Microwave modulated transdermal drug delivery using chitosan nanocarrier / Asif Nawaz

The chitosan has been used as the primary excipient in transdermal particulate dosage form design. This study investigated the transdermal drug delivery profiles and mechanisms of chitosan nanoparticles and their cellular uptake mechanisms by melanoma cells as a function of nanoparticles attributes and pre-treatment effects of skin by microwave. Low molecular weight chitosan of smaller size, higher zeta potential and degree of deacetylation were obtained via microwave ligation of polymer chains at solution state. Low molecular weight chitosan nanoparticles, loaded with free or conjugated 5-fluorouracil, were prepared by nanospray-drying technique with tween 20 and span 20 as additives. Folate was covalently attached to the chitosan-carboxymethyl 5- fluorouracil conjugate when necessary and subjected to nanoparticulation process. The transdermal drug delivery profiles of chitosan-carboxymethyl 5-fluorouracil nanoparticles across the untreated and microwave-treated skins (2450 MHz 5 min, 5 + 5 min; 3985 MHz 5 min) were examined, against microstructural changes of skin. Both constituent materials of nanoparticles and drug encapsulation were required to succeed the transdermal drug delivery. The drug transport was mediated via nanoparticles carrying the drug across the skin and/or diffusion of the earlier released drug molecules from skin surfaces

Drug Resistance in Re-treatment Cases of Pulmonary Tuberculosis by Using the Drug Sensitivity Test

Background: Drug resistant tuberculosis (TB), particularly multidrug resistant (MDR) represents a major global public health problem particularly in developing countries like Pakistan. Different studies have found that Drug resistant TB is associated with a higher risk of treatment failure and death. This study was done to determine the magnitude of drug resistance among retreatment cases. Objective: To determine the frequency of drug resistance in re-treatment cases of pulmonary tuberculosis by using the Drug Sensitivity Test (DST). Material and methods: Tubes containing LJ medium were separately supplemented with following drugs in each tube (Streptomycin 10 µg, Isoniazid 1 µg, Ethanbutaol 10 µg, Rifampicin 1 µg, Pyrazinamide 100 µg, Ethionamide 5 µg, Kanamycin 6 µg, Amikacin 6 µg, Ofloxacin 1 µg, Capremycin 10 µg). Any amount of growth observed in any tube with drug was considered as Resistant. If no growth observed in any of those tubes then it was Sensitive. Results: Of these 265 study cases, 157 (59.2) were male patients and 108 (40.8%) were female patients. Mean age of our study cases was 34.16 ± 8.24 years (with minimum age was 20 years while maximum age was noted to be 48 years). Mean weight of our study cases was 59.38 ± 7.54 Kg (with minimum weight was 48 Kg while maximum weight was 75 Kg). Of these 265 retreatment cases, 74 (27.9%) were of treatment failure, with relapse 53 (20%) and 138 (52.1%) were defaulters of the treatment. Drug resistance was noted in 170 (64.2%) of our study cases while 95 (35.8%) showed drug sensitivity. Conclusion: Very High frequency of drug resistance was observed among retreatment patients in our study. Failure to the compliance with treatment (defaulter of treatment) was major risk factor observed in our study. Drug resistance was significantly associated with increasing age, relapse of tuberculosis, defaulter of treatment and diabetes mellitus. More studies are required from different parts of Pakistan to generate database at National level to combat this menace. There is a need to design well directed massive awareness campaign to educate general public and to bring awareness among targeted population. Keywords: Pulmonary tuberculosis, retreatment, drug resistance

Efficiency, Scale Economies, and Profitability of the US Commercial and Savings Banks: Recent Evidence

The importance of researching the ways of building an efficient and stable banking sector encouraged the endeavour of pursuing this research. With an unbalanced panel of 454 US banks including 394 commercial and 60 savings banks and 5265 observations, this study has analysed both efficiency and profitability of these banks during 2003-2018. The use of Battese and Coelli (1995) Stochastic Frontier model provided the chance of simultaneously estimating the efficiency levels of the banks and analysing the determinants of cost and profit efficiency. Further, the System Generalised Method of Moments (SGMM) is used to investigate the important bank-specific, industry-specific, and macroeconomic determinants of US commercial and savings banks’ profitability. The efficiency results indicate that the overall cost efficiency is statistically higher than the profit efficiency with a score of 92.1% and 63.59% respectively. Although the global financial crisis did not affect cost efficiency much, but it had a shattering effect on the profit efficiency of the US banks. Moreover, it is found that savings banks in the USA are more cost efficient than the commercial banks and commercial banks are more profit efficient than savings banks; there is no significant differences between the cost and profit efficiencies of privately or publicly owned banks; and foreign banks are less cost and profit efficient compare to their domestic counterparts. Furthermore, the medium, large and very large banks experienced the lowest cost and profit efficiency scores during the studied period, however, on average banks are enjoying economies of scale in terms of the outputs produced. Besides, among the three largest banks chosen for bank level efficiency analysis, Bank of America suffered most in terms of both cost and profit efficiency, J.P. Morgan Chase experienced the most vulnerable profit efficiency and Wells Fargo’s profit efficiency score is the most stable one and had always been the highest. The analyses of the determinants of cost and profit inefficiency influencing determinants reveal that the cost inefficiency gets reduced with the increase of US commercial and savings banks’ capital level, banking industry’s concentration level, and with the economic growth. However, increase in banks’ assets, liquidity, operating expenses, and non-performing loans, and increase in US economy’s unemployment, inflation, money supply, and interest rate boost the cost inefficiency among the considered banks. On the other hand, the increase of commercial and savings banks’ size, operating expenses, non-performing loans, and capital level help in reducing profit inefficiency; whereas, increased market concentration, economic growth and interest rate increase the profit inefficiency of these banks. Finally, the profitability determinants analysis uncovers that profitability is significantly positively influenced by the previous years’ profit, current bank size and inflation; whereas, banks’ capital level, market capitalisation, and money supply in the economy found to be having significantly negative impact on the profitability of the US commercial and savings banks

How terrorism ends: the impact of lethality of terrorist groups on their longevity

Doctor of PhilosophySecurity Studies Interdepartmental ProgramAndrew G. LongDavid R. StoneThis dissertation research examines the effect of organizational lethality on the longevity of terrorist groups. The current scholarship has sought to understand the demise of terrorist groups through means such as group success, government repression, negotiations, internal conflict, reorientation of goals, defeat, leadership decapitation and loss of public support. However, little research is available on the determinants of terrorists’ target selection and its implications for the group’s longevity. This study evaluates the targeting patterns and preferences of 480 terrorist groups that were operational between 1980 and 2011 and disaggre- gates the victims of all terrorist attacks into combatant versus non-combatant target-types. It is hypothesized that organizational lethality – defined as the average number of civilian killings generated by each group in its home-base country – is associated with negative group reputation, which results in faster group mortality. Popular support for violence, however, can influence and result from terrorism at the same time and has been found to be inherently endogenous by many previous studies. Therefore, a Seemingly Unrelated Bivariate Probit Model is employed to examine this endogenous relationship, and the results confirm that there is a significant correlation between negative group reputation and group mortality. Moreover, the study differentiates between terrorist group activity – defined as average at- tacks generated by a group – and group lethality, and employs the Cox Proportional Hazard Model to estimate group duration. The study includes covariates like group size, ideology, positive consistency reputation and other factors affecting group longevity and mortality. The results imply that organizational lethality is associated with higher political risks for terrorist groups and tends to backfire by decreasing their survival probability. However, on the other hand, the study finds that an escalation in terrorist activity (launching more attacks) significantly increase the group longevity over time. The results of this study are tested by conducting group-specific case studies on the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban in Pak- istan using information collected from the English language Pakistani newspaper archives, and Harmony Database from Combat Terrorism Center at West Point, NY

Some Remarks on Results Related to ∇-Convex Function

In the present article, we give new techniques for proving general identities of the Popoviciu type for discrete cases of sums for two dimensions using higher-order ∇-divided difference. Also, integral cases are deduced by different methods for differentiable functions of higher-order for two variables. These identities are a generalization of various previously established results. An application for the mean value theorem is also presented

Review of Slurry Bed Reactor for Carbon One Chemistry

The slurry bed reactor has many advantages, which make it very suitable for gas-to-liquid processes, especially for the highly exothermic reactions. This chapter reviews three types of slurry bed reactors and their comparisons, including the mechanically stirred slurry reactor, bubble column slurry reactor and three-phase fluidized bed reactor. The application of the slurry bed reactors in carbon one (C1) chemistry for syngas conversion to different valuable chemicals is presented, which includes four typical exothermic reactions, that is, the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis to oil, methanol synthesis, dimethyl ether synthesis and synthetic natural gas synthesis. The operation parameters and performance of slurry bed reactor, fixed bed reactor and fluidized bed reactor are compared while discussing the reasons of catalyst deactivation. Since, the development trend of slurry bed reactor for C1 chemistry is finally proposed

Impact of Total Quality Management (TQM) practices on Sustainability and Organisational Performance

[EN] Total quality management (TQM) has been identified as a key driver of organizational performance in public and private organizations. Organizational culture, along with TQM and sustainability has been investigated to understand its contributions to organizational performance. TQM has become a crucial pillar for growth and development due to the growing expansion of manufacturing sectors of the world. TQM practices, which may differ in manufacturing firms, are said to be important for effective TQM adoption. However, it was found that organizational performance can be achieved if TQM practices in manufacturing businesses are well managed. Therefore, this study is carried out and the purpose of the study is to propose a conceptual model to investigate the relationship between TQM practices, sustainability, and organizational performance and to demonstrate the impact on organizational performance. The data underlying this study was collected by using a questionnaire survey in the manufacturing industries. The tool of analysis was used for the study through Factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The findings of the study revealed that total quality management and sustainability are the most important approaches to the success of the performance of manufacturing industries. The results show that TQM and sustainability have a positive impact on organizational performance. In the radiance of these outcomes, a framework was created in view of relationship between significant practices of TQM, sustaibanility and organistaional performance. Generally, it is accepted that total quality management can produce a sustainable competitive benefits in organisational performance.Wassan, AN.; Memon, MS.; Mari, SI.; Kalwar, MA. (2022). Impact of Total Quality Management (TQM) practices on Sustainability and Organisational Performance. Journal of Applied Research in Technology & Engineering. 3(2):93-102. https://doi.org/10.4995/jarte.2022.17408931023

Harmonic scalpel versus electrocautery tonsillectomy: a comparative study in adult patients

OBJECTIVE: To compare harmonic scalpel (HS) tonsillectomy with electrocautery (EC) tonsillectomy in terms of operating time, intra-operative blood loss, post-operative pain and secondary haemorrhage.METHODS: Sixty adult patients subjected to tonsillectomy only, were evaluated in this prospective study. The patients were stratified into 2 groups (30 each) based on the dissecting instrument used (HS vs. EC) at Aga Khan University Hospital Karachi Pakistan from June, 2006 to August, 2008.RESULTS: The mean operative time was less in electrocautery group (EC 3.57 +/- 0.85 minutes Vs HS 4.20 +/- 1.37 minutes;

Effectiveness of clean intermittent self catheterization in patients with recurrent urethral stricture post visual internal urethrotomy

OBJECTIVE :   Objective of the study is to determine the effectiveness of CISC in management of recurrent urethral strictures after visual internal urethrotomy.  METHODOLOGY :  This study   performed in department of urology   Saidu teaching hospital Swat  from June 2016 to July 2019 on 215 patients who were diagnosed as having urethral stricture disease. Patients were counseled  for CISC after removal of catheter 2 times a day for 8 weeks  and  at 8th  week cystourethroscopy performed along with detail  evaluation of symptoms of urethral stricture to know  recurrence of stricture.  RESULTS:   81.39% patients have no urethral stricture on cystourethroscopy  and symptomatic evaluation at 8th week  post visual internal urethrotomy  while 18.60%  patients have recurrent urethral stricture . Length of urethral stricture is the most important prognostic factor, stricture of less than 1 cm has success rate of 62.39% while stricture of more than one cm length has success rate of 20% as shown in table IV.  CONCLUSION:  In this study it has been confirmed that CISC  is safe ,cost effective procedure and most of the patients can do it in home with out any complications.