Composite polymeric microsponge-based long-acting gel formulation for topical delivery of mupirocin

Topical delivery of medicaments in a controlled manner is still a promising area of research. Drug-containing dammar gum-ethyl cellulose composite microsponge loaded gel formulation (D-MSPG) was developed for controlled topical delivery of mupirocin. The drug-loaded microsponges (D-MSPs) were formulated by the quasi-emulsion solvent diffusion method and were evaluated for morphology, particle size distribution, entrapment efficiency, thermal properties, and crystallinity. The optimized D-MSPs (entrapment efficiency 91.5 ± 4.0% and particle size of 55.15 ± 2.9 μm) were dispersed in carbopol 934 gel (D-MSPG). The final product was characterized for pH, viscosity, texture, spreadability, consistency, syneresis, in vitro drug release, and ex vivo skin penetration study. A comparative study with marketed formulation was performed. For optimized gel formulation (G4), drug content was 104.19 ± 1.68%, and drug release was 84.19% after 24 h. The pH of the optimized gel was observed to be 6.05 ± 0.04. Viscosity of the optimized gel formulation was found to be 1212.15 ± 434.85 mPa-s at 50 s⁻¹. The steady-state flux (J) in ex vivo skin permeation was observed to be 53.96 μg cm⁻² h⁻¹ and the permeability coefficient was 2.69 cm/h for the optimized gel formulation. According to the findings, the D-MSPG-based formulation strategy can act well to prolong the topical delivery of mupirocin or similar drug molecules.     

An integrated semi-automated framework for domain-based polarity words extraction from an unannotated non-English corpus

The Journal of Supercomputing - Building sentiment analysis resources is a fundamental step before developing any sentiment analysis model. Sentiment lexicons are one of these critical resources....     

An automatic non-English sentiment lexicon builder using unannotated corpus

The Journal of Supercomputing - Sentiment lexicons in the English language are widely accessible while in many other languages, these resources are extremely deficient. Current techniques and...     

Pulsed laser deposition of alumina coating for corrosion protection against liquid uranium

Alumina coatings find wide applications as tribological coatings and as corrosion protective coatings for structural materials against chemical attack. We have investigated alumina coatings deposited on Stainless Steel (SS) substrates via pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. Characterization tests performed on these coatings including their compatibility with liquid uranium suggests alumina to be a potential candidate as a coating material for handling and containment of liquid uranium. We present here results of our detailed parametric study including dependence of average mass removal rate on laser fluence and ablation geometry and average deposition efficiency during PLD. These measurements provide vital inputs facilitating proper choice of process parameters for PLD runs. Deposited coatings have been characterized in terms of their microstructure, surface profile, adhesion to substrate, crystalline phase and corrosion resistance against liquid uranium. Our PLD based alumina coatings have shown a high degree of compaction and excellent corrosion resistance to molten uranium even upto a temperature of 1165 °C.     

Thermophysical properties of U2Mo intermetallic

The current paper has investigated specific heat capacity, coefficient of thermal expansion and phase transition temperatures of U₂Mo intermetallic. The transformation of U₂Mo phase to bcc (γ-uranium) phase occurred at 853 K. The coefficient of thermal expansion has been determined in the temperature range 423–873 K to be 14.65 × 10^?6 K^?1. The specific heat data showed a smooth curve up to 773 K and above it a change in trend to follow a λ-shape was observed. The specific heat values of U₂Mo have been found to be lower than that calculated from the additivity rule. This study provides first time data on U₂Mo. The data obtained from this investigation were compared to available literature on U–Mo alloys.     

Optimized area efficient quantum dot cellular automata based reversible code converter circuits: design and energy performance estimation

The Journal of Supercomputing - Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) based circuit designs are creating a surge in transistorless computational technologies. Due to its quasi-adiabatic switching...     

Silicon-On-Nothing Electrostatically Doped Junctionless Tunnel Field Effect Transistor (SON-ED-JLTFET): A Short Channel Effect Resilient Design

Silicon - This work investigates the novel device structure, silicon-on-nothing electrostatically doped junctionless tunnel field effect transistor (SON-ED-JLTFET) with high-K stacked hetero-gate...     

Thermal Conductivity of Composites of Beryllia and Lithium Titanate

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power for energy purposes. Wide varieties of solid breeders and multiplier materials have been proposed for fusion blankets. Beryllium and lithium titanate (Li₂TiO₃) have been accepted as neutron multiplier and breeder materials, respectively. However, swelling of beryllium due to helium and tritium permeation through metallic beryllium and low thermal conductivity of lithium titanate have caused serious limitations when ITER is in the demo version. It has been well established that BeO due its highest thermal conductivity among the known ceramics, low neutron absorption cross section, and high neutron reflection cross section is a good neutron multiplier. In the present investigation, a novel ceramic single compound of BeO-Li₂TiO₃ was synthesized, keeping the BeO content to Li₂TiO₃ in the volume ratio of 80:20, 75:25, 65:35, and 55:45 with the aim of maintaining the tritium breeding ratio as more than one, and characterized for phases present by x-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy.     

Ground Plane Electrostatically Doped Junctionless Tunnel Field Effect Transistor: Process Immune Design for Suppressed Ambipolarity

Silicon - The incorporation of a highly doped Si layer below the Si film, termed as the ground plane, in the electrostatically doped junctionless tunnel field effect transistor (ED-JLTFET) with...