Fabrication of Electrochemical Sensors for the Determination of Pharmaceuticals

Voltammetric sensors are an important class of electrochemical sensors in which the analytical information is obtained from the measurement of current obtained as a result of electrochemical oxidation/reduction.This current is proportional to the concentration of the analyte.Chemically modified electrodes(CMEs) have great significance as important analytical tools for the electrochemical determination of pharmaceuticals.The modification of electrode results in efficient determination of electro-active biomolecules at very lower potential without its major interferences.The operation mechanism of CMEs depends on the properties of the modifier materials that are used to promote selectivity towards the target analytes.Modified electrodes can be prepared by deposition of various compounds such as organic compounds ,conducting polymers,metal oxides,etc. on the various electrode surfaces.The thesis presents the development ,electrochemical characterization and analytical application studies of eight voltammetric sensors developed for six drugs viz.,Ambroxol,Sulfamethoxazole,PAM Chloride, Lamivudine,Metronidazole and Nimesulide.The modification techniques adopted as part of the present work include Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube(MWCNT) based modification.Electropolymerisation and Gold Nanoparticle (AuNP) based modifications.

Design and Development of Instrumentation Systems to determine the Dry Rubber Content in Natural Rubber Latex

Hevea latex is a natural biological liquid of very complex composition .Besides rubber hydrocarbons,it contains many proteinous and resinous substances,carbohydrates,inorganic matter,water,and others.The Dry Rubber Content (DRC) of latex varies according to season, tapping system,weather,soil conditions ,clone,age of the tree etc. The true DRC of the latex must be determined to ensure fair prices for the latex during commercial exchange.The DRC of Hevea latex is a very familiar term to all in the rubber industry.It has been the basis for incentive payments to tappers who bring in more than the daily agreed poundage of latex.It is an important parameter for rubber and latex processing industries for automation and verious decesion making processes.This thesis embodies the efforts made by me to determine the DRC of rubber latex following different analytical tools such as MIR absorption,thermal analysis.dielectric spectroscopy and NIR reflectance.The rubber industry is still Looking for a compact instrument that is accurate economical,easy to use and environment friendly.I hope the results presented in this thesis will help to realise this goal in the near future.

An evaluation of Primary health care system in Kerala

The thesis entitled An Evaluation of Primary Health Care System in Kerala. The present study is intended to examine the working of primary health care system and its impact on the health status of people. The hypothesis tested in the thesis includes, a. The changes in the health profile require reallocation of resources of primary health care system, b. Rate of utilization depends on the quality of services provided by primary health centers, and c. There is a significant decline in the operational efficiency of the primary health care system. The major elements of primary health care stated in the report of AlmaAta International Conference on Primary Health Care (WHO, 1994)” is studied on the basis of the classification of the elements in to three: Preventive, Promotive, and Curative measures. Preventive measures include Maternal and Child Health Care including family Planning. Provision of water and sanitation is reviewed under promotive measures. Curative measures are studied using the disease profile of the study area. Collection of primary data was done through a sample survey, using pre-tested interview schedule of households of the study area. Multi stage random sampling design was used for selecting the sample. The design of the present study is both descriptive and analytical in nature. As far as the analytical tools are concerned, growth index, percentages, ratios, rates, time series analysis, analysis of variance, chi square test, Z test were used for analyzing the data. Present study revealed that no one in these areas was covered under any type of health insurance. Conclusion states that considering the present changes in the health profile, traditional pattern of resource allocation should be altered to meet the urgent health care needs of the people. Preventive and promotive measures like health education for giving awareness among people to change health habits, diet pattern, life style etc. are to be developed. Proper diagnosis and treatment of the disease at the beginning of the stage itself may help to cure majority of disease. For that, Public health policy must ensure the primary health care as enunciated at Alma- Ata international Conference. At the same time Public health is not to be treated as the sole responsibility of the government. Active community participation is an essential means to attain the goals.

Analytical Equations for Compact Dual Frequency Microstrip Antenna

Design equations are presented for calculating the resonance frequencies for a compact dual frequency arrow-shaped microstrip antenna. This provides a fast and simple way to predict the resonant frequencies of the antenna. The antenna is also analyzed using the IE3D simulation package. The theoretical predictions are found to be very close to the IE3D results and thus establish the validity of the design formulae

An analytical study of the power distribution pattterns of silica waveguides with high paraboloic cylindrical deformation

An attempt is made to determine the relative power distribution in a step-index parabolic cylindrical waveguide (PCW) with high deformation across the direction of propagation. The guide is assumed to be made of silica. The scalar field approximation is employed for the analysis under which a vanishing refractive-index (RI) difference in the waveguide materials is considered. Further, no approximation for folds- is used in the analytical treatment. Due to the geometry of such waceguides, PCWs lose the well-defined modal discreteness, and a kind of mode bunching is observed instead, which becomes much more prominent in PCWs with high bends. However, with the increase in cross-sectional size, the mode-bunching tendency is slightly reduced. The general expressions for power in the guiding and nonguiding sections are obtained, and the fractional power patterns in all of the sections are presented for PCWs of various cross-sectional dimensions. It is observed that the confinement of power in the core section is increased for PCWs of larger cross-sectional size. Moreover, a fairly uniform distribution of power is seen over the modes having intermediate values of propagation constants

Analytical Investigations 0n Collapse of Cylindrical Submarine Shells

Submarine hull structure is a watertight envelope, under hydrostatic pressure when in operation. Stiffened cylindrical shells constitute the major portion of these submarine hulls and these thin shells under compression are susceptible to buckling failure. Normally loss of stability occurs at the limit point rather than at the bifurcation point and the stability analysis has to consider the change in geometry at each load step. Hence geometric nonlinear analysis of the shell forms becomes. a necessity. External hydrostatic pressure will follow the deformed configuration of the shell and hence follower force effect has to be accounted for. Computer codes have been developed based on all-cubic axisymmetric cylindrical shell finite element and discrete ring stiffener element for linear elastic, linear buckling and geometric nonIinear analysis of stiffened cylindrical shells. These analysis programs have the capability to treat hydrostatic pressure as a radial load and as a follower force. Analytical investigations are carried out on two attack submarine cylindrical hull models besides standard benchmark problems. In each case, the analysis has been carried out for interstiffener, interdeepframe and interbulkhead configurations. The shell stiffener attachment in each of this configuration has been represented by the simply supported-simply supported, clamped-clamped and fixed-fixed boundary conditions in this study. The results of the analytical investigations have been discussed and the observations and conclusions are described. Rotation restraint at the ends is influential for interstiffener and interbulkhead configurations and the significance of axial restraint becomes predominant in the interbulkhead configuration. The follower force effect of hydrostatic pressure is not significant in interstiffener and interdeepframe configurations where as it has very high detrimental effect on buckling pressure on interbulkhead configuration. The geometric nonlinear interbulkhead analysis incorporating follower force effect gives the critical value of buckling pressure and this analysis is recommended for the determination of collapse pressure of stiffened cylindrical submarine shells.

Fabrication of Potentiometric Sensors for the Determination of Lanthanide Ions

In many fields such as earth science biology, environment and electronics, the knowledge about elemental distributions and chemical speciation is important. The determination of metal levels especially the toxic ones both in the environment and in biological materials are increasingly demanded by the society.Ion selective sensors have become one of the most effective ad powerful means for analytical scientists for the trace level monitoring of metal ions. The wide range of applications ,low material requirements and simplicity of analytical procedure have not only brought ion-selective electrodes in to the lime light of analytical chemistry,but have promoted their use as tools for physiologists,medical researchers,biologists,geologists,environmental protection specialists etc.Potentiometric ion-selective sensors have been developed for the determination of lanthanide ions such as La3+,Nd3+,Pr3+,Sm3+, and Gd3+.The sensors fabricated include both PVC membrane sensor and chemically modified carbon paste sensor. A set of 10 sensors have been developed. The response parameters of all the sensors have been studied and the sensors were applied as an indicator electrode in the potentiometric titration and for the determination of metal ions in real samples.

lntemet utilization and academic activities of faculty members in the universities of Kerala : an analytical study

This thesis Entitled Internet Utilization and Academic Activities of Faculty Members in the Universities of kerala: an analytical study. Today, scientific research is throwing up new discoveries, inventions and vistas by the hour. We are witnessing a veritable knowledge explosion. It is important for members of university faculty members to keep abreast of it for giving up-t-date information to their students about the new development in the subject of their study. The internet is an invaluable tool for achieving it. Most of the universities have sufficient internet facility, but the accessibility to all the faculty members is not adequate. University Libraries also provides standard supplementary service in the internet area. This study indicates differential level of awareness and utilization of the internet services by the faculty members in the areas of teaching, research and publication. However the overall impression is that the awareness and utilization is inadequate. This point to the urgent need to devise programs and schemes to promote internet utilization among the faculty members. The suggestions indicate the key areas that deserve attention by policy makers and administrators. Thanks to the internet, every new development in every field of study is just a click away for faculty members, research scholars and students.

Analytical Studies on Diffusion and lntermittency in Chaotic Maps

The study of simple chaotic maps for non-equilibrium processes in statistical physics has been one of the central themes in the theory of chaotic dynamical systems. Recently, many works have been carried out on deterministic diffusion in spatially extended one-dimensional maps This can be related to real physical systems such as Josephson junctions in the presence of microwave radiation and parametrically driven oscillators. Transport due to chaos is an important problem in Hamiltonian dynamics also. A recent approach is to evaluate the exact diffusion coefficient in terms of the periodic orbits of the system in the form of cycle expansions. But the fact is that the chaotic motion in such spatially extended maps has two complementary aspects- - diffusion and interrnittency. These are related to the time evolution of the probability density function which is approximately Gaussian by central limit theorem. It is noticed that the characteristic function method introduced by Fujisaka and his co-workers is a very powerful tool for analysing both these aspects of chaotic motion. The theory based on characteristic function actually provides a thermodynamic formalism for chaotic systems It can be applied to other types of chaos-induced diffusion also, such as the one arising in statistics of trajectory separation. It was noted that there is a close connection between cycle expansion technique and characteristic function method. It was found that this connection can be exploited to enhance the applicability of the cycle expansion technique. In this way, we found that cycle expansion can be used to analyse the probability density function in chaotic maps. In our research studies we have successfully applied the characteristic function method and cycle expansion technique for analysing some chaotic maps. We introduced in this connection, two classes of chaotic maps with variable shape by generalizing two types of maps well known in literature.

Polymeric complexesSynthesis, Characterization and Analytical Applications

As the application of polymeric complexes is enormous, there exists a continuing interest in the synthesis and characterization of these complexes. The synthetic and characterization parts are very important in an academic point of view. Further in an application point of view also polymeric ligands/complexes are gaining attention.The thesis is divided in to six chapters, in which the first chapter gives an introduction along with a brief review on polymeric ligands/ complexes. The second chapter explains the different procedure adopted for the whole work along with the details of the reagents/ instruments used. The third chapter gives a report of the detailed study regarding the synthesis and characterization of eighteen complexes. While the fourth chapter is a report of the ion removal studies using three polymeric ligands, the fifth chapter explains the development of a polymeric complex as ion selective electrode material for the fabrication of a CC ion selective electrode. The sixth chapter presents the summary and tables, figures and references are given separately at the end.

Analytical Study of Typographical Errors in OPACS and Corrective Measures

The present study is an attempt to highlight the problem of typographical errors in OPACS. The errors made while typing catalogue entries as well as importing bibliographical records from other libraries exist unnoticed by librarians resulting the non-retrieval of available records and affecting the quality of OPACs. This paper follows previous research on the topic mainly by Jeffrey Beall and Terry Ballard. The word “management” was chosen from the list of likely to be misspelled words identified by previous research. It was found that the word is wrongly entered in several forms in local, national and international OPACs justifying the observations of Ballard that typos occur in almost everywhere. Though there are lots of corrective measures proposed and are in use, the study asserts the fact that human effort is needed to get rid of the problem. The paper is also an invitation to the library professionals and system designers to construct a strategy to solve the issue

ICT Tools for Teaching & Learning

Page 1. ICT Tools for Teaching & Learning G Santhosh Kumar Cochin University Page 2. Agenda • What is ICT? • Why integrate ICT in Education? • What are the Challenges? • What are the good resources? Page 3. Questions # “Despite the increasing use of ICT, the need for teachers is as great as ever” # “Placing ICT in schools will automatically improve the quality of education that children receive” #”The Internet is unsafe for children to use because there is so much dangerous material available on it” Page 4. What is ICT? • ICT is short for ..