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.     

A comparative study of human skin thermal response to sapphirecontact and cryogen spray cooling

Surface cooling, in conjunction with various thermally mediated therapeutic procedures, can provide a means to protect superficial tissues from injury while achieving destruction of deeper targeted structures. We have investigated the thermal response of in-vivo human skin to: (1) contact cooling with a sapphire window (6-12°C); and (2) spray cooling with a freon substitute cryogen [tetrafluoroethane; boiling point ≈-26°C at 1 atmospheric pressure (atm)]. Measurements utilizing infrared radiometry show surface temperature reductions from 30°C to 14-19°C are obtained within approximately is in response to sapphire contact cooling. Surface temperature reductions to values between 5°C and -9°C are obtained in response to 20-100-ms cryogen spurts. Computational results, based on fitting the measured radiometric surface temperature to estimate heat transfer parameters, show: (1) temperature reductions remain localized to approximately 200 μm of superficial tissue; and (2) values of heat flux and total energy removed per unit skin surface area at least doubled when using cryogen spray cooling     

On Iron Metabolism and Its Regulation

Iron is a critical metal for several vital biological processes. Most of the body’s iron is bound to hemoglobin in erythrocytes. Iron from senescent red blood cells is recycled by macrophages in the spleen, liver and bone marrow. Dietary iron is taken up by the divalent metal transporter 1 (DMT1) in enterocytes and transported to portal blood via ferroportin (FPN), where it is bound to transferrin and taken up by hepatocytes, macrophages and bone marrow cells via transferrin receptor 1 (TfR1). While most of the physiologically active iron is bound hemoglobin, the major storage of most iron occurs in the liver in a ferritin-bound fashion. In response to an increased iron load, hepatocytes secrete the peptide hormone hepcidin, which binds to and induces internalization and degradation of the iron transporter FPN, thus controlling the amount of iron released from the cells into the blood. This review summarizes the key mechanisms and players involved in cellular and systemic iron regulation.     

Quantitative estimation of sucrose esters of plamitic acid

Thin layer chromatography was adapted for direct quantitative estimation of sucrose esters of palmitic acid. Urea-phosphoric acid spray was used to detect the sucrose moiety of the various esters. The photometrically metermined density density of each spot on the thin layer plate was found to be proportional to its sucrose content. Ester content was then obtained by multiplying sucrose found by the factor, mol. wt. ester/mol. wt. sucrose. Ester mixtures were prepared by interesterifying sucrose with various proportions of methyl palmitate in dimethylformamide solution. Positional isomers were observed at each level of substitution but could not be adequately separated from each other for quantitative evaluation. Presented at the AOCS Meeting, Minneapolis, October 1969. So. Utiliz. Res. Dev. Div., ARS, USDA.     

Mathematical Analysis and Performance Evaluation of the Cell-Free mMIMO Networks Based on Cognitive Relays

Wireless Personal Communications - The cell-Free massive multiple input multiple output “mMIMO” networks can provide a satisfied performance for the fifth generation “5G”...     

Assessing information quality of e-learning systems: a web mining approach

E-learning systems provide a promising solution as an information exchanging channel. Improved technologies could mean faster and easier access to information but do not necessarily ensure the quality of this information; for this reason it is essential to develop valid and reliable methods of quality measurement and carry out careful information quality evaluations. This paper proposes an assessment model for information quality in e-learning systems based on the quality framework we proposed previously: the proposed framework consists of 14 quality dimensions grouped in three quality factors: intrinsic, contextual representation and accessibility. We use the relative importance as a parameter in a linear equation for the measurement scheme. Formerly, we implemented a goal-question-metrics approach to develop a set of quality metrics for the identified quality attributes within the proposed framework. In this paper, the proposed metrics were computed to produce a numerical rating indicating the overall information quality published in a particular e-learning system. The data collection and evaluation processes were automated using a web data extraction technique and results on a case study are discussed. This assessment model could be useful to e-learning systems designers, providers and users as it provides a comprehensive indication of the quality of information in such systems.     

An AP structure with Finslerian Flavor: Path equations

The Bazanski approach to deriving paths is applied to Finsler geometry. The approach is generalized and applied to a new developed geometry called “Absolute parallelism with Finslerian Flavor” (FAP). A set of path equations is derived for the FAP. It is a horizontal (h) set. A striking feature in this set is that the coefficient of the torsion term jumps by a step of one-half from one equation to the other. It is tempting to believe that the h-set admits some quantum features. Comparisons with the corresponding sets in other geometries are given. Conditions for reducing the set of path equations obtained to well-known path equations in some geometries are summarized in a schematic diagram.     

Robust multiscale stereo matching from fundus images with radiometric differences

A robust multiscale stereo matching algorithm is proposed to find reliable correspondences between low contrast and weakly textured retinal image pairs with radiometric differences. Existing algorithms designed to deal with piecewise planar surfaces with distinct features and Lambertian reflectance do not apply in applications such as 3D reconstruction of medical images including stereo retinal images. In this paper, robust pixel feature vectors are formulated to extract discriminative features in the presence of noise in scale space, through which the response of low-frequency mechanisms alter and interact with the response of high-frequency mechanisms. The deep structures of the scene are represented with the evolution of disparity estimates in scale space, which distributes the matching ambiguity along the scale dimension to obtain globally coherent reconstructions. The performance is verified both qualitatively by face validity and quantitatively on our collection of stereo fundus image sets with ground truth, which have been made publicly available as an extension of standard test images for performance evaluation.     

Sodium Alginate—Natural Microencapsulation Material of Polymeric Microparticles

From the multitude of materials currently available on the market that can be used in the development of microparticles, sodium alginate has become one of the most studied natural anionic polymers that can be included in controlled-release pharmaceutical systems alongside other polymers due to its low cost, low toxicity, biocompatibility, biodegradability and gelatinous die-forming capacity in the presence of Ca²⁺ ions. In this review, we have shown that through coacervation, the particulate systems for the dispensing of drugs consisting of natural polymers are nontoxic, allowing the repeated administration of medicinal substances and the protection of better the medicinal substances from degradation, which can increase the capture capacity of the drug and extend its release from the pharmaceutical form.     

Debottlenecking procedure of effluent thermal treatment system

In this study pinch technology has been improved for wastewater temperature reduction. Having considered design grouping rules on the basis of pinch technology, a new debottlenecking procedure for thermal treatment of the wastewater network, has been introduced. In the presented procedure, better thermal treatment of effluent network using the new method can be used to avoid investment in new cooling tower capacity and to improve the performance of the tower in a systematic way. Related coding in Visual Sudio.Net 2003, C++, has been developed for the illustrative example to get optimal values in the cooling water design method computations.