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Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNPs) are inorganic nanoparticles that have been comprehensively investigated and are intended to deliver therapeutic agents. MSNPs have revolutionized the therapy for various conditions, especially cancer and infectious diseases. In this article, the viability of MSNPs' administration for lung cancer therapy has been reviewed. However, certain challenges lay ahead in the successful translation such as toxicology, immunology, large-scale production, and regulatory matters have made it extremely difficult to translate such discoveries from the bench to the bedside. This review highlights recent developments, characteristics, mechanism of action and customization for targeted delivery. This review also covers the most recent data that sheds light on MSNPs' extraordinary therapeutic potential in fighting lung cancer as well as future hurdles. Article highlights Background Lung cancer (LC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related mortality worldwide. It has been estimated that 19.5 million novel tumor instances and 6.09 million fatalities happened in 2022. The conventional therapies are not successful in the treatment of LC, because of the resistance of LC cells against the usual chemotherapeutic agents. There is an urgent need for the development of innovative illness treatment techniques. This paper highlights the potential of mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNPs) in LC. Molecular mechanism of LC & inhibitory pathways LC is characterized by a neoplastic metamorphosis of epithelial cells of the lungs. LC is not only induced by mutations, but molecular alterations of the anaplastic lymphoma kinase gene are also the prevalent inducer of LC. The article highlights the mechanism and various inhibitory pathways in LC. Diagnosis & treatment methods for LC The article highlights various diagnosis strategies including physical evaluation, analysis of blood and urine samples, x-ray, MRI, computed tomography scan, positron emission tomography (PET) scan, etc. The multifactorial treatments including surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, radiosurgery, and immunotherapy for LC have also been discussed in the article. Two potential targeting strategies, i.e., passive targeting and active targeting are employed as a potential approach to anticancer therapy. Emergence of nanomaterials & role of MSNPs in LC MSNPs have revolutionized the therapy for various conditions, especially cancer and infectious diseases. MSNPs are excellent and unique carriers for drug delivery and cancer therapy owing to their suitable features. The surface functionalization of MSNPs is extremely crucial to increase their effectiveness in vivo while lowering their toxicity. MSNPs are typically employed in pulmonary drug-delivery systems through the process of passive diffusion. Advantages & disadvantages of MSNPs MSNPs possess an ordered structure which is very appropriate for packing high amounts of drug moieties. The toxicology of MSNPs toward specific cell lines may be due to the presence of surface silanolates and/or the formation of silica reactive oxygen species. The structural modifications of MSNPs minimize their toxicities and influence the accumulation and biodegradation rate. Conclusion & Future Perspective MSNPs have demonstrated significant benefits over other nanocarriers in terms of anticancer drug delivery. Employing MSNPs and the EPR effect, neoteric therapeutic strategies can be used to alleviate LC. Prior to clinical trials, it is also essential to standardize any exterior functionalization approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tofacitinib is a first-generation JAK inhibitor approved by the US FDA for treating rheumatoid arthritis. It exhibits a broad-spectrum inhibitory effect with abilities to block JAK-STAT signalling. The primary objective of this review is to obtain knowledge about cutting-edge methods for effectively treating a variety of skin problems by including tofacitinib into formulations that are based on nanocarriers. The review also highlights clinical trials and offers an update on published clinical patents. Nanocarriers provide superior performance compared to conventional treatments in terms of efficacy, stability, drug bioavailability, target selectivity and sustained drug release. Current review has the potential to make significant contributions to the ongoing discussion involving dermatological treatments and the prospective impact of nanotechnology on transforming healthcare within this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present Locksynth, a tool that automatically derives synchronization needed for destructive updates to concurrent data structures that involve a constant number of shared heap memory write operations. Locksynth serves as the implementation of our prior work on deriving abstract synchronization code. Designing concurrent data structures involves inferring correct synchronization code starting with a prior understanding of the sequential data structure's operations. Further, an understanding of shared memory model and the synchronization primitives is also required. The reasoning involved transforming a sequential data structure into its concurrent version can be performed using Answer Set Programming, and we mechanized our approach in previous work. The reasoning involves deduction and abduction that can be succinctly modeled in ASP. We assume that the abstract sequential code of the data structure's operations is provided, alongside axioms that describe concurrent behavior. This information is used to automatically derive concurrent code for that data structure, such as dictionary operations for linked lists and binary search trees that involve a constant number of destructive update operations. We also are able to infer the correct set of locks (but not code synthesis) for external height-balanced binary search trees that involve left/right tree rotations. Locksynth performs the analyses required to infer correct sets of locks and as a final step, also derives the C++ synchronization code for the synthesized data structures. We also provide a performance analysis of the C++ code synthesized by Locksynth with the hand-crafted versions available from the Synchrobench microbenchmark suite. To the best of our knowledge, our tool is the first to employ ASP as a backend reasoner to perform concurrent data structure synthesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the under-recognized income accounting identity to provide an important theoretical basis for using the Cobb-Douglas production function in IT productivity analyses. Within the income accounting identity we partition [...]

Many studies measure the value of information technology (IT) by focusing on how much value is added rather than on the mechanisms that drive value addition. We argue that value […]

A cross-sectional, representative sample from adolescent girls of higher senior secondary schools was collected for the study. We analyzed the data from 600 Punjabi Indian female adolescents (200 from humanities, 200 from commerce, and 200 from science stream) aged 15-17 years who were randomly selected from government and private schools. The symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress were assessed by the DAS questionnaire. Overall prevalence was 50.8%, 58.7%, and 68% for depression, anxiety, and stress, respectively. A significant difference was reported for depression (.000), anxiety (.000), and stress (.002) between adolescents of three streams. The results of the study point out that there is a necessity for some interventions to educate adolescent girls about the negative effects of stress, depression, and anxiety on their body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study on the two online algorithms for the computation of the slice is presented. Findings reveal that the first algorithm is useful for computing the slice for a general predicate and the second algorithm can be used for computing the slice for a regular predicate.

An efficient distributed algorithm surrogate for solving the group mutual exclusion (GME) problem based on the notion of surrogate-quorum is examined. Results suggest that the distributed algorithm is capable of achieving a low message complexity and maintaining synchronization delay and waiting time at two message hops.

Linked lists and other list-based sets are some of the most ubiquitous data structures in computer science. They are useful in their own right and are frequently used as building blocks in other data structures. A linked list can be "unrolled" to combine multiple keys in each node; this improves storage density and overall performance. This organization also allows an operation to skip over nodes which cannot contain a key of interest. This work introduces a new high-performance concurrent unrolled linked list with a lazy synchronization strategy. Most write operations under this strategy can complete by locking a single node. Experiments show up to 300% improvement over other concurrent list-based sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although higher dose might increase the gastrointestinal (GI) side effect, robust data are required for higher dose of oral semaglutide. B To the Editor: b Oral semaglutide is a molecule approved for the management of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in dose of 3-14 mg.[[1], [3]] This is the only glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) formulation available in oral dosage form and showed significant reduction in hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) (upto 1.5%) and weight loss (upto 5 kg) in PIONEER trial program. Recently, the data in the public announcement depicted that HbA1c and weight reduction will be dose dependent, and higher doses of 25 and 50 mg of oral semaglutide can be of clinical significance, for use in patients with T2DM who need further glycemic control. [Extracted from the article]

In the present investigation, an attempt was made to formulate timolol maleate (TML) loaded polymeric nanoparticles of flax seed gum (FX) and chitosan (CH) for ocular delivery using ionic gelation method. The process of nanoparticle preparation was optimized using 2-factor, 3-level central composite experimental design. The optimal concentration of FX and CH that yielded nanoparticles with minimum particle size (267.06 ± 8.65 nm) and maximum encapsulation efficiency (74.96 ± 4.78%) was found to be 0.10% w/v and 0.08% w/v, respectively. The formulated nanoparticles revealed considerable bioadhesive strength and exhibited sustained release of drug in in vitro diffusion studies. The ex vivo transcorneal penetration study revealed higher corneal penetration of TML compared to marketed eye drops. The confocal scanning laser microscopy (CSLM) studies also confirmed the ability of nanoparticles to penetrate into deeper layers of cornea. The histopathological studies revealed corneal biocompatibility of nanoparticles. The nanoparticles were found to reduce the intra ocular pressure (IOP) in rabbits for prolonged period when compared to conventional eye drops. The results of the present study suggested a promising role of polymeric nanoparticles for ocular drug delivery in treatment of glaucoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, biomedical, food, and pharmaceutical industries are exploring biocompatible, biodegradable, and readily available polymers as an alternative to synthetic polymers. The naturally occurring galactomannans comprising of galactopyranosyl (Gal) and mannopyranosyl (Man) residues are an attractive alternative to synthetic polymers due to their wide availability, and easily maniputable physical, and chemical properties. In the present study, a natural polymer, Leucaenea leucocephala galactomannan (LLG) was extracted from the seeds of Leucaenea leucocephala by an aqueous method, derivatized by reductive amination process using ethylene diamine as aminating agent to form aminated LLG (AMLLG). The conditions for amination were optimized by varying the concentration of aminating agent, temperature of the reaction mixture and time of reaction and their effect on degree of substitution was determined. The derivatized galactomannan was characterized by FTIR, DSC, XRD, SEM and zeta potential analysis. The texture properties (firmness, consistency, and cohesiveness) and bioadhesive strength of AMLLG was also determined. Furthermore, the antimicrobial potential of AMLLG was evaluated against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus suggesting better antibacterial activity of AMLLG than chitosan (standard). Overall, the study highlights that the amine derivative of LLG could be a promising candidate as preservative in food industry and as a drug delivery vehicle in pharmaceutical industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction To determine whether Computed Tomography Perfusion (CTP) can predict treatment response and prognosis in non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC). To determine which one of the perfusion parameter correlated best with treatment outcome. Methods Sixteen patients with NSCLC underwent CTP before and after completion of chemo-radiotherapy. Patients with complete and partial response were grouped as responders and patients with stable and progressive disease were grouped as non-responders. Pre and post-treatment whole tumour perfusion parameters (blood flow - BF, blood volume - BV, mean transit time - MTT and permeability surface area product - PS) were compared between responders and non-responders. Results Responders had higher baseline BF and PS values than non-responders; P  = 0.047, 0.028 respectively. On 1 year follow up, patients with even 2.65% increase in PS value from baseline developed metastasis while patients with decrease in PS value by 24% did not develop metastasis ( P  = 0.05). Greater decrease in BF values (17%) were noted among responders than non-responders (2.4%) following chemoradiation, though the results were not statistically significant ( P  > 0.05). Conclusions Tumours with higher baseline BF and PS respond well to chemo-radiation. Changes in the PS values can predict the development of metastasis and hence, the long term outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Designing a drug delivery system to target the eye is an interesting and challenging endeavor faced by scientists because of the critical and pharmacokinetically-specific environment that exists in the eye. Topical administration of ophthalmic drugs is used to alleviate the symptoms and signs caused by ocular surface inflammatory disorders, to treat infections, for glaucoma or intraocular inflammation (uveitis). However, the responsiveness toward the conventionally developed drug delivery system is limited because of the presence of several types of barriers in the eye that impede the effective passage of many drugs leading to minimal dose absorption. Ion activated in situ gelling ocular systems undergo phase transition in the presence of cations (present in the tear fluid), thus enhancing the residence time of drug in the cornea. In the present study natural polysaccharides (pectin alone or in combination with sodium alginate) or a pectin derivative (thiolated pectin [TP] alone or in combination with sodium alginate) were used to formulate in situ gelling eye drops. The formulations were evaluated for their gelling capacity, rheological studies, spreadability, bioadhesion strength, and in vitro drug release. Thiolation of pectin was observed to result in an increase in the gelling behavior, viscosity, and bioadhesive strength. The formulations comprising pectin alone (P7), combination of pectin and sodium alginate (P5SA1) or TP6 demonstrated good in vitro release characteristics. The optimized formulations displayed a significant decrease in the intraocular pressure as compared to the marketed formulation upon instillation in rabbit eye. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014, 131, 39788. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gag reflex is a normal involuntary defense mechanism that prevents foreign bodies from entering the trachea, pharynx or larynx. The patient who gags may present with a range of disruptive reaction, from simple contraction of palatal or circumoral musculature to spasm of the pharyngeal structures, accompanied by vomiting. Factors that are believed to be important in etiology are; Local and systemic disorders, Anatomic factors, Psychological factors, Iatrogenic factors. Management of gagging includes-Clinical techniques, Psychological technique, Surgical technique, and Pharmacological management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A cognitive radio node is a radio device capable of operating over multiple channels. As a result, a network consisting of one or more cognitive radio nodes can adapt to varying channel availability in its geographical region by dynamically changing the channel (or channels) nodes are using for communication. We investigate the problem of designing a fast deterministic algorithm for neighbor discovery in an undirected network consisting of one or more cognitive radio nodes when different nodes may have different subsets of channels available for communication at their location. We say that a neighbor discovery algorithm is fast if its time-complexity is polynomial in actual network-size. We prove that it is impossible to devise a fast algorithm to solve the neighbor discovery problem if nodes are neither size-aware nor collision-aware. When nodes are collision-aware, we present a fast algorithm for neighbor discovery with time-complexity of , where denotes the actual number of nodes present in the network, denotes the size of space used for assigning labels to the nodes, and denotes the number of channels over which nodes can operate. Our algorithm has the desirable property that every node knows when the neighbor discovery has completed and, moreover, all nodes terminate at the same time. When nodes are size-aware, we use a gossiping algorithm for a single-channel network with large labels that was proposed recently to derive a fast adaptive algorithm for neighbor discovery. We also investigate the neighbor discovery problem when the network may be directed. Finally, we describe a way to speed up neighbor discovery when nodes are collision-aware and channel availability sets of neighboring nodes do not vary significantly. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We investigate the problem of detecting termination of a distributed computation in systems where processes can fail by crashing. Specifically, when the communication topology is fully connected, we describe a way to transform any termination detection algorithm that has been designed for a failure-free environment into a termination detection algorithm that can tolerate process crashes. Our transformation assumes the existence of a perfect failure detector. We show that a perfect failure detector is in fact necessary to solve the termination detection problem in a crash-prone distributed system even if at most one process can crash. Let and denote the message complexity and detection latency, respectively, of when the system has processes and the underlying computation exchanges application messages. The message complexity of is messages per failure more than the message complexity of . Also, its detection latency is per failure more than that of . Furthermore, application message size increases by at most bits, where is the actual number of processes that fail during an execution. We show that, when the communication topology is fully connected, under certain realistic assumption, any fault-tolerant termination detection algorithm can be forced to exchange control messages in the worst-case even when at most one process may be active initially and the underlying computation does not exchange any application messages. This implies that our transformation is optimal in terms of message complexity when . The fault-tolerant termination detection algorithm resulting from the transformation satisfies three desirable properties. First, it can tolerate the failure of up to processes. Second, it does not impose any overhead on the fault-sensitive termination detection algorithm until one or more processes crash. Third, it does not block the application at any time. Further, using our transformation, we derive a fault-tolerant termination detection algorithm that is the most efficient fault-tolerant termination detection algorithm that has been proposed so far to our knowledge. Our transformation can be extended to arbitrary communication topologies provided process crashes do not partition the system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The group mutual exclusion problem is an extension of the traditional mutual exclusion problem in which every critical section is associated with a type or a group. Processes requesting critical sections of the same type can execute their critical sections concurrently. However, processes requesting critical sections of different types must execute their critical sections in a mutually exclusive manner. We present an efficient distributed algorithm for solving the group mutual exclusion problem when processes are arranged in the form of a tree. Our algorithm is derived from Beauquier et al.'s group mutual exclusion algorithm for a tree network. The message complexity of our algorithm is at most 3hmax, where hmax is the maximum height of the tree when rooted at any process. Its waiting time and synchronization delay, measured in terms of number of message hops, are at most 2hmax and hmax, respectively. Our algorithm has optimal synchronization delay for the class of tree network based algorithms for group mutual exclusion in which messages are only exchanged over the edges in the tree. Our simulation experiments indicate that our algorithm outperforms Beauquier et al.'s group mutual exclusion algorithm by as much as 70% in some cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important problem in distributed systems is to detect termination of a distributed computation. A distributed computation is said to have terminated when all processes have become passive and all channels have become empty. We focus on two attributes of a termination detection algorithm. First, whether the distributed computation starts from a single process or from multiple processes: diffusing computation versus non-diffusing computation. Second, whether the detection algorithm should be initiated along with the computation or can be initiated any time after the computation has started: simultaneous initiation versus delayed initiation. We show that any termination detection algorithm for a diffusing computation can be transformed into a termination detection algorithm for a non-diffusing computation. We also demonstrate that any termination detection algorithm for simultaneous initiation can be transformed into a termination detection algorithm for delayed initiation. We prove the correctness of our transformations, and show that our transformations have only a small impact on the performance of the given termination detection algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]