Bücher veröffentlicht von Mdpi AG

Several steps need to be considered in the management of disasters and emergencies. Establishing command and control, with leaders having communication skills, enables sufficient collaboration and engagement with other agencies and offers the opportunity for situational assessments of the incident as well as the ability to achieve a balance between available personnel and material resources and the need for successful management of the incident. Although these steps are necessary for the overall management of the incident, the medical part remains critical at the operational level. The triage, treatment, and transport of patients are vital steps in the management of the victims and influence the overall outcome of an incident. It is, therefore, critical to establish guidelines regarding how victims are triaged, treated, and transported to specialized medical facilities. These are vital parameters in a multiagency approach to disasters and major incidents, in which several organizations with diverse backgrounds, knowledge, limitations, and abilities need to work together.The aim of this issue is to bring researchers and practitioners together to discuss and describe issues and solutions regarding the evidence-based management of victims of disasters and major incidents, with a particular focus on triage, treatment, and transportation. Special consideration should be given to CBRNE events and their influence on the assessment and management of victims.

This book focuses on monitoring and analysis of the relationship between urbanization and ecosystem services on the different scales.The use of innovative technologies for land cover change monitoring, ecosystem services modeling and mapping, innovation in land use planning, and which highlight the potential of technologies to tackle challenges such as sustainability of urbanization, climate change adaptation, sustainable land management, and food security are of particular interest.

The delivery of genome sequences for most livestock species over the past 10-15 years has generated the potential to revolutionise livestock production globally, by providing farmers with the ability to match individual animals to rapidly changing climates, production systems and markets. Initially, technologies such as marker-assisted selection, functional genomics, gene expression, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics were hailed as technologies with the greatest promise of delivering on that potential. To date, however, their potential for the delivery of practical solutions for livestock farmers is still to be realised, though they do provide supportive evidence of value to other approaches. Gene editing using tools such as CRISPR-Cas9 also show strong promise, but face regulatory hurdles before practical applications can be delivered for use by farmers. The technology that has had the greatest impact to date is genomic selection. This year marks 20 years since genomic selection was developed by Meuwissen, Hayes and Goddard (Genetics, 2001, 157: 1819-1829) and genomic selection has been successfully applied in livestock, plants and even human health applications. However, genomic selection also faces ongoing limitations around lack of essential phenotypes, particularly for expensive or difficult-to-measure traits and possibly the need for faster/greater computational capacity. It is therefore timely to examine the impact of genomic technologies generally, and to identify successes and limitations that need to be overcome in order to achieve practical applications for livestock producers in future.

This reprint delves into the relationship between religious leaders and movements and secular political systems. While the secularisation thesis predicted the decline of religion in both private and public life, this reprint challenges this narrative by exploring the diverse approaches of religious actors towards politics within secular systems. The reprint includes theoretical explorations and country case studies, analyzing the roles of religious leaders in the political arena of secular countries. From radical movements seeking to establish a religious state to those embracing participation in electoral processes, the authors examine the practical and prescriptive dimensions of religion's engagement with politics. With its interdisciplinary approach and timely subject matter, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the complex and dynamic relationship between religion and politics in the modern world.

This Special Issue contains eleven accepted and published submissions to a Special Issue of the MDPI journal Axioms on the subject of "Nonlinear Dynamical Systems with Applications". In this volume, the invited authors have submitted their latest results on nonlinear dynamical systems and related applications. All papers have been accepted after a rigorous review process.

This reprint covers 27 papers published in the Special Issue entitled "Corporate Finance, Governance, and Social Responsibility," which examines several topics related to corporate finance, financial modeling, corporate governance, and corporate social responsibility. Corporate finance-related articles (Anton and Afloarei Nucu, 2021; Bae et al., 2023; Kedzior et al., 2020; Lääts and Lukason, 2022; Miglo, 2020; Mihail et al., 2021; Mota and Moreira, 2023; Tsolas, 2021; Tudose et al., 2021; and Wen et al., 2021) focus on the drivers of the capital structure and firm performance, the effect of working capital management on profitability, and the link between derivative use and profitability. Regarding financial modeling, stock market volatility was explored during COVID-19 (Gherghina et al., 2021). Corporate governance studies (Aluchna and Kuszewski, 2020; Ararat et al., 2021; Ding and Chea, 2021; Kjærland et al., 2020; Lourenço et al., 2021; Lukason and Camacho-Miñano, 2020; Maier and Yurtoglu, 2022; Mihail and Dumitrescu, 2021; Mihail et al., 2022; Mihail and Micu, 2021; and Pourmansouri et al., 2022) examine the effect of corporate governance compliance practices, board attributes, or employee stock option plans on bankruptcy risk, performance, firm value, or earnings management. Regarding CSR (Bozos et al., 2022; Rossi et al., 2021; Saeed and Sroufe, 2021; Singh and Hong, 2023; and Tseng and Shih, 2022), the research focuses on how CSR affects financial performance, risk management, or analyst profits estimates.

Applied computing and artificial intelligence methods have attracted a growing interest in recent years due to their effectiveness at solving technical problems. Recent developments in applied mathematics have largely led to benefits for industrial tasks in different fields, including the aerospace industry, manufacturing, transportation, energy, robotics, materials, informatics, etc. The objective of this Special Issue is to present advanced methods in applied computing and artificial intelligence to address the practical challenges in the related areas. The response of the scientific community has been remarkable, and a large number of papers have been submitted. After a careful peer-review process, 22 high-quality papers have been accepted and published. It is hoped that the papers will have an impact on international scholars in this field and promote further remarkable research in this area.

This reprint deals with the central theme of philosophy of law and legal theory, namely the relationship between truth and justice. This presupposes that we always have true knowledge-that is, verifiable facts-and the intellectual ability to theoretically and historically correctly ascertain and analyse the question of justice.A modern philosopher of law who has formulated this issue excellently in his work is Ronald Dworkin (1931-2013). Therefore, he is the common point of reference for all our contributions to "Justice based on Truth".In addition, great philosophers of the past such as Thomas Aquinas, Baruch de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz or Lon Fuller, to whom our authors devote themselves, have commented on these questions. Finally, time-tested folk wisdom such as the traditional Chinese doctrine of the use of stratagems in life or the modern theory of transitional justice in civil war-like conflicts can also perform these functions.

The development of mathematical models and their optimization are fundamental for the effective resolution of many problems in operational research. In recent years, increased insights into real-world problems have led to the development of new mathematical models and optimization algorithms, contributing to the development of a research area with increasing practical relevance. This Special Issue is dedicated to works at the interface of mathematical modeling, optimization, and operations research, with a special focus on their real-world applications. The interest of the scientific community was significant, with submissions from authors from different countries from five continents, including Australia, China, Egypt, India, Israel, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United States of America. Ten papers were accepted for publication after thorough peer review by dedicated reviewers with expertise in the relevant fields. We are confident that the papers selected for this Special Issue will attract a significant audience in the scientific community and will further stimulate research involving the development of mathematical models and their optimization.

Experiencing the suicide of a close person is often a major life event, which increases the risk of maladaptive grief reactions, social, physical, and mental health problems, and suicidal behavior in the bereaved individuals. However, people bereaved by suicide may also experience long-term positive outcomes regarding personal or post-traumatic growth. The field of suicide bereavement research is evolving rapidly. Hence, this reprint is particularly focused the advance knowledge on bereavement and postvention. In this reprint, you can find papers that enhance our understanding of grief after suicide and how to help those who are bereaved, including studies on suicide grief in specific populations and studies on interventions and support offered to the bereaved or their social environment, in addition studies based on novel methods and studies that contribute to the development of theory or models. We believe that this reprint can add important knowledge on our journey to help suicide-loss survivors in their continued struggle with the loss on their loved ones to suicide.

Crystal engineering is a broad area of research that includes crystal habit modification, polymorphism, solid dispersions, and salt formation. This reprint covers state-of-the-art applications of crystal engineering and includes a combination of research and review articles, with special emphasis on novel drug delivery and targeting applications.

The use of advanced and scalable algorithms, along with parallel programming frameworks and high-performance computers, is commonly used to solve Big Data problems and obtain valuable information and learning processes in a reasonable time. This Special Issue includes high-quality research papers in the fields of big data, cloud-based data analysis, and machine learning systems. In particular, wide-ranging surveys and advanced research papers are included, focusing both on aspects relating to big data (e.g., frameworks for big data analysis or systems for big data management) and on the use of big data in application areas (e.g., big data from social media or big data from streams).

Arthritis has a high prevalence globally and includes over 100 types; the most common types are rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and inflammatory arthritis. All types of arthritis share common features, including monocyte infiltration, inflammation, synovial swelling, pannus formation, stiffness in the joints, and articular cartilage destruction. The exact etiology of arthritis remains unclear, and no cure exists as of yet. Anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs and corticosteroids) are commonly used for the treatment of arthritis. However, these drugs are associated with significant side effects, such as gastric bleeding and an increased risk of a heart attack and other cardiovascular problems. Therefore, it is crucial that we continue to research the pathogenesis of arthritis and novel modes of therapy. This reprint summarizes and discusses the themes of 19 articles published in our Special Issue "Research of Pathogenesis and Novel Therapeutics in Arthritis 3.0". The reprint details important novel research discoveries that contribute to our current understanding of arthritis.

This reprint aims to investigate some of the numerous ways in which Christianity venerated and represented the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Fifteen researchers in various areas of the Arts and Humanities have brought together here their efforts to address in part this inexhaustible objective. The reprint is divided into two main parts. In one of them, composed of six chapters, we study some of the several ways in which the Christian faithful rendered worship and devotion to the Virgin Mary during the more than one thousand years under consideration. The other part, made up of seven chapters, analyzes various iconographic manifestations through which medieval and Renaissance Christians made their devotion to the mother of Christ visible in pictorial or sculptural forms. Therefore, this reprint will be very useful not only for specialists in Christian studies, especially in Marian themes but also for those interested in the development of the societies and cultures of medieval and Renaissance Europe.

This special issue contains 11 papers dealing with various aspects related to the usage of artificial intelligence in service provision. The Special Issue includes a broad range of papers covering recent applications of AI and new technologies across service businesses. The papers cover managerial and customer challenges, technologies, service robotics and research trends. Overall, the Special Issue offers knowledge for advancing the adoption of AI in services and inspiring managerial decisions and innovation in the fields of: service systems, smart service, service digitization, customer interactions, artificial intelligence, emotion detection, servitization, service robots and digitalization.

Blockchain technology is becoming one of the most powerful future technologies in supporting logistics processes and applications. It has the potential to destroy and reorganize traditional logistics structures. Both researchers and practitioners all over the world continuously report on novel blockchain-based projects, possibilities, and innovative solutions with better logistic service levels and lower costs. The idea of this Special Issue is to provide an overview of the status quo in research and possibilities to effectively implement blockchain-based solutions in business practice.This Special Issue reprint contained well-prepared research reports regarding recent advances in blockchain technology around logistics processes to provide insights into realized maturity.

This reprint aims to disseminate the latest research achievements, findings, and ideas in the robotics field, with particular focus on the Italian scenario. It covers a range of topics related to the theory, design, practice, and applications of robots, such as robot design and kinematics, dynamics of robots and multi-body systems, linkages and manipulators, control of robotic systems, trajectory planning and optimization, innovative robots and applications, industrial robotics, collaborative robotics, medical robotics, assistive robotics, and service robotics. The reprints contributions include (but are not limited to) revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers that were presented at the 2nd International Conference of IFToMM, Italy (IFIT 2018).

It is estimated that about 15% of all animals spread across the majority of lineages are venomous. Animals use venom for various purposes including prey capture, predator deterrence, sexual combat and the provision of food for their offspring. Humans have always been fascinated by venomous animals, albeit in a Janus-faced way. On the one hand, venomous animals have gained a fearsome reputation in the public media, which is further boosted by an annual global death toll in the hundreds of thousands (with many more cases of permanent disablement) with the leading cause being tropical snakes. For this reason, snake envenomation has recently been classified by the World Health Organization as a neglected tropical disease. On the other hand, a growing global scene of enthusiasts in industrialized countries is keeping venomous animals such as snakes, spiders, scorpions, and centipedes in captivity as pets. The (also venomous) honeybees are even used as production animals in agriculture for the pollination of a wide variety of crops, which ensures the survival of billions of people and has the added benefit of yielding delicious honey. Furthermore, recent scientific research focused on exploiting animal venoms for the benefit of humanity in form of novel therapeutics or biopesticides.

This book is focused on recent advances in land-atmosphere interactions and their effects on climate change over the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding regions using multisource remote sensing data and in situ measurements.Retrieval of land surface variables and surface heat fluxes as well as change monitoring in snow, glaciers, lakes, and other land-surface covers are of particular interest. Special attention is given to the retrieval of land-surface key properties, variations in land-surface heat fluxes, estimation of precipitation and evapotranspiration, change monitoring of glacier and lakes, the responses of lakes to climate change, carbon, water and heat exchange in terrestrial ecosystems, risk assessment of snow disasters, estimation of turbulence characteristics, and vegetation dynamics and its response to weather and climate.This book was funded by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (Grant No. 2019QZKK0103); National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42230610, 91837208, 41875031).

As we know, strokes are one of the world's leading causes of death, and the cruel aspect of a stroke is that it leaves people with severe functional disability and/or cognitive impairment. Strokes have a significant impact on economies worldwide, as it is estimated that about 10% of the male population and 8% of the female population are affected by them. Such people need personal help in their everyday life and must be materially supported by social services. With the advancement of medicine, artificial intelligence, and new technologies have been developing rapidly and are gradually applied in diseases of the nervous system, increasingly helping diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and prognosis of disease.This Special Issue has collected the 14 papers on artificial intelligence and new technologies in strokes, including in the aspects of diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, rehabilitation, and nursing. We welcome your reading.

Humans have eaten nuts for thousands of years, yet their consumption was discouraged just a few decades ago due to their high-fat content. This perspective began to change in the early 1990s due to seminal publications from the Adventist Health Study, which showed that nut consumption significantly improved heart health-related outcomes. Many randomized clinical trials, epidemiological studies, and in vitro/in vivo mechanistic studies have since explored the role of eating nuts and its relation to health. Similarly, dried fruits have been scrutinized due to their concentrated sugar content despite their non-sodium micronutrient and fiber density. Due to accumulating evidence on nut and dried fruit intake and health outcomes, an international scientific meeting was organized for leading experts to examine and recapitulate in detail what is well known and established and what avenues of knowledge are still lacking in nut and dried fruit research. This book summarizes proceedings from this international scientific meeting and the latest information relating to: (1) energy balance and body weight; (2) insulin resistance and diabetes; (3) lipoproteins and dyslipidemia; (4) gastrointestinal system; (5) inflammation and oxidation; (6) cardiovascular disease; (7) cognition; (8) cancer; (9) dried fruit and health; (10) future lines of research. These findings highlight the beneficial health potentials of nuts for researchers, health professionals, other stakeholders, and the public while simultaneously pinpointing areas for further investigation to continue informing and guiding health practices and policies.

This reprint contains the original articles and reviews compiled in the Special Issue "The Role of PPARs in Disease II" published in Cells. Nicole Wagner and Kay-Dietrich Wagner from the University Côte d'Azur served as the Guest Editors of this Special Issue and compiled the reprint.

Mycotoxins are a diverse group of chemicals that present wide toxicological responses in animals and humans. Their ingestion causes toxic effects that go from acute toxicity to long-term or chronic health disorders. Some mycotoxins have caused outbreaks of human toxicoses, and at least one mycotoxin, aflatoxin B1, is an assumed human hepatocarcinogen. As part of a comprehensive effort to curtail the adverse health effects posed by mycotoxins, substantial research has been conducted to determine the mechanism of action of mycotoxins. Although much information has been obtained regarding the action of several mycotoxins, future research topics should continue to address several areas of critical concern.In vitro studies in different cell lines could detail and explain many of these mechanisms, while in vivo can give a real scenario in the development of a toxic effect. This Special Issue of Toxins collected the most recent reports on the mechanism of action of mycotoxins on single or combined mycotoxins studied in vivo or in vitro, the identification of known and unknown mycotoxins metabolites and other metabolites in different cell lines and animals or matrices (including organs, urine, or blood), and the development of analytical skills to study these mechanisms. A total of eleven papers, eight research papers and three review articles, are included in this reprint.

This collection of research papers focuses on ultra-low-power (ULP) integrated circuits (ICs) that operate within a constrained power budget. This is a requirement in the design of electronic devices that rely less and less on batteries in order to enable the Internet of Things (IoT). Several ULP IC design solutions and building blocks are explored and described.

Vols 1 and 2 contain 57 papers in the Special Issue of 'Plant Genomics 2009' and cover a wide range of topics, highlighting the significant progress that has been made in recent years in our understanding of the genetics and genomics of plants' growth, development, and stress responses. These studies provide valuable insights into the potential applications of genomic tools and technologies for crop improvement and sustainable agriculture, as well as fundamental questions about the evolution and function of plant genes and genomes.

This book focuses on personalized medicine in ophthalmic diseases, their challenges and opportunities, which often involves methods to achieve personalized diagnosis and treatment of ophthalmic diseases. Personalized medicine is a broadly used term to encompass approaches used to tailor healthcare to the needs of individual patients. It has been early adopted in ophthalmology and is mainly achieved through disease stratification and individualization. Therefore, diagnostic techniques that can realize comprehensive individual assessment are very important. Previous studies have put forward techniques such as next-generation sequencing and translational research. Gene therapy-based treatment trials have been presented for ophthalmic diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration. Recently, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence and interdisciplinary collaboration, concepts such as machine learning and wearable devices have been frequently discussed in ophthalmic research. There might be new promising methods to realize personalized ophthalmology.

Physical and chemical properties of simple and complex liquids or mixtures play an important role in industrial manufacturing processes. Liquids serve as the reaction solvent media in the preparation of new chemical compounds, as an extraction solvent in the purification of synthesized materials, as a solubilizing agent in both pharmaceutical formulations and personal healthcare products, as a fuel to meet industrial heat demand, and as a coolant to maintain a desired reaction temperature. Special emphasis was given to studies that reported the latest technical and theoretical results concerning the properties and processes of industrial significance.This Special Issue reports new experimental data for select liquid mixtures, and discusses modern experimental and computational methods for measuring and predicting thermophysical properties and phase equilibria. Each paper provides valuable insight into the underlying fundamental principles that govern the studied processes. The predictive expressions and models presented in the published papers will enable practicing scientists and engineers to estimate physical and thermodynamic properties needed in industrial process design calculations.This Special Issue has constituted an international forum for various groups of researchers to summarize their most recent developments and ideas applied to the liquid state.

Wound healing has three overlapping steps: 1) coagulation and inflammation, 2) the proliferation and formation of new tissue, and 3) tissue remodeling. The initial phase of acute wound healing is the coagulation and the formation of a temporary wound matrix. This phase begins immediately after the injury and is completed within a few hours. Inflammation is crucial to the clean-up-repair process. Early inhibition of inflammation can hinder regeneration processes. Inflammation is associated with the activation of the innate immune system. At the site of inflammation, neutrophils appear first, followed by monocytes, which may differentiate into macrophages. The main function of macrophages and immune cells is to remove cell debris and microorganisms. These cells, in addition to the functions mentioned below, play an essential role in preparing the next phase by coordinating cellular processes. The second phase starts with the division of the cells. This process allows damaged and lost structures to be replaced. Granulation tissue formed by the extracellular matrix (ECM) and new blood vessels generated by angiogenesis fills the lesion. This process usually takes 2-10 days. In the final phase, the blood vessels regress, the inflammation resolves, and the granulation tissue becomes functional tissue. In this phase, the ECM transforms from a temporary ECM to a permanent collagen matrix. This phase starts 2-3 weeks after injury and can last for years if tissue regeneration is inadequate.

Vols 1 and 2 contain 57 papers in the Special Issue of 'Plant Genomics 2009' and cover a wide range of topics, highlighting the significant progress that has been made in recent years in our understanding of the genetics and genomics of plants' growth, development, and stress responses. These studies provide valuable insights into the potential applications of genomic tools and technologies for crop improvement and sustainable agriculture, as well as fundamental questions about the evolution and function of plant genes and genomes.

In the last decade, the incidence of cancer in young patients has increased in several cancer types according to the US Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Result (SEER) data and other worldwide registries. Recently, Sung and colleagues published an extensive pooled analysis from the US in Lancet Public Health, which revealed a dramatic increase in cancer incidence among younger adults (aged 25-49 years), mainly in "obesity-related" cancers, most of which occur in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Several studies over the past decade have indicated a significant increase in colorectal cancer incidence among young adults below the age of 50 years. Current evidence suggests that the majority of early-onset GI cancers are sporadic and harbor no familial etiology, indicating the potentially significant role of environmental and behavioral factors in their pathogenesis. Furthermore, the gut microbiome has been proposed to play a key role in CRC carcinogenesis. The scope of this Special Issue of Cancers is to highlight perspectives regarding biology, etiology, late-term toxicities and quality of life which are unique and relevant to young-onset GI cancer cases.