4,202 research outputs found
Microencapsulation-protected l-ascorbic acid for the application of human epithelial HaCaT cell proliferation.
No full textAbstract l-ascorbic acid is an abundant water-soluble nutrient found in vegetables and fruits. It enhances the cell proliferation, which is helpful in wound healing process. However, it is relatively unstable and easily degraded under external environments including acidity, alkalinity, evaporation, heat, oxidization, light or moisture. Its storage remains challenged. This study reported the development of l-ascorbic acid microcapsules using the natural protein, gelatin, and the natural polysaccharide, agar, as the wall protection carrier. The physical properties including entrapment efficiency, particle size, surface morphology, chemical compositions and release profile were identified. The cell proliferation of l-ascorbic acid microcapsules was stronger than the free drug. Significant cell growth in microencapsulated l-ascorbic acid-treated human epithelial HaCaT cells was observed when compared with untreated control. Since cell proliferation and wound repair are closely related, it is believed that l-ascorbic acid microcapsules would effectively increase the potential effect of wound healing activity in human skin
The FM and PL Libraries Documentation
No full textBuilding complex SPMD code in an ecient and portable way is nowadays a challenge, especially when there is no uniformity of tools and libraries across platforms. The Fast Messages (FM) and the Portability Library (PL) where both designed to provide the basis of an abstract enough framework for C, so that problems can be coded and ported to any supported platform with no more than a few changes in the makeles and a recompilation. The FM library provides a message passing communications library built around the Berkeley Active Messages library. The PL library provides the primitives for host to node communication for problem initialization and results collection, as well as other miscellaneous and potentially non-portable primitives. This technical report contains the documentation for both libraries.Technical report LCSR-TR-25
Increasing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics skills using Project Lead the Way
No full textIncludes bibliographical references
Development of hydrocortisone succinic acid/and 5-fluorouracil/chitosan microcapsules for oral and topical drug deliveries
No full textRecently, we demonstrated the safety use of calendula oil/chitosan microcapsules as a carrier for both oral and topical deliveries. We also reported the improved biological activity towards skin cells and Staphylococcus aureus of phyllanthin containing chitosan microcapsules. However, the possibility of both oral and topical applications was still necessary to be further studied. Here we investigated that both oral and topical applications of chitosan-based microcapsules were tested using hydrocortisone succinic acid (HSA) and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), respectively. The drug loading efficiency, particle size, surface morphology and chemical compositions of both drug loaded microcapsules were confirmed by UV-vis spectrophotometer, particle size analyzer, scanning electron microscope and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The in vitro release studies revealed that both HSA and 5-FU could be released form chitosan microcapsules. The mean adrenocorticotropic hormone concentration in HSA loaded microcapsule mice plasma was detected to be lower than that of water control. One hundred micrograms per milliliter of 5-FU containing microcapsules exhibited a stronger growth inhibition towards skin keratinocytes than that of free 5-FU. In vitro drug delivery model demonstrated the delivery of 5-FU from microcapsule treated textiles into nude mice skin. Further uses of the drug loaded microcapsules may provide an efficiency deliverable tool for both oral and topical applications
A novel green gelatin-agar microencapsulation system with P. urinaria as an improved anti-A. niger model.
No full textn this study, a novel green microencapsulation system was used to develop Phyllanthus urinaria (PU) extract containing microcapsules. Agar was used with gelatin as the wall matrix materials of microcapsules to prevent the use of toxic crosslinker formaldehyde. Microencapsulated PU extract was developed to improve the potential antifungal activities of PU water extracts. The active components and surface morphology of PU extract containing microcapsules were analyzed by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy, respectively. The in vitro release study demonstrated that approximately 80% of drug was released after 120 h. PU loaded microcapsules were shown to have a stronger anti-Aspergillus niger activity than the free drug
Development of phyllanthin containing microcapsules and their improved biological activity towards skin cells and Staphylococcus aureus
No full textChitosan based microcapsule which encapsulated with phyllanthin was developed by simple coacervation. The composition and surface morphology of phyllanthin containing microcapsules were analyzed by Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy, respectively. The release of phyllanthin from the microcapsules was found to be more than 60% after 120 h. In vitro biological assays demonstrated that these phyllanthin containing microcapsules showed a stronger anti-oxidation potential on both human fibroblasts and keratinocytes as well as a better growth inhibitory activity towards Staphylococcus aureus
Introduction to Urban Science: Evidence and Theory of Cities as Complex Systems
No full textLuís Bettencourt provides a timely, comprehensive, and rigorous treatment of urban space, by contributing to the
advancement of knowledge in the field of urban science. The author develops a valuable scientific guide for researchers,
policymakers, practitioners, and students interested in understanding cities as complex systems. Today, more than half of
world's population lives in urban areas, and, according to theWorld Bank data, by 2045, urban citizens will increase up to
6 billion. Cities of different sizes will play a pivotal role in the postpandemic recovery and, most importantly, they will
make the green transition of our economies and societies really work in coming years. Therefore, understanding “how
each city and every one of its people is the result of the aggregation of many choices, accidents, and influences from
their compounded joint history” (p. xxi) becomes crucial to manage present and future local and global challenges
The Impact of Structured Kangaroo Care Education on Premature Infants’ Weight Gain, Breastfeeding and Length of Hospitalization in Malaysia
No full textSharmiza Samsudin,1,2 Ping Lei Chui,1 Azanna Ahmad Kamar,3 Khatijah Lim Abdullah,4,5 Chye Wah Yu,2 Zainah Mohamed5 1Department of Nursing Science, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; 2Faculty of Allied Health Professions, AIMST University, Bedong, Malaysia; 3Department of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; 4Department of Nursing, School of Medical and Life Sciences, Sunway University, Subang Jaya, Malaysia; 5Department of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, MalaysiaCorrespondence: Ping Lei Chui, Department of Nursing Science, Faculty of Medicine, University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, 50603, Malaysia, Tel +60127128893, Email [email protected]: Kangaroo care is a complementary humanistic intervention based on a family-centered care model. This study investigated the effects of a locally contextualized, structured kangaroo care education program on weight gain, breastfeeding rate and length of hospitalization for premature infants.Patients and Methods: This longitudinal quasi-experimental study with pre- and post-intervention design involved 96 infants born between 28 and 37 weeks of gestation for three months, and was carried out at a neonatal intensive care unit in Malaysia. The experimental group received a structured education program and careful monitoring of their kangaroo care practices, while the control group received routine care without a structured education program. The institutional review board approved the study design and registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04926402).Results: The kangaroo care hours performed by mothers at baseline in the experimental and control group was 4.12 and 0.55 hours per week, respectively. At three months post-discharge, the experimental group had significantly higher weight gain, higher breastfeeding rates and shorter lengths of hospitalization than the control group.Conclusion: A locally contextualized and structured kangaroo care education program is effective in the performance of kangaroo care. One hour per day of kangaroo care is positively associated with an extended period of breastfeeding, improved weight gain and shorter hospitalization of premature infants.Keywords: premature infant, structured program, kangaroo mother care, length of hospital stay, body weight, breastfeedin
MultiEmo: Multilingual, Multilevel, Multidomain Sentiment Analysis Corpus of Consumer Reviews
No full textMultiEmo, a new benchmark data set for the multilingual sentiment analysis task including 11 languages. The collection contains consumer reviews from four domains: medicine, hotels, products and university. The original reviews in Polish contained 8,216 documents consisting of 57,466 sentences. The reviews were manually annotated with sentiment at the level of the whole document and at the level of a sentence (3 annotators per element). We achieved a high Positive Specific Agreement value of 0.91 for texts and 0.88 for sentences. The collection was then translated automatically into English, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Russian, German, Spanish, French, Dutch and Portuguese. MultiEmo is publicly available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.
More information: https://github.com/CLARIN-PL/multiemo
Citation:
@inproceedings{kocon2021multiemo,
title={Multiemo: Multilingual, multilevel, multidomain sentiment analysis corpus of consumer reviews},
author={Koco{\'n}, Jan and Mi{\l}kowski, Piotr and Kanclerz, Kamil},
booktitle={International Conference on Computational Science},
pages={297--312},
year={2021},
organization={Springer}
Synthesis, characterization and preliminary analysis of in vivo biological activity of chitosan/celecoxib microcapsules
No full textThe use of chitosan as the wall of microcapsule designed for delivery of encapsulated celecoxib is reported. Microcapsules were characterised with respect to size and encapsulation efficiency of celecoxib. In vivo animals demonstrated that both free celecoxib administration and chitosan/celecoxib microcapsules administration lead to a significant inhibition of cyclooxygenase-2 protein expression in the hepatocytes when compared with vehicle control mice. Interestingly, microcapsule containing celecoxib showed a better inhibition of cyclooxygenase-2 protein expression when compared with a simple oral administration of free celecoxib. Gas-chromatography-mass-spectrometry analysis showed that in mice treated with free celecoxib or chitosan/celecoxib microcapsules, their plasma concentration of celecoxib was similar. Microcapsules-based biomaterials as oral drug delivery vehicles may help to improve the absorption efficiency of therapeutic drugs
- …
