IgG functionalized polymeric nanoparticles for oral insulin administration.

The oral route is the best way to administer a drug; however, fitting peptide drugs in this route is a major challenge. In insulin cases, less than 0.5% of the administered dose achieves systemic circulation. Oral delivery by nanoparticles can increase insulin permeability across the intestinal epithelium while maintaining its structure and activity until release in the gut. This system can be improved to increase permeability across intestinal cells through active delivery. This study aimed to improve a nanoparticle formulation by promoting functionalization of its surface with immunoglobulin G to increase its absorption by intestinal epithelium. The characterization of formulations showed an adequate size and a good entrapment efficiency. Functionalized nanoparticles led to a desirable increase in insulin release time. Differential scanning calorimetry, infrared spectroscopy and paper chromatography proved the interactions of nanoparticle components. With immunoglobulin G, the nanoparticle size was slightly increased, which did not show aggregate formation. The developed functionalized nanoparticle formulation proved to be adequate to carry insulin and potentially increase its internalization by epithelial gut cells, being a promising alternative to the existing formulations for orally administered low-absorption peptides.

A simple recursive method for stationary receiver position estimation using GPS difference measurements.

This paper presents a simple recursive method to estimate the position of a stationary receiver using the difference of Global Positioning System (GPS) pseudorange measurements. In contrast to conventional Differential GPS (DGPS), the proposed simple method uses the difference of pseudorange measurements corresponding to a single receiver itself without requiring a fixed station with known location. The use of difference measurements reduces the effects of the various noise terms involved in pseudorange measurements. According to the proposed method, the position of the receiver is estimated recursively using an optimal linear approximation of the pseudorange nonlinear equations. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated on the estimation of the position of a stationary receiver, and its performance is compared to the performance of a classical approach. The results show that the proposed method outperforms the classical approach.