Prediction of Dry Powder Inhaler Formulation Performance From Surface Energetics and Blending Dynamics

The purpose of these studies was to investigate the ability of surface energy measurements and rates of mixing in dry powder inhaler (DPI) formulations to predict aerosol dispersion performance. Two lactose carrier systems comprising either spray-dried or milled particles were developed such that they had identical physical characteristics except for surface morphology and surface energies avoiding confounding variables common in other studies. Surface energy measurements confirmed significant differences between the powder systems. Spray-dried lactose had a higher surface entropy (0.20 vs. 0.13 mJ/m²K) and surface enthalpy (103.2 vs. 79.2 mJ/m²) compared with milled lactose. Mixing rates of budesonide or fluorescein were assessed dynamically, and significant differences in blending were observed between lactose systems for both drugs. Surface energies of the lactose carriers were inversely proportional to dispersion performance. In addition, the root mean square (RMS) of blending rates correlated positively with aerosol dispersion performance. Both techniques have potential utility in routine screening of DPI formulations.     

Embedded passive components in advanced 3D chips and micro/nano electronic systems

Microsystem Technologies - Electronic devices are shrinking day by day, while the speed and reliability is increasing. At the same time, IC designs and micro/nano electronic systems are becoming...     

Toward the modeling of data provenance in scientific publications

In this paper, we implement a provenance-aware system for documenting publications, called PADS. It employs a three-layered provenance hierarchy, which can output diverse types of provenance data related to the research life cycle. From this, we generate different profiles for research ventures, reviewers, and authors. PADS employs the standard Open Provenance Model (OPM) specification for capturing provenance data, and stores this data as ontological instances. We show that data is retrieved without any apparent delay in the execution time of the queries. We also demonstrate how this data can be used to make useful recommendations to the organizers, in order to manage upcoming research ventures.     

Economic production quantity model with a shifting production rate

Typical models for determining the economic production quantity (EPQ) assume perfect product quality and perfect production processes. Deteriorating processes may affect production systems in several ways. They may decrease the quality of the items produced, cause production stoppage and breakdowns and/or reduce the production rate due to production process inefficiency. The purpose of this paper is to present an EPQ model that incorporates the effect of shifts in production rate on lot sizing decisions due to speed losses. The cycle starts with a certain production rate and after a random time, the production rate shifts to a lower value. A mathematical model to determine the optimal production policy under these conditions is developed and analyzed. Numerical examples are presented for illustrative purposes.     

Effect of polyacrylic acid (PAA) binder system on particle orientation during dry-pressing

Effect of polyacrylic acid (PAA) binder system on the development of particle orientation during uniaxial pressing is reported. Granules of different properties were compacted using uniaxial pressing at various pressure and their degree of particle orientation (DPO) was determined. The increment trend of DPO varies with granule strength and shows higher value for binder system of higher flexibility. Anisotropic shrinkage related to particle orientation is shown by compact of higher relative density (RD) and DPO; whereas anisotropic shrinkage related to non-uniform packing density is shown by compact of lower RD and DPO. Anisotropic shrinkage remains in the former compact while isotropic shrinkage was obtained for the latter compact at sintering temperature of 1600 °C. Subsequent cold isostatic pressing increases DPO and sintering shrinkage ratio of uniaxially pressed compacts.     

Compressive sensing based high-resolution passive bistatic radar

Passive bistatic radar (PBR) systems using different communication signals can only offer low-resolution target detection due to their inherent low bandwidth. In this paper, compressive sensing (CS) is applied to multichannel FM and GSM PBR to achieve improved range-Doppler resolutions and avoid some limitations of classical multiband PBR processing. In CS context, block-structured time-domain dictionary which is formed from multichannel signals suffers from coherence when fine range resolution is employed. To overcome such a pitfall, this work first transforms the dictionary to spectral domain where only the most important spectral components are retained. Principle component analysis followed by a whitening method are then applied to this spectrally transformed data in order to reduce the dimensionality of problem, thereby reducing the dictionary size and most importantly fulfilling the required condition of dictionary incoherence for better CS-based recovery. Two different block-structured dictionary formations are tested. The performance of the recovery of spatially close targets, in both FM and GSM PBR setups, are reported.     

Effect of kappa distribution on the damping rate of the obliquely propagating magnetosonic mode

Data from spacecrafts suggest that space plasma has an abundance of suprathermal particles which are controlled by the spectral index κ when modeled on kappa particle velocity distribution. In this paper, considering homogeneous plasma, the effect of integer values of κ on the damping rate of an obliquely propagating magnetosonic(MS) wave is studied. The frequency of the MS wave is assumed to be less than ion cyclotron frequency, i.e.,iw(28)w. Under this assumption, the dispersion relation is investigated both numerically and analytically, and it is found that the real frequency of the wave is not a sensitive function of κ, but the imaginary part of the frequency is. It is also shown that for those values of κ where a large number of resonant particles participate in wave–particle interaction, the wave is heavily damped, as expected. The possible application of the results to the solar wind is discussed.     

Antioxidant potential of rice bran extracts and its effects on stabilisation of cookies under ambient storage

Methanolic extracts of rice bran (MRB) were found to be the richest in phenolics than all the other extraction media, i.e. water, 80% methanol, 70% ethanol, diethyl ether. Thermal stability of MRB was determined by evaluating antioxidant activity of heated extracts in linoleic acid system. Cookies were prepared in sunflower oil premixed with MRB at different concentrations, i.e. 500, 1000 and 2000 ppm, and with butylated hydroxytoluene and α‐tocopherol at 200 ppm. Oxidative stability of cookies was measured by storing under ambient conditions for an year with periodical analysis after every 2 months. Fatty acid composition was determined by gas–liquid chromatography. A regular decrease in unsaturated fatty acids (USFA) and increase in saturated fatty acids was observed with the increase in storage period; all the stabilised samples showed appreciably less decrease in USFA than that of control sample. Induction period ranged from 14.73 to 31.22 h while control exhibited 7.5 h. Peroxide value, iodine value and free fatty acids were chosen as the parameters for quality evaluation of cookies. Results suggest rice bran to be a potential source of antioxidants for stabilisation of cookies.     

Donor Heart Preservation with Hydrogen Sulfide: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Preclinical studies have shown that postconditioning with hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) exerts cardioprotective effects against myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI). The aim of this study was to appraise the current evidence of the cardioprotective effects of H₂S against IRI in order to explore the future implementation of H₂S in clinical cardiac transplantation. The current literature on H₂S postconditioning in the setting of global myocardial ischemia was systematically reviewed and analyzed, performing meta-analyses. A literature search of the electronic databases Medline, Embase and Cinahl identified 1835 studies that were subjected to our pre-defined inclusion criteria. Sixteen studies were considered eligible for inclusion. Postconditioning with H₂S showed significant robust effects with regard to limiting infarct size (standardized mean difference (SMD) = −4.12, 95% CI [−5.53–−2.71], p < 0.00001). Furthermore, H₂S postconditioning consistently resulted in a significantly lower release of cardiac injury markers, lower levels of oxidative stress and improved cardiac function. Postconditioning with slow-releasing H₂S donors offers a valuable opportunity for novel therapies within cardiac preservation for transplantation. Before clinical implication, studies evaluating the long-term effects of H₂S treatment and effects of H₂S treatment in large animal studies are warranted.