Bücher veröffentlicht von Mdpi AG

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.

"Molecules at Play in Cancer" is a collection of 24 research articles on recent findings about some important molecules responsible for either cancer development and proliferation, or anti-cancer therapy. It covers a wide range of tissues and organs affected by cancer: adrenal glands, blood, breasts, muscles, ovaries, prostate, stomach, and testicles.

This Special Issue covers current and relevant information about the applied anatomy of domestic animals, new companion animals and wild animals. It includes recent research and review articles on diverse topics based on the use of different diagnostic imaging techniques and more classic anatomical methods, providing a deeper insight into the healthy anatomy of diverse structures, which is crucial in high-quality medicine.

This book focuses on the forming technologies and mechanical properties of advanced materials. Plastic working is the most efficient and an important manufacturing technology in today's industry. Plastic working technologies enable giving the material the appropriate functional properties, which depend on the rheological conditions of the plastic forming process and on the thermoplastic treatments carried out during the forming process. Metal processing is one of the most important sectors of the economy. In addition to the continuous improvement in the existing methods of plastic working, new technologies are also implemented, the purpose of which is to reduce the energy consumption of processing and the modernization of technological machines and tools. The subjects of research articles published in this book are multidisciplinary, including friction and lubrication in sheet metal forming, the single-point incremental forming of polymeric and lightweight metallic sheets, the optimization of shear spinning parameters and the cutting performance of cutting tools, the numerical and experimental analysis of titanium sheet forming, the mechanical and structural properties of titanium alloy subjected to impact-oscillatory loading, macro- and microdeformation characteristics of Ti-2.5Al-1.5Mn foil, and the optimisation of the thermomechanical process of nickel-based oxide-dispersion-strengthened superalloys.

This reprint contains the most recent research in pavement engineering, which mainly addresses the performance-related properties of asphalt mixtures. We hope that this reprint is helpful for researchers and pavement industries to generate a better and deeper understanding of pavement materials, pavement construction, and pavement maintenance.

Pyrometallurgy is considered to be an environmentally friendly technology in processing of primary and secondary raw materials. The continuous development of pyrometallurgical processes to treat more complex raw materials requires direct support from fundamental research. In this reprint, 18 papers focusing on recent investigations into the existing and new pyrometallurgical processes such as recovery of cobalt through chlorination-volatilization, the extraction of tungsten from low-grade concentrates, copper and lead smelting, ironmaking, and steelmaking are collected. This reprint is expected to serve as a valuable reference for academia and the industry working on thermodynamics, kinetics, and technological optimization and development.

Biocatalysis is a sustainable alternative for the chemical industry in manufacturing, monitoring, and waste management. Biocatalytic processes perform with isolated enzymes or whole cells as biocatalysts. Whole-cell biocatalysts offer some unique advantages of cascade reactions catalyzed by multienzymes as well as a single bioredox reaction with cofactor regeneration in a single strain. Therefore, whole-cell biocatalysts are widely applied for biosynthesis/biotransformation to produce value-added chemicals as well as the complete mineralization of organic pollutants.Biological catalytic processing using whole-cell biocatalysts includes biocatalyst engineering, bio-reaction engineering, and downstream processing. In addition to the traditional screening of microbial strains and immobilized whole-cell biocatalysts, modern genetic engineering, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology make tailored whole-cell biocatalysts possible. At the same time, some integrated processes have successfully been applied in the catalytic processing using living whole-cell biocatalysts, such as harnessing biocompatible chemistry to interface with the microbial metabolism as well as using various separation techniques for in situ product removal.This reprint on "Microbial Biocatalysis" provides a comprehensive overview of the recent developments of catalyst discovery, catalyst modification, and process intensification for whole cell catalysis in fermentation, biotransformation or biodegradation processes.

At the molecular level, the activation of growth factor receptors (GFRs) induces a mitogenic response and maintains cancer cell growth. The majority of malignant diseases are related to aberrant intra- and intercellular communication, associated with the GFR-mediated pathways. Moreover, the evasion of apoptotic signals and the requirement of angiogenesis were also found to be of fundamental importance for tumor progression and metastasis. In this context, a high expression of GFRs aids blood vessel formation, cell migration, and the inhibition of apoptosis. GFR-directed therapy that would theoretically selectively kill malignant cells and reduce the toxicity associated with nonselective conventional chemotherapy may be a promising treatment for cancer. Many intracellular proteins involved in GFR signal transduction can also function as oncogenes. Mutations affecting key proteins in the RAS/MAPK and PI3K/AKT pathways are known to be crucial in maintaining the malignancy of different types of cancers. This information has guided the development of compounds designed to target one or more of these pathways in cancer cells. Even though there have been important advances in our understanding of GFRs and their signaling, certain essential information is still lacking, and these membrane receptors are still being laboriously studied by several research groups, to find therapeutic solutions to unmet medical needs.

In recent years, inorganic oxidic nanomaterials have been extensively investigated for their outstanding properties that allow their use within a large variety of raising fields of interest, ranging from (photo)catalysis to the development of functional nanocomposites. Nanoscopic metal (eventually mixed) oxides are often fabricated following soft-chemistry approaches, characterized by the possibility of favouring specific morphologies, particles dimensions, and surface porosities through different synthetic methods and templating processes. In this context, surface functionalities and reactivity play a major role in the determination of nanomaterials final properties. For this reason, further surface functionalization with specific chemical moieties is often recommended to extend their field of application. This Special Issue, now edited as a book, aimed at extending the comprehension of the mechanisms involved in the synthesis and templating of inorganic oxidic nanomaterials, as well as in their surface functionalization and reactivity. Additionally, this Special Issue aimed at increasing the knowledge on the latest advances of these systems in (photo)catalysis, environmental clean-up processes, energy storage, controlled transport and/or release, biomedicine, sensing, development of smart-materials, stimuli-responsive materials, and nanocomposites. Nanomaterials of interest included: silica, alumina, titania, zirconia, zinc oxide, aluminosilicates, iron oxides, perovskites and titanates, rare earth oxides, and composites. Furthermore, particular attention was dedicated toward studies describing alternative ecofriendly preparation methods.

The application fields of colloid and interface chemistry are very wide, covering many aspects such as industrial and agricultural production, daily chemistry, enhanced oil recovery, and so on. The traditional experimental analysis of a colloid and interface chemistry system includes various instrumental analysis methods such as spectroscopy, rheometer, microscopes, etc. In recent decades, molecular simulation has become an important research method in this field. It can investigate at the molecular level and provide mechanisms or insights that are hard or even impossible to obtain from an experiment. Many applications of molecular simulation have been reported in the literature, such as the behavior of surfactant, self-assembly, enhanced oil recovery, adsorption around interface, etc. This reprint has collected ten research articles which relate to the application of molecular dyamics simulation in colloide and interface chemistry.

The reprint, "Rare Monogenic Diseases: Molecular Pathophysiology and Novel Therapies", provides a collection of original research articles and systematic reviews focused on diverse conditions stemming from a pathogenic single gene mutation. The articles are focused on the molecular mechanisms that are affected within a rare monogenic disorder, such as those involving gene expression, molecular pathways and cell death. Moreover, specific experimental therapies including drug discovery, drug repositioning, gene therapy and protein-based therapeutics are discussed.

Interactions between nucleic acids and proteins are essential requirements for the viability of cellular life because they are indispensable for many basic biological processes. DNA is typically presented as a specific double-stranded helical structure, but nucleic acids have great structural flexibility. Current knowledge demonstrates that the structural conformations of nucleic acids play critical roles in protein-DNA interactions. This book presents a collection of research findings published in the Special Issue of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, titled "Impacts of Molecular Structure on Nucleic Acid-Protein Interactions".The breadth of research findings reported here demonstrates that the structural flexibility of nucleic acids plays critical roles in their interactions with proteins, with important implications across a range of human diseases, including cancer and some infectious diseases.Prof. Richard BowaterUniversity of East Anglia, Norwich, United KingdomProf. Václav BrázdaInstitute of Biophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic

Inflammation is a complex biological response to injury as a result of different stimuli such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants. Inflammatory injuries induce the release of a variety of systemic mediators, cytokines, and chemokines that orchestrate cellular infiltration, consequentially bringing about the resolution of inflammatory responses and the restoration of tissue integrity. However, persistent inflammatory stimuli or the disregulation of the mechanisms of the resolution phase can lead to chronic inflammation and inflammatory-based diseases. Nowadays, commercially approved anti-inflammatory drugs are represented by nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID); glucocorticoids (SAID); and, in some cases, immunosuppressant and/or biological drugs. These agents are effective for the relief of the main inflammatory symptoms. However, they induce severe side effects, and most of them are inadequate for chronic use. Starting from these premises, the demand for new, effective, and safe anti-inflammatory drugs has led research in new therapeutic directions. The recent and emerging scientific community slant is oriented towards natural products/compounds that could represent a boon for the discovery of new active molecules and for the development of new drugs and potentially useful therapeutic agents in different inflammatory-related diseases. We hope that it will stimulate the interest of the scientific community involved in studying the effects of natural and synthetic compounds in different fields of interest such as acute and chronic inflammation, inflammatory pain, inflammation-related diseases (e.g., autoimmune diseases), amongst others.

Mathematical modeling is at the heart of most current developments in biological system analysis and bioprocess optimization and control. At the industrial scale, this evolution is reflected in process analytical technologies (PAT), digital twins, and Industry 4.0. This book focuses on various aspects of mathematical modeling at the microscopic and macroscopic scales, respectively, and demonstrates the potential of these methodologies to gain insight into the cell metabolism, to support the design of software sensors to reconstruct unmeasurable variables, or to establish model-based optimization of the operating conditions and/or feedback control of the bioprocesses. The range of applications is vast, including biopharmaceuticals, bioenergy, and the environment.

This Special Issue, "Scientific Papers by Developmental Biologists in Japan", represents a collection of high-quality review articles, research articles, and communications on the development of multicellular organisms at the molecule, cell, tissue, organ, and whole-organism level, which were written and submitted by developmental biologists working in Japan.

Psychopathology, including functional psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders, and also dementia and challenging behaviour, is common in people with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), such as intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and is the cause for a major public health concern. Much research has been conducted in the last three decades to understand this issue and develop effective interventions. Still, a lot remains unknown, for which high-quality translational research is urgently needed. In this Special Issue, we drew together research on recent advances addressing these issues. The areas covered included life expectancy among people with and without intellectual disabilities, the social and emotional development of people with intellectual disabilities and ASD, the influence of external environmental factors in determining aggressive behaviour in people with intellectual disabilities, parent and child training for children with autism and intellectual disabilities, how the presence of deafness influences quality of life, the views of prescribers on the deprescribing of antipsychotics among adults with intellectual disabilities, the views of people with intellectual disabilities who took part in the deprescribing, the views of direct-care workers on the causes of challenging behaviours in people with intellectual disabilities, and the validation of tools to detect cognitive decline in adults with intellectual disabilities.

"Sustainable Food Supply Chain Research", as a seminar collection of articles, provides theoretical and empirical scientific insights to enable sustainable food research academics, students, and practitioners to gauge the trajectory of sustainable food supply chain research, including contemporary research positions on a sustainable food supply chain around the world. Rigorously synthesizing the relevant academic literature and gold standard methods, the scientific contributions in this reprint integrate quantitative and qualitative models and tools that address the product quality framework for food supply chains, the causes of food waste within grocery retail chains, choice editing in favour of sustainable consumption in supply chains, multi-stakeholder initiatives in food supply chains, sustainability in governance in the cocoa supply chain, digitalisation for a sustainable food supply chain, logistics service quality, crop failure and supply chain dynamics in a developing country context, strategic agility in the fresh produce supply chain, and short food supply chains, among others.

This reprint focuses on radioactivity and applied research on the gamma irradiation of marjoram and the transfer of natural radionuclides to date palm plants. Sustainable techniques such as phytoremediation and bio-sorption were used in the treatment of radioactive waste, and sustainable materials were used in the immobilization of radioactive waste and radiation shielding. Natural radioactivity was investigated in common construction materials.

As Editor-in-Chief of the journal Diabetology, I am pleased to announce that the Special Issue "Diabetology: Feature Papers 2022" has now been published as a reprint. Diabetology (ISSN 2673-4540) is an international, peer-reviewed scientific open access journal that provides an advanced forum for studies related to the epidemiology, etiology, pathophysiology, pathogenesis, management, complications, and prevention of diabetes, including the molecular, biochemical, and physiological aspects of diabetes. In this Special Issue, "Feature Papers", we aimed to publish outstanding contributions in the main fields covered by the journal, which will make a great contribution to the community.This reprint covers the whole spectrum of diabetology from risk screening, risk markers, pathways of disease in type 1 diabetes and insulin treatment, and management of the disease and comorbidities.

This reprint is a collection of articles belonging to the Special Issue Advances in Metabolic Profiling of Biological Samples of Metabolites. The Special Issue is dedicated to reviews and original articles covering the current methodological and technological advancements in the pre-analytical handling of biological samples, sample preparation protocols, analytical approaches for untargeted and targeted metabolic profiling, and metabolite annotation tools.

Traditional manufacturing processes, such as welding and casting, and modern techniques, such as additive manufacturing, can significantly affect the local material properties of metallic materials. To ensure the safe and reliable operation of engineering components and structures, fundamental knowledge of the manufacturing effects on fatigue performance is of the utmost importance. Hence, this Special Issue focuses on the fatigue design of metallic structures, considering the influence of technological aspects. Approaches based on local stress/strain, as well as fracture-mechanics-based concepts, are applied, considering local manufacturing-process-dependent characteristics, such as microstructure, hardness, porosity/defects, surface topography, and/or residual stress state. Moreover, probabilistic methods are utilized which enable a link between statistically distributed local characteristics and failure/survival probability, enabling the advanced fatigue design of metallic structures.

The Key Laboratory of High-temperature and High-pressure Study of the Earth's Interior belongs to the Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. It is a unique and authoritative key laboratory at the provincial and ministerial levels. The Key High-Pressure Laboratory is primarily focused on the high-temperature and high-pressure experimental sciences, in combination with filed geophysical observation, theoretical calculation and advanced analysis tests in order to explore the chemical composition, cycling structure, geological state, material circulation, etc., of deep Earth.The mainstream research subjects of the Laboratory mainly include: research and development of experimental platforms and measurement techniques at high temperatures and high pressures; high-pressure material synthesis and hot-pressed sintering techniques; physical and chemical characterizations (e.g. electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, ultrasonic wave velocity, etc.) of minerals and rocks at conditions of high pressure and different oxygen fugacities by virtue of representative high-pressure apparatus, including autoclaves, piston cylinders, multi-anvil presses, diamond anvil cells and shock waves; high-pressure physiochemical behavior and storage states in the geological fluid and melt of deep Earth interior; high-pressure theoretical calculations; and high-pressure applications in the service of national economical and societal development.

This Special Issue "Innovative Conservation Cropping Systems and Practices" is focused on the development and assessment of innovative conservation cropping systems and practices in determining system productivity and enhancing crop production and soil quality. It covers applied engineering for achieving a sustainable balance between productivity, environmental, and profitability factors, presenting a collection of research articles that cover a broad range of cropping systems and practices from the farmland ecosystem.

"Advances in Sustainable Polymeric Materials" is a compilation of 22 articles highlighting the recent progress in the research and development of polymeric materials, with an emphasis on sustainability. Some papers focus on developing biodegradable plastics obtained from renewable sources such as starch and biomass waste. Other articles discuss modification techniques to improve the mechanical properties of biopolymers such as PLA and PHAs. The use of recycled polymeric materials in the construction industry is highlighted as a low-cost and environmentally friendly solution.Other studies include investigations on polymer-modified bitumen, a novel sound-absorbing material made from used palm-oil-based polyurethane foam and water hyacinth fibre composite, bio-based epoxy-lignin coatings, TiO2 nanocomposites, the photocatalytic activity of different polymeric composites, sustainable elastomers, interactions between vanillyl-alcohol-based epoxy and cross-linkers, polyvinyl chloride sorbent for rare earth elements, lignin-based thermoplastic, the chemical foaming process of polylactic acid, microencapsulation strategies for essential oils, electrochemical sensors for glucose determination, and an intelligent drug delivery system based on pH-sensitive polymeric formulations.It is important to recognize that the field of sustainable polymeric materials is vast and rapidly evolving, and while a single volume cannot entirely capture all the developments occurring in this field, this collection provides readers with a valuable introduction and overview of the topic.

The present reprint contains five articles accepted and published in the Special Issue "Logic and Computation 2023" of the MDPI "Mathematics" journal, covering several topics on computing science based on some form of logic. These topics include the model theory for formal logic-based formal specification and programming, logic mining and logic for games. It is hoped that the reprint will be interesting and useful for those working in the area of applying logic to computing.

This reprint presents groundbreaking discoveries, practical techniques, and rigorous analyses related to the cultivation, preparation, and exploitation of mycelium composites. The papers cover a wide range of topics, including functional modifications of mycelium with inorganic particles, modifying and assessing the mechanical properties of mycelium composites, strategies for improving the flexural behaviour of composites, beehives from fungal materials, bio-welding and reinforcement of composites, bioreactors for fungal production, co-production of composites by fungi and bacteria, growing large-scale mycelium structures, sound absorption by composites, and the geometrical parameterisation of fungi. This informative compendium of techniques, methods, and insights on growing fungal material appeals to readers from all walks of life, from high school pupils to university professors, from mathematicians, computer scientists, and engineers to chemists, from craft practitioners to industrial producers of fungal materials, and from biologists to architects and artists.

Following on from the Special Issue "Recent Advances and Contribution of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Applications for Agricultural Monitoring", we concluded that SAR has now become a pivotal sensor for agricultural monitoring. In this Special Issue, you will find a variety of background material discussing SAR and its applications. Several papers focused on using machine learning approaches with SAR to monitor crop stages and classify crops, while others focused on the polarimetric mode to estimate crop height. Going forward, we hope that you will find this Special Issue to be a useful reference.

Environmental issues have attracted great attention with the pursuit of a high quality of life, and the effective removal of environmental pollutants is a great challenge today. This includes two topics: one is to remove the pollutants produced post-treatment, and the other is to synthesize chemicals by a green route, avoiding producing pollutants in the process.Catalytic technology is an effective way to solve environmental problems, which can facilitate the conversion of pollutants to nontoxic or even useful chemicals. Thus, this reprint focuses on resolving the environmental problems by a catalysis technology, including photocatalysis, thermocatalysis, and electrocatalysis. Research works relating to the catalytic removal of pollutants or the catalytic synthesis of chemicals by a green route are reported.

Building extraction from remote sensing data plays an important role in geospatial applications such as urban planning, disaster management, navigation, and updating geographic databases. The rapid development of image processing techniques and the accessibility of very-high-resolution multispectral, hyperspectral, LiDAR, and SAR remote sensing images have further boosted research on building-extraction-related topics. In particular, to meet the recent demand for advanced artificial intelligence models, many research institutes and associations have provided open source datasets and annotated training data, presenting new opportunities to develop advanced approaches for building extraction and monitoring. Hence, there are higher expectations of the efficiency, accuracy, and robustness of building extraction approaches. Additionally, they should meet the demand for processing large city-, national-, and global-scale datasets. Moreover, learning and dealing with imperfect training data remains a challenge, as does unexpected objects in urban scenes such as trees, clouds, and shadows. In addition to building masks, more research has arisen on the automatic generation of LoD2/3 building models from remote sensing data. This follow-up Special Issue of "Remote Sensing-based Building Extraction", has collected more research on cutting-edge approaches to essential urban processes such as 3D reconstruction, automatic building segmentation, and 3D roof modelling.

This book, entitled "Smart Textile and Polymer Materials", is dedicated to recent research and development regarding smart textiles and response-based polymer materials, including, but not limited to, fiber-based energy harvesting devices, energy storage devices, chromatic devices, color and shape changes, sensing, drug release, and ultraviolet resistant, electrically conductive, optical, hydrophobic and flame-retardant materials.