Bücher veröffentlicht von Mdpi AG

This reprint presents a collection of papers showcasing the latest advancements and research work in the field of electrical machines. The reprint focuses on pioneering electrical machine technologies that have the potential to emerge as the next generation of electrical machines, and their potential applications in various industries. The papers delve into distinct machine technologies, such as flux-intensifying memory machines, Vernier machines, flux-reversal machines, wound rotor machines, line start motors, and doubly fed machines, and explore their applications in areas including electric transportation and renewable energy power generation. The reprint serves as a useful resource for researchers, engineers, and students who are interested in emerging electrical machine technologies.

Modern materials and structures are significantly different from conventional ones. Their sizes can be orders of magnitude smaller, and their compositions are so sophisticated that traditional characteristic methods are inapplicable. Non-conventional methods are essential to tackle these issues, which must often be approached in an interdisciplinary fashion. This Special Issue is a collection of articles that shed light on these problems.

Insects are the most diverse group of organisms, representing approximately 80 percent of the world's species. It is estimated that there are some ten quintillion individual insects alive. During millions of years of evolution, insects developed extraordinary adaptations that allowed them to reside in different habitats. As with all other organisms, insects encounter a wide range of microbes. Although lacking adaptive immunity, they rely on robust innate immune systems to combat these microbes to maintain organismal homeostasis. Conversely, some microbial communities can benefit the host and profoundly affect the host's physiology and overall fitness. Microbiotas have been proven to provide nutrients, promote host defense, and mediate host reproductive behavior. In recent decades, the emergence of high-throughput sequencing has enabled researchers to study host-microbe interactions from the whole microbiome level rather than single microbial species, greatly expanding our knowledge of insect biology.

This is a reprint of the Special Issue entitled "Wood-Based Materials in Building" and deals with the latest developments in reinforcing construction materials, their joining, glulam-concrete composite beams, the effect of fire-retarding wood on its strength, and the applicability of newly developed wood-based boards and composite insulation materials produced with the use of wood by-products.

Drought and Groundwater Development is an important reference work in the field of groundwater science. Covering various topics related to groundwater contamination and aquifer management, this reprint makes an important contribution to the field of hydrogeology and hydrology by providing up-to-date, comprehensive, and holistic information on groundwater management during droughts. Key features:- Presents global case studies that show readers how this problem affects sites around the world.- Includes a remediation plan, problem-solving, groundwater management, water treatment techniques, and management of available groundwater resources.- Provides advanced techniques that can be applied as a methodology for solving.

Fruits and vegetables are important sources of nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, and bioactive compounds, and provide many health benefits. However, due to non-optimal post-harvest management, large quantities of fresh or fresh-cut fruits and vegetables experience a decline in their quality and nutritional value before they reach the consumer. This Special Issue covers technologies for the harvesting, handling, and storage of vegetables, including storage strategies such as active packaging, edible coatings, the application of nanotechnology in the post-harvest of vegetable crops, and others, with the aim of improving the shelf-life of fresh and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables.

This Special Issue highlights how zoos, aquariums, and botanical gardens have partnered with organizations and agencies to address local and regional conservation issues through research and education projects, rehabilitation programs, policymaking efforts, and other types of activities. Understanding how such partnerships are developed and maintained, the challenges encountered, and success stories (as well as unsuccessful ones) were of interest. Hopefully, the stories shared and lessons learned will guide other organizations in their local and regional conservation efforts.

The recovery of solid waste is a challenge and an opportunity for companies, thanks to the ongoing awareness of sustainability and technological advances. The end-of-waste criteria constitute a European strategic goal that promotes recycling in order to ensure a high level of environmental protection by means of reducing the quantity of waste destined for disposal.This Special Issue promotes the knowledge regarding technological methods for solid waste recovery. Articles investigate innovative processing methods with the goal of valorizing solid waste from different civil and industrial activities. Topics includes studies on construction and building, mining, plastics, and WEEE, referring to the treatment techniques used and, where appropriate, the critical raw materials that can be valorized. The recovery processes of critical raw materials can be very energy-intensive, affecting environmental and soil factors. Case studies on sustainable, low-carbon and resource-efficient techniques for the purpose of a more competitive economy were also very welcomed. The environmental impact and safety measures, especially for dangerous waste, should be taken into account in the description of their processing and management.

This reprint contains a collection of research articles covering the recent advances of process systems engineering tools in the areas of integrated biorefineries and ionic liquid design. The reprint comprises original research contributions and review articles on these topics.

The research scope of this reprint mainly focuses on GNSS data processing methods; GNSS applications; precise GNSS positioning and navigation; theories, models, and methods for processing wojGNSS errors; multi-GNSS positioning technologies; positioning and navigation methods under challenging environments; and low-cost GNSS positioning and navigation.

Asthma is a prevalent chronic inflammatory disease of the airways with complex etiology and mechanistic pathways and variable clinical presentation. Such heterogeneity renders the search for targeted therapies difficult. Currently, the best-known disease phenotype with tailored biological treatment is eosinophilic asthma; however, even in some of these patients, anti-IL5 treatment is ineffective. Furthermore, about a quarter of patients, especially those with a severe phenotype, develop progressive and irreversible airway obstruction, leading to persistent symptoms despite optimized treatment. Therefore, new therapeutic approaches are still needed, particularly in severe asthma. The Special Issue presents asthma research focusing on modern personalized therapeutic approaches. Particular interest is directed to novel asthma biomarkers, including molecular and epigenetic ones, shining new light on pathogenesis, phenotyping, and customized therapy in various airway inflammatory patterns of the disease. In addition, research articles on airway epithelial cell dysfunction, airway remodeling, and the overlap between asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are welcomed.Stanislawa Bazan-Socha (Guest Editors)

Cannabis has a history of medical use dating back millennia; however, the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes fell out of favor in the middle of the last century. There is currently a renewed interest in the potential medicinal value of this plant, as well as individual compounds produced by Cannabis (as well as synthetic analogs). Currently, nearly 50 countries permit the medical use of cannabis, and over a dozen other countries have legalized cannabis-based products (CBD, Sativex, Dronabinol, etc.) for medical use. While there exists a plethora of anecdotal reports indicating that cannabis can treat a variety of diseases, there is a limited amount of strong, evidence-based scientific data to support these claims. This Special Edition of Biomedicines, "Therapeutic Potential for Cannabis and Cannabinoids", was dedicated to providing evidence for the medicinal value of cannabis to treat human illness and disease. Topics included, but were not limited to, preclinical animal models examining the efficacy of cannabis and cannabinoid derivatives on pain, anxiety, cancer, and other diseases; and cell and molecular models of cannabinoid pharmacokinetics, drug-drug interactions, and disease treatment. These studies are of great importance not only for progressing the cannabis field, but also for validating the use of cannabis and cannabinoids as therapeutics.

The study of complex dynamic systems has become increasingly important in recent years due to its wide range of applications in fields such as engineering, physics, economics, and biology. These systems are characterized by their interconnectedness, nonlinearities, and feedback loops, which make them difficult to understand and control. As a result, there has been growing interest in developing tools and techniques for the modelling, identification, and control of complex dynamic systems.The aim of this reprint is to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art methods for the modelling, identification, and control of complex dynamic systems. This reprint covers a wide range of topics, including system identification, model-based control, adaptive control, nonlinear control, and predictive control. It also includes case studies and examples from different fields to demonstrate the practical application of these methods.This reprint is intended for researchers, graduate students, and practitioners in the field of control systems. It assumes a basic understanding of linear systems theory, calculus, and linear algebra. Overall, this reprint provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the methods for the modelling, identification, and control of complex dynamic systems.

This is a reprint of the articles from the Special Issue entitled "10th Anniversary of Actuators", published in the open-access journal, Actuators. It consists of 18 representative works with four main topics: systematic reviews for specific types of actuators, performance evaluation, design and controls, and new actuators' applications. This reprint helps readers to understand the challenges and the trends of research and development in advancing the theories, methodologies, and design tools of actuators.

The construction industry is growing rapidly and time has changed the construction methods used. The traditional way of construction is becoming obsolete and technology is taking over. In this case, sustainable construction is the future and the new norm in the construction industry. Although there are various opportunities in this sector, there are also some challenges that exist and hinder productivity. Hence, this reprint covers the opportunities and challenges in sustainable construction.

This reprint focuses on the mechanisms, modeling and controlling techniques of flash flood disasters, mainly in mountainous areas. Flash floods are among the most severe natural disasters, and the current publication will not only inspire future research but also enrich the current practice of flash flood disaster prevention and mitigation. This collection focusses on the engaged efforts in mitigating flash flood disasters, deepening the understanding of the causes of disasters in existing cases, finding appropriate modeling approaches, and implementing mitigation strategies. The readers will find within this reprint significant contributions for improving prevention and developing mitigation strategies, as well as protecting the safety of exposed populations.

The reprint has collected the latest scientific achievements in the microstructure-related deformation and fracture behavior of various metallic materials (e.g., steels, superalloys, and titanium alloys) under monotonical or cyclic loads. According to the research findings arising from this collection of works, the initial microstructure and microstructural evolution have a significant effect on deformation and fracture mechanisms and, thus, mechanical properties. To understand these influences, microstructure characterization, mechanical property testing, and numerical simulation are discussed in this reprint. These results are beneficial for promoting the potential applications of these materials and for the future development of novel high-performance metallic materials.

The sustainability of water resources worldwide is increasingly imperiled as climate change contributes to the human-induced problems of water supply scarcity and maldistribution. Environmental problems associated with water quality, such as aquifer depletion, land subsidence, the seasonal drying of river flows, waterlogging, the salinization of rivers and groundwater, and human health problems from the excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides will require a radical re-thinking of resource-management policy and new tools to help analysts and regulators craft novel solutions. Over the past several decades, with the advent and rapid progress of computational technology, watershed models have increasingly become important and effective tools for tackling a wide range of water resource and environmental management issues and for supporting regulatory compliance. Statistical and machine-learning methods are being used to support and even supplant more traditional simulation models to improve the estimation of the temporal dynamics and patterns of variability in pollutant concentrations and loads. With the advancements in modeling approaches for water quality, there have also been developments in decision-support tools for water quality management. This reprint describes innovative decision-support approaches from around the world and across sectors that can be applied by stakeholders, government entities, and regulators to reduce environmental pollution and result in cost-effective and sustainable water management strategies.

In the domain of electronic navigation, satellite navigation (GNSS) is one of the most important complex modern systems. GNSS is a key aspect of infrastructure which supports the development and improvement of power grid systems, banking operations, global transportation systems, and global communication systems. Today, GNSS requires the use of several positioning networks and sensors, such as radio networks and MEMS. The Earth's atmosphere, particularly the ionosphere and troposphere, can be seen as a huge laboratory where multiple processes and phenomena directly affecting the propagation of EM waves occur. Like all complex systems, GNSS technology has also gone through certain evolutionary stages. Factors affecting the future evolution of GNSS technology include the appearance of new signals and frequencies, complementary technologies in use, etc., but in the domain of GNSS technologies, it is essential to study the impact of space weather on GNSS systems. A key part of research related to GNSS technologies is the vertical TEC distribution and anomalies related to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions on Earth. There are many challenges that need to be addressed because they affect reliability, accuracy, and all other essential parameters of GNSS systems. It addresses some of these issues by publishing manuscripts which study GNSS risk assessment, different effects of space weather disturbances on the operation of GNSS systems, environmental impacts on the operation of GNSS systems, GNSS positioning error budgets, TEC special features in volcano eruptions, and similar topics.

The present Special Issue will lead you to discover the association between cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, through update reviews and original articles exploring the pathophysiological mechanisms underpinning this association and describing the latest results in term of cardiovascular event prevention. An interesting scientific journey that reflects the recent advances in pharmacological treatments and interventional procedures.

This reprint covers new aspects of the recent developments in the theory and applications of fractional differential equations, including inclusions, inequalities, and systems of fractional differential equations with Riemann-Liouville derivatives, Caputo derivatives, or other generalized fractional derivatives, subject to various boundary conditions. The authors study the existence, uniqueness, multiplicity, and nonexistence of classical or mild solutions, the approximation of solutions, and the approximate controllability of mild solutions for diverse mathematical models.

In this book, the underlying damage mechanisms of materials used under extreme conditions are explored using computer simulation and modelling methods, presenting important information to predict the lifetime of related facilities. The scope of this book embraces numerical work on material responses to extreme conditions, such as high-speed impact or loading, neutron or ion irradiation, and high-pressure and/or high-temperature environments. Related simulation results based on the first principle method, molecular dynamics, and finite element methods are reported. Results of various topics have been reported by papers collected in this book, for example, including fitting a better empirical potential, diffusion of atoms on surface, corrosion, interaction between different defects, elastic constants calculations, effect of hot press forming on collision toughness and energy distribution, and influence of radiation defects on the thermo-mechanical properties of UO2. Furthermore, a review about the experiments and models for the effect of strain rate on NiTi shape memory alloys (SMAs) has also been included in this book. These new results present new knowledge for understanding the damage mechanisms of materials under extreme conditions, which would be useful not only for researchers in these fields but also for new readers to learn about basic concepts and current research progress to better understand the response of materials under extreme conditions.

This reprint focuses on the current research trends in renewable energy sources (RESs) penetrated modern power systems (PSs). Various operational, power quality and stability issues and their solutions are discussed comprehensively in RESs integrated PSs. The topics of attraction include islanding detection and prevention, frequency regulation, pricing based multi-objective optimal scheduling, day-ahead load demand forecasting, advancing intelligent and robust optimization techniques based control strategies.

This Special Issue examines English teachers' perspectives on multilingualism and teaching English in multilingual contexts, implemented or planned teaching practices, and the teachers' intended goals. The research presented in this collection focuses on the perspectives of pre- and in-service teachers in a range of educational settings. Overall, the findings suggest that teachers continue to experience tensions between monolingual and multilingual ideologies and need continued support in adapting to the ever-evolving teaching contexts. While researchers and philosophers of language have been calling for a multilingual shift in education, teacher education and professional development programs lag behind in revising their curricula. Therefore, due consideration must be paid to the teachers; they are the agents of change, but they are also experts and professionals, and their views, knowledge, and pedagogical aims must be treated with respect. Many of the articles presented in this reprint illustrate that collaboration and mentorship between school and university partners can be fruitful, creative, and rewarding. The collection is a call for more opportunities for teachers and researchers to work in tandem to implement multilingual pedagogies that foster equal educational opportunities for all learners across different ages and stages of language development.

In a developing world, the demands for energy, water and the damage to our environment are constantly increasing. Electrochemistry could be a great tool to solve these problems, with an impact that could minimize or at least control damage in our environment, since the main driver of the reaction is the electron that can be produced in a sustainable manner.In electrochemical approaches of energy conversion and production, drinking water production and wastewater treatment, the material synthesis and interface characterization are key components that greatly affect a system's performance.The Special Issue "Electromaterials for Environment & Energy" proposes a set of publications that covers a range of subjects and applications related to energy, water and environmental pollution treatment, with a focus on material and interface control for process optimization.

The book is the reprint of the Special Issue 'Advances in Sustainable and Digitalized Factories: Manufacturing, Measuring Technologies and Systems' published in the journal Applied Science (MDPI). It contains 17 articles, including 1 Editorial, 14 Research Papers, and 2 Reviews.

The fast development of the industrial internet is boosting the evolution of the manufacturing industry to a new stage of socialization, servitization, universal interaction and connection, and platformization. Under this background, social manufacturing emerged as a new kind of manufacturing paradigm, established based on the self-driven, self-organizing and self-adaptive cyber-physical-social interaction among extensive numbers of socialized manufacturing resource providers. Up until now, social manufacturing has drawn attention from both academic and industrial fields due to its promising research and application values. However, social manufacturing is still at its infant stage as the fast development of the industrial internet, artificial intelligence, collective intelligence, cloud/edge/fog computing, and a new generation of information and communication technologies, etc., are changing the interaction, configuration and operation mechanisms of social manufacturing every day. In this regard, this Special Issue is established to explore precisely how the newly emerged social manufacturing paradigm influences the trends of mass customization and the configuration/operation patterns during order delivery, and exactly how the advanced information technologies can boost the development and application of social manufacturing

In a developing world, the demands for energy, water and the damage to our environment are constantly increasing. Electrochemistry could be a great tool to solve these problems, with an impact that could minimize or at least control damage in our environment, since the main driver of the reaction is the electron that can be produced in a sustainable manner.In electrochemical approaches of energy conversion and production, drinking water production and wastewater treatment, the material synthesis and interface characterization are key components that greatly affect a system's performance.The Special Issue "Electromaterials for Environment & Energy" proposes a set of publications that covers a range of subjects and applications related to energy, water and environmental pollution treatment, with a focus on material and interface control for process optimization.

Marine environmental conditions are very distinct in the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the East/Japan Sea. Physico-chemical properties and subsequently biological characteristics are different among the three seas. During the recent decades, dramatic changes in physical structure and vertical distribution of chemical properties were reported in the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the East/Japan Sea. However, we do not know much about the current status of the marine ecosystems in these three distinct seas to date. Since 2018, the integrated ecosystem assessment for ecosystem-based fisheries management have been implemented in the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the East/Japan Sea by the National Institute of Fisheries Science, Korea. This special volume will provide basic information for the current status of the marine ecosystems and an important background for the future monitoring of marine ecosystem responses to ongoing climate changes in the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the East/Japan Sea.

The articles discussed in this book show the potential health benefits of nutraceuticals, which are products containing bioactive compounds that can prevent and treat chronic diseases. This book explores various functional ingredients, including plant-derived products, mushrooms, microalgae, and goji berries, for their therapeutic, hypoallergenic, and sporting purposes. The study of the gut microbiome and its interactions with dietary components is also discussed. Additionally, the importance of sustainable and environmentally friendly practices in the food industry also stands out. As consumers seek out natural and functional food products, continued research on and the development of nutraceuticals will be critical in promoting healthy aging and addressing chronic diseases.