Bücher veröffentlicht von Mdpi AG

In the last few decades, various composite gels have been developed. In recent years, further advances have been made in the development of novel composite gels with potential applications in various fields. This reprint offers the latest findings of composite gels by experts throughout the world.

(Mass spectrometric) non-target screening is a preferably comprehensive and untargeted (predominantly organic molecules detecting) approach combining (robust) analytical measurements with adapted data evaluation concepts, systematic compound identification workflows, and statistical data interpretation. It is well suitable for the identification of new, unexpected and/or unknown organic compounds as well as monitoring 'molecular fingerprints' and profiling 'process-relevant' molecules via statistical methods. In recent years, 14 articles in various disciplines were published and presented in this Special Issue, whereby it contains 4 peer-reviewed review articles and 10 peer-reviewed research articles dealing with non-target screening strategies and solutions.

This reprint gathers contributions from renowned researchers in the field, offering a collection of the current progress in the preparation, characterization, and applications of carbon-based nanomaterials, including carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, and graphene and its derivatives. The investigation on this type of nanomaterials has increased extraordinarily over the last years owed to their outstanding mechanical, thermal, optical, and electrical properties and superior mechanical properties, have paved the way for a broad range of applications ranging from flexible electronics to biomedicine, bioimaging, and sensing.

This reprint brings together fifteen articles published in the Special Issue of the journal Atmosphere, entitled "High-Performance Computing Serving Atmospheric Transport & Dispersion Modelling". These articles cover a wide variety of topics related to air quality in urban areas and nature-based solutions to improve it in the context of climate change; impact studies on human health and the environment of facilities and infrastructure projects as well as risk studies; the assessment of emerging threats; and preparations for and responses to emergencies involving toxic, flammable, or explosive atmospheric releases. As the fifteen articles presented here remarkably illustrate, what these contemporary topics have in common is the implementation of multi-scale simulations of atmospheric transport and dispersion by means of physical models of computational fluid dynamics (CFDs), whose potential is enhanced by high-performance computing (HPC). This reprint thus addresses the answers provided by modelling and the most advanced simulations to some societal matters of major interest.

Electronic cigarettes (ECs) have been present on the consumer market for over a decade, and the number of related scientific publications in the PubMed database has now exceeded seven thousand. Despite the number of publications, there is still no consensus in the scientific community regarding their safety. However, it should be emphasized that a comparison of equivalent quantities of tobacco smoke and the aerosol produced from e-cigarettes showed that there was a significantly lower quantity of toxic compounds in the aerosol compared with the tobacco smoke. Therefore, the use of ECs could be seen as a way of reducing the health damage to cigarette smokers who cannot or are unwilling to quit using conventional methods. In addition, randomized studies are emerging suggesting that ECs could be useful in smoking cessation. On the other hand, ECs are now widely used among adolescents and may pose a serious risk of future nicotine dependence and health problems in this population, as they counteract their advantages in the population gained from smokers who quit using them. Therefore, as most authors stress, further research that will convincingly resolve the current controversies is needed. Clinicians urgently need evidence-based knowledge to better inform their patients about the use of these emerging tobacco products as a harm-reduction strategy, and regulators should regulate these products in ways that best serve public health, especially taking the youth population into account.

The Special Issue "Radioactive Pollution and Biological Effects of Radioactivity"of the Journal Life involved the participation of academic scientists, researchers, and scholars from all over the World that contributed with articles, reviews, and case reports, based on high-quality research works.The common topic of the published works concerns the radioactive pollution, which occurs when radioactive elements enter the atmosphere and reach the Earth's surface, within solids, liquids, or gases, including the human body. This happens after natural and/or man-made activities, such as nuclear tests, industrial waste (e.g., radiodiagnostics), and excesses of naturally occurring radioactive sources. This kind of pollution entails risks of radiological contamination of the environment, with harmful effects on human health caused by the ionizing radiation. This theme has become even more current due to the increasing use of ionizing radiation for domestic, industrial, and medical purposes during the last century. Radiological monitoring is a primary objective of radiation protection in order to estimate and understand the impact of radionuclides on the environment and to assess the health risk for the population.The aim of the Special Issue has been to provide an interdisciplinary platform for researchers to exchange and share their experiences and latest achievements on all aspects of radioactive pollution. Survey data analysis, original and unpublished results of conceptual, constructive, empirical, experimental, and theoretical work were welcome, as well as other concepts related to the radiation field.

Supply Chain 4.0 is designed, planned, managed and optimized using Industry 4.0 technologies. There are many research issues and challenges associated with Supply Chain 4.0, a data rich complex system. The available data can interpret what happened in the past, what is currently happening, what will happen in the future and what are the best actionable decisions.Digitalization, visibility, connectivity and interoperability are integrated in Supply Chain 4.0. The operational, tactical and strategic plans across the supply chain are digitally interlinked and real-time synchronized with a 360-degree view. The win-win partnerships are dynamic and sustainable, with agility, flexibility and responsiveness to uncertain business environments. New models and methods are advocated to implement Supply Chain 4.0 research and development. With the progress and implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies, it is anticipated that there will be more and more breakthroughs in the models and methods of Supply Chain 4.0. This Special Issue will serve as a helpful reference for Supply Chain 4.0 researchers and practitioners.

Almost all fields of dentistry are closely related to newly developed materials, and all clinical improvements often follow, or, in any case, go hand in hand with the creation and the development of innovative and higher performing materials, instruments, and equipment. Thanks to contemporary applications of dental materials, the effectiveness of clinical dentistry has made remarkable advances.In recent years, thanks to digital technology and the frenetic development of the dental industry, new materials have been developed and proposed in many fields of dentistry: prosthesis, restorative dentistry, endodontics, implantology, and orthodontics. Unfortunately, as often happens, this productive challenge is not always accompanied by valid scientific research, and consequently the clinician finds new materials at their disposal that are not necessarily better than the old. Further studies are needed to gain relevant evidence for all recently introduced dental materials.This reprint includes research articles, clinical studies, review articles, and case reports focused on the latest advances and prospects of dental materials concerning all fields of dentistry.

This reprint is excellent proof that, despite more than a hundred years of research into hydrogen bonds, they are still an interesting and fundamental topic in the natural sciences. The collected articles deal with various aspects of the existence of hydrogen bonds and show human ingenuity in the field of inventing and applying various techniques, both experimental and theoretical, in order to describe them more fully.

This reprint presents the Special Issue on "Memristive Devices and Systems: Modeling, Properties, and Applications". The Special Issue provides a comprehensive overview of key computational primitives enabled by these memory devices, as well as their applications, spanning edge computing, signal processing, optimization, machine learning, deep learning, stochastic computing, and so on. The memristor is considered to be a promising candidate for next-generation computing systems due to its nonvolatility, high density, low power, nanoscale geometry, nonlinearity, binary/multiple memory capacity, and negative differential resistance. Novel computing architectures/systems based on memristors have shown great potential to replace the traditional von Neumann computing architecture, which faces data movement challenges. With the development of material science, novel preparation and modeling methods for different memristive devices have been put forward recently, which opens up a new path for realizing different computing systems/architectures with practical memristor properties.

This book reprints articles from the Special Issue "Advances in Computer-Aided Technology" published online in the open-access journal Machines (ISSN 2075-1702). This book consists of thirteen published articles. This Special Issue belongs to the "Mechatronic and Intelligent Machines" section. Industry 4.0 is characterized by the integration of advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and cloud computing, into traditional manufacturing and production processes. CAx (Computer-Aided Systems) systems are a set of computer software tools used in engineering and product design, covering various stages of the product development cycle. Advanced CAx tools combine many different aspects of product lifecycle management (PLM), including design, finite element analysis (FEA), manufacturing, production planning and product. In connection with the transition to Industry 4.0 concepts, the concept of the digital twin comes to the fore, and existing CAx systems must adapt to this trend. The Special Issue deals with a number of research areas, such as:New trends in CAx systems;Digital manufacturing;Internet of Things in manufacturing;Simulation of production systems and processes;Systems for advanced finite element analysis;Material engineering;Digitization and 3D scanning.

This overview of the most recent advances in the field of SMA research and applications in civil engineering aims to help remove the knowledge barriers across disciplines and sheds considerable light on the opportunity to commercialize SMA products in the construction industry.

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been at the center of attention of studies and industry. The AM process involves gradual build-up in layers, and capability in the fabrication of complex shapes with low cost. Advances in the processing of polymers and polymer composites with this method are in the domain of this journal, which can provide a vital resource for anyone involved in additive manufacturing. This Special Issue cover original reviews and research articles dedicated to: AM processes of manufacturing and materials; Process-microstructure/morphology-properties relationships; Optimization of process parameters; Mechanical properties of fabricated parts; Modeling and simulation.

Analytical chemistry is bound to face growing challenges in the future, especially for the quantification of trace analytes in complex matrices. Although the development of increasingly sensitive and specific instrumental techniques has achieved remarkable results, sample preparation is still a fundamental step, often limiting the whole workflow. In the context spawned by the recent international environmental policies that are responsive to the rapport of human activities with the surrounding environment, chemistry cannot hesitate to give its contribution. Almost pioneeringly, in analytical chemistry, we have been talking for some time about "green analytical chemistry", its guiding principles, and the development of eco-friendly analytical approaches. However, the new and still open challenge is advance not only in eco-compatibility but mainly in eco-sustainability, rooting the future of analytical chemistry in new perspective aimed at minimizing the environmental impact of the analytical process by placing environmental cost as a priority aim on par with analytical performance. This is the reprint of a Special Issue that includes contributions focused on the progress in analytical chemistry based on the arguments previously raised and discussed, with a particular reference to eco-compatibility and eco-sustainability. The contributions include the development of low environmental impact methods and/or techniques or their applications.

This reprint compiles several studies on radiation interactions with biomolecules. The fragmentation induced by slow electron and electron scattering processes are described, and the induced processes by UV radiation are characterised. The present Special Issue offers complementary studies on radiation induced by photons and electrons in biological (and related) target molecules. The present collection provides important insights on radiation physics and chemistry and the advances in knowledge in these areas.

This Reprint Book provides recent studies addressing encapsulation systems for active compounds (e.g., drugs and food ingredients) to improve the quality of life around the world. The content may be helpful for the colleagues and students working on encapsulation of active compounds.

Sundqvist, Sandlund, Källkvist, and Gyllstad have edited a timely book that will help to guide the future of English language teaching and learning. This comprehensive and lucidly written volume brings together research on English classroom practices from all levels across the globe with the aim of enhancing our understanding of current developments. All chapters are theoretically informed, as the book is both practical in its style and orientation, and pedagogically astute in the recommendations offered. This volume is a welcome resource for teachers, student teachers, teacher educators and researchers around the world.

Nowadays, Forestry has become an important field for the Environmental and Earth sciences due to its importance in global systems. While forest recreation focuses on forests as the main destination for public recreational activities, landscape protection refers to the conservation and restoration of natural beauty. Urban and peri-urban forests have become a place for the recreational activities of people living in big cities. They provide benefits to the quality of life. Landscape protection is also important, not only for scientific and ecological reasons but also for social and cultural ones.This reprint presents different contributions by the authors dealing with recent scientific research on forestry, recreational activities, landscape management, ecosystem services, etc., in different areas of the world.

The reprint focuses on fundamental and applied research on environmentally friendly manufacturing of food additives and its effect on the structural features and functional applications of functional ingredients in several fields.Food additives and functional ingredients are naturally or artificially synthesized substances that are added to foodstüs to improve their color, aroma, and taste, as well as to meet anti-corrosion and other technological purposes. The innovation of clean production, encompassing environmental and sustainability issues in the manufacturing process of food additives and functional ingredients is of particular interest. Special attention is given to their bioconversion, extraction, separation and purification, stabilization, formulation and compounding, etc., as well as relevant process intensification and integration.

Dry pasta is one of the most popular staple foods worldwide due to its convenience in terms of affordability, versatility, long shelf life, as well as sensory and nutritional value. As such, it represents a suitable carrier for health-promoting substances providing specific physiological functions. This Special Issue deals with the continuum aspects, "from seed to fork", that could have an impact on the nutritional, sensory, and technological aspects of pasta. In this Special Issue, we aim to publish innovative research and review papers on physico-chemical and sensorial characteristics, nutritional value, functional and technological properties of pasta, and pasta-making processes. New raw materials, new functional ingredients, up-cycling of waste materials, in vivo experiments to test the effect of assumption of the supplemented pasta, and innovative packaging systems will also be addressed in this Special Issue. Predictions of pasta quality adopting chemometrics as well as multi-variate and statistical data analysis approaches are welcomed. Finally, in the medium term, the international pasta market is expected to stay negative unless tangible product innovations are introduced, particularly regarding the technological innovations aimed at improving the products' health benefits. This Special Issue aims to provide a fundamental understanding and present the current strategies to improve the technological, nutritional, and sensory properties of pasta.

Since the emergence of the Coronavirus-19 infectious disease (COVID-19) pandemic, a rising number of reports have underlined the risk of increasing antimicrobial resistance due to antibiotic overuse in COVID-19 patients. In addition, many physicians and pharmacists involved in antimicrobial stewardship have had to shift their activities to the containment of the COVID-19 crisis. In contrast to this observed overconsumption of antibiotics, very few bacterial superinfections have been documented in COVID-19 patients, especially in patients admitted outside the intensive care unit and in the first days of admission. However, the identification of bacterial co-/superinfections in COVID-19 patients is difficult, as inflammatory and radiological markers of bacterial infection lack specificity in this setting. Furthermore, studies regarding the effect of immune suppression, including the use of corticosteroids and anti-interleukins, and the effect of potential immunomodulatory properties of certain antibiotics on the occurrence of bacterial co-/superinfection are needed.This Special Issue of Antibiotics aims to increase our knowledge regarding (more or less specific) markers associated with bacterial co-/superinfection in COVID-19 patients, quantitative and qualitative data regarding antibiotic prescriptions in COVID-19 patients, potential beneficial effects of antibiotic use in certain COVID-19 subgroups, detrimental effects associated with antibiotic overuse in COVID-19 patients, and evidence-based guidelines, which could facilitate the decision-making process when antibiotic prescriptions are considered.

Microgrids deliver efficient, low-cost, and clean energy while improving regional electric grid operation and stability. They further provide exceptional dynamic responsiveness for energy resources. A global portfolio of operations centered on the development and deployment of microgrids to increase grid dependability and resilience would therefore assist communities in better preparing for future weather catastrophes and keep the world moving toward a sustainable energy future. Solar photovoltaic systems are seen as a promising renewable resource, and their application in microgrids has grown rapidly in recent years.

Medical imaging and computational biology continuously pose new fundamental medical and biological questions that often give rise to novel challenges in Artificial Intelligence. These research fields present an increasing need for the application of cutting-edge computational approaches that generally involve machine learning or computational intelligence techniques, which can effectively perform bioimage and biosignal processing in different clinical areas.

The Special Issue, "Effect of the Modification of Catalysts on the Catalytic Performance", should be of great interest to all researchers involved in this scientific area regarding the synthesis and characterization of various catalysts or catalytic materials; catalytic performance (activity and selectivity); synergetic effect; and the modification of catalysts or suitable promoters that are added to modify the catalyst structure.

The introduction of permanent cardiac pacing in the late 1950s began the era of cardiac electrotherapy. In the 1980s, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) were introduced. These advances created new challenges for cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs). Right ventricular pacing was the primary breakthrough; however, over the years, it has become apparent that it can induce cardiac contraction dyssynchrony. Biventricular pacing allowed for the alleviation of dyssynchrony and improved the survival of patients with heart failure and bundle branch block. In recent decades, His bundle pacing has become a new strategy for physiological ventricular activation. However, the use of CIEDs carries several risks, e.g., complications related to transvenous leads. This led to the development of percutaneous lead extraction techniques as well as the introduction of a subcutaneous ICD (S-ICD) and leadless pacing. Technological evolution promises an exciting future in the development of cardiac electrotherapy.In this Special Issue, readers can find out about the clinical and hemodynamic aspects of right ventricular, His bundle, and biventricular pacing; ICD therapy; treatment of complications and technological advances in cardiac electrotherapy.

The reprint provides an overview of recent applications of both chemometrics and spectrometric techniques to target current issues associated with food authenticity, traceability, as well as modern approaches on the analysis of food ingredients and products.

Energy is an important material basis that can promote the development of human society. Despite the increasing use of renewable energy, the overall energy supply is dominated by fossil fuels. For a long period of time, the main consumption proportion of fossil energy will not change. With the perspective of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, natural gas, shale oil, shale gas, and combustible ice, energy exploration, reservoir reconstruction, and intelligent applications in energy exploitation and energy occurrence geology are currently explored from the perspectives of exploration and exploitation technology. This reprint summarizes the intelligent unmanned mining and its development trends and conducts various research studies, including the stratigraphic correlation of sandy conglomerate in the Yellow River Delta Sag of the Bohai Bay basin, the growth and distribution of coal-measured hydrocarbon source rocks in a mixed platform, the physical and mechanical properties of sandstone, mudstone and granite in the geological environment of deep energy reservoirs, the formation mechanism of energy reservoirs and gas reservoirs, the two-phase flow experiment and numerical simulation in energy mining, the evolution law of cracks in the surrounding rock and the reinforcement principle of gradient support, and the comparison of particle pickup by axial flow and swirling flow in horizontal pneumatic conveying.

Dear Colleagues,The direction of fiber orientation plays a crucial role in deciding the mechanical performance of textile structural composites. Unlike conventional composite materials, geometrically oriented textile structures, e.g., woven, knitted, and braided constructions, can be designed and developed for load bearing in a particular direction. Their properties can be enhanced by modifying the geometry and material composition. One major challenge in producing textile structural composites with superior mechanical properties at a reasonably lower price is cost effective prepreg. Composites constructed from reinforcement having a well-defined geometry perform better than randomly oriented fibers at a reasonable cost. Their flex fatigue is superior to conventional preforms in specific applications. This Special Issue invites research as well as review articles dealing with different types of (2D, 3D, multiaxial) woven, knitted, and braided structures for load bearing structural composite applications. Use of industrial multifilament yarns of pure and hybrid composition in textile geometrical reinforcement structures can also be included. The methods of impregnation of such structures by thermoplastic and thermoset resins should be described. The superior performance in such structural composites must be highlighted. Methods of characterizing woven, knitted, and braided textile reinforced composites is the focus of this issue. Current and future applications of advanced textile structural composites can be summarized in the submitted articles. Theoretical (computational, numerical simulation etc.) as well as experimental work can be submitted with sufficient scientific innovation.Prof. Dr. Rajesh Mishra

The reprint provides the most relevant and state-of-the-art in the field, including recent developments in the production of natural compounds from various bioresources, and their formulations as bioactives. This reprint also covered the engineered approaches for enhanced biological properties and their potential applications. Identification of novel compounds and bioprocess tools to improve the quantity and quality of bioactive compounds and their formulations are exclusively covered in this reprint.

This book contains 14 articles on various aspects of many-body physics. Most of the articles are devoted to different phenomena in Bose-Einstein condensate (M.R. Pathak and A. Nath; M.H. Figlioli Donato and S.R. Muniz ; B. Halder with coauthors; O.E. Alon).L. Madeira and V.S. Bagnato discuss the route of an out-of-equilibrium system to its thermalized state. M.R. Singh discusses the many-body interactions in plasmonic nanohybrids. M. Pudlak and R. Nazmitdinov analyze electron transport through a one-dimensional quantum ring, subject to Rashba spin-orbit interaction in the presence of external fields. R. Friedberg and J.T. Manassah report computer investigations on the duration memory for storage for an isolated atom. M.C. Pagnacco with coauthors describe the crazy-clock phenomenon. V.I. Yukalov and E.P. Yukalova consider materials with nanoscale phase separation. E.M. Anitas investigates materials with fractal-like geometry. L. Madeira with coauthors address the topic of quantum turbulence. K. Ziegler discusses how the employment of the diagonal elements of the time correlation matrix can be used to probe closed quantum systems that are measured at random times. L. Salasnich analyzes the collective dynamics of electrons in graphene positioned between the two slabs.