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Ulcerative colitis is the chronic relapsing multifactorial gastrointestinal inflammatory bowel disease, which is characterized by bloody or mucus diarrhea, tenesmus, bowel dystension, anemia. The annual incidence of ulcerative colitis in Asia, North America and Europe was found to be 6.3, 19.2 and 24.3 per 100,000 person-years. The major challenge in the treatment of ulcerative colitis is appropriate local targeting and drug related side-effects. To overcome these challenges, microparticulate systems seem to be a promising approach for controlled and sustained drug release after oral administration. The main goal of this article is to explore the role of microparticles in ulcerative colitis for the appropriate targeting of drugs to colon. There are different approaches which have been studied over the last decade, including prodrugs, polymeric approach, time released system, pH sensitive system, which show the site specific drug delivery to colon. Among these approaches, microparticulate drug delivery system has been gaining an immense importance for local targeting of drug to colon at a controlled and sustained rate. Combined approaches such as pH dependent and time dependent system provide the maximum release of drug into colon via oral route. This article embraces briefly about pathophysiology, challenges and polymeric approaches mainly multiparticulate systems for site specific drug delivery to colon in sustained and controlled manner so that drug related side-effects by reducing dosage frequency can be minimized.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the propensity of thiolated chitosan nanoparticles (TCNs) to enhance the nasal delivery of selegiline hydrochloride. TCNs were synthesized by the ionic gelation method. The particle size distribution (PDI), entrapment efficiency (EE), and zeta potential of modified chitosan (CS) nanoparticles were found to be 215 ± 34.71 nm, 70 ± 2.71%, and + 17.06 mV, respectively. The forced swim and the tail suspension tests were used to evaluate the anti-depressant activity, in which elevated immobility time was found to reduce on treatment. TCNs seem to be promising candidates for nose-to-brain delivery in the evaluation of antidepressant activity.

Clinically, the therapeutic outcomes in neurodegenerative disorders (NDs) by drug treatment are very limited, and the most insurmountable obstacle in the treatment of NDs is the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which provides the highest level of protection from xenobiotics. A great deal of attention still needs to be paid to overcome these barriers, and surface-engineered polymeric nanoparticles are emerging as innovative tools that are able to interact with the biological system at a molecular level for the desired response. The present review covers the potential importance of surface-structure-engineered nanoparticles to overcome the BBB for good bioavailability, and the evaluation of drug therapy in NDs.

Nanogels have shown a great potential for the delivery of large number of drugs to different organs of the body owing to their high biocompatibility, high drug loading capacity, high biodegradability (and hence low cytotoxicity), good permeation capabilities and tissue mimicking properties. Their high water retention makes them ideal capable of incorporation of bulky drugs like proteins, peptides, oligonucleotides and other macromolecules. All these properties of nanogels make them able to carry number of drugs to vast number of organs. Nanogels have shown potential in many fields including chemotherapy, diagnosis, organ tergeting, gene delivery and many others. The main areas of the target for the nanogels have been tumors of brain, liver, skin etc. Other uses of the nanogel are in diabetes, inflammation, wound healing, local anesthesia etc. This review concentrates over the targeting potential of nanogels in different organs for various conditions.

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Modern electric vehicles (EVs) have complex thermal systems due to stringent energy efficiency requirements. The thermal systems of such vehicles have highly nonlinear and strongly coupled dynamics as they operate under various thermal modes. Extracting the maximum performance benefits from such complex systems requires elaborate and modern control strategies since classic and rule-based strategies cannot effectively control them. This is becoming a challenge for electric vehicles. Feedback linearization is a control approach that is designed based on the mathematical model of the system. It has the advantage of requiring low computational resources, specifically, low-computational-time and low-memory usage when compared to control strategies such as Model Predictive Control (MPC).</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">This paper presents a feedback linearization controller that is designed using a nonlinear physics-based model for cabin heating of an electric vehicle. The nonlinear physics-based model is derived from cabin heating governing equations and is correlated with a 1-D model of the thermal systems of the target vehicle. The controller is composed of an Input-Output Feedback Linearization and a Proportional-Integral control. The controller is implemented in an onboard embedded Electronic Control Unit (ECU) and tested on an electrified vehicle. The performance of the classic or Rule-Based controller and the Feedback-Linearization controller are compared.</div></div>

Embelin and gliclazide administration to diabetic rats cause a highly significant decline in the blood glycated hemoglobin, serum glucose and nitric oxide activity with a concomitant increase in the serum insulin level. The aim of present work was the development and characterization of self-solid nano-emulsified drug delivery system (SNEDDS) formulation of embelin in combination with gliclazide for the determination of antidiabetic effect in Wistar rats. In this connection, we prepared SNEDDS by using an oil:surfactant mixture ratio of [Capmul® MCM: Kolliphor® HS 15: PEG 400 (2:1)] and encapsulated the drug combination in this system. The in-vitro characterization of optimized liquid SNEDDS containing 40% surfactant mixture and 60% oil) was performed and the SNEDDS were found to have particle size of 159.9nm, polydispersity index of 0.289 and zeta potential of -34.35mV. Percentage cumulative release from this formulation was 94.26±3.80% for gliclazide and 90.63±3.67% for embelin in phosphate buffer (pH 7.4) compared to 39.09±1.38% and 34.29±1.20% from plain drug suspension. The embelin (30mg/kg)+gliclazide (10mg/kg) loaded SNEDDS was found to be effective in reversing streptozotocin-induced hyperglycemia as compared to pure drugs in Wistar rats.