Browsing by Subject "drugs"
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Item In the American Vein: 1945-1975(2015-05) Marzoni, AndrewThis dissertation shows how twentieth-century advances in media technology have contributed to a surge of formal experimentation in postwar American literature and film. Scholars have identified a pervasive influence of mass media on avant-garde art in the postwar era, as can be readily witnessed in the celebrity-obsession of Frank OO'Hara's poems or Andy Warhol's films. But more than providing mere subject matter, the technological instruments of popular culture presented artists with new ways to work, challenging the traditional relationship between the artist and the work of art. Much of twentieth-century literary and critical theory has argued that human perception is endlessly mediated, revealing the concepts of "reality," "the self," and "the author" � to be constructs. I demonstrate that this postmodern conception of what it means to be an author---and even, to be human is a direct result of the ways that electronic media such as radio and television have reframed perception. I consider how postwar American writers and filmmakers contemplated the aesthetic possibilities of newer media by adopting those technologies for their own use, constructing "literary machines" ---technological assemblages that subsume the author's body into the creative process. My project defines "technology"� in Marshall McLuhan's sense of "extenions of man"� in order to show how postwar, pre-digital American literature and film implicated the human body in their understandings of the literary, the cinematic, and the technological. For example, I treat narcotics as a media technology in their own right, provoking users with new ways to see, hear, and experience time. I trace the various roles that drugs have played in twentieth-century theories of literature, media, and human embodiment as well as American literary and film history. Because drugs are a technology literally consumed by the human body, the texts and films that Henry Miller, Terry Southern, John Cassavetes, and William S. Burroughs produced about and under the influence of drugs suggest that the aesthetic and conceptual problems posed by new media technologies are in fact inherent to human experience.Item International Variations In Essential Medication Lists(University of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy, 2014) Tejani, Ali H.; Wertheimer, AlbertEvery nation in the world has established a National Medication Formulary to account for all the medications present in the country. Many countries follow the Essential Medication List provided by the World Health organization (WHO) when making their own National Medication Formulary. Our study looked at variations in the National Formularies when compared to the Essential Medication Lists. Different relationships such as missing and extra medications lists were formulated and the statistics analyzed. It was noted that on average most of the countries studied were lacking 47% of medications, and had 30% additional medications on their national formulary. Further studies need to be conducted as Essential Medications may be lacking, or harmful medications may be present in a country’s formulary leading to severe health problems.Item Investigating the Interactions of Polymeric Excipients with Poorly Water-Soluble Drugs as Means for Pharmaceuticals Bioavailability Enhancement(2019-02) Purchel, AnatoliiOral administration is the most preferable route of drug delivery, especially during prolonged therapy of chronic diseases. Unfortunately, many effective pharmaceuticals are poorly water-soluble, which leads to decreased bioavailability and shelf life. One of the ways to improve drug solubility and efficacy is to prepare an amorphous solid dispersion (ASD) with a polymer excipient. It is important that the polymer matrix of an ASD will stabilize the drug in the amorphous state and maintain its supersaturated concentration long enough in the dissolution media. Some of the commercial polymeric systems have shown a positive impact on drug dissolution, but most of them are difficult to characterize due to high polydispersity and system complexity. Most of the available excipients that improve dissolution of poorly water-soluble drugs tend to form nano-aggregates in the solution. Thus, in order to understand structure-property relationships better, various polymers were explored, which self-assemble into micelle-like structures or exist as free polymer chains in the solution, as excipients for dissolution of a model drugs such as probucol and phenytoin. Reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization was used as a controlled polymerization technique to obtain well-defined polymers of polystyrene, poly(acrylic acid), N-isopropylamide, 4-vinylpyridine, N,N-dimethylacrylmide, and trehalose-derived monomers. The polymers were characterized by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and size exclusion chromatography (SEC). The effects of nano-aggregation in ASDs, polymer charge, H-bonding and hydrophobic interactions on drug dissolution were determined. Caco-2 cell permeability assay was applied to determine cell permeability of drugs in some of the obtained formulations.