Mucoadhesive delivery systems. I. Evaluation of mucoadhesive polymers for buccal tablet formulation

Different types of mucoadhesive polymers, intended for buccal tablet formulation, were investigated for their comparative mucoadhesive force, swelling behavior, residence time and surface pH. The selected polymers were carbopols (CP934, and CP940), polycarbophil (PC), sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (SCMC) and pectin representing the anionic type, while chitosan (Ch) as cationic polymer and hydroxypropylmethyl cellulose (HPMC) as a non-ionic polymer. Results revealed that polyacrylic acid derivatives (PAA) showed the highest bioadhesion force, prolonged residence time and high surface acidity. SCMC and chitosan ensured promising bioadhesive characteristics, whilst HPMC and pectin exhibited weaker bioadhesion. Different polymer combinations as well as formulations were evaluated to improve the mucoadhesive performance of the tablets. Bioadhesive tablet formulations containing either 5% CP934, 65% HPMC and 30% spray-dried lactose or 2% PC, 68% HPMC and 30% mannitol showed optimum mucoadhesion and suitable residence time. SCMC, when formulated individually, exhibited promising bioadhesion, acceptable swelling, convenient residence time and surface pH. In-vivo trials of these formulations proved non-irritative and prolonged residence of the mucoadhesive tablets on human buccal mucosa for 8 to 13 h.     

A Risk-Aware Reputation-Based Trust Management in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are susceptible to many security threats and are specifically prone to physical node capture in which the adversary can easily launch the so-called insider attacks such as node compromise, bypassing the traditional security mechanisms based on cryptography primitives. So, the compromised nodes can be modified to misbehave and disrupt the entire network and can successfully perform the authentication process with their neighbors, which have no way to distinguish fraudulent nodes from trustworthy ones. Trust and reputation systems have been recently suggested as a powerful tools and an attractive complement to cryptography-based schemes in securing WSNs. They provide ability to detect and isolate both faulty and malicious nodes. Considerable research has been done on modeling and managing trust and reputation. However, trust topic issue in WSNs remains an open and challenging field. In this paper, we propose a Risk-aware Reputation-based Trust (RaRTrust) model for WSNs. Our novel framework uses both reputation and risk to evaluate trustworthiness of a sensor node. Risk evaluation is used to deal with the dramatic spoiling of nodes, which makes RaRTrust robust to on–off attack and differ from other trust models based only on reputation. This paper contributes to model the risk as opinion of short-term trustworthiness combining with traditional reputation evaluation to derive trustworthiness in WSNs.

     

Effect of Handling,Packing and Transportation on the Moisture of Timber Wood

In order to improve the efficiency of moisture meters calibrations, we studied the effect of ambient humidity, sample handling, packing and transportation on the timber wood (spruce) moisture determination. It was proved by experiments that dry timber samples (\(12 \times 12 \times 2.5\) cm) reach equilibrium within 30–40 days even when moisturizing them at a high relative air humidity (80 %). On the other hand, the major mass loss of moist samples placed at normal laboratory conditions was found to occur during the first few days while the first 5 days are critical. The effects of sample handling, packing and transportation were studied by means of interlaboratory comparison between CMI, CETIAT, INRIM, NIS and KRISS. The obtained results show that samples with moisture content less than 7 % tend to absorb small amount of water, whereas samples with moisture content larger than 15 % tend to desorb small amount of water during the handling and transporting even when using vacuum packing and short handling times.     

Application of MoS2 thin film in multi-wavelength and Q-switched EDFL

Multi-wavelength and Q-switched EDFLs are demonstrated using a MoS₂ thin film as stabilizer and saturable absorber, respectively. For a multi-wavelength output, a 50-m-long PCF is incorporated into the cavity to induce unstable multi-wavelength oscillation and a MoS₂ thin film is further incorporated into the cavity to achieve stable multi-wavelength. The laser generates 11 lasing wavelengths with constant spacing of 0.47 nm at pump power of 250 mW. In the case of the Q-switched EDFL, MoS₂ thin film is utilized as a saturable absorber. Q-switched operation occurrs at a threshold pump power of 28.86–51.48 mW and the spectrum is centered at 1561.15 nm. The pulse repetition rate showed increasing trend from 18.57–30.72 kHz whereas the pulse width decreased from 53.85–32.54 μs in the Q-switched pump power range. The highest pulse energy of 30.73 nJ is obtained at pump power of 51.48 mW.     

Effect of filler load and high-energy ball milling process on properties of plasticized wheat gluten/olive pomace biocomposite

The increase of particles surface area can optimize the dispersion state of biocomposite components and enhance their properties. First in this paper, we aimed to elaborate a novel biocomposite without any treatments. Plasticized wheat gluten (WG), was filled with 0–20% of olive pomace (OP) powder. The second objective was the improvement of biocomposite properties using physical treatment. High-energy ball milling process was applied on the blend of wheat gluten and olive pomace powders (MPs). The grinding effect of particle shape, size and distribution in biocomposite was characterised by particle size distribution using a laser-light diffraction and by SEM analysis. The cryo-fractured surface of selected films, mechanical properties, moisture absorption and thermal properties of both biocomposites were described in details. It was found that the sensitivity of biocomposites to moisture absorption was reduced with the increase of filler content after the applying of high-energy ball milling process. The thermal stability of OP biocomposite decreased with the increase of loading, while that of MPs was unaffected by high-energy ball milling process. This process affects the physical and morphological characteristics of the powders. The mechanical properties were improved by grinding process at filler content lower than15%.