Feasibility of electrospray deposition for rapid screening of the cocrystal formation and single step,continuous production of pharmaceutical nanococrystals

Objectives: This study employed electrospray deposition (ESD) for simultaneous synthesis and particle engineering of cocrystals.

Significance: Exploring new methods for the efficient production of cocrystals with desired particle properties is an essential demand.

Methods: The possibility of cocrystal formation by ESD was examined for indomethacin-saccharin, indomethacin-nicotinamide, naproxen-nicotinamide, and naproxen-iso-nicotinamide cocrystals. Solutions of the drug and coformer at stoichiometric ratios were sprayed to a high electric field which caused rapid evaporation of the solvent and the formation of fine particles. The phase purity, size, and morphology of products were compared with reference cocrystals. Experiments were performed to evaluate the effects of stoichiometric ratio, concentration and solvent type on the cocrystal formation. Physical stability and dissolution properties of the electrosprayed cocrystals were also compared with reference cocrystals.

Results: ESD was found to be an efficient and rapid method to produce cocrystals for all studied systems other than indomethacin-nicotinamide. Pure cocrystals only formed at a specific drug:coformer ratio. The solvent type has a weak effect on the cocrystal formation and morphology. Electrosprayed cocrystals exhibited nano to micrometer sizes with distinct morphologies with comparable physical stability with reference cocrystals. Nanococrystals of indomethacin-saccharin with a mean size of 219?nm displayed a threefold higher dissolution rate than solvent evaporated cocrystal.

Conclusion: ESD successfully was utilized to produce pure cocrystals of poorly soluble drugs with different morphologies and sizes ranging from nano to micrometer sizes in one step. This study highlighted the usefulness of ESD for simultaneous preparation and particle engineering of pharmaceutical cocrystals.     

Efficient desulfurization of fuel with functionalized mesoporous carbon CMK-3-O and comparison its performance with mesoporous carbon CMK-3

In this work, a functionalized mesoporous carbon (CMK-3-O) was synthesized after oxidation with nitric acid and was used to adsorb dibenzothiophene (DBT) from model oil for the first time. Then, its performance was compared with that of CMK-3. The functionalized mesoporous carbon, CMK-3-O, showed better a capacitance performance for DBT adsorption than that of CMK-3. The maximum adsorption capacity was obtained for functionalized mesoporous carbon at optimum conditions with 6 M HNO₃ aqueous solution and 30 min contact time. The physical and structural properties of CMK-3-O and CMK-3 were investigated with X-ray diffraction method (XRD), N₂ adsorption–desorption isotherm, FT-IR, and elemental analysis (CHNO). Results of the elemental analysis showed that the oxygen and nitrogen content has increased and the carbon content has decreased through oxidation treatment. The effects of various factors on the adsorption process (such as temperature, amount of adsorbent, contact time, and concentration) of DBT were studied. CMK-3-O showed a maximum adsorption capacity of 86.96 mg DBT g^?1 of CMK-3-O at optimized conditions (temperature, 25°C; adsorbent dosage, 20 g L^?1; contact time, 60 min), which was a higher adsorption capacity of that observed for CMK-3 (57.47 mg DBT g^?1 of CMK-3). Kinetic studies have revealed that the adsorption of DBT can be described by a pseudo-second-order rate equation. Equilibrium data showed that adsorption process was best represented by the Langmuir model. The results also illustrated the fact that the regenerated adsorbent afforded 64.3% of the initial adsorption capacity after the two regeneration cycles.     

Fingerprinting of Peptides with a Large Channel of Bacteriophage Phi29 DNA Packaging Motor

Nanopore technology has become a highly sensitive and powerful tool for single molecule sensing of chemicals and biopolymers. Protein pores have the advantages of size amenability, channel homogeneity, and fabrication reproducibility. But most well‐studied protein pores for sensing are too small for passage of peptide analytes that are typically a few nanometers in dimension. The funnel‐shaped channel of bacteriophage phi29 DNA packaging motor has previously been inserted into a lipid membrane to serve as a larger pore with a narrowest N‐terminal constriction of 3.6 nm and a wider C‐terminal end of 6 nm. Here, the utility of phi29 motor channel for fingerprinting of various peptides using single molecule electrophysiological assays is reported. The translocation of peptides is proved unequivocally by single molecule fluorescence imaging. Current blockage percentage and distinctive current signatures are used to distinguish peptides with high confidence. Each peptide generated one or two distinct current blockage peaks, serving as typical fingerprint for each peptide. The oligomeric states of peptides can also be studied in real time at single molecule level. The results demonstrate the potential for further development of phi29 motor channel for detection of disease‐associated peptide biomarkers.     

Reservoir Optimization for Energy Production Using a New Evolutionary Algorithm Based on Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Models

The study applies kidney algorithm for the optimization of reservoir operation for hydropower generation. The objective function defined for optimization is to minimize the hydroelectric power deficiency. Results of kidney algorithm are compared with those of bat algorithm (BA), water cycle algorithm (WCA), biogeography-based optimization algorithm (BBO), genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSOA), and scatter matters search algorithm (SMSA). All algorithms are evaluated by Complex proportional assessment (COPRAS), Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), modified TOPSIS, and Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS), as well as Borda count social choice theory. Then, vulnerability, time and volumetric reliability, as well as resiliency indices are used for comparison and multi-criteria decision-making indicators for selecting the best algorithm. It is found that no algorithm is ranked uniformly the best. Results indicate that kidney and particle swarm algorithms are ranked higher than other algorithms by most indices. Results of 10 random implementations of the objective function indicate that KA has a lower coefficient of variation and is computationally moe efficient. Further, most of the multi-criteria decision making models allocate the first rank to KA.     

Reservoir Operation by a New Evolutionary Algorithm: Kidney Algorithm

This article shows an application of a new algorithm, called kidney algorithm, for reservoir operation which employs three different operators, namely filtration, secretion, and excretion that lead to faster convergence and more accurate solutions. The kidney algorithm (KA) was used for generating the optimal operation of a reservoir namely; Aydoghmoush dam in eastern Azerbaijan province in Iran whose purpose was to decrease irrigation deficit downstream of the dam. Results from the algorithm were compared with those by other evolutionary algorithms, including bat (BA), genetic (GA), particle swarm (PSO), shark (SA), and weed algorithms (WA). The results showed that the kidney algorithm provided the best performance against the other evolutionary algorithms. For example, the computational time for the KA was 3 s, 2 s, 4 s, 6 s and 3 s less than BA, SA, GA PSA and WA, respectively. Also, the objective function for the optimization problem was the minimization of the irrigation deficits and its value for the KA was 55%, 28%, 52%, 44 and 54% less than GA, SA, WA, BA and PSA, respectively. Also, the different performance indexes showed the superiority of the KA compared to the other algorithms. For example, the root mean square error for the KA was 74%, 61%, 68%, 33 and 54% less than GA, SA, WA, BA and PSA, respectively. Different multi criteria decision models were used to select the best models. The results showed that the KA achieved the first rank for the optimization problem and thus, it shows a high potential to be applied for different problems in the field of water resources management.     

A modified water cycle evolutionary game theory algorithm to utilize QoS for IoT services in cloud-assisted fog computing environments

The Journal of Supercomputing - The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly gaining popularity as a result of the advancements in portable embedded devices and wireless protocols, enabling a new class...     

A New Method for Flood Routing Utilizing Four-Parameter Nonlinear Muskingum and Shark Algorithm

Water Resources Management - Considering the great importance of flood prediction, flood routing based on Shark Algorithm (SA) and Four-Parameter Nonlinear Muskingum (FPNM) has been proposed in the...     

Compact microstrip lowpass filter with very sharp roll-off using meandered line resonators

In this paper, a new compact size microstrip lowpass filter (LPF) with a very sharp roll-off is presented to apply in the modern wireless networks. The proposed LPF is designed using the series main resonators with meandered lines based on inductor-capacitor (LC) equivalent circuit analysis. The main goal is to achieve maximum-sharp roll-off by maintaining a wide stopband bandwidth and high return loss (RL). The main resonator of the proposed filter is consisted of two meandered line hairpin resonators (MLHR), and a meandered line T-shaped resonator (MLTR). The designed suppressor is composed of two coupled radial stubs to create a wide stopband. Low return loss in the passband, which has been created by the main resonator, is resolved by the suppressor structure with high return loss. The measured results show a ??3 dB cut-off frequency of 1.93 GHz. The very sharp transition band starts at 1.93 to 1.97 GHz (from ??3 to ??20 dB). The stopband is from 1.97 to 19.9 GHz (with the suppression level of ??20 dB). Also, the total size of the proposed LPF is only 13.3?×?10.1 mm².

     

Introducing a Novel Hybrid Machine Learning Model and Developing its Performance in Estimating Water Quality Parameters

Water Resources Management - For the first time, a novel hybrid machine learning model named the least-squares support vector machine-arithmetic optimization algorithm (LSSVM-AOA) was proposed. The...     

Crosslinked poly(ethylene oxide) hydrogels

Poly(ethylene oxide) with a molecular weight of 2,000,000 was crosslinked by a difunctional peroxide in the molten state. We determined the molecular weight between crosslinks by swelling the samples with deionized water and by indentation and dynamic mechanical analysis. Results were compared with the calculated optimum molecular weight between crosslinks. Fair agreement was obtained between the experimental methods. However, the efficiency of peroxide‐induced crosslinking was very low. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 88: 1451–1455, 2003