Development of Stable Liposomal Drug Delivery System of Thymoquinone and Its In Vitro Anticancer Studies Using Breast Cancer and Cervical Cancer Cell Lines

Thymoquinone, a well-known phytoconstituent derived from the seeds of Nigella sativa, exhibits unique pharmacological activities However, despite the various medicinal properties of thymoquinone, its administration in vivo remains challenging due to poor aqueous solubility, bioavailability, and stability. Therefore, an advanced drugdelivery system is required to improve the therapeutic outcome of thymoquinone by enhancing its solubility and stability in biological systems. Therefore, this study is mainly focused on preparing thymoquinone-loaded liposomes to improve its physicochemical stability in gastric media and its performance in different cancer cell line studies. Liposomes were prepared using phospholipid extracted from egg yolk. The liposomal nano preparations were evaluated in terms of hydrodynamic diameter, zeta potential, microscopic analysis, and entrapment efficiency. Cell-viability measurements were conducted using breast and cervical cancer cell lines. Optimized liposomal preparation exhibited polygonal, globule-like shape with a hydrodynamic diameter of less than 260 nm, PDI of 0.6, and zeta potential values of −23.0 mV. Solid-state characterizations performed using DSC and XRPD showed that the freeze-dried liposomal preparations were amorphous in nature. Gastric pH stability data showed no physical changes (precipitation, degradation) or significant growth in the average size of blank and thymoquinone-loaded liposomes after 24 h. Cell line studies exhibited better performance for thymoquinone-loaded liposomal drug delivery system compared with the thymoquinone-only solution; this finding can play a critical role in improving breast and cervical cancer treatment management.     

Breakdown of a Nonlinear Stochastic Nipah Virus Epidemic Models through Efficient Numerical Methods

Background: Nipah virus (NiV) is a zoonotic virus (transmitted from animals to humans), which can also be transmitted through contaminated food or directly between people. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, the transmission of Nipah virus infection varies from animals to humans or humans to humans. The case fatality rate is estimated at 40% to 75%. The most infected regions include Cambodia, Ghana, Indonesia, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Thailand. The Nipah virus model is categorized into four parts: susceptible (S), exposed (E), infected (I), and recovered (R). Methods: The structural properties such as dynamical consistency, positivity, and boundedness are the considerable requirements of models in these fields. However, existing numerical methods like Euler–Maruyama and Stochastic Runge–Kutta fail to explain the main features of the biological problems. Results: The proposed stochastic non-standard finite difference (NSFD) employs standard and non-standard approaches in the numerical solution of the model, with positivity and boundedness as the characteristic determinants for efficiency and low-cost approximations. While the results from the existing standard stochastic methods converge conditionally or diverge in the long run, the solution by the stochastic NSFD method is stable and convergent over all time steps. Conclusions: The stochastic NSFD is an efficient, cost-effective method that accommodates all the desired feasible properties.     

Recent Advances,Challenges, and Future Perspectives of ZnO Nanostructure Materials Towards Energy Applications

In this approach, zinc oxide (ZnO) is a multipurpose substance with remarkable characteristics such as high sensitivity, a large specific area, non-toxicity, excellent compatibility, and a high isoelectric point, which make it attractive for discussion with some limitations. It is the most favorable possible option for the collection of nanostructures in terms of structure and their characteristics. The development of numerous ZnO nanostructure-based electrochemical sensors and biosensors used in health diagnosis, pharmaceutical evaluation, food hygiene, and contamination of the environment monitoring is described, as well as the production of ZnO nanostructures. Nanostructured ZnO has good chemical and temperature durability as an n-type semiconducting material, making it useful in a wide range of uses, from luminous materials to supercapacitors, batteries, solar cells, photocatalysis, biosensors, medicinal devices, and more. When compared to the bulk materials, the nanosized materials have both a higher rate of disintegration and a higher solubility. Furthermore, ZnO nanoparticles are regarded as top contenders for electrochemical sensors due to their strong electrochemical behaviors and electron transmission characteristics. The impact of many factors, including selectivity, sensitivity, detection limit, strength, and structures, arrangements, and their respective functioning processes, has been investigated. This study concentrated a substantial amount of its attention on the recent advancements that have been made in ZnO-based nanoparticles, composites, and modified materials for use in the application areas of energy storage and conversion devices as well as biological applications. Supercapacitors, Li-ion batteries, dye-sensitized solar cells, photocatalysis, biosensors, medicinal, and biological systems have been studied. ZnO-based materials are constantly analyzed for their advantages in energy and life science applications.     

A novel framework for G/M/1 queuing system based on scheduling-cum-polling mechanism to analyze multiple classes of self-similar and LRD traffic

Provisioning guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) in multiservice wireless internet is challenging due to diverse nature of end-user traffic (e.g., voice, streaming video, interactive gaming) passing through heterogeneous interconnected domains with their own policies and procedures. Numerous studies have shown that multimedia traffic carried in wireless internet possesses self-similar and long-range dependent characteristics. Nonetheless, published work on wireless traffic modeling is merely based on traditional Poisson traffic distribution which fails to capture these characteristics and hence yield misleading results. Moreover, existing work related to self-similar traffic modeling is primarily based on conventional queuing and scheduling combinations which are simple approximations.This paper presents a novel analytical framework for G/M/1 queuing system based on realistic internet traffic distribution to provide guaranteed QoS. We analyze the behavior of multiple classes of self-similar traffic based on newly proposed scheduling-cum-polling mechanism (i.e., combination of priority scheduling and limited service polling model). We formulate the Markov chain for G/M/1 queuing system and present closed form expressions for different QoS parameters i.e., packet delay, packet loss rate, bandwidth, jitter and queue length. We develop a customized discrete event simulator to validate the performance of the proposed analytical framework. The proposed framework can help in building comprehensive service level agreements for heterogeneous wireless domains.     

Microwave‐assisted synthesis of disulfides using tetrathiomolybdate: A step toward greener synthesis

An eco‐friendly, efficient, and rapid synthetic procedure for disulfides using benzyl triethyl ammonium tetrathiomolybdate through microwave irradiation of solid support adsorbed reactants is reported. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heteroatom Chem 23:373–376, 2012; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com . DOI 10.1002/hc.21025     

二维横观各向同性厚板在空间变化热源及体力作用下的动力学响应

研究热源和体力作用下的横观各向同性厚板的二维问题,板的上表面无应力作用,但有规定的表面温度作用;板的下表面置于刚性基础之上,并处于绝热状态.采用Green和Naghdi提出的广义热弹性理论,通过Laplace和Fourier双重变换,在Laplace-Fourier变换域中,得到位移和温度场的控制方程.数值求解双重变换的逆变换,采用一个基于Fourier级数展开的方法,数值地求解Laplace变换的逆变换.对材料镁(Mg)进行数值计算,并用图形表示其结果.推演出各向同性材料铜(Cu)的数值结果,并用图形与横观各向同性材料镁进行比较.同时研究了体力的影响.     

Wavelet and matching pursuit estimates of the transient-evoked otoacoustic emission latency

Different time-frequency techniques may be used to investigate the relation between latency and frequency of transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions. In this work, the optimization of these techniques and the interpretation of the experimental result are discussed. Time-frequency analysis of click-evoked otoacoustic emissions of 42 normal-hearing young subjects has been performed, using both wavelet and matching pursuit algorithms. Wavelet techniques are very effective to provide fast and reliable evaluation of the average latency of large samples of subjects. A major advantage of the matching pursuit technique, as observed by Jedrzejczak et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 115, 2148-2158 (2004)], is to provide detailed information about the time evolution of the response of single ears at selected frequencies. A hybrid matching pursuit algorithm that includes Fourier spectral information was developed, capable of speeding-up computation times and of identifying "spurious" atoms, whose latency-frequency relation is apparently anomalous. These atoms could be associated with several known phenomena, either intrinsic, such as intermodulation distortion, spontaneous emissions and multiple internal reflections, or extrinsic, such as instrumental noise, linear ringing and the acquisition window onset. A correct interpretation of these phenomena is important to get accurate estimates of the otoacoustic emission latency.     

Optimization of Cylindrical Pin-Fin Heat Sinks Using Genetic Algorithms

In this paper, genetic algorithms (GAs) are applied for the optimization of pin-fin heat sinks. GAs are usually considered as a computational method to obtain optimal solution in a very large solution space. Entropy generation rate due to heat transfer and pressure drop across pin-fins is minimized by using GAs. Analytical/empirical correlations for heat transfer coefficients and friction factors are used in the optimization model, where the characteristic length is used as the diameter of the pin and reference velocity used in Reynolds number and pressure drop is based on the minimum free area available for the fluid flow. Both inline and staggered arrangements are studied and their relative performance is compared on the basis of equal overall volume of heat sinks. It is demonstrated that geometric parameters, material properties, and flow conditions can be simultaneously optimized using GA.     

Electron acoustic solitary waves in unmagnetized nonthermal plasmas

Electron acoustic(EA) solitary waves(SWs) are studied in an unmagnetized plasma consisting of hot electrons(following Cairns-Tsalli distribution), inertial cold electrons, and stationary ions.By employing a reductive perturbation technique(RPT), the nonlinear Korteweg–de Vries(KdV) equation is derived and its SW solution is analyzed. Here, the effects of plasma parameters such as the nonextensivity parameter(q), the nonthermality of electrons(α), and the cold-to-hot electron density ratio(β) are investigated.     

Spectrophotometric determination of osmium with ammonium thiocyanate

Summary A spectrophotometric method for the determination of osmium using ammonium thiocyanate is described. A stable reddish brown colour with an absorption maximum at 440 nm is produced when osmium tetroxide is heated for 30 min at a p_H between 1 to 4 over a boiling water bath with excess reagent. The recommended concentration range is from 3 to 15 ppm of osmium in aqueous medium and from 0.6 to 1.5 ppm when the brown colour (which turns blue) is extracted into isoamyl alcohol. Errors are about ± 1.5%.

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Zusammenfassung Zur spektrophotometrischen Bestimmung von Osmium wird als Reagens Ammoniumthiocyanat empfohlen. Bei Erwärmung von Osmiumtetroxid bei p_H 1–4 mit überschüssigem Reagens (30 min) wird eine beständige rötlich-braune Färbung mit einem Absorptionsmaximum bei 440 nm gebildet. Der günstigste Konzentrationsbereich ist 3–15 ppm in wä\rigem Medium bzw. 0,6–1,5 ppm, wenn mit Isoamylalkohol extrahiert wird (wobei die Farbe nach Blau umschlägt). Die Fehler betragen etwa ± 1,5%.