This study investigates the use of chitosan, extracted from pink shrimp shells, as a stabilizer for argan oil nanoemulsions. Chitosan was obtained through demineralization, deproteination, bleaching, deacetylation, and purification, then characterized through potentiometric titration, viscometry, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and purity assessments. The resulting chitosan was used to stabilize nanoemulsions formulated with extra-virgin argan oil and a nonionic surfactant using the phase inversion composition (PIC) method. The stability of the nanoemulsion was assessed through light scattering, zeta potential, viscosity, and pH measurements. The extracted chitosan exhibited high purity, a deacetylation degree of 88.34%, a molecular weight of 408.809 kDa, and a crystalline index of 66.36%. Chitosan significantly improved nanoemulsion stability, maintaining droplet integrity for over six months at 40 °C. Higher chitosan concentrations increased droplet size, viscosity, and stability, indicating strong polymer adsorption. These findings demonstrate the potential of shrimp waste-derived chitosan as a sustainable stabilizer for argan oil nanoemulsions, promoting effective bioactive compound delivery and environmental sustainability.

Background: Cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive compound derived from Cannabis sativa, exhibits therapeutic potential for various conditions, including inflammation, pain, and skin disorders, making it a promising candidate for the topical treatment of psoriasis. However, its poor water solubility and instability limit its therapeutic efficacy. This study focuses on the development and characterization of CBD-loaded nanoemulsions using argan oil as the lipid phase, with and without a chitosan coating, which serves as a stabilizing and functional biopolymer. Methods: Nanoemulsions (NE) and chitosan-stabilized nanoemulsions (CS-NE), both without CBD (serving as controls), and CBD-loaded variants (CBD-NE and CBD-CS-NE) were prepared and characterized for their physicochemical properties, including pH, droplet size, polydispersity index (PDI), zeta potential (ζ-potential), and viscosity at various shear rates and temperatures. Stability was assessed over time, and drug release behavior was investigated through in vitro diffusion and ex vivo skin permeation studies, followed by kinetic modeling. Safety was evaluated through in vitro cytotoxicity assays using HaCaT keratinocyte cells, as well as in vivo toxicity studies using Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). Results: The chitosan-coated formulations exhibited enhanced physical stability, nanoscale droplet size, a positive surface charge, and increased viscosity. Release studies demonstrated that CBD-CS-NE enabled controlled and sustained drug release, with a strong correlation to the Higuchi model, indicating diffusion-controlled permeation. Cytotoxicity assays indicated that CBD-CS-NE was non-toxic to cultured cells, while in vivo testing with C. elegans revealed sensitivity to chitosan-coated systems. Conclusions: These findings highlight the potential of CBD-loaded argan oil nanoemulsions, particularly those stabilized with chitosan, as potential topical delivery systems for managing psoriasis.

We study the no-jump evolution of ideal grid states in a lossy bosonic dimer with differential decay. The effective non-Hermitian quadratic dynamics induces a complex symplectic flow in phase space that deforms both the primitive lattice vectors and the origin seed. The average decay rate controls common-mode attenuation, while coherent hopping and differential decay control the reduced dimer deformation. For resonant modes, the reduced displacement flow is oscillatory in the elliptic regime, linear at the exceptional point, and exponentially separating in the hyperbolic regime. Although projected lattice areas can change, the deformation comes from a determinant-one complex symplectic flow on the complexified phase space. For a Gaussian regularization of the origin seed in the resonant dimer, we derive the associated complex width matrix and show that the seed remains square-integrable and Gaussian for every positive initial width, all non-negative times, and all physical loss rates. For an initial two-mode qunaught product state, the lossless limit recovers the standard beam-splitter generation of a square Gottesman–Kitaev–Preskill Bell pair, while the no-jump dynamics produces its non-Hermitian deformation. The full no-jump probability for a normalized finite-energy input sets the postselection cost and depends on its excitation-number distribution and the reduced dimer dynamics.