Processing-Induced Disorder in Pharmaceutical Materials

This chapter focuses on the major types of pharmaceutical processing methods that have been widely reported to produce disordered material either intentionally or unintentionally. Milling is one of the most frequently used unit operations used by the pharmaceutical industry for reducing the particle size of solids. Thermal processing techniques are mainly used for controlling or improving the release and the subsequent bioavailability of an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API). Techniques such as melt-mixing, spray-congealing, sintering, melt-granulation, and hot-melt extrusion (HME) have developed and evolved rapidly for large-scale pharmaceutical production. Solvent-evaporation-based methods are important processing techniques for both raw materials, such as crystallization of the raw drug, and formulation manufacturing in the pharmaceutical industry. The chapter discusses the processing that can potentially induce the formation of the disordered state during the manufacture of formulations. The widely used solvent-evaporation-based processing techniques in pharmaceutical formulation production include spray-drying, freeze-drying, film casting, and film coating

The Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (2)

On his death, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) left behind around 20,000 pages of manuscripts and typescripts; most of these are still unpublished today. The goal of the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen is to create a machine-readable version of the Wittgenstein Nachlass, including an electronic facsimile and a complete set of machine-readable transcriptions

A Multidisciplinary Approach Toward Improving Bus Schedule Readability

Printed schedules are critical to mass transit mobility, perhaps no more so than to bus transit users who often embark from locations where information is not provided. For economic reasons, they also rely heavily on transit. Schedules are their lifeline. After becoming concerned with the readability of its bus schedules, New Jersey Transit (NJT) enlisted an interdisciplinary research and design team from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) to analyze, redesign, and test the agency’s bus timetables over an 18-month period beginning in 2003. The process included precedent research, community outreach, graphic design, laboratory testing, and survey methods. It began with a literature survey and review of timetables produced by other agencies. Two focus groups were convened to incorporate user viewpoints. Based on these methods and acknowledging the institutional and production constraints of the agency, two prototype timetables were designed for one of the agency’s most complex bus routes. The prototypes and the current schedule for the route were time-tested in a laboratory with 30 participants. A survey was given to the same participants. The analysis of the experimental data was partially inconclusive due to high error rates for all schedules tested. However, in the survey, a majority of participants showed preference for aspects developed in the prototypes, offering the agency important production recommendations regarding font sizes, text orientation and graphic display methods, as well as institutional directives regarding data transfer, maps, zone designations, passenger information, and telephone contacts. This article recounts this process and offers to the larger transit community the conclusions of this interdisciplinary approach, not combined in this manner before, to make bus transit more attractive and efficient

Vinyl polymer-coated lorazepam particles for drug delivery to the airways

Original article can be found at : http://www.sciencedirect.com/ Copyright ElsevierA particle engineering method that adsorbs a microfine vinyl polymer coat to crystalline drug microparticles has been shown to be an effective way to control delivery. However, the means by which the functional performance of such microparticles is altered by the behaviour of the polymers in the microparticle coat remains unclear. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of vinyl polymer coating on the in vitro delivery characteristics of intranasal lorazepam microparticles. A series of four, similarly sized (ca. 10 μm), lorazepam-rich microparticles with different polymer coats were generated. The absorption of the polymer coats appeared to disrupt lorazepam solid state dimer formation in the microparticles, which manifested in a reduction in drug melting point. Mildly cohesive particles (aerodynamic diameter of 32 μm) that allowed rapid drug release (ca. 80% in 5 min) were generated when partially hydrolysed PVA dominated the microparticle coat, whilst fully hydrolysed PVA reduced particle cohesion and retarded drug release (ca. 15% release in 5 min). Infrared analysis showed that the properties of the microparticles were dictated by the strength of the hydrogen bonding in the polymer coat and not the strength of coat adsorption that was facilitated by hydrogen bond formation between the hydroxyl groups of the PVA and the hydroxyl group at position C3 of the lorazepam diazepine ring.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio