Search Results (33)

Background/Objectives: Pediatric drug administration is hindered by difficulties in swallowing conventional medications and the unpalatable taste of many drugs. Among diseases highlighting the need for improved pediatric delivery, tuberculosis (TB) stands out. One form of the disease is latent TB infection (LTBI), which is concerning in children. Effective LTBI treatment is crucial for prevention, with isoniazid (INH) widely used for its proven efficacy and safety. This study aims to develop innovative 3D-printed chewable gels containing INH for LTBI treatment. Methods: The gels were formulated using gelatin and carrageenan gum, sugar-free sweeteners, and flavoring. Two batches were prepared, and using 3D printing (3DP) with a semi-solid extrusion (SSE) module, chewable gels were produced. Rheological properties were measured to assess the feasibility of 3DP-SSE, evaluating the structural integrity and adequate fluidity of the formulation. The 3D-printed chewable gels were evaluated by visual, mass, and dimensional characteristics. In addition, the water activity, texture profile, INH and degradation product content, in vitro release, and taste-masking were investigated. Results: The optimized formulation maintained suitable rheological properties for 3DP-SSE, demonstrating consistent weight, dimensions, and stability after the process. The texture achieved a balance between printing parameters and shape maintenance, and the INH presented an immediate-release profile (>85% within 30 min). The chewable gels showed an improvement in palatability compared to conventional INH tablets. Conclusions: This innovative approach offers a promising solution for pediatric LTBI treatment, as it improves efficacy, medication acceptability, and on-demand access. Full article

Environmental control based on growth stage is critical for enhancing the yield and quality of industrially cultivated Pleurotus pulmonarius. Challenges such as scene complexity and overlapping mushroom clusters can impact the accuracy of growth stage detection and target segmentation. This study introduces a lightweight method called the real-time detection model for the growth stages of P. pulmonarius (GSP-RTMDet). A spatial pyramid pooling fast network with simple parameter-free attention (SPPF-SAM) was proposed, which enhances the backbone’s capability to extract key feature information. Additionally, it features an interactive attention mechanism between spatial and channel dimensions to build a cross-stage partial spatial group-wise enhance network (CSP-SGE), improving the feature fusion capability of the neck. The class-aware adaptive feature enhancement (CARAFE) upsampling module is utilized to enhance instance segmentation performance. This study innovatively fusions the improved methods, enhancing the feature representation and the accuracy of masks. By lightweight model design, it achieves real-time growth stage detection of P. pulmonarius and accurate instance segmentation, forming the foundation of an environmental control strategy. Model evaluations reveal that GSP-RTMDet-S achieves an optimal balance between accuracy and speed, with a bounding box mean average precision (bbox mAP) and a segmentation mAP (segm mAP) of 96.40% and 93.70% on the test set, marking improvements of 2.20% and 1.70% over the baseline. Moreover, it boosts inference speed to 39.58 images per second. This method enhances detection and segmentation outcomes in real-world environments of P. pulmonarius houses, offering a more accurate and efficient growth stage perception solution for environmental control. Full article

Pronucleotides, after entering the cell, undergo chemical or enzymatic conversion into nucleotides with a free phosphate residue, and the released nucleoside 5′-monophosphate is then phosphorylated to the biologically active form, namely nucleoside 5′-triphosphate. The active form can inhibit HIV virus replication. For the most effective therapy, it is necessary to improve the transport of prodrugs into organelles. The introduction of new functional groups into their structure increases lipophilicity and, as a result, facilitates the interaction of pronucleotide molecules with components of biological membranes. Studies of these interactions were performed using the Langmuir technique. The prototype of the biological membrane was a thin monolayer composed of phospholipid molecules, DPPC (1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine). The pronucleotides were 3′-azido-3′-deoxythymidine (AZT) analogs, formed by the phosphorylation of AZT to monophosphate (AZTMP) and containing various masking moieties that could increase their lipophilicity. Our results show the influence of the pronucleotide’s chemical structure on the fluidization of the model biomembrane. Changes in monolayer morphology in the presence of prodrugs were investigated by BAM microscopy. It was found that the incorporation of new groups into the structure of the drug as well as the concentration of AZT derivatives have a significant impact on the surface properties of the formed DPPC monolayer. Full article

The fortification of bread is considered an effective approach for improving its nutritional properties. However, the incorporation of free bioactive components into bread formulations may affect the overall quality of breads in different ways, depending on the sensitivity of bioactive components to baking factors. In this study, the incorporation of encapsulated vitamin C (ascorbic acid and its salts) and fish oil in breads was investigated for their stability and effect on bread quality. The combination of fish oil emulsions increased the retention of encapsulated ascorbic acid, calcium ascorbate, or sodium ascorbate in breads compared to that of the free non-combined vitamin. At the same time, the combination of vitamin gels increased the retention of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and decreased the lipid oxidation in breads compared to the non-combined encapsulated forms. The highest retention values of ascorbic groups, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and DHA were about 70%, 88%, and 95% in breads after baking, respectively. There was the negative correlation between the ABTS radical scavenging capacity and peroxide value in breads. The specific volume of breads was improved by vitamin gels but reduced by fish oil emulsions. Their combination resisted individual impact on the specific volume of breads. The breads with combined ascorbic acid gels and fish oil emulsions showed similar textural properties to the control one. The functional bread with calcium ascorbate gel and fish oil emulsion had the highest moisture content of 45.87%. The inclusion of vitamin gels plus fish oil emulsion decreased free water but increased the bound water. Combining ascorbic acid gels with fish oil emulsions effectively reduced and masked the fishy flavor. The integration of encapsulation techniques and multi-nutrient fortification is proposed as an effective way to enhance the nutritional value and quality of functional bread through synergistic effects. Full article

The CO₂ adsorption capacity and the CO₂/N₂ selectivity of a series of Supported Ionic Liquid-Phase adsorbents (SILPs), including the novel inversely structured SILP “Inverse SILPs”, are thoroughly investigated. ZIF-8, ZIF-69 and ZIF-70 were involved as the solid matrix, while ILs, having tricyanomethanide (TCM) as an anion and alkyl-methylimidazolium of different alkyl chain lengths (C₂, C₆, C₈) as a cation, were used as the liquid constituents of the SILPs. The ultimate target of the work was to ratify a few recently reported cases of enhanced CO₂ absorptivity in ILs due to their incorporation in ZIFs and to corroborate phenomena of CO₂/N₂ selectivity improvements in ZIFs, due to the presence of ILs. This ambiguity originates from the vague assumption that the pores of the ZIF are filled with the IL phase, and the free pore volume of a SILP is almost zero. Yet, through the integration of theoretical predictions with N₂ porosimetry analysis of an actual sample, it is suggested that a thin layer of IL covered the exterior surface of a ZIF crystal. This layer could act as an impermeable barrier for N₂, inhibiting the gas molecules from reaching the empty cavities laying underneath the liquid film during porosimetry analysis. This consideration is based on the fact that the solubility of N₂ in the IL is very low, and the diffusivity at 77 K is negligible. In this context, the observed result reflects an averaged adsorptivity of both the IL phase and the empty pores of the ZIF. Therefore, it is incorrect to attribute the adsorption capacity of the SILP solely to the mass of the IL that ‘hypothetically’ nests inside the pore cavities. In fact, the CO₂ adsorption capacity of SILPs is always less than the average adsorptivity of an ideal ZIF/IL mixture, where the two phases do not interact. This reduction occurs because some ZIF pores may become inaccessible, particularly when the IL forms a layer on the pore walls, leaving only a small empty core accessible to CO₂ molecules. Additionally, the IL layer masks the active sites on the ZIF’s pore walls. It should also be noted that the CO₂/N₂ selectivity increases only when the ZIF’s pores are completely filled with the IL phase. This is because ILs have a higher CO₂/N₂ selectivity compared to the bare ZIF. Full article

LED devices are increasingly gaining importance in lithography approaches due to the fact that they can be used flexibly for mask-less patterning. In this study, we briefly report on developments in mask-free lithography approaches based on nano-LED devices and summarize our current achievements in the different building blocks needed for its application. Individually addressable nano-LED structures can form the basis for an unprecedented fast and flexible patterning, on demand, in photo-chemically sensitive films. We introduce a driving scheme for nano-LEDs in arrays serving for a singularly addressable approach. Furthermore, we discuss the challenges facing nano-LED fabrication and possibilities to improve their performance. Additionally, we introduce LED structures based on a hybrid nanocrystal/nano-LED approach. Lastly, we provide an outlook how this approach could further develop for next generation lithography systems. This technique has a huge potential to revolutionize the field and to contribute significantly to energy and resources saving device nanomanufacturing. Full article

Approximately 1 billion people are affected by neglected diseases around the world. Among these diseases, schistosomiasis constitutes one of the most important public health problems, being caused by Schistosoma mansoni and treated through the oral administration of praziquantel (PZQ). Despite being a common disease in children, the medication is delivered in the form of large, bitter-tasting tablets, which makes it difficult for patients to comply with the treatment. In order to mask the taste of the drug, allow more appropriate doses for children, and enhance the absorption by the body, different polymer matrices based on poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) were developed and used to encapsulate PZQ. Polymer matrices included PMMA nano- and microparticles, PMMA-co-DEAEMA (2-(diethylamino)ethyl methacrylate), and PMMA-co-DMAEMA (2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate) microparticles. The performances of the drug-loaded particles were characterized in vitro through dissolution tests and in vivo through pharmacokinetic analyses in rats for the first time. The in vitro dissolution studies were carried out in accordance with the Brazilian Pharmacopeia and revealed a good PZQ release profile in an acidic medium for the PMMA-DEAEMA copolymer, reaching values close to 100 % in less than 3 h. The in vivo pharmacokinetic analyses were conducted using free PZQ as the control group that was compared with the investigated matrices. The drug was administered orally at doses of 60 mg/kg, and the PMMA-co-DEAEMA copolymer microparticles were found to be the most efficient release system among the investigated ones, reaching a C_max value of 1007 ± 83 ng/mL, even higher than that observed for free PZQ, which displayed a C_max value of 432 ± 98 ng/mL. Full article

Iron deficiency is the principal cause of nutritional anemia and it constitutes a major health problem, especially during pregnancy. Despite the availability of various non-invasive traditional oral dosage forms such as tablets, capsules, and liquid preparations of iron, they are hard to consume for special populations such as pregnant women, pediatric, and geriatric patients with dysphagia and vomiting tendency. The objective of the present study was to develop and characterize pullulan-based iron-loaded orodispersible films (i-ODFs). Microparticles of iron were formulated by a microencapsulation technique, to mask the bitter taste of iron, and ODFs were fabricated by a modified solvent casting method. Morphological characteristics of the microparticles were identified by optical microscopy and the percentage of iron loading was evaluated by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). The fabricated i-ODFs were evaluated for their morphology by scanning electron microscopy. Other parameters including thickness, folding endurance, tensile strength, weight variation, disintegration time, percentage moisture loss, surface pH, and in vivo animal safety were evaluated. Lastly, stability studies were carried out at a temperature of 25 °C/60% RH. The results of the study confirmed that pullulan-based i-ODFs had good physicochemical properties, excellent disintegration time, and optimal stability at specified storage conditions. Most importantly, the i-ODFs were free from irritation when administered to the tongue as confirmed by the hamster cheek pouch model and surface pH determination. Collectively, the present study suggests that the film-forming agent, pullulan, could be successfully employed on a lab scale to formulate orodispersible films of iron. In addition, i-ODFs can be processed easily on a large scale for commercial use. Full article

The epidemic caused by the coronavirus infection SARS-CoV-2 at the beginning of 2022 affected approximately 500 million people in all countries. The source of infection is the particles of the virus, which, when breathing, talking, and coughing, are released with the respiratory droplets and aerosol dust of an infected person. Actions aimed at combating and minimizing the consequences of coronavirus infection led to taking measures in scientific areas to investigate the processes of the spread of viral particles in the air, in ventilation, and air conditioning systems of premises and transport, filtration through masks, the effect of partitions, face shields, etc. The article presents a mathematical model of the spread of viral particles in technological transport. Air intake diverters and the operator’s respiratory tract are the sources of the virus. The Euler–Lagrange approach was used to simulate liquid droplets in a flow. Here, the liquid phase is considered as a continuous medium using Navier–Stokes equations, the continuity equation, the energy equation, and the diffusion equation. Accounting for diffusion makes it possible to explicitly model air humidity and is necessary to consider the evaporation of droplets (changes in the mass and size of particles containing the virus). Liquid droplets are modeled using the discrete-phase model (DPM), in which each particle is tracked in a Lagrange coordinate system. The DPM method is effective, since the volume fraction of particles is small relative to the total volume of the medium, and the interaction of particles with each other can be neglected. In this case, the discrete and continuous phases are interconnected through the source terms in the equations. The averaged RANS equations are solved numerically using the k-ω turbulence model in the Ansys Fluent package. The task was solved in a static form and in the time domain. For a non-stationary problem, the stabilization time of the variables is found. The simulation results are obtained in the form of fields of pressures, velocities, temperatures and air densities, and the field of propagation of particles containing the virus. Various regimes were studied at various free flow rates and initial velocities of droplets with viral particles. The results of trajectories and velocities of particles, and particle concentrations depending on time, size, and on the evaporability of particles are obtained. Full article

Thorough study of composition and fluorescence properties of a commercial reagent of active equine NAD-dependent alcohol dehydrogenase expressed and purified from E. coli has been carried out. Several experimental methods: spectral- and time-resolved two-photon excited fluorescence, sodium dodecyl sulfate–polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, fast protein liquid chromatography, and mass spectrometry were used for analysis. The reagent under study was found to contain also a number of natural fluorophores: free NAD(P)H, NADH-alcohol dehydrogenase, NADPH-isocitrate dehydrogenase, and pyridoxal 5-phosphate—serine hydroxymethyltransferase complexes. The results obtained demonstrated the potential and limitations of popular optical methods as FLIM for separation of fluorescence signals from free and protein-bound forms of NADH, NADPH, and FAD that are essential coenzymes in redox reactions in all living cells. In particular, NADH-alcohol dehydrogenase and NADPH-isocitrate dehydrogenase complexes could not be optically separated in our experimental conditions although fast protein liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry analysis undoubtedly indicated the presence of both enzymes in the molecular sample used. Also, the results of fluorescence, fast protein liquid chromatography, and mass spectrometry analysis revealed a significant contribution of the enzyme-bound coenzyme pyridoxal 5-phosphate to the fluorescence signal that could be separated from enzyme-bound NADH by using bandpass filters, but could effectively mask contribution from enzyme-bound FAD because the fluorescence spectra of the species practically overlapped. It was shown that enzyme-bound pyridoxal 5-phosphate fluorescence can be separated from enzyme-bound NAD(P)H and FAD through analysis of short fluorescence decay times of about tens of picoseconds. However, this analysis was found to be effective only at relatively high number of peak photon counts in recorded fluorescence signals. The results obtained in this study can be used for interpretation of fluorescence signals from a mixture of enzyme-bound fluorophores and should be taken into consideration when determining the intracellular NADH/FAD ratio using FLIM. Full article

With the growing demands for transferring large amounts of data between components in a package, it is required for advanced packaging technologies to form smaller vertical vias in the insulators. Plasma etching is one of the most widely used micro-vias formation processes. This paper has developed a fabrication process for 5–10 µm residue-free micro-vias with 70° tapered angle in polyimide film based on O₂/CHF₃ inductively coupled plasma (ICP). The etch rate would monotonically increase with the ICP power, RF power, and gas flow rate. As for the gas ratio, there is an optimum range of CHF₃ ratio, which could obtain the highest etch rate. The results have clearly shown that the enhancement of ion bombardment and prolongation of etching time would be beneficial to grass-like residue removal. In addition, during the etching of partially cured polyimide, the lateral etch rate would significantly increase in the region near the metal hard mask. Full article

Recently, learning-based image completion methods have made encouraging progress on square or irregular masks. The generative adversarial networks (GANs) have been able to produce visually realistic and semantically correct results. However, much texture and structure information will be lost in the completion process. If the missing part is too large to provide useful information, the result will be ambiguity, residual shadow, and object confusion. In order to complete large mask images, we present a novel model using conditional GAN called coarse-to-fine condition GAN (CF CGAN). We use a coarse-to-fine generator with symmetry and new perceptual loss based on VGG-16. The generator is symmetric in structure. For large mask image completion, our method produces visually realistic and semantically correct results. The generalization ability of our model is also excellent. We evaluate our model on the CelebA dataset and use FID, LPIPS, and SSIM as the metrics. Experiments demonstrate superior performance in terms of both quality and reality in free-form image completion. Full article

In this study, we fabricated a random nanostructure (RNS) external light extraction composite layer containing high-refractive-index nanoparticles through a simple and inexpensive solution process and a low-temperature mask-free process. We focused on varying the shape and density of the RNSs and adjusted the concentration of the high-refractive-index nanoparticles to control the optical properties. The RNSs fabricated using a low-temperature mask-free process can use the distance between the nanostructures and various forms to control the diffraction and scattering effects in the visible light wavelength range. Consequently, our film exhibited a direct transmittance of ~85% at a wavelength of 550 nm. Furthermore, when the RNSs’ composite film, manufactured using the low-temperature mask-free process, was applied to organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), it exhibited an external quantum efficiency improvement of 32.2% compared with the OLEDs without the RNSs. Therefore, the randomly distributed high-refractive-index nanoparticles on the polymer film can reduce the waveguide mode and total reflection at the substrate/air interface. These films can be used as a scattering layer to reduce the loss of the OLED substrate mode. Full article

Masks are effective for preventing the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory infections. If antimicrobial properties can be applied to the non-woven fabric filters in masks, they can become a more effective countermeasure against human-to-human and environmental infections. We investigated the possibilities of carrying antimicrobial agents on the fiber surfaces of non-woven fabric filters by applying silica-resin coating technology, which can form silica-resin layers on such fabrics at normal temperature and pressure. Scanning electron microscopy and electron probe microanalysis showed that a silica-resin layer was formed on the fiber surface of non-woven fabric filters. Bioassays for coronavirus and quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reactions (RT-PCR) revealed that all antimicrobial agents tested loaded successfully onto non-woven fabric filters without losing their inactivation effects against the human coronavirus (inhibition efficacy: >99.999%). These results indicate that this technology could be used to load a functional substance onto a non-woven fabric filter by vitrifying its surface. Silica-resin coating technology also has the potential of becoming an important breakthrough not only in the prevention of infection but also in various fields, such as prevention of building aging, protection of various cultural properties, the realization of a plastic-free society, and prevention of environmental pollution. Full article

Label-free detection of biomolecules using localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) substrates is a highly attractive method for point-of-care (POC) testing. One of the remaining challenges to developing LSPR-based POC devices is to fabricate the LSPR substrates with large-scale, reproducible, and high-throughput. Herein, a fabrication strategy for wafer-scale LSPR substrates is demonstrated using reproducible, high-throughput techniques, such as nanoimprint lithography, wet-etching, and thin film deposition. A transparent sapphire wafer, on which SiO₂-nanodot hard masks were formed via nanoimprint lithography, was anisotropically etched by a mixed solution of H₂SO₄ and H₃PO₄, resulting in a patterned sapphire substrate (PSS). An LSPR substrate was finally fabricated by oblique deposition of Au onto the PSS, which was then applied to label-free detection of the binding events of biomolecules. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first report on the application of the PSS used as an LSPR template by obliquely depositing a metal. Full article