consistent, and therefore better quality of fibre fabrication.
Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) studies observed lower melt enthalpies for finer CA nanofibers in the first heating cycle confirming the results gained from SEM analysis. From the conditions that were explored in this study the temperature and humidity that gave the most suitable fibre mats for a membrane purpose were 25.0°C and 50%RH due to the highest level of fibre diameter uniformity, the lowest level of beading while maintaining a low fibre diameter for increased surface area and increased pore size homogeneity. This study has highlighted the requirement to control the atmospheric conditions during the electrospinning process in order to fabricate reproducible fibre mats

Nanoinformatics knowledge infrastructures: bringing efficient information management to nanomedical research

Nanotechnology represents an area of particular promise and significant opportunity across multiple scientific disciplines. Ongoing nanotechnology research ranges from the characterization of nanoparticles and nanomaterials to the analysis and processing of experimental data seeking correlations between nanoparticles and their functionalities and side effects. Due to their special properties, nanoparticles are suitable for cellular-level diagnostics and therapy, offering numerous applications in medicine, e.g. development of biomedical devices, tissue repair, drug delivery systems and biosensors. In nanomedicine, recent studies are producing large amounts of structural and property data, highlighting the role for computational approaches in information management. While in vitro and in vivo assays are expensive, the cost of computing is falling. Furthermore, improvements in the accuracy of computational methods (e.g. data mining, knowledge discovery, modeling and simulation) have enabled effective tools to automate the extraction, management and storage of these vast data volumes. Since this information is widely distributed, one major issue is how to locate and access data where it resides (which also poses data-sharing limitations). The novel discipline of nanoinformatics addresses the information challenges related to nanotechnology research. In this paper, we summarize the needs and challenges in the field and present an overview of extant initiatives and efforts