Bücher veröffentlicht von Mdpi AG

Great strides have been made in the area of hydrogel science since the first hydrogels were described in the 1960s. Hydrogels usually consist of three-dimensional matrices of hydrophilic polymers, held together by chemical or physical crosslinks, or supramolecular assemblies of small amphiphilic molecules. The gelation process occurs in response to a physical or chemical stimulus, such as temperature, pH, electric or magnetic field, enzymatic modification, light, and others. Consisting of mainly water molecules, they represent a unique class of materials, with many applications such as cell therapeutics, cartilage/bone regeneration, sustained drug release and drug delivery systems, tissue engineering, and 3D bioprinting. Despite these great strides, there is still much more to discover in this area. This Special Issue is focused on the use of hydrogels in tissue and bone regeneration. Hydrogels are particularly suited for this purpose as their physical characteristics resemble that of the extracellular matrix; as such, they have found applications as an extracellular medium for cancer cells, stem cells, and neuronal cells. This Special Issue also includes research papers on the other biomedical applications of hydrogels.

This reprint covers topics on geographical scale of glacier and lake ice variations, as well as the engineering scale of ice properties and their practical applications via laboratory tests and numerical modeling.

The effects of nutrition on chronic conditions, such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and stroke, continue to generate interest among researchers. This is because diet is a modifiable risk factor. The composition of diet, including the proportions and types of macronutrients and micronutrients, is a major contributor to chronic diseases. The beneficial effects of nutritional interventions on chronic conditions have been well documented, although differences remain among researchers concerning their overall impact. The evaluations of the role of nutrition in chronic conditions draw on diet's effects on body weight, body composition, glycemic, and insulin excursions, and vascular remodeling. The effect of diet in modulating gut microbiota dysbiosis is also an evolving area of research.This Book, entitled "Nutrition in Chronic Conditions", aims to examine the effect of nutrition in the development, care, and management of chronic conditions. This Book includes 11 original studies conducted in high- and middle-income countries, 3 systematic reviews with meta-analysis, and 3 literature reviews.The topics covered in the Book include: the effects of diet on (1) insulin and glucose metabolism; (2) gut health; (3) brain and cognitive impairment; (4) infections, chronic conditions, malnutrition, and all-cause mortality; (5) obesity and dietary variables in post-menopausal women; (6) non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in mice, specifically with the consumption of coffee; and (7) chronic conditions and COVID-19 infection.

Anti-cancer immunotherapies have generated spectacular outcomes in the clinical environment and changed treatment schemes for cancer patients. Adoptive cell therapies (ACTs), including using autologous tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, and checkpoint blockades have emerged as the most effective treatments for certain cancers. The current challenge for cancer immunotherapies is that although some patients have benefited from the treatments, a number of cancers are resistant. The purpose of this Special Issue is to understand anti-cancer immunotherapy treatment resistance mechanisms and explore new options to provide opportunities for effective treatments.

This Special Issue focuses on feeding and feed technology advances and challenges in aquaculture. These are of particular interest since aquaculture and fisheries are considered crucial sources of animal protein in human diets, providing around 17% of global edible animal protein. Special attention is given to alternative sources of fish meal and how substitutions can influence the metabolism, immune response, and disease resistance of the targeted species. Moreover, the impact of plant extracts on growth performances, physiological responses, immunity, and intestinal health is addressed.

Roads, bridges, airports, and ports are multirole transportation infrastructure assets, which rely heavily on asphalt, cement, and aggregates in traditional civil engineering. Multirole transportation infrastructures should be resistant enough against structural loads and vehicle loads. Further, multirole transportation infrastructures are greatly affected by climate change, which has the potential to impact both long- and short-term infrastructure performance. Recent developments in materials science, especially polymers, have brought new perspectives in the modification of civil engineering materials and consequent improvements. Being both strong and lightweight, polymer composites have already found wide-ranging uses in civil engineering. The application of various types of polymers includes admixtures and additives (e.g., alternative binders, polymer fibers) for enhanced mechanical performances and enhanced functional properties such as self-healing and self-cleaning. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze advanced functional polymer composites sitting at the intersection of physics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering. This Special Issue is concerned with the possible applications of polymeric composites to develop new technologies in road and bridge engineering, which will focus on current and future research toward characterization techniques, evaluation tools, and the production of advanced functional polymer composites.

This book focuses on applied technologies on biowaste treatment with the aim to minimize its environmental impact and to recover resources in the form of energy, nutrients, and other valuable products. As a result of this, the book has collected the latest research on mature, conventional, and innovative technologies used to address the challenging issues with the treatment and valorization of different flows of biowaste.

Encyclopedia of Engineering aims at providing a collection of entries concerning several fields of Engineering Sciences. The reprint provides a historical overview, starting from the investigation of Mechanics and Science in Ancient Greece and showing their evolution over time. The topical collection focuses on Civil, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering providing basic concepts as well as novel trends in modeling, design and construction of engineering systems, structures, and materials. Special attention is also given to the recent developments and achievements in the framework of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.

Computational Intelligence (CI) is the theory, design, application, and development of biologically and linguistically motivated computational paradigms. Traditionally, the three main pillars of CI have been neural networks, fuzzy systems, and evolutionary computation. However, in time, many nature-inspired computing paradigms have evolved. Thus, CI is an evolving field, and, at present, in addition to the three main constituents, it encompasses computing paradigms such as ambient intelligence, artificial life, cultural learning, artificial endocrine networks, social reasoning, and artificial hormone networks. CI plays a major role in developing successful intelligent systems, including games and cognitive developmental systems. Over the last few years, there has been an explosion of research on deep learning, specifically deep convolutional neural networks, and deep learning has become the core method for artificial intelligence. In fact, some of the most successful AI systems today are based on CI. Therefore, this book focuses on the theoretical study of computational intelligence and its applications.

Billions of people suffer from dental problems. Paradoxically, the deteriorating state of teeth is accompanied by the ever-increasing desire to preserve the best facial appearance, which is significantly influenced by teeth aesthetics. This favors the development of dental materials and manufacturing technologies for dental prosthetics, needed to achieve expected effects of clinical treatment.This reprint focus on enhancing antimicrobial and mechanical properties of polymeric materials and composites for dentistry. In recent years, special attention has been focused on the possibility of giving materials new or improved properties by the introduction of nano or submicron size additives, fibers or whiskers. Using agents such as natural oils to enhance antimicrobial properties remains an exciting idea. Another area of research is the application of antibacterial monomers, which can be copolymerized in resins to kill oral pathogenic microflora. The use of new monomers or new compilations of various monomers to improve mechanical properties has also aroused interest. In addition, we are currently looking for new data regarding colonization of dental materials by pathogenic microbes and their influence on the other properties. Further, there are many new commercially available materials which should be investigated to verify their properties, which is important from the point of view of clinical practice. Original new research and reviews related to any of the topics mentioned above indicate the current directions of development of dental materials. We hope that the presented work will be of interest to readers.

The Special Issue "Focus on Antibiotics - New Challenges and Steps Forward in Discovery and Development" addresses the latest efforts towards discovering new antibiotics. The articles in this Special Issue cover various topics concerning antibacterial drugs. They provide valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities facing the field of antibiotic research and offer innovative solutions to tackle the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. The content of this Special Issue addresses antibacterial quinolones of the latest generation, new tetracyclines (such as glycylcyclines, aminomethylcyclines, and fluorocyclines), metal complexes (Ru (II/III) frameworks and Co(III) complexes with diamine chelate ligands), various nanoparticles (gold, silver and titanium dioxide nanoparticles), bioactive compounds produced by Mixobacterials species, anti-mycobacterial compounds acting as phosphopantetheinyl transferase inhibitors. The research in this Special Issue will contribute to pharmaceutics and ultimately contribute to developing new and effective antibiotics. We are grateful to the authors for their contributions and hope this Special Issue will stimulate further research and discussion on antibiotics. We also thank the reviewers for their time and expertise, and the editorial team for supporting this Special Issue. Finally, we hope this Special Issue will serve as a valuable resource for researchers, clinicians, and policymakers working towards a future where antibiotics remain vital in our fight against infectious diseases.

In 2023, Economies celebrates its 10th anniversary. Thanks to the incredible support from all of you, the journal has developed into a well-respected academic journal. Economies has been included in several journal rankings, has a decent and growing number of submissions by well-known experts, and obtains very satisfactory citation scores given its young age. We acknowledge these achievements with a dedicated Special Issue. Therefore, researchers from all areas of economic research have been invited to submit their contributions to this Special Issue.The Special Issue is titled "Recent Topics in Economic Research" and covers a broad range of topics that are currently at the forefront of economics research and that are within Economies' scope. This includes original research papers as well as comprehensive review papers on topics of actual importance in economics.

Metal¿insulator transitions (MITs) constitute a core subject of fundamental condensed matter research. The localization of conduction electrons occurs in a large variety of materials and engenders intriguing quantum phenomena such as unconventional superconductivity and exotic magnetism. Nearby an MIT, minuscule changes of the interaction strength via chemical substitution, doping, physical pressure, or even disorder can trigger spectacular resistivity changes from zero in a superconductor to infinity in an insulator near T = 0. While approaching an insulating state from the conducting side, deviations from Fermi-liquid transport in bad and strange metals are the rule rather than the exception. As the drosophila of electron¿electron interactions, the Mott MIT receives particular attention from theory as it can be studied using the Hubbard model. On the experimental side, organic charge-transfer salts and transition metal oxides are versatile platforms for working toward solving the puzzles of correlated electron systems. This Special Issue provides a view into the ongoing research endeavors investigating emergent phenomena around MITs.

The forest, as the main body of the terrestrial ecosystem, has a huge carbon sink function and plays an important role in coping with global climate change. This book on "Monitoring forest carbon sequestration with remote sensing" mainly focuses on new remote sensing theories, methods, and technologies for monitoring carbon sinks in forest ecosystems (including urban forest ecosystems) and calls for papers that present original research on the following broad topics: Application of new remote sensing techniques to estimate forest aboveground biomass carbon storage and soil carbon storage. Coupling remote sensing and ecosystem models to simulate the carbon cycle of a forest ecosystem. Application of new sensors or algorithms to retrieve vegetation parameters closely related to forest carbon sink functions, such as leaf area index, tree height, chlorophyll, maximum rate of rubisco carboxylase activity, sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence, forest age, etc. Integration of multi-temporal or multi-sensor data to detect dynamic changes in and disturbances of forest resources.

This book includes papers from different research fields, reflecting the sectional talks presented at the 9th edition of the Scientific Conference of the Doctoral Schools from the "Dun¿rea de Jos" University of Galäi, which took place in June 2021. The objective of the 2021 Conference was to bring together perspectives and challenges in doctoral research in a common forum and to provide a platform enabling doctoral researchers to meet and share state-of-the-art developments in their fields. It consists of 16 papers presented at the 9th edition of the Scientific Conference of the Doctoral Schools from the "Dun¿rea de Jos" University of Galäi, in several fields such as: mechanical and industrial engineering, food science and biotechnology, electrical/electronic engineering, systems engineering and information technologies, chemistry, electrochemistry, and economic models and strategies.

This Special Issue is a collection of research topics on developing analytical and bioanalytical methods for isolation, identification, and determination of substances in biomedical and pharmaceutical matrices. Special attention is given to advancements in sample preparation, separation techniques and novel detection methods of small molecules, peptides, and monoclonal antibodies. The presented analytical methods exhibit several applications, including pharmacokinetic studies, therapeutic drug monitoring, microdialysis, toxicology, disease screening or drug stability study. Two comprehensive review articles were also presented on applying capillary electrophoresis to analyze bioactive compounds in herbal matrices.

This Special Issue on advanced sensor technologies contains contributions on the latest developments in mobile robotic systems and related research. Various topics with different ideas and applications from mobile robotics have found their place. New ideas are presented for mobile robots that specialise in cleaning floors, power lines and HVAC systems. We also find innovative approaches for navigation path planning using local minima-free potential fields, novel path primitives and/or their parameterisation for minimum-time planning, and various control approaches ranging from visual serving to model predictive and adaptive trajectory tracking, applied to wheeled robots, humanoid manipulators and flying robots. Localisation approaches using LiDAR, motion capture systems, fingerprint-based and biomechanical gait systems are also discussed. In addition to advances in methodology, applications in healthcare, mining tunnels, cleaning, warehouses and other areas are mentioned.

This reprint represents a collection of papers that aimed to highlight the importance of immunohistochemical findings and their role in improving the understanding of organ tissue functions.We focused our attention on farm animals because they represent not only a source of food in the supply chain, but also a source of income for breeders, a source of employment, and a primary tool in the quest for sustainable food production. To achieve this last aim, we asked authors for research that could potentially be applied to the purpose of this study, and whose results could be useful in improving farm management practices and the responsible use of natural resources.A total of 20 papers were contributed to this issue, written by 118 authors from 4 countries, and comprising 18 research articles and 2 communications articles.

This book focuses on the most recent technical innovations and developments in the area of microfluidics, particularly in relation to their biomedical applications.The advent of microfluidics has provided important insights into the fields of biomedical research and clinical diagnosis. Special attention is given to the isolation and detection of circulating tumor cells and exosomes, the generation of concentration dilutions, the rapid sensing and detection of single molecules and viruses, and the innovations in inertial microfluidics, electrical impedance, magnetic biosensors, and droplet microfluidics.

The recent studies focused on development of advanced carbon nanostructured materials, functionalized carbons, nanostructured oxides, electrocatalysts, and catalytic composite materials are collected in this reprint. The advantage of using novel catalytic materials and adsorbents in various applications is demonstrated.

The connected and automated vehicle (CAV) is a promising piece of technology, anticipated to enhance the safety and effectiveness of mobility. Advanced sensing technologies and control algorithms, working to acquire environmental data, analyze data, and regulate vehicle movements, are key functional components of CAVs. In recent years, the creation of innovative sensing technologies for CAVs has gained substantial attention. CAVs can now interpret sensory data to more accurately detect impediments, track their locations, navigate autonomously in a dynamic environment, and communicate with other nearby vehicles. This has been made possible by advancements in sensing technology. Additionally, by utilizing computer vision and other sensing techniques, the bodily movements, facial expressions, and even mental states of in-cabin persons can be identified.

Electrification plays a key role in decarbonizing energy consumption for various sectors, including transportation, heating, and cooling. There are several essential infrastructures for a smart city, including smart grids and transportation networks. These infrastructures are the complementary solutions to successfully developing novel services, with enhanced energy efficiency and energy security. This Special Issue includes high-quality papers that address issues related to cutting-edge smart city technologies in the electrification process, including but not limited to the following:Electrification of building environments and transportation systems;Role and impact of smart grids for smart cities;ICT and IoT infrastructures with big data for smart city electrification;Market, services, and business models for smart city electrification;Standards and implementation for smart city electrification;Advanced smart grid technology integration in smart cities, such as energy storage, demand-side management, and distributed energy resources.

Among the strategies for reducing the negative effects on the environment effected by the uncontrolled consumption and low potential for the recovery of conventional plastics, the synthesis of new biodegradable and recyclable plastics represents one of the most promising methods for minimizing the negative effects of conventional non-biodegradable plastics. The spectrum of existing biodegradable materials is still very narrow; thus, to achieve greater applicability, research is being carried out on biodegradable polymer mixtures, the synthesis of new polymers, and the incorporation of new stabilizers for thermal degradation, alongside the use of other additives such as antibacterials or new and more sustainable plasticizers. Some studies analyze direct applications, such as shape memory foams, new cartilage implants, drug release, etc.The reader can find several studies on the degradation of biodegradable polymers under composting conditions; however, novel bacteria that degrade polymers considered non-biodegradable in other, unusual conditions (such as conditions of high salinity) are also presented.

In this Special Issue, "Pathogenesis of Pregnancy-Related Complications", 4 reviews, 13 original papers, 1 communication, and 1 case report are compiled. These papers were published by scientific teams from 24 countries, including China, Tunisia, Canada, France, Serbia, Portugal, Spain, Chile, Singapore, Australia, the USA, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, Norway, Poland, Greece, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, and Israel, which is a really great achievement.

Heat transfer plays a crucial role in modern engineering and energy conversion efficiency. Understanding its mechanisms is essential for sustainable energy management. Waste heat recovery, an increasingly popular strategy, reduces energy consumption and promotes sustainability. This reprint highlights advancements in heat transfer technology and heat recovery systems, addressing the persistent demand for innovative solutions. The content focuses on four main categories: heat transfer and heat exchangers, heat recovery, renewables, and domestic hot water preparation systems.

Catalytic oxidation or reduction processes are among the most efficient processes for water and wastewater treatment. These include photocatalysis, sulfate and hydroxyl-radical-based advanced oxidation processes.This Special Issue contains the contributions of different research groups and discusses the recent progress and advances in catalytic processes in water and wastewater treatment.

This reprint features a dozen high-quality research studies and reviews on different types of nanofluids and their important topics related to thermophysical and electrical properties, as well as convective and boiling heat transfer characteristics, contributed by renowned researchers around the world. It is expected to be a useful resource for related industrial professionals and researchers in this emerging and popular field of nanofluids.

This book covers the theory and fabrication of plasmonic nanostructures, patterned surfaces, and devices for lossy mode resonance (LMR), surface plasmon resonance (SPR), surface-enhanced fluorescence spectroscopy (SEFS), and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-based biosensors. The chapters in this book cover a range of topics, including the interplay between SPR and lossy mode resonance, fabrication of LSPR substrates using high-throughput techniques, recent advances in various nanostructures, recent developments in the field of nanostructured Ag substrates, and innovative advances in biosensors based on DNA nanotechnology. These chapters provide a comprehensive overview of recent developments in plasmonic biosensors, making this book essential reading for researchers working in biosensors and plasmonics.

Agricultural productivity should increase to meet the growing food demand. Tillage is defined as the mechanical manipulation of agricultural soil, and it is an extremely vital part of crop production, particularly for seedbed preparation and weed control. Tillage operations are carried out using mechanical force, commonly with a tractor-drawn tool to achieve the cutting, inversion, pulverization, and disturbance of soil. A significant part of the energy (from fossil fuels) used in crop production is expended in tillage. This energy use results in greenhouse gas emissions. It is essential that we reduce energy use (hence, greenhouse gas emissions) to achieve sustainable farming practices and improve crop production and design new tillage tools or optimize the existing tools.Although the design and evaluation of tillage tools are generally carried out using analytical methods and field experiments, with recent technological improvements, computer technology has been used for the design and evaluation of tillage tools. Additionally, sensor technology can improve the efficiency of tillage tools. This Special Issue collated innovative papers that make a significant contribution to the design and application of agricultural equipment in tillage systems. It involved original research and review papers from different research fields, such as agricultural engineering, engineering simulation, and precision agriculture.

The manuscripts published in this reprint provide new insights into the hypothalamic neuronal and non-neuronal pathways involved in the pathophysiology and development of obesity and related diseases such as diabetes. Via four original papers, six review manuscripts, and one perspective, this reprint will substantially contribute to the identification of novel therapeutic targets in the hypothalamus and novel approaches to combatting the progression of human obesity.