Layered Double Hydroxide Nanocarrier for Controlled Delivery of Drug Molecules

Ibuprofen intercalated Mg-Al Layered Double Hydroxide nanohybrids have been prepared for controlled delivery of anti-inflammatory drug molecule ibuprofen (IBU). NSAID such as ibuprofen in anionic form has been intercalated in situ into the interlayer space of LDH nanoparticle during coprecipitation of hydroxides. LDH-drug nanohybrids have been characterized using DLS, XRD, FTIR, and EDX. The XRD patterns shows a decrease in diffraction angle and anincrease in the interlayer spacing of basal planes of LDH-IBU which is due to the presence of ibuprofen in the interlayer. FTIR analysis indicates that ibuprofen molecules are intercalated into the hydroxide interlayer space and are stabilized by electrostatic forces, intermolecular bonds and Vanderwall’s interaction. Stretching vibration of hydroxyl group of ibuprofen at 2980 cm-1 in LDH-IBU confirms the presence of ibuprofen in the interlamellar space of LDH-IBU. Drug release behaviour of LDH-drug nanohybrids have been evaluated in vitro using UV-Visible spectroscopy in simulated body fluid (SBF) of physiological pH. The drug release behaviour of LDH-IBU nanohybrid shows an initial burst release followed by a slower, steady and sustained release for later time period and importantly more than 95 % of drug was released in 72 hours in SBF

A questionnaire based study to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of rationale use of antibiotics among undergraduate dental students in a tertiary care dental hospital of South India

Background: To assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of rational use of antibiotics among dental students and make necessary interventions suitable to meet their need and aspiration.Methods: Questionnaire was administered to the students of a dental college hospital to assess their knowledge, attitude and practice about rational use of antibiotics. Data was analysed after entering in to a Microsoft excel sheet and by using descriptive statistics.Results: The response rate of our study was 100%. Large majority (94%) of the students knew that antibiotics were useful in bacterial infections. More than half of the students (63.7%) believed that antibiotic resistance is a threat to mankind. A very less percentage (23.3%) of students had ever attended (Continuous Medical Education) CME regarding the rational use of antibiotics.Conclusions: This study showed that that most of the students possessed average knowledge about antibiotics. Their attitude was also not satisfactory towards rational use of antibiotics and same was true for the practice as well. Educational intervention is utmost essential to improve their KAP regarding rational use of antibiotics

Meldonium: drug which brought disrepute to sport

World of sports have been rocked by doping scandals every now and then and World Anti-Doping Agency(WADA) has banned several offending drugs at different times to counter this menace. Meldonium is the recent addition to the long list of drugs banned by WADA to prevent its misuse among the athletes. Meldonium is a carnitine synthesis inhibitor and has been approved by some European countries for the management of cardiac diseases like angina pectoris and congestive cardiac failure. Apart from these, it has numerous other indications like bronchial asthma, bronchitis and retinopathies. It had also been used by athletes across the world because of its presumptive role in increasing the performance

Damping of fixed-fixed welded joints

Welded joints are often used to fabricate assembled structures in machine tools, automotive and many such industries requiring high damping. The damping mechanism of welded jointed structures can be explained by considering the energy loss due to friction and the dynamic slip produced at the interfaces. The frictional damping is evaluated from the relative slip between the jointed interfaces and is considered to be the most useful method for investigating the structural damping. The theoretical analysis proposes two different methods to calculate damping: classical method and finite element method. The damping characteristics in jointed structures are influenced by the intensity of pressure distribution, micro-slip and kinematic coefficient of friction at the interfaces and the effects of all these parameters on the mechanism of damping have been extensively studied. All the above vital parameters are largely influenced by the thickness ratio of the beam and thereby affect the damping capacity of the structures. In addition to this, number of layers, beam length and distance between two take welding also play key roles on the damping capacity of the jointed structures quantitatively. It is established that the damping capacity can be enhanced appreciably using larger beam length and distance between two welded points as well as lower thickness ratio of the beams. Further improvement in damping is possible with the use of more number of layers compared to its equivalent solid one. This design concept of using layered structures with welded joints can be effectively utilized in trusses and frames, aircraft and aerospace structures, bridges, machine members, robots and many other applications where higher damping is required. Extensive experiments have been conducted on a number of mild steel specimens under different initial conditions of excitation for establishing the authenticity of the theory developed

Color and Shape Recognition

The object "car" and "cat" can be easily distinguished by humans, but how these labels are assigned? Grouping these images is easy for a person into different categories, but its very tedious for a computer. Hence, an object recognition system finds objects in the real world from an image. Object recognition algorithms rely on matching, learning or pattern recognition algorithms using appearance-based or feature-based techniques. In this thesis, the use of color and shape attributes as an explicit color and shape representation respectively for object detection is proposed. Color attributes are dense, computationally effective, and when joined with old-fashioned shape features provide pleasing results for object detection. The procedure of shape detection is actually a natural extension of the job of edge detection at the pixel level to the difficulty of global contour detection. A tool for a systematic analysis of edge based shape detection is provided by this filtering scheme. This enables us to find distinctions between objects based on color and shape

Effect of educational intervention on the knowledge and attitude on prescribing amongst interns of a tertiary care hospital: a questionnaire based study

Background: Prescribing correct therapy is the essential part of physicians and therefore, adequate knowledge and confidence on drugs efficacy, safety, cost, and convenience is important. Understanding the knowledge and perceptions of medical students will help to identify the problems in clinical pharmacology teaching. Prescribing performance and competence can be significantly improved by training and giving feedback to the prescriber. The objective of the study was to evaluate and compare the effect of educational intervention in enhancing the knowledge of medical interns on prescribing practice.Methods: A Cross sectional, Educational Interventional observational study was conducted using two copies of a pretested validated questionnaire (Pre & Post CME) with 15 questions among 110 MBBS interns. They were subjected to a continuous medical education on rational prescription writing followed by a hand’s on training on prescription writing in which they were divided into 9 batches and asked to prescribe for the case scenario given to them and the same was audited and feedback was given.Results: Out of 110 internees’, 105 (95.50%) and 95 (96.90%) had completely filled the pre & post educational intervention questionnaire. The overall knowledge and attitude of interns has improved after the intervention. Significant increase (P value < 0.0001) in the Mean + Standard deviation value from 5.81 + 2.1 to 7.35 + 3.18 is noted on applying Paired t Test. All the prescriptions were rational. The formats of their prescriptions were scrutinized and the precise way of writing the same was explained to the interns.Conclusions: This study clearly shows that early sensitization of Physicians about rational prescription writing during Internship phase by means of educational intervention/training program can reduce the number of prescription errors

Glycosylation Effects on FSH-FSHR Interaction Dynamics: A Case Study of Different FSH Glycoforms by Molecular Dynamics Simulations

This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedicationThe gonadotropin known as follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) plays a key role in regulating reproductive processes. Physiologically active FSH is a glycoprotein that can accommodate glycans on up to four asparagine residues, including two sites in the FSH alpha subunit that are critical for biochemical function, plus two sites in the beta subunit, whose differential glycosylation states appear to correspond to physiologically distinct functions. Some degree of FSH beta hypo-glycosylation seems to confer advantages toward reproductive fertility of childbearing females. In order to identify possible mechanistic underpinnings for this physiological difference we have pursued computationally intensive molecular dynamics simulations on complexes between the high affinity site of the gonadal FSH receptor (FSHR) and several FSH glycoforms including fully-glycosylated (FSH24), hypo-glycosylated (e.g., FSH15), and completely deglycosylated FSH (dgFSH). These simulations suggest that deviations in FSH/FSHR binding profile as a function of glycosylation state are modest when FSH is adorned with only small glycans, such as single N-acetylglucosamine residues. However, substantial qualitative differences emerge between FSH15 and FSH24 when FSH is decorated with a much larger, tetra-antennary glycan. Specifically, the FSHR complex with hypo-glycosylated FSH15 is observed to undergo a significant conformational shift after 5-10 ns of simulation, indicating that FSH15 has greater conformational flexibility than FSH24 which may explain the more favorable FSH15 kinetic profile. FSH15 also exhibits a stronger binding free energy, due in large part to formation of closer and more persistent salt-bridges with FSHR.This research was supported by National Institute of Health Grant P01 AG-029531 to GRB. LiS Consulting provided support in the form of a salary for GHL, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific role of this author is articulated in the 'author contributions' section

Design of single ended primary inductor DC-DC converter

In modern age different portable electronic equipment have benefited from a power converter is able to achieve high efficiency with a wide input and output voltage ranges with a small size. But conventional power converter can’t maintain a wide operation range with high efficiency, especially if up-and-down voltage conversion has to be achieved. These characteristics can be obtained in a single ended primary inductor converter (SEPIC). Some limitation in conventional buck boost converter like inverted output ,pulsating input current, high voltage stress make it unreliable for wide range of operation. So to get rid of this SEPIC converter is used. In this thesis ideal method of designing passive component of SEPIC is described, which is a DC-DC converter that provides a positive regulated output voltage from an input voltage. It also operates as a buck and boost converter. The SEPIC also has a simple controller that provides low noise operation. The experimental result of SEPIC is well studied by designing open loop hardware model and observing the waveforms in oscilloscop

A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY EVALUATION OF DIAGNOSTIC IMPLICATIONS OF PLATELET INDICES IN THROMBOCYTOPENIA.

Introduction: Thrombocytopenia (TCP) refers to a reduction of platelet count below 150 x 109/ L; it’s not a disease entity by itself, but a finding that may result from a number of disease processes. Automated hematology analyzers that determine the Mean Platelet Volume (MPV), Platelet Distribution Width (PDW), Plateletcrit (PCT), and Platelet Large Cell Ratio (P-LCR), could be very helpful to facilitate the differential diagnosis of thrombocytopenia and to monitor thrombocytopenic conditions. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study of platelet indices of 512 thrombocytopenic samples by automated hematology analyzers was done. Results: The cases of thrombocytopenia were classified into hypo-productive (362 cases) and hyper-destructive (150) groups. A most common cause of hypo-productive and hyper-destructive thrombocytopenia was Aplastic anemia and ITP, respectively. All the indices were significantly higher (p-value &lt; 0.05) in hyper-destructive TCP compared to hypo-productive TCP, except Plateletcrit. Conclusion: The results of the present study show platelet indices to be a useful and reliable test to differentiate between hyper-destructive thrombocytopenia from the hypo-productive type with statistically significant differences

Identification of a suitable clustering method and allocation strategy for core set development in salt stress tolerant rice (Oryza sativa) germplasm

Preserving genetic diversity in repository of germplasm is essential for crop breeding programs. However, maintenance and protection of all the germplasms in gene bank is difficult due to its voluminous size. Hence the development of core set with minimum number of germplasm representing maximum genetic diversity of the population has become an alternative. From the available clustering methods and allocation strategies, identifying a suitable combination is essential for the development of species-specific core set. In the present study, data on 219 salt stress tolerant rice (Oryza sativa L.) germplasm accessions with 14 phenotypic traits and 2915 genome wide Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) is considered to identify a suitable combination of clustering method and allocation strategy for core set development. Eight different combinations consisting of two clustering methods, viz. Ward’s and UPGMA along with four different allocation strategies, viz. L, D, LD and NY allocation with three level of sampling intensities (20%, 25% and 30%) have been tried. Based on the study carried out during 2013-14 at Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute, New Delhi, it is concluded that the Ward’s clustering method with NY allocation, irrespective of sampling intensity, is suitable for developing core set with maximum diversity