DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIPLE-UNIT MUCOADHESIVE SUSTAIN RELEASE MINI-TABLETS OF BOSENTAN

Objective: To formulate once daily capsule filled with multiple unit mucoadhesive sustain release (SR) mini tablets of bosentan prepared using combination gelucire 43/01 and hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose (HPMCK4M), sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (NaCMC) and chitosan to sustain drug release for 24 h.Methods: The mini tablets were prepared by melt granulation technique using gelucire 43/01 as meltable hydrophobic release retardant. The polymers such as hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMCK4M), sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (NaCMC) and chitosan were added as release modulators and mucoadhesives. The physical mixture of drug and excipient were subjected Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) for evaluation of drug-polymer interaction. Mini tablets were evaluated for mucoadhesive strength, in vitro drug release, swelling index and percentage of hydration. The optimized mini tablets of formulation F23 were filled into zero sizes hard gelatin capsule.Results: The release of bosentan from gelucire 43/01 based sustain release mini tablets extended drug release for 24 h with an initial burst release of more than 32 %. Incorporation of NaCMC, HPMCK4M and chitosan into the mini tablets controlled initial burst release with mucoadhesion.Conclusion: Hence mini tablets prepared with a combination of gelucire 43/01 (release retardant) and NaCMC (release modulator and mucoadhesive polymer) filled into zero sizes hard gelatin capsule can be used to formulate once daily formulation of bosentan

Prevalence, Isolation, Characterisation and Antibiogram Study of Pathogenic Escherichia coli from Different Poultry Farms of Odisha

From 182 birds of different farms of odisha suspected for colibacillosis 317 swab samples containing 51 air sacs, 39 lungs, 53 livers, 36 heart bloods, 45 pericardial fluids, 19 yolk sacs and 74 intestine samples were processed for isolation and identification of pathogenic E. coli. and subjected to detail bacteriological and biochemical examination in the laboratory and 105 E. coli isolates were isolated following standard procedures. The percentage of isolation of E. coli isolates in decreasing order was yolk sac (52.6%) and heart blood (38.4%) in 0-4 week birds. In older birds (4-7week) the highest percentage of isolation was from pericardial fluid (35.8%) followed by heart blood (33.4%). The present study showed that the frequency of occurrence of O9 strain is highest (16.7%) followed by O1, O33 & O51 (13.3%), O23 & O119 (10%), O103 & 79 (6.7%) and serotype O90 (3.3%). The antibiogram study reveals that, E. coli isolates found were highly resistant to some of the classical drugs like chlortetracycline (88.58%), streptomycin (85.72%), penicillin-G (82.86%), amikacin (82.86%), furazolidone (77.14%), ampicillin (74.29%), Tetracycline(74.29%), Amoxicillin (71.43%) and cotrimoxazole (71.43%), while isolates were highly sensitive to ceftriaxone and tazobactum (94.29%), ceftriaxone (91.43%), gentamicin (85.72%), chloromphenicol (82.67%), cephotaxime (77.14%), cefixime (74.29%) and ciprofloxacin (74.29%)

SURVEILLANCE OF MICROBIAL FLORA FOR INFERTILITY COUPLES IN AN INDIAN TERTIARY CARE TEACHING HOSPITAL

Objective: Infertility has been known to cause serious social and emotional problems in India. Microorganisms may be a primary cause for thisinfertility. This study was carried out to know the prevalence of microorganisms in the infertility couples of a tertiary caring teaching hospital.Methods: One thousands of couples were screened for the infertility test presented at the outpatient Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.The suspected infertility couples were tested for microbial contamination in their reproductive sample. Simultaneously, the demographic data of allpatients were documented, and all the data were analyzed with SPSS 20 software.Result: From one thousand couples, 288 couples were found infertility symptoms, whereas 67.71% were primary infertility problems and rest weresecondary. It is due to male factor (27.08%), female factor (50%), and both (4.86%) but 18.05 were unexplained. From vaginal swabs, 186 and semen145 microbial colony were grown. However, Chi-square (χ) showed that there is no significant difference between the growth of microbial colony from semen or vaginal swap as p=0.06. Eight varieties of bacteria (387) and Candida albicans (37) were documented. 2Conclusion: With respect to older ages of the infertile couples, it is more chances to infections. Antibiotic should be prescribed to primary infertilitycouples and infections can be avoided the cross transmission during intercourse.Keywords: Primary infertility, Candida, Semen, Antibiotic, Vaginal swab

A mindful path to the COVID-19 pandemic: an approach to promote physical distancing behavior

Purpose: The present situation is marked by the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic on entire humankind and researchers across the globe are looking forward to vaccines or medicines to tackle COVID-19. But, according to the scholars and health care agencies, vaccines alone won’t be of much help, and in the long run adhering to the physical distancing policy along with sanitation could be the only solution. Moreover, extant studies across different areas have noted a positive association between various human psychological factors and prosocial behaviours. Additionally, an empirical study undertaken in the western context has tried exploring the association between a human psychological factor and physical distancing behaviour (a kind of prosocial behaviour) in the COVID-19 context. The results of the extant study seem intriguing and encouraging enough to undertake a more robust exploratory study in this nascent area. Against this background, the present study intends to explore the relationship between individuals’ mindfulness and physical distancing behaviour, along with the mediating role of empathy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: To achieve the study objectives, this study has utilized an online survey method and has collected responses from the general adult population in India spread across all the six regions. The survey was conducted during May 2020 when India was under a nationwide lockdown to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 pandemic. The respondents were identified based on the convenience and snowball sampling techniques and utilizing social media platforms the prospective respondents were either contacted through WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and Facebook or e-mails. Post data cleaning, a total of 315 responses were found to be suitable for analysis. For analysis, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to establish the validity and reliability of the conceptual model, whereas Pearson correlation was undertaken to study the relationship between variables, and mediation was examined using the PROCESS macro of Hayes. Findings: The findings were encouraging and could become the foundation stone for further research as well as a practical guide for policymakers, agencies working in the healthcare areas, and even corporate leaders. As expected, an individual’s mindfulness was noted to be positively related and influencing physical distancing behaviour and the mediation analysis indicated the intervening role of empathy in the association between an individual’s mindfulness and physical distancing behaviour. Theoretical implications: This study relates and extends the mechanism of mindfulness in influencing individuals’ physical distancing behaviour in the pandemic situation, notably the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, based on the “empathy-altruism hypothesis” as well as Schwartz’s theory of basic values, the intervening role of empathy has been explored and the findings further helped in extended these two theories in the domain of pandemic. Practical implications: The findings of the present could be a game-changer in restricting the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. As espoused by various scholars as well as health care organizations about the usefulness of physical distancing in mitigating the risk of COVID-19, policy makers, healthcare authorities, and even corporate leaders could look forward to strategizing and executing the dissemination of various mindfulness-based programs amongst the individuals. These mindfulness-based programs, which could be disseminated offline as well as online through smartphones, could in-turn help in positively influence physical distancing behaviour amongst the individuals leading to the success of physical distancing policy. Originality/value: This study could be the first to conceptualize and examine the human psychological factors, particularly the relationship and the role of an individual’s mindfulness with that of physical distancing behaviour amongst the general public during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, this could also be the first study to conceptualize and explore the intervening role of empathy in the relationship between an individual’s mindfulness and physical distancing behaviour. Moreover, in conceptualizing and exploring the relationship between an individual’s mindfulness and physical distancing behaviour, this study explored and extended the “reperceiving” mechanism of mindfulness and the “empathy-altruism hypothesis” along with Schwartz’s theory of basic values in the domain of pandemic

A Quintessentially Geometric Model

We consider string inspired cosmology on a solitary $D3$-brane moving in the background of a ring of branes located on a circle of radius $R$. The motion of the $D3$-brane transverse to the plane of the ring gives rise to a radion field which can be mapped to a massive non-BPS Born-Infeld type field with a cosh potential. For certain bounds of the brane tension we find an inflationary phase is possible, with the string scale relatively close to the Planck scale. The relevant perturbations and spectral indices are all well within the expected observational bounds. The evolution of the universe eventually comes to be dominated by dark energy, which we show is a late time attractor of the model. However we also find that the equation of state is time dependent, and will lead to late time Quintessence.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. References and comments adde

Coupled dark energy: Towards a general description of the dynamics

In dark energy models of scalar-field coupled to a barotropic perfect fluid, the existence of cosmological scaling solutions restricts the Lagrangian of the field \vp to p=X g(Xe^{\lambda \vp}), where X=-g^{\mu\nu} \partial_\mu \vp \partial_\nu \vp /2, $\lambda$ is a constant and $g$ is an arbitrary function. We derive general evolution equations in an autonomous form for this Lagrangian and investigate the stability of fixed points for several different dark energy models--(i) ordinary (phantom) field, (ii) dilatonic ghost condensate, and (iii) (phantom) tachyon. We find the existence of scalar-field dominant fixed points (\Omega_\vp=1) with an accelerated expansion in all models irrespective of the presence of the coupling $Q$ between dark energy and dark matter. These fixed points are always classically stable for a phantom field, implying that the universe is eventually dominated by the energy density of a scalar field if phantom is responsible for dark energy. When the equation of state w_\vp for the field \vp is larger than -1, we find that scaling solutions are stable if the scalar-field dominant solution is unstable, and vice versa. Therefore in this case the final attractor is either a scaling solution with constant \Omega_\vp satisfying 0<\Omega_\vp<1 or a scalar-field dominant solution with \Omega_\vp=1.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures; minor clarifications added, typos corrected and references updated; final version to appear in JCA

Long-term trends of direct nitrous oxide emission from fuel combustion in South Asia

An increasing concentration of nitrous oxide (N2O) in the global atmosphere can perturb the ecological balance, affecting the climate and human life. South Asia, one of the world's most populous regions, is a hotspot for N2O emission. Although agriculture traditionally dominated the region, economic activities are rapidly shifting towards industry and energy services. These activites may become the largest emitters of N2O in future. Yet, few attempts have been made to estimate long-term direct N2O emission from fuel combustion for the different energy-consuming sectors in the South Asian region. Therefore, the present study developed a comprehensive sectoral N2O emission inventory for South Asian countries for the time period of 1990–2017, with projections till 2041. It revealed that the average N2O emission from fuel combustion in the South Asia region is about 40.96 Gg yr−1 with a possible uncertainty of ±12 Gg yr−1, showing an increase of more than 100% from 1990 to 2017. Although India is the major contributor, with an average of 34 Gg yr−1 of N2O emissions, in terms of growth, small countries like Bhutan and Maldives are dominating other South Asian countries. Sector-wise, the residential sector contributed a maximum emission of 14.52 Gg yr−1 of N2O but this is projected to reduce by more than 50% by 2041. This is because of the successful promotion of cleaner fuels like liquefied petroleum gas over more polluting fuelwood. Power generation contributed 9.43 Gg yr−1of N2O emissions, exhibiting a maximum growth of 395%, followed by road transport (289%) and industry (231%). Future N2O emissions from transport, power and industry are projected to rise by 2.8, 3.3, and 23.9 times their 2017 estimates, respectively, due to the incapability of current policies to combat rising fossil fuel consumption. Mitigation options, such as replacing diesel and compressed natural gas vehicles with electricity-driven vehicles, can decelerate N2O emissions to 45% by 2041 for road transport. A 41% reduction is possible by displacing coal with renewables in the power and industry sectors. Overall, the South Asian contribution to global N2O emissions has enlarged from 2.7% in 1990 to 5.7% in 2007–2016, meaning there is an urgent need for N2O emission mitigation in the region

Social and environmental sustainability model on consumers’ altruism, green purchase intention, green brand loyalty, and evangelism

Across the globe, the awareness for environmental degradation and its harmful effects is rapidly growing. The whole world has come together to work in the direction to protect the environment. Consumers are increasingly becoming cautious towards the impact of their consumption pattern on environment and organisations can attain a competitive edge by leveraging this cautiousness by offering them green products/brands. However, it is importance for the marketers to understand that how increasing levels of sustainability awareness impacts other factors which explain pro-environmental behaviour of customers. To fill the existing gap in the current literature in this regard, the current study aims to build a structural model which includes social and environmental sustainability awareness in measuring customer altruism, buying intention, loyalty and customer evangelism. The theoretical model extends the existing framework of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and explores the decision-making framework regarding ethical behaviour. Through existing literature review and expert input, the indicators (variables) for each construct were recognised. After that, data was collected from 331 respondents through a structurally designed questionnaire; the hypothetical model was test using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique. The findings of the study indicate that sustainability awareness positively influence the consumer altruism which in turn enhances the consumer purchase intention, green brand loyalty and green brand evangelism and altruism can and can bridge value-action gap for green brands. Current analysis supports the view that there are significant positive associations among the identified constructs.N/

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries