Development of Anticandidal Delivery Systems: (I) Anticandidal Activities of Antifungal Agents and Synergistic Combination with Other Drugs

Susceptibility testing with antifungal agents, e. g., minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determination, is performed to obtain reliable data that permit selection of the most suitable agents for treatment of an infective condition. To determine the drugs that provide maximum effectiveness against oral candidiasis, the MICs of various antifungal agents were determined. Also, synergism between two chosen antifungal agents was evaluated, and the effect of benzocaine, an anesthetic, and hydrocortisone, an antiinflammatory agent, on their MICs was examined. It was observed that among all the drugs tested, clotrimazole was the most promising candidate for use as an oral local antifungal. The combination of clotrimazole and chlorhexidine resulted in a decrease in the MIC. While the addition of hydrocortisone to this combination resulted in a slight increase in the MIC, the inclusion of benzocaine resulted in a substantial decrease in the MIC of the antifungal agent combination.     

Irradiation of large area Mylar membrane and characterization of nuclear track filter

Ion irradiation of Si⁸⁺ ion beam of 100 MeV was scattered by a gold foil on a Mylar membrane of 25 Μm thickness in the form of film roll (width, 12.5 cm and length, 400 cm) at the Nuclear Science Centre, New Delhi. The characterization of etched nuclear tracks was carried out by gas permeation measurements. The samples cut from the film roll of required size for permeability measurements were etched in a controlled manner in a constant temperature bath of 6N NaOH solution. The opening of the conical etched tracks was characterized by hydrogen gas permeation.     

A radix-8 wafer scale FFT processor

Wafer Scale Integration promises radical improvements in the performance of digital signal processing systems. This paper describes the design of a radix-8 systolic (pipeline) fast Fourier transform processor for implementation with wafer scale integration. By the use of the radix-8 FFT butterfly wafer that is currently under development, continuous data rates of 160 MSPS are anticipated for FFTs of up to 4096 points with 16-bit fixed point data.     

Microclusters as superatoms for developing new materials

With the discovery of solid C₆₀, efforts are being made to develop new clusters and molecules which could be assembled to form new materials. Here we present some recent developments in this direction and discuss bonding in such materials.     

Simulation of leachate migration in leaky aquifers

A two-dimensional cross-section finite difference model is presented to simulate density dependent leachate migration in leaky aquifers. Unlike existing models, a new approach is adopted to couple the groundwater-flow equation and the hydrodynamic dispersion equation with the elimination of the intermediate step of calculating velocities. The concept of the reference density is employed, permitting increased accuracy (over pressure-based models) in the representation of the transport process. The model is then used to study the effect of several hydraulic and transport parameters on the flow pattern and plume migration which are found to be very sensitive to most of these parameters. Equiconcentration and equipotential lines are overlapped to provide a better understanding of the coupling effect.     

Flexible and light weight copper indium diselenide solar cells on polyimide substrates

Thin film flexible CuInSe₂ (CIS) solar cells have been fabricated for the first time on light-weight polymeric substrates. Evaporated Cu---In alloy precursors were selenized in H₂Se atmosphere at around 400°C to grow the CIS absorber layers. Low temperature techniques which are compatible with the polymeric substrates were used to deposit the window layers of CdS and ZnO. The demonstrated active area conversion efficiency of 9.3% makes this light-weight device very attractive for many terrestrial and space power generation applications where high specific power and mechanical flexibility are needed.     

Identifying technology horizons for strategic investment decisions

Technology investment models usually assume that a known number of technologies will appear in the future, though their appearance, cost, and revenue parameters may be uncertain. In practice, however, it is not always clear how many future technologies or periods need to be considered. We introduce the concept of a technology horizon, which we define as the minimum number of future technologies and future periods that need to be considered to guarantee that the optimal decision would not change even if additional technologies or periods worth of data were to be considered. We also allow the costs and revenue of existing technologies in our model to vary depending on the latest technology introduced. Further, we allow for implementation costs, which enables us to model situations where it may cost more to leapfrog technologies than if one were to buy intervening technologies. We then provide a fast algorithm to identify such technology horizons     

Novel A-sandwich radome design for airborne applications

A novel A-sandwich hybrid variable thickness radome design, based on optimised power reflection, is presented. The radome performance parameters are evaluated accurately by a 3D ray-tracing procedure in conjunction with the aperture integration method. This design is demonstrated to be a better choice when multiple performance parameters need to be satisfied simultaneously.     

Dual frequency miniature microstrip antenna

A single-feed dual frequency compact microstrip antenna with a shorting pin is described. This new antenna configuration gives a large variation in frequency ratio of the two operating frequencies, without increasing the overall size of the antenna     

A reliability test-plan for series systems with components havingstochastic failure rates

This paper proposes a reliability test plan for a series system, by considering the parameter λ_j of the exponential distribution to be a random variable having uniform distribution over [0, &thetas;_j], j = 1, 2,..., n. Explicit expressions are obtained for the optimal values of the t_j, when the number of components in the system is 2. The general solution, albeit implicit, has also been obtained when the number of components in a given system is ⩾3. Mathematical programming is used to find the optimal solution and to illustrate it with numerical results