Ethnoveterinary studies of medicinal plants used to treat livestock in the Haridwar region of Uttarakhand, India

Ethnoveterinary practices are still prevalent in rural livestock healthcare. This research contributes significantly to the understanding of biological resources employed in ethnoveterinary practices in the Haridwar district of Uttarakhand. This current study focuses on ethnoveterinary knowledge among ethnic populations in Haridwar and quantitatively documented the traditional knowledge about the usage of different medicinal herbs. The field survey was carried out at four sampling sites, i.e., Chilla range, Mohand range, Vindhyavasini hills, and Shyampur range. The ethnoveterinary information was documented and collected in the study areas through interviews, questionnaires, and group discussions with ethnic communities and traditional healers, primarily elderly shepherds and farmers. The collected data were quantitatively analysed utilizing the informant consensus factor (ICF), fidelity level (FL), and use value (UV). In this study, 102 medicinal plant species were identified in which herbs (58.8%) were the maximum used life forms. Leaves (27.1%) were found to be the most commonly used plant part. The oral mode of medication was used most often in the ethnoveterinary practices (79.4%) used. Quantitative analysis revealed that the most important species having high UV values for curing livestock was Zingiber officinale (L) (UV = 2.67). FL% values ranged between 27.8 to 100% and ICF values ranged from 0.97 to 0.99. This study reveals that a large variety of medicinal plant species are of great ethnoveterinary relevance and are used by informants in Haridwar to treat cattle ailments. Further phytochemical and pharmacological studies would be needed to determine the usefulness and safety of the identified plants, allowing communities to use them in a more cost-effective, and safe manner

Development of a Novel Nanotechnology-Based Ophthalmic Drug Delivery Device

Topical delivery by eye drops, which accounts for approximately 90% of all ophthalmic formulations, is extremely inefficient. Only approximately 5% of the drug applied as drops penetrates the outer layer of the eye and reaches the target, while the rest is lost due to tear drainage. A number of conditions like glaucoma, conjunctivitis, and proliferative retinopathy need a sustained release of drug inside the eye for drug to be therapeutically effective. In addition to eye drops, other ocular drug delivery systems include drug-loaded liposomes or nanoparticles and drug-loaded contact lenses (hydrogels). Particle drug delivery systems also have difficulty penetrating the outer layer of the eye and can be lost before the drug can be released. Contact lens delivery systems often show a burst release with poor release over long periods of time. To improve sustain delivery of drugs to the eye, we have designed a novel system that includes drug-loaded nanoparticles suspended within a thin, membrane that can be attached to a standard commercial-grade contact lens for support. The lens system will provide constant contact with the eye's surface and the particles will supply a continuous release of medication, resulting in more drug reaching the target. First, PLGA nanoparticles, synthesized by the emulsion solvent evaporation technique, are loaded with the hydrophobic drug lidocaine. Next, the nanoparticles are loaded within a thin, collagen membrane that can be stored dried, and later rehydrated and attached to a contact lens for delivery to the eye. Drug loading and drug release rates must be controlled within the novel delivery system in order to ensure that therapeutic levels of the drug are delivered safely to the eye. The PLGA nanoparticles were found to be irregular in shape, 247 nm in diameter, and contained 5.17 wt% of lidocaine. The nanoparticles loaded into the collagen membrane did not have a significant effect on light transmittance through the membrane, compared to a commercially available contact lens. For initial drug release in the first 48 hours, the complete lens system, nanoparticles only, and collagen membrane only released 21.8%, 53.0% and 7.6% of the initial drug loading, respectively. For the first 400 hours tested, the complete lens system, nanoparticles only, and collagen membrane only released 20.8%, 63.9 and 7.0% of the initial drug loading, respectively.School of Chemical Engineerin

A stochastic control approach for scheduling multimedia transmissions over a polled multiaccess fading channel

We develop scheduling strategies for carrying multimedia traffic over a polled multiple access wireless network with fading. We consider a slotted system with three classes of traffic (voice, streaming media and file transfers). A Markov model is used for the fading and also for modeling voice packet arrivals and streaming arrivals. The performance objectives are a loss probability for voice, mean network delay for streaming media, and time average throughput for file transfers. A central scheduler (e.g., the access point in a single cell IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN)) is assumed to be able to keep track of all the available state information and make the scheduling decision in each slot (e.g., as would be the case for PCF mode operation of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN). The problem is modeled as a constrained Markov decision problem. By using constraint relaxations (a linear relaxation and Whittle type relaxations) an index based policy is obtained. For the file transfers the decision problem turns out to be one with partial state information. Numerical comparisons are provided with the performance obtained from some simple policies

Surface Waves In Homogeneous Visco-Elastic Media Of Higher Order Under The Influence Of Gravity And Surface Stresses

The aim of the present paper is to investigate the surface waves in a homogeneous, isotropic, visco-elastic solid medium of nth order, including time rate of strain under the influence of gravity and surface stresses. The theory of generalized surface waves is developed to investigate particular cases of waves such as the Stoneley, Rayleigh and Love waves. Corresponding equations have been obtained for different cases. These reduced to classical results, when the effects of gravity, surface stresses and viscosity are ignored. Keywords: Gravity, Surface waves, Visco-elasticity, Surface stresses