Introduction: Methadone hydrochloride (MDN) is an effective pharmacological substitution treatment for opioids dependence, adopted in different countries as methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) programmes. However, MDN can exacerbate the addiction problem if it is abused and injected intravenously, and the frequent visits to the MMT centres can reduce patient compliance. The overall aim of this study is to develop a novel extended-release capsule of MDN using the sol-gel silica (SGS) technique that has the potential to counteract medication-tampering techniques and associated health risks and reduce the frequent visits to MMT centres. Methods: For MDN recrystallisation, a closed container method (CCM) and hot-stage method (HSM) were conducted, and MDN crystals were characterised using the polarised light microscope (PLM). MDN crystal thickness was determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and confocal microscopy (CM) to establish a relationship between MDN crystals thickness and their birefringence colours using the Michel-Levy Birefringence Colour Chart. The experimental series was continued to produce novel silica-based MDN formulations A and B capsules by adding MDN powder at the end and beginning of the SGS process, respectively. The silica-based MDN formulations were characterised by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), SEM, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), PLM and mean grey value (MGV) analyses. The in vitro release studies (n=3) for the silica-based MDN formulations and pure MDN capsules were conducted in a phosphate buffer solution (pH= 7.2) for 7 days. Stability studies were conducted for 1 month by keeping the silica-based MDN capsules under 25°C and 57% RH. Results: The optimal method to produce large numbers of MDN crystals was the CCM, and MDN crystals were characterised as diamond shaped with an intrinsic angle of 62o. The SEM surpassed the CM in measuring MDN crystal thickness, and Mann-Whitney U Test showed statistically significant differences between SEM and confocal thickness measurements (U= 1283, p < 0.05) as the SEM exhibited thinner diamond crystals (6.62 ± 2.9 µm) than the CM measurements (9.6 ± 4.6µm). According to the Michel-Levey birefringence colour chart (using the SEM mean thickness of MDN crystals and their retardation value of 428 nm), most of MDN crystals demonstrated a yellow colour. The FT-IR, SEM, DSC, MGV and PLM analyses of both silica-based MDN formulations revealed that MDN was successfully incorporated inside the silica network producing amorphous material (with no appearance of the melting peak of pure MDN at 233.4°C) with evidence of no physical or chemical interaction between sol-gel silica and MDN. However, the TGA analysis revealed a significantly greater amount of MDN was loaded inside the silica-based MDN formulation B compared to A (t = 2.80, p = 0.009, n=6), as 28.3 ± 0.6 mg of MDN was loaded in the former while 25.6 ± 0.7 mg in the latter. In addition, the silica-based MDN formulation B released 10% more MDN after 7 days than formulation A, and both formulations were stable when stored for 1 month under 57% RH and 25°C. Conclusion: The novel combined use of SEM and PLM techniques shows a potential for the identification of MDN in forensic science as it established a range of birefringence colours of MDN crystals. Moreover, the new silica-based MDN formulation B can help to deter MDN abuse and increase patient adherence to MMT due to its potential to sustain MDN release and reduce the frequent visits to MDN treatment centres.
In this paper the variable structure control theory is utilized to derive a discontinuous controller to the magnetic levitation system. The magnetic levitation system model is considered uncertain, which subjected to the uncertainty in system parameters, also it is open-loop unstable and strongly nonlinear. The proposed variable structure control to magnetic levitation system is proved, and the area of attraction is determined. Additionally, the chattering, which induced due to the discontinuity in control law, is attenuated by using a non-smooth approximate. With this approximation the resulted controller is a continuous variable structure controller with a determined steady state error according to the selected control
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Most of the water pollutants with dyes are leftovers from industries, including textiles, wool and others. There are many ways to remove dyes such as sorption, oxidation, coagulation, filtration, and biodegradation, Chlorination, ozonation, chemical precipitation, adsorption, electrochemical processes, membrane approaches, and biological treatment are among the most widely used technologies for removing colors from wastewater. Dyes are divided into two types: natural dyes and synthetic dyes.
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The evaluation of subsurface formations as applied to oil well drilling started around 50 years ago. Generally, the curent review articule includes all methods for coring, logging, testing, and sampling. Also the methods for deciphering logs and laboratory tests that are relevant to assessing formations beneath the surface, including a look at the fluids they contain are discussed. Casing is occasionally set in order to more precisely evaluate the formations; as a result, this procedure is also taken into account while evaluating the formations. The petrophysics of reservoir rocks is the branch of science interested in studying chemical and physical properties of permeable media and the components of reservoir rocks which are associated
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This research investigates new glasses which are best suitable for design of optical systems
working in the infrared region between 1.01 to 2.3μm. This work is extended to Oliva & Gennari
(1995,1998) research in which they found that the best known achromatic pairs are (BAF2-IRG2; SRF2-
IRG3; BAF2-IRG7; CAF2-IRGN6; BAF2-SF56A and BAF2-SF6). Schott will most probably stop the
production of these very little used and commercially uninteresting IRG glasses. In this work equally
good performances can be obtained by coupling BAF2, SRF2&CAF2 with standard glasses from Schott
or Ohara Company. The best new achromatic pairs found are (SRF2-S-TIH10; CAF2-S-LAL9; CAF2-SLAL13
and CAF2-S-BAH27). These new achromatic pai
This paper designed a fault tolerance for soft real time distributed system (FTRTDS). This system is designed to be independently on specific mechanisms and facilities of the underlying real time distributed system. It is designed to be distributed on all the computers in the distributed system and controlled by a central unit.
Besides gathering information about a target program spontaneously, it provides information about the target operating system and the target hardware in order to diagnose the fault before occurring, so it can handle the situation before it comes on. And it provides a distributed system with the reactive capability of reconfiguring and reinitializing after the occurrence of a failure.
Visible light communication (VLC) is an upcoming wireless technology for next-generation communication for high-speed data transmission. It has the potential for capacity enhancement due to its characteristic large bandwidth. Concerning signal processing and suitable transceiver design for the VLC application, an amplification-based optical transceiver is proposed in this article. The transmitter consists of a driver and laser diode as the light source, while the receiver contains a photodiode and signal amplifying circuit. The design model is proposed for its simplicity in replacing the trans-impedance and transconductance circuits of the conventional modules by a simple amplification circuit and interface converter. Th
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Graph is a tool that can be used to simplify and solve network problems. Domination is a typical network problem that graph theory is well suited for. A subset of nodes in any network is called dominating if every node is contained in this subset, or is connected to a node in it via an edge. Because of the importance of domination in different areas, variant types of domination have been introduced according to the purpose they are used for. In this paper, two domination parameters the first is the restrained and the second is secure domination have been chosn. The secure domination, and some types of restrained domination in one type of trees is called complete ary tree are determined.
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Currently, with the huge increase in modern communication and network applications, the speed of transformation and storing data in compact forms are pressing issues. Daily an enormous amount of images are stored and shared among people every moment, especially in the social media realm, but unfortunately, even with these marvelous applications, the limited size of sent data is still the main restriction's, where essentially all these applications utilized the well-known Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) standard techniques, in the same way, the need for construction of universally accepted standard compression systems urgently required to play a key role in the immense revolution. This review is concerned with Different
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