Design and evaluation of mucoadhesive microspheres of repaglinide for oral controlled release

Gastro retentive dosage forms have potential for use as controlled-release drug delivery systems. Multiple unit systems avoid the “all-or-none gastric” emptying nature of single-unit systems. A controlled release system designed to increase its residence time in the stomach with contact with the mucosa was achieved through the preparation of mucoadhesive microspheres by the emulsion solvent evaporation technique consisting of (I) chitosan mucoadhesive (ii) repaglinide, an oral hypoglycemic agent; and (iii) Eudragit RS-100 as polymer. The microspheres were evaluated for surface morphology and particle shape by scanning electron microscope. The microspheres were also evaluated for their microencapsulation efficiency, in vitro wash-off mucoadhesion test, in vitro drug release and in vivo study. The microspheres were found to be spherical and free flowing. The microencapsulation efficiency was in the range of 61.44±1.16 to 79.90±1.17and microspheres exhibited good mucoadhesive property in the in vitro wash off test. The drug-polymer concentration of dispersed phase influences the particle size and drug release properties. All the formulations were followed by Matrix-Peppas model. The drug release was also found to be slow and extended for 24 h. In vivo testing of the mucoadhesive microspheres in diabetic albino rats demonstrated significant antidiabetic effect of repaglinide. The hypoglycemic effect obtained by mucoadhesive microspheres was for more than 16 whereas repaglinide produced an antidiabetic effect for only 10 h suggesting that mucoadhesive microspheres are a valuable system for the long term delivery of repaglinide.Keywords: Controlled Release, Repaglinide, Solvent Evaporation, Microspheres, Mucoadhesive

Automatic Text Summarization for Hindi Using Real Coded Genetic Algorithm

In the present scenario, Automatic Text Summarization (ATS) is in great demand to address the ever-growing volume of text data available online to discover relevant information faster. In this research, the ATS methodology is proposed for the Hindi language using Real Coded Genetic Algorithm (RCGA) over the health corpus, available in the Kaggle dataset. The methodology comprises five phases: preprocessing, feature extraction, processing, sentence ranking, and summary generation. Rigorous experimentation on varied feature sets is performed where distinguishing features, namely- sentence similarity and named entity features are combined with others for computing the evaluation metrics. The top 14 feature combinations are evaluated through Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation (ROUGE) measure. RCGA computes appropriate feature weights through strings of features, chromosomes selection, and reproduction operators: Simulating Binary Crossover and Polynomial Mutation. To extract the highest scored sentences as the corpus summary, different compression rates are tested. In comparison with existing summarization tools, the ATS extractive method gives a summary reduction of 65%

Closed Form Expressions for Delay to Ramp Inputs for On-Chip VLSI RC Interconnect

In high speed digital integrated circuits, interconnects delay can be significant and should be included for accurate analysis. Delay analysis for interconnect has been done widely by using moments of the impulse response, from the explicit Elmore delay (the first moment of the impulse response) expression, to moment matching methods which creates reduced order trans impedance and transfer function approximations. However, the Elmore delay is fast becoming ineffective for deep submicron technologies, and reduced order transfer function delays are impractical for use as early-phase design metrics or as design optimization cost functions. This paper describes an approach for fitting moments of the impulse response to probability density functions so that delay can be estimated accurately at an early physical design stage. For RC trees it is demonstrated that the inverse gamma function provides a provably stable approximation. We used the PERI [13] (Probability distribution function Extension for Ramp Inputs) technique that extends delay metrics for ramp inputs to the more general and realistic non-step inputs. The accuracy of our model is justified with the results compared with that of SPICE simulations. Keywords¾ Moment Matching, On-Chip Interconnect, Probability Distribution function, Cumulative Distribution function, Delay calculation, Slew Calculation, Beta Distribution, VLSI

INFILTRATING DUCTAL CARCINOMA OF THE BREAST PRESENTING AS BREAST ABSCESS

Invasive ductal carcinoma, also known as Infiltrating Ductal Carcinoma (IDC) is the most common form of breast cancer. IDC starts in the breast's milk ducts and invades the surrounding breast stroma. Breast cancer usually present as a: swelling of all or parts of breast, skin irritation or dimpling, breast pain, nipple pain or retraction, redness or scaliness or thickening of the nipple or breast skin, nipple discharge other than breast milk, or a lump in the axilla. We present a case of a 40 year old female, with no family history of malignancy, who underwent Incision and Drainage (I &D) for Right Breast Abscess 2 months back followed by a non-healing wound at the I & D site, associated with fungating growth and Right axillary lymph node enlargement, diagnosed as IDC with Axillary lymph node metastasis. Immunohistochemical studies showed deficient basement membrane and myoepithelial layer confirming the infiltrative nature

Proposed Framework for Dealing COVID-19 Pandemic Using Blockchain Technology

The production and distribution of COVID-19 testing kits is an urgent and increasingly worldwide requirement, due to the ongoing pandemic. The accuracy of the kit is critically important and to save the world from the faulty kit becomes an issue. The kit before use has to be approved by an authorized medical research agency like US-FDA, ICMR, etc. In this paper, we proposed a framework that ensures that the testing kit is validated by various measures and gives the history of the supply chain of the testing kit. The parties that are used in the supply chain are Notary, Manufacturer, and Validating Party. A Consumer also plays an important role and can punch the batch number to check whether the kit is approved or not. The framework is developed using R3 Corda, a permissioned distributed ledger technology. A permissioned blockchain is used for data privacy and security so that only trusted parties can leave or join the system

Proposed Framework for Dealing COVID-19 Pandemic Using Blockchain Technology

270-275The production and distribution of COVID-19 testing kits is an urgent and increasingly worldwide requirement, due to the ongoing pandemic. The accuracy of the kit is critically important and to save the world from the faulty kit becomes an issue. The kit before use has to be approved by an authorized medical research agency like US-FDA, ICMR, etc. In this paper, we proposed a framework that ensures that the testing kit is validated by various measures and gives the history of the supply chain of the testing kit. The parties that are used in the supply chain are Notary, Manufacturer, and Validating Party. A Consumer also plays an important role and can punch the batch number to check whether the kit is approved or not. The framework is developed using R3 Corda, a permissioned distributed ledger technology. A permissioned blockchain is used for data privacy and security so that only trusted parties can leave or join the system

Prevention of Blackhole Attack in MANET using Certificateless Signature Scheme

Mobile AdHoc Networks (MANETs) are the network of self-configuring nodes. Such nodes communicate through single as well as multi-hop modes without the aid of any centralized administrator or pre-existing network infrastructure. Due to this reason, MANETs have gained a highly significance in modern wireless networking technologies. Such networks are extremely vulnerable to one of the security attack i.e. blackhole attack. It is a malicious node when an attacker is able to send a fake route reply to the originator of a route request packet. Such attackers discard the legitimate packets and replay packets in the whole network thereby adversely affecting network performance. Most of the security protocols for MANET are using bilinear pairing methods to provide security against security attacks and it takes high computing cost for the computation of pairing operations. Nowadays, researchers are using certificate-less signature schemes in distributed environments to provide efficient security. This signature scheme is very popular because it does not use any certificate authority for the management of security certificates. In this paper, we proposed an efficient technique to prevent blackhole attack in MANET using RSA-based certificateless signature scheme without using any bilinear pairing operations. Our scheme provides security against forgery and blackhole attacks and is evaluated under a discrete logarithm problem. Proposed scheme outperforms existing schemes in terms of these metrics viz., throughput, packet delivery ratio, routing overhead and end-to-end delay when we are varying mobility and fixed percentage of malicious nodes. Our proposed scheme not only detects or prevents the blackhole attack but it is also capable to provide important security services viz., integrity, authentication and non-repudiation

Adrenocortical carcinoma with inferior vena cava thrombus: Renal preserving surgery

Adrenocortical carcinoma with tumor thrombus extending via an adrenal vein into the inferior vena cava is uncommon. We describe a left side kidney-preserving surgery in such a patient where, after transection of the main renal vein at the point of insertion of the adrenal vein, the left kidney was being drained by lumbar and gonadal veins

Role of health literacy and primary health-care access in self-care management of hypertension

Background: Globally, hypertension is the leading risk factor for men and women and the largest contributor to premature deaths and diseases in India. Health literacy (HL) and health-care access are important determinants for self-care management of hypertension. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to estimate the prevalence of HL, health-care access, and their importance in the self-care management of hypertension. Materials and Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 104 known hypertensive patients for 2 months from May to June 2022. Data were collected by face-to-face interviews using a pretested, preformed, and validated questionnaire, and tabulated and analyzed using Microsoft Excel and SPSS version 20 software. Results: Most of the participants (80, 76.9%) have low levels of HL. However, more than half of the (62, 59.6%) participants were satisfied with their access to primary health care. The age of the participants ranged from 38 to 80 years, and half of them (54, 51.9%) were middle-aged adults. The majority (66, 63.5%) of the patients belonged to lower-middle socioeconomic status, and 15.4% (16) were living alone. We found poor HL, and primary health-care access is statistically significantly associated with poor self-care management. Conclusion: Our findings confirm that HL and access to primary health care are crucial factors in the self-care management of hypertension in hypertensive patients