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The adoption of the Lions Gate Hospital Drug Formulary by the British Columbia Hospital Association for distribution and use in all provincial hospitals endorses the growing trend toward regionalization of drug information. Several aspects of this Formulary were investigated in the present study with the objective of designing a text even more applicable to the varied needs of the province. The format of the Formulary and a mechanism for regularly evaluating and updating the information therein were the major areas receiving consideration. One major change in format proposed is the increase in the number of drug monographs to approximately 600 from the present 300 entries. This increase is based on the requests for additional drugs from the representative hospitals sampled in the province. Changes in the format of individual monographs include an expansion of information under the heading "Mode of Action", that an additional section on "Instructions to the Patient" be added to facilitate effective instructions for self-administration in ambulatory services, that each monograph receive a Canadian Drug Identification Code reference and that the information in each monograph be referenced where possible to the primary literature source. Changes in the format of the overall Formulary include a cross-index of monographs to manufacturers' brand names, a bibliography of the referenced information and a "Mini" Formulary format for use on individual hospital wards. The latter recommendation is made in recognition of the potential bulk of the overall Master Formulary which would make it awkward for efficient and frequent use. In this respect, it is anticipated that one Master Formulary containing all 600 eventual monographs, the bibliography for each and the various indices be made available in each hospital for resource reference. On each ward a complete Formulary of all drug monographs but not the accompanying bibliographies would be available. Studies showed that something less than 100 of these drugs (less than 20 percent) were used with any frequency on any specialty ward studied. Therefore, a "Mini" Formulary containing only the monographs of drugs frequently used in a specialty area would make the information more readily available in that service. Changes in printing format also are recommended with the objective of reducing the bulk of the proposed Formulary. A regular updating mechanism must be activated to keep the information in the Formulary current. Such a mechanism related to an annual literature evaluation assignment by the senior students of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of British Columbia, is proposed. Based on this academic exercise, two types of updating are identified. First, a complete evaluation and referencing of the existing monograph information is required. Second, annual updating of this information from current literature should be maintained. To evaluate, revise and condense the students' evaluations to monograph format, a "service" component of faculty instructor time and of stenographer time have been projected. It is anticipated that the provision of approximately one-half time instructor per year and one-tenth time stenographer will be required on a "service" basis to enable the regular updating of the current Formulary as defined above. The arrangement for a Medical Review Board to review the evaluated monographs from a clinical validity standpoint also should be made. The above projections are based on studies related to the evaluation and updating of 100 drug monographs during 1972-73. A final recommendation is that the basis for generating, updating and additional referencing of the Drug Formulary should be a provincial Drug Information Centre. / Pharmaceutical Sciences, Faculty of / Graduate

Importance of problem: Ice Milk is not a new product in the ice cream industry. Rather it is one that has gained only little popularity, except in the preparation of "malts" and "milk shakes"; however, within the last decade the gallonage of ice milk produced has more than doubled. Ice milk has been relatively unimportant because of the difficulty of obtaining a product with acceptable quality. In recent years progressive ice milk manufacturers and research workers have discovered new ingredients and processing procedure that seem to produce favorable results. This low-fat product has several merits that justify its recent popularity, such as low cost to the consumer, high nutritional value, an additional outlet for serum solids, and it is an attractive product to those individuals who may be diet conscious. Ice milk differs from regular ice cream in that it contains less butterfat and more solids-not-fat. Frequently when the fat content is decreased there is a tendency for the product to become coarse. In order to correct this coarseness more milk-solids-not-fat are added to the mix which often effects the flavor of the ice milk. Also with an excessive increase of serum solids in the mix there is danger of sandiness developing in the product during storage. Purpose of problem: The purpose of this experiment is to determine a formula and processing procedure that will yield a frozen ice milk product with desirable flavor, good body and texture qualities, and freedom from sandiness after reasonable storage. By the proper balance and use of ingredients and modern processing and freezing methods it is hoped that the quality goal will be reached and prove beneficial to the industry.

A procedure for preparing an enteral formula was developed, using Pakistani indigenous food items. The basis of development was that it would be nutritionally effective, easy to prepare and relatively cheap. 100 indigenous enteral diets were formulated using a computer aided master sheet in which various combinations were analysed. In order to prove the efficacy of these diets, a modified PER was carried out on 6 diets and results indicated a higher PER for the experimental diet. 29 formulations were shortlisted for preparation trials, and 2 main techniques were applied: incubation and cooking techniques. Physical and chemical analyses were carried out to assess the effect of preparation, the cooking methodologies were tried on various diets and 2 diets were shortlisted for human trials. To compare the efficacy of the indigenous enteral formula versus commercial formulae, a pilot study was carried out. Patient nutritional outcomes were assessed using biochemical parameters, and preliminary findings indicated that the experimental diet performed as well as the control diet. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The marketing of infant feeding products is almost impossible as the infant nutrition industry is highly regulated. Despite operating under strict regulations, the infant formula manufacturing companies still generate high revenues on an annual basis. The infant formula manufacturing industry operates under a value chain which can be broken down into six sequential steps. These steps are: (1) Translational science; (2) Product development; (3) Clinical research; (4) Product notification; (5) Reimbursement granting and (6) Product marketing. Medical nutrition companies aspire to understand product requirements of healthcare professionals and medical representatives. This is to enable direct investment to acquire market share without wasting resources. The medical nutrition industry currently makes use of medical representatives to execute product marketing. Manufacturing companies invest a lot of money into developing their products, employing and training medical representatives and trust that this will be enough to persuade healthcare professionals to recommend their products to parents. This study analyses the main contributing factors that enhance prescription of specialised infant formula by healthcare professionals. This study was conducted in a positivistic paradigm by making use of a quantitative approach. Healthcare professionals from Port Elizabeth, working with paediatric patients were included in this study. The healthcare professionals were chosen by a convenience sampling method and were then interviewed. The empirical interview results were substantiated with the interpretive findings which were in the form of verbatim statements extracted directly from the research questionnaire. Linkage between the dependable variable (prescription) and independent variables (manufacturing company; product composition; cost of product; medical representative and peers) were established and analysed. The research revealed that prescription behaviour is an important construct which can be measured in medical practices. Prescription behaviour is correlated with positive business and medical outcomes and manufacturing companies are able to exert influence over it through the identified variables. Of these variables, efficacy of vii a product, trusted manufacturing company and the medical representatives were found to have direct and significant effects. Healthcare professionals tend to prescribe a specialised infant formula if they have seen results and trust the outcome of the product. It is advisable for manufacturing companies to exert great effort before appointing a medical representative, to make sure that the right candidate represents the face of the company.

Linalool is a key intermediate for the production of important fragrance chemicals such as geraniol, nerol, geranial, and neral. Linalool can be produced via a two-step process from α-pinene which is a major component of crude sulphated turpentine (CST) a foul-smelling, volatile waste product of the pulp and paper industry. The key step in this process is the pyrolysis step which involves the isomerisation of cis-2-pinanol to linalool and requires high temperatures (600-650°C) and is not very selective due to the decomposition of the product itself under these conditions. A client of the CSIR, Teubes Pty. Ltd., is a manufacturer of flavour and fragrance compounds for the local and international fragrance market and expressed an interest in producing linalool since the company would then gain access to other valuable fragrance chemicals via relatively simple processes. Earlier work conducted by AECI, R & D did not meet with much success since the selectivity to linalool was very poor and the process could hardly be deemed as scalable. The main objective of this project was therefore to develop a process for the selective isomerisation of cis-2-pinanol to linalool with minimum by-product formation and using process equipment that could be scaled to full-scale production. Since cis-2- pinanol could not be purchased in sufficient quantities for process development, a process had to be developed for the bench-scale preparation of kilogram quantities of cis-2-pinanol from α-pinene obtained from the client. Although this synthesis formed a minor part of this investigation, several process improvements and innovations were introduced to produce high quality cis-2-pinanol, in very good yields at kilogram scale. A major part of this investigation was the design and set up of a pyrolyis rig capable of operating at elevated temperatures (400 - 750°C) for the evaluation of various process parameters. Various vaporizer, reactor, and condensation systems were evaluated for their ability to cope with the demanding conditions on a consistent basis. The initial part of the investigation was a screening exercise to evaluate various process parameters as well as solvents, materials of construction, catalysts, etc. A comprehensive statistical design was also conducted to determine the critical process parameters and the model obtained was used to predict the optimum conditions required for the preparation of in-specification product on a consistent basis. These conditions were used in the preparation of a 1kg sample which was required by theclient for market evaluation purposes. The use of a novel microreactor system was also evaluated for the pinanol pyrolysis reaction. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a microreactor has been successfully used for this type of reaction in the Fragrance industry and a patent application is being filed by the CSIR. The kinetics of the reaction in both the tubular reactor system and the microreactor system was investigated. Computer modelling studies on both the systems were also conducted. The raw material cost to produce a kilogram of linalool is $1.40. There is a significant margin of 60.8 percent between the raw material cost of linalool and the current selling price ($3.57/kg). This clearly indicates that the project is potentially feasible from an economic point of view and we can now proceed with confidence to the next stage which is the engineering design, building and commissioning of the large scale pyrolysis rig. The rest of the process steps will be conducted on existing equipment currently present at the CSIR’s large scale facility (Imbiza in Isando, Gauteng).

The traditional Euclidean approach to problem solving in AI has always designed representations for a domain and then spent considerable effort on the methods of efficiently searching the representation in order to extract the desired information. We feel that the emphasis in problem solving should be on the automated construction of the knowledge representation and not on the searching of the representation. This thesis proposes and implements an alternative approach: that of analogical representation. Analogical representation differs from the Euclidean methodology in that it creates a representation for the data from which the acquisition of information is done by simple 'observation.' It is not our goal to propose a system that reduces the NP-hard problem of temporal reasoning to a lower complexity. Our approach simply minimizes the number of times that we must pay the exponential expense. Furthermore, the representation can encode uncertainty and unknownness in an efficient manner. This allows for 'intelligent' creation of a representation and removes the 'mindless' mechanical search techniques from information retrieval, placing the computational effort where it should be: on representation construction. / Master of Science