Ontology-Based MEDLINE Document Classification

An increasing and overwhelming amount of biomedical information is available in the research literature mainly in the form of free-text. Biologists need tools that automate their information search and deal with the high volume and ambiguity of free-text. Ontologies can help automatic information processing by providing standard concepts and information about the relationships between concepts. The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) ontology is already available and used by MEDLINE indexers to annotate the conceptual content of biomedical articles. This paper presents a domain-independent method that uses the MeSH ontology inter-concept relationships to extend the existing MeSH-based representation of MEDLINE documents. The extension method is evaluated within a document triage task organized by the Genomics track of the 2005 Text REtrieval Conference (TREC). Our method for extending the representation of documents leads to an improvement of 17% over a non-extended baseline in terms of normalized utility, the metric defined for the task. The SVMlight software is used to classify documents

Effect of hydrolyzed milk on the adhesion of Lactobacilli to intestinal cells

Milk is an essential part of the human diet and is undoubtedly a major calcium source in human nutrition, accepted well by most individuals. Knowledge on how the components from dairy products support or reduce the adherence of probiotics to the intestinal epithelium is limited. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of acid-hydrolyzed milk on the adhesion ability of two potentially probiotic strains (Lactobacillus plantarum S2, Lactobacillus gasseri R) to in vitro human intestinal epithelial model consisting of Caco-2 and mucus-secreting HT29-MTX co-culture. The adhesion of our tested strains L. gasseri and L. plantarum was 4.74 and 7.16%, respectively, when using inoculum of 2 × 108 CFU ml–1. Addition of acid-hydrolyzed milk to co-culture decreased the adherence by 53.7% for L. gasseri R and by 62.2% for L. plantarum S2. The results of this study evidently indicate the potential importance of the food matrix as a factor influencing probiotic colonization of the gut

Uncovering Productivity Growth in the Disaggregate: Indonesia's Dueling Agricultural Sub-Sectors

The success of seed-fertilizer technologies and government subsidies in attaining nearly self-sufficient rice production in the mid-1980s encouraged the Indonesian government soon afterward to shift resources away from food crops and toward export-oriented crops. These shifts were reinforced by trade liberalization and a sharp devaluation of the rupiah after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which exerted Indonesia’s comparative advantage in tropical perennial products. In the present paper, we ask whether such events have altered Indonesia’s agricultural growth strategy from a food-crop to an export-crop one. With an innovative multi-output stochastic distance frontier model and provincial production and policy-related data from 1985 to 2005, we estimate technology growth by agricultural subsector and efficiency improvement by political jurisdiction. The perennial-crop sector is found to have achieved the highest technology growth rate, followed by the livestock and annual-crop sectors. We find overall productivity growth to have been moderate, and suggest that little of it can be attributed to Indonesia’s public research efforts.agricultural research, Indonesia, Shephard distance function, stochastic frontier, technical change, technical efficiency, International Development, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Sublingual Drug Delivery Systems- Faster Therapeutic Action Dosage Forms

Sublingual means “under the tongue” refers to administrating substances through mouth such that the substance is absorbed rapidly via blood vessels under the tongue. It outweighs orally ingested tablets in rapid onset of action and better patient compliances. The amount of drug absorbed through sublingual blood vessels bypasses hepatic first pass metabolic process giving more bioavailability. These days people lead short period of action so sublingual is the most suitable form of administration. New sublingual technologies address many pharmaceutical and patient desires and convenient dosing for all age groups. Keywords: Sublingual route and patient compliance, dysphagia, sublingual technologies

Particle Engineering Techniques: A Boon in Enhancing Dissolution Rate of Poorly Water Soluble Drugs

For any dosage forms enhancing dissolution is the first criteria i.e. it should give increased bioavailability in order to provide onset of action. In market many poorly soluble drugs are available which are having problem of low solubility. Low solubility of these poorly water soluble drugs are the main issue factor in preparing dosage forms of these drugs as with low solubility enhanced or effective dissolution to reach therapeutic effect is difficult. To overcome these problems there are main engineering techniques came in market which helps in enhancing the dissolution of these drugs. Some of the common use techniques are cryogenic, super critical fluid technology, evaporative precipitation into aqueous solution, nano- milling methods were developed based on the drug properties and required nanoparticles character. Making use of these techniques has increases the in vitro dissolution rates and in vivo bioavailability of many poorly water soluble drugs. This review highlights about the materialistic availability of particle engineering processes recently reported in the literature for enhancing the dissolution properties of poorly water soluble drugs. Keywords: Solubility. Dissolution Rate, Poorly Soluble Drugs, Particle Engineering Technique

Microemulsions: Transdermal Drug Delivery Systems With Enhanced Bioavailability

Microemulsions are preferred because of its advantages like low cost of preparation and enhanced bioavailability due to increased absorption of drug through skin which is achieved by adding penetration enhancers. Most frequently used permeation enhancers are saturated and unsaturated fatty acids like oleic acid . Microemulsions are the systems which can be used as a carrier to enhance the solubility of the drug and they protect the drug from oxidation, degradation and hydrolysis. As this system is directly applied on the skin, there is lesser risk of side effects like toxicity. Thus, microemulsions can be used as safe and effective dosage form to enhance the bioavailability of drugs in the transdermal drug delivery system. This article summarizes the structure of microemulsions, its components, merits and demerits of microemulsion system. Keywords: Microemulsion, transdermal drug delivery, bioavailability

Critical analysis of strategies for PM reduction in urban areas

This paper presents an overview of practical strategies that can be adopted for reducing the particulate matter concentration in urban areas. Each strategy is analyzed taking into account the latest results of the scientific literature. A discussion useful for pointing out some problems to be solved for their correct adoptions completes the paper

Application of strategies for particulate matter reduction in urban areas: an italian case

The paper describes the particulate matter pollution in a Northern Italian city: Varese. The city is distinguished by a particular orographic and meteorological situation, characterized by valleys and heavy rainfalls. Nevertheless the urban area is interested by particulate matter pollution mainly due to heating systems and traffic. Here some corrective strategies in order to reduce PM air pollution have been presented, applied and evaluated by the means of a simplified model which considers emissions and meteorological conditions