Utah Digital Newspapers: The past, present, and future

presentationPresentation on the development of Utah Digital Newspapers in the Digital Library at the Mountain West Digital Library Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah

Introduction: Urban revolutions in the age of global urbanism

This special issue, papers presented at an Urban Studies Foundation-funded conference in Jakarta (March 2011), examines the current ‘urban century’ in terms of three revolutions. Revolutions from above index the logics and norms of mainstream global urbanism, particularly the form they have taken as policymakers work with municipal officials worldwide to organise urban development around neoliberal norms. Revolutions from below refer to the multifaceted contestations of global urbanism that take place in and around cities, ranging from urban street demonstrations and occupations (such as those riveting the world in early 2011 when these papers were written) to the quotidian actions of those pursuing politics and livelihoods that subvert the norms of mainstream global urbanism. It also highlights conceptual revolutions, referencing the ongoing challenge of reconceptualising urban theory from the South – not simply as a hemispheric location or geopolitical category but an epistemological stance, staged from many different locations but always fraught with the differentials of power and the weight of historical geographies. Drawing on the insights of scholars writing from, and not just about, such locations, a further iteration in this ‘southern’ turn of urban theorising is proposed. This spatio-temporal conjunctural approach emphasises how the specificity of cities – their existence as entities that are at once singular and universal – emerges from spatio-temporal dynamics, connectivities and horizontal and vertical relations. Practically, such scholarship entails taking the field seriously through collaborative work that is multi-sited, engages people along the spectrum of academics and activists, and is presented before and scrutinised by multiple publics

Formulation and Evaluation of Sitagliptin Phosphate and Metformin Hydrochloride Trilayered tablets

Sitagliptin phosphate when used alone is an oral anti hyperglycemic drug of the dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitor class. It is available as tablets under trade name JANUVIA. Metformin hydrochloride is used alone in the form of biguanide anti hyperglycemic agent for treating non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) and is available as both conventional and sustained release tablets. The objective of the present study was to develop a trilayered tablet of immediate release Sitagliptin phosphate layer and sustained release Metformin Hydrochloride layer. Apart from the aesthetic appeal this trilayered tablet is expected to improve glucose tolerance in patients with the type 2 diabetes by lowering both basal and postprandial plasma glucose, reducing the dose, reducing frequency of administration and dose related gastrointestinal side effects of metformin and improve its bioavailability thus improving the patient compliance. Metformin Hydrochloride has biological half-life of nearly 6 hours. An attempt was made to sustain its release by using two different polymers in two layers. Preformulation studies including drug excipient compatibility studies were conducted for both drugs. Different formulations of sustained release Metformin HCl tablets were prepared by using a combination of hydrophilic polymers like HPMC K100, HPMC K4M, HPMC K15 M, pH sensitive polymer Carbopol 971P, retarding polymer Ethyl cellulose and Low substituted hydroxy propyl cellulose. Sitagliptin immediate release formulations were prepared using cross povidone, croscarmellose sodium and sodium starch glycolate as super disintegrants. The tablets were evaluated for all physico chemical parameters like angle of repose, bulk density, tapped density, Hausners ratio and carr’s index. Based on the invitro dissolution data the formulations SF6, MF9 and MF8 were found to be the optimized formulations for Sitagliptin phosphate and Metformin Hydrochloride formulations respectively. Trilayered tablets were prepared by first preparing Metformin HCl layers namely MF3 and MF8 using lesser compression force. The final compression was made by placing Sitagliptin IR layer (SF6) on the Metformin layers with final hardness of 6.5 kg and evaluated. The IR layer of Sitagliptin phosphate layer disintegrated in 54.67 sec from the trilayered tablet. In vitro dissolution studies of Trilayered tablet were performed in USP type II apparatus. The cumulative % drug release of Sitagliptin phosphate SF6 was found to be 99.65% at 30 min and Metformin HCl MF3 and MF8 was found to be 98.72 % at 12 hrs. From the study it is found that the formulations made from MF3 and MF8 combination of HPMC K15M and HPMC K4M polymers and SF6 Sodium starch glycolate used as super disintegrant was found to show optimum properties of required drug release

Personality Analysis Through Handwriting

This work discusses about computer aidedGraphology i.e. Personality analysis based on handwritten text,in which instead of a Graphologist, a system will be trained toperform the analysis without much human intervention. A realworld dataset of handwritten text samples will be maintained andbased on few features like Margins, Baseline, Size, Zones etc.depicted in each of the samples and extracted through Imageprocessing techniques and , an approximate analysis of thewriter’s personality trait will be done. These traits will then bemapped to the existing personality theories and finally apersonality type, temperament and a detailed report will be givenfor the handwritten sample, as the result of analysis

FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF BILAYERED TABLETS OF MONTELUKAST AND LEVOCETRIZINE DIHYDROCHLORIDE USING NATURAL AND SYNTHETIC POLYMERS

The objective of present work was to formulate and evaluate bilayered tablets of Levocetrzine and Montelukast for treating allergic rhinitis effectively. Anti-allergic medicines (eg, some antihistamines) can cause adverse events such as somnolence and sedation. The Combining Montelukast with Levocetirizine gives additional benefits in comparison with either drug alone and could be considered for patients whose quality of life is impaired by persistent allergic rhinitis. Montelukast sodium is alkaline stable (bioavailability 64%), most of drug being absorbed from the intestine while Levocetirizine Dihydrochloride is acid stable. When tablets of the combination of these are  prepared, they tend to become unstable during the shelf life of the formulation. Hence it is recommended to prepare a bilayer tablet, by formulating Montelukast in sustained release layer and Levocetrizine as immediate release layer as it improves and increases the stability by reducing the acid base interactions of both the drugs in combination there by increasing the bioavailability. Taking this into account different formulations were prepared by wet granulation method using natural Tamarind Seed Polysaccharide and synthetic HPMCK100,K15M and K4M release rate controlling hydrophilic polymers. The formulations were evaluated for hardness, weight variation, friability, swelling index and drug content uniformity. The in vitro release of drug from the formulations was studied in pH 1.2 acidic buffer and pH 7.4 phosphate buffer, and it was found that the prepared tablets were able to sustain the release of the drug upto 12hours. The release of Montelukast and Levocetrizine of both layers from the tablets was found to be diffusion controlled and the release mechanism was non-Fickian based on the n value of Korsmeyer-peppas plot. The FTIR studies were performed on three optimized formulations (F4, F12, F16) and the plain drug controls(Levocetrizine,Montelukast).From the  observed peaks it is evident that the polymers used and the drugs were  found to be mutually compatible chemically. The Pharmacokinetic Studies were performed in two groups of male wistar rats. One group was administered with the optimized formulation containing tamarind Seed Polysaccharide(F12) while Plain Montelukast oral suspension acted as control in the second group.The results indicate that the formulation optimised with 1:4(drug:TSP) was able to sustain the release of montelukast upto 12hours.Insrease in Tmax and AUC(0-α) also were also observed in the studies indicating efficient sustained action and improved bioavailability of the drug. The formulated bilayered tablets using natural polymers provided immediate release of Levocetrizine and sustained release of Montelukast and therefore hold promise as an alternative dosage form in the treatment of allergic rhinitis and bronchial asthma. Key words: Tamarind Seed Polysacharide, Hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose,  Bilayered tablets

Stereoselective synthesis of (-) Cephalosporolide D

A simple and efficient synthesis of eight-membered lactone, Cephalosporolide D has been accomplished from inexpensive and commercially available starting materials. This synthesis utilizes α-aminoxylation catalyzed by L-proline reaction, Jacobsen’s hydrolytic kinetic resolution and Yamaguchi macrolactonization as key steps

Scalable learning of interpretable rules for the dynamic microbiome domain [preprint]

The microbiome, which is inherently dynamic, plays essential roles in human physiology and its disruption has been implicated in numerous human diseases. Linking dynamic changes in the microbiome to the status of the human host is an important problem, which is complicated by limitations and complexities of the data. Model interpretability is key in the microbiome field, as practitioners seek to derive testable biological hypotheses from data or develop diagnostic tests that can be understood by clinicians. Interpretable structure must take into account domainspecific information key to biologists and clinicians including evolutionary relationships (phylogeny) and dynamic behavior of the microbiome. A Bayesian model was previously developed in the field, which uses Markov Chain Monte Carlo inference to learn human interpretable rules for classifying the status of the human host based on microbiome time-series data, but that approach is not scalable to increasingly large microbiome datasets being produced. We present a new fully-differentiable model that also learns human-interpretable rules for the same classification task, but in an end-to-end gradient-descent based framework. We validate the performance of our model on human microbiome data sets and demonstrate our approach has similar predictive performance to the fully Bayesian method, while running orders-of-magnitude faster and moreover learning a larger set of rules, thus providing additional biological insight into the effects of diet and environment on the microbiome