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.
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This paper describes a newly modified wind turbine ventilator that can achieve highly efficient ventilation. The new modification on the conventional wind turbine ventilator system may be achieved by adding a Savonius wind turbine above the conventional turbine to make it work more efficiently and help spinning faster. Three models of the Savonius wind turbine with 2, 3, and 4 blades' semicircular arcs are proposed to be placed above the conventional turbine of wind ventilator to build a hybrid ventilation turbine. A prototype of room model has been constructed and the hybrid turbine is placed on the head of the room roof. Performance's tests for the hybrid turbine with a different number of blades and different values o
... Show MoreBreast cancer constitutes about one fourth of the registered cancer cases among the Iraqi population (1)
and it is the leading cause of death among Iraqi women (2)
. Each year more women are exposed to the vicious
ramifications of this disease which include death if left unmanaged or the negative sequels that they would
experience, cosmetically and psychologically, after exposure to radical mastectomy.
The World Health Organization (WHO) documented that early detection and screening, when coped
with adequate therapy, could offer a reduction in breast cancer mortality; displaying that the low survival rates
in less developed countries, including Iraq, is mainly attributed to the lack of early detection programs couple
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The current research is concerned with the prices of Goods and materials in the Iraqi slang a descriptive, lexicographic , and semantic study expressing the meanings of these names and their positions , as well as expressing the imaginations of Human mind , the popular mind in describing these goods with evaluating them besides the semantic of each word accordingly
The current research is divided into two parts , the first part is consisted of Vocalizations" words" That are arisen through cognitive naming that concentrate on the mental imaginations for the most important and sensitive such as colors , taste , shapes and forms impacts of Goods and materials according to users' ' taste for those words , on other hand, the second part of
Nowadays, Wheeled Mobile Robots (WMRs) have found many applications as industry, transportation, inspection, and other fields. Therefore, the trajectory tracking control of the nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots have an important problem. This work focus on the application of model-based on Fractional Order PIaDb (FOPID) controller for trajectory tracking problem. The control algorithm based on the errors in postures of mobile robot which feed to FOPID controller to generate correction signals that transport to torque for each driven wheel, and by means of dynamics model of mobile robot these torques used to compute the linear and angular speed to reach the desired pose. In this work a dynamics model of
... Show MoreCancer is in general not a result of an abnormality of a single gene but a consequence of changes in many genes, it is therefore of great importance to understand the roles of different oncogenic and tumor suppressor pathways in tumorigenesis. In recent years, there have been many computational models developed to study the genetic alterations of different pathways in the evolutionary process of cancer. However, most of the methods are knowledge-based enrichment analyses and inflexible to analyze user-defined pathways or gene sets. In this paper, we develop a nonparametric and data-driven approach to testing for the dynamic changes of pathways over the cancer progression. Our method is based on an expansion and refinement of the pathway bei
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Early detection of brain tumors is critical for enhancing treatment options and extending patient survival. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning gives more detailed information, such as greater contrast and clarity than any other scanning method. Manually dividing brain tumors from many MRI images collected in clinical practice for cancer diagnosis is a tough and time-consuming task. Tumors and MRI scans of the brain can be discovered using algorithms and machine learning technologies, making the process easier for doctors because MRI images can appear healthy when the person may have a tumor or be malignant. Recently, deep learning techniques based on deep convolutional neural networks have been used to analyze med
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This paper presents a new algorithm in an important research field which is the semantic word similarity estimation. A new feature-based algorithm is proposed for measuring the word semantic similarity for the Arabic language. It is a highly systematic language where its words exhibit elegant and rigorous logic. The score of sematic similarity between two Arabic words is calculated as a function of their common and total taxonomical features. An Arabic knowledge source is employed for extracting the taxonomical features as a set of all concepts that subsumed the concepts containing the compared words. The previously developed Arabic word benchmark datasets are used for optimizing and evaluating the proposed algorithm. In this paper,
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Mobile ad hoc network security is a new area for research that it has been faced many difficulties to implement. These difficulties are due to the absence of central authentication server, the dynamically movement of the nodes (mobility), limited capacity of the wireless medium and the various types of vulnerability attacks. All these factor combine to make mobile ad hoc a great challenge to the researcher. Mobile ad hoc has been used in different applications networks range from military operations and emergency disaster relief to community networking and interaction among meeting attendees or students during a lecture. In these and other ad hoc networking applications, security in the routing protocol is necessary to protect against malic
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