Bücher veröffentlicht von Mdpi AG

In this Special Issue, you will find new directions in the research on liquid crystal applications. To be honest, we were surprised to find 10 papers covering a variety of application areas, with no overlap between them. The only important application without a related article was "display"! This was exactly the situation we hoped for. In this Special Issue, you can find 10 articles discussing the applications of LC devices or LC materials. The applications are liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) for optical communication, laser processing and wireless optical charging, wavelength selective filters, waveguides, smart windows, LCDs for terahertz waves, LC polymers for polarizing grating and LC material for an ink.We believe that this Special Issue will help researchers focusng on optical devices or LC materials to obtain inspiration for new devices using liquid crystals.

This book covers a broad range of subjects, from smart nanoparticles and polymer nanocomposite synthesis and the study of their fundamental properties to the fabrication and characterization of devices and emerging technologies with smart nanoparticles and polymer integration.

The continuous and widespread deterioration of lake water quality and eutrophication is not only a local problem, but also a global phenomenon. It is not only destroying, or at least limiting, the valuable water resources for daily life, but threatening the water security of sustainable social development. More importantly, along with the rapid accumulation of the alga, including novel hypertoxic viruses and new toxic chemicals, as well as other organic compounds, these stressors threaten aquatic life, biodiversity and endanger our health.This Special Issue highlights and discusses major threats to Plateau Lakes water quality, and provides an update on both lake current status, as well as future challenges. Lake problems, such as pollution and eutrophication, require that we quantify how serious the situation is, identify the probable causes, and recommend how to control the pollution in order to restore and protect water quality. More importantly, this Special Issue stresses the need to manage the lakes and the watershed under a unified approach.

The emergence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens currently represents a serious threat to public health and the economy. Due to antibiotic treatments in humans and veterinary medicine, prophylactic use and environmental contamination, bacteria are today more frequently exposed to unnatural doses of antibiotics and their selective effect.Antibiotic resistance can be encoded on chromosomes, plasmids, or other mobile genetic elements in bacteria. It may also result from mutations that lead to changes in the affinity of antibiotics for their targets or in the ability of antibiotics to act on bacterial growth or death. Exposure of bacteria, bacterial populations, and microbial communities to antibiotics at different concentrations shapes their genomic dynamics, as does the mobilisation and spread of resistance determinants. It is, therefore, essential to understand the dynamics and mobilisation of genes encoding antibiotic resistance, in human, animal, plant, and environmental microbiomes, through genomic and metagenomic approaches and bioinformatics analyses.This Special Issue gathers research publications on the horizontal transfer of antibiotic-resistance genes, their dissemination and epidemiology, their association with bacterial virulence, between bacterial genotypes and their phenotypes, and other related research topics.

The growing population is forcing us to look for new, more effective solutions to various problems. The rising demand for power, water supply and waste management, pedestrian safety, the efficient use of electric vehicles, traffic jams, commuting, the identification of all road users and prediction of their travel paths, and increasing air and noise levels are the most pressing issues in today's cities. Advance planning is a feature of green development that reduces dependence on vehicles associated with an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The development of eco-friendly cities includes the development and application of new efficient solutions and technologies, such as efficient transport management, emission control and pollution control, energy efficiency and the usage of renewable energy, resource efficiency, etc., which would ensure a better quality of life of the growing population.

Carbon-based nanomaterials are incredible tools with exceptional properties (high mechanical strength, high conductivity, attractive optical properties, chemical versatility, etc.). Among them, graphene and carbon nanotubes are the most frequently used from a practical viewpoint. These carbon nanomaterials can be synthesized by several methods, including top-down and bottom-up approaches. Their characterization via Raman spectroscopy, electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy is essential to correlate their structure with their properties in order to use them for specific applications. They show a brilliant future that is envisaged in the current reprint, which provides selected examples of the most recent advances in the preparation and characterization of carbon nanotube and graphene-based nanomaterials for a variety of applications.

The use of photocatalysis for wastewater treatment is an important area of research, which is not yet fully exploited at an industrial level and has significant potential in the disposal of many industrial effluents, particularly the effluents that are difficult to treat by conventional treatment processes. This reprint tries to know the latest advances in the field of wastewater treatment by photocatalysis. In this sense, it is worth mentioning the treatments based on photolysis, TiO2/solar light, oxidants/ultraviolet irradiation, oxidants/catalyst/ultraviolet irradiation, etc. In addition, the reprint describes catalyst manufacturing methods and reaction mechanisms.

The impairment of neurogenesis may be induced after pre- and post-natal chemical and biological toxin, alcohol, or radiation exposure, drug treatment, hormone imbalances, stress, pain, hypoxia, brain trauma, malnutrition, and aging. It also occurs as a result of genetic disorders such as Down syndrome (DS), autism, fragile X syndrome (FXS), neurological disorders including Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) epilepsy, and Huntington's disease (HD), and neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression and schizophrenia; however, the causal relationship between the impairment of neurogenesis and neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders remains unknown. In this Special Issue, entitled "Induced Impairment of Neurogenesis and Brain Diseases", original animal or cell experimental research and review papers were combined to discuss different causes of the impairment of neurogenesis, relevant neurobehavioral changes, molecular mechanisms, and therapeutic approaches. The aim is to update researchers and clinicians about the complexity of the development of the impairment of neurogenesis, the importance of the involvement of the impairment of neurogenesis in neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, and to provide some clues for designing novel therapeutic approaches by targeting the impairment of neurogenesis to effectively prevent or treat different genetic, neurological, and neuropsychological disorders.

Working life is in a major transition. Furthermore, environmental, societal, and economic problems challenge human activities. The need to develop reliance and sustainability also through higher education is evident. It has been anticipated that emphasis on entrepreneurship competencies will be even stronger in the future. In this book, Entrepreneurial Education Strengthening Resilience, Societal Change and Sustainability, we provide insights on how to develop entrepreneurial competencies within higher education and its existing networks. First, the book guides the reader to understand how political documents steer the implementation of global goals and what could be improved. Second, we present how pedagogical solutions and models can meaningfully support the development of entrepreneurial competencies in the field of higher education. We also show the complexity of this phenomenon, thus developing a deeper understanding of this educational issue. Third, we highlight the essence of developing teacher education in this context. Fourth, we stress that entrepreneurial competencies are also needed in the working life. Lastly, we present some interesting key points for developing entrepreneurial higher education from the entrepreneurial ecosystem point of view. The book consists of 13 articles from international scientific experts in this field. Our book provides new knowledge, ideas and opportunities for creating practices to enhance the development entrepreneurial, sustainable and resilient societies. The book is targeted to researchers, policy-makers, higher education providers, stakeholders, educators and trainers.

This reprint focuses on applied research on growth traits, fat reserves, fatty acid profiles and enriched diets and their effects on reproduction, health status and welfare. The studies contained in the volume have been carried out in both monogastric organisms and ruminants, fish, broilers or pigeons. Fundamental studies with rats or mice are also presented.The reader will find novel research about the effects of the degree of fatness and muscularity determined by ultrasound method on sows¿ reproductive performance, genetic studies on fatty acid profiles and growth traits in rabbits and Gilthead Seabream; nutritional studies addressing diets enriched with bee pollen in rats, postbiotics in male rabbits, concentrate and bypass supplementations in buffaloes; and interesting studies on the welfare assessment of meat sheep, rabbits, racing pigeons, broilers, alpacas and llamas using body condition measurements.

This reprint provides important scientific information across all areas of respiratory research including COVID-19, COPD, asthma, pulmonary embolism, pneumonia, sleep medicine and respiratory critical care.

This reprint includes papers published in the Special Issue entitled "Land Modifications and Impacts on Coastal Areas", with the aim of collecting multidisciplinary studies concerning the evaluation of natural and anthropic drivers inducing coastal morphodynamic modifications as well as coastal environmental changes.The volume presents studies carried out by means of in situ surveys as well as analysing remote sensing data. In order to provide the reader with a wide overview on different coastal settings and methodological approaches, case studies from Bulgaria, Cameroon, Ecuador, Ghana, Italy, Mexico, North Carolina (USA), and Spain are included in this Special Issue. It is hoped that the findings will be of interest for a wide range of investigations related to coastal analysis and management, especially for researchers and academics who could utilise exploit the provided approaches and methodologies.

This reprint collects works which stimulate and spread the latest knowledge on energy in construction and building materials, providing the basis for new ideas on various topics for young investigators as well as leading experts in the field of Materials Science and Engineering. The collection features fifteen research papers and one review study. The main research aim covers the topic of thermal energy storage in construction and building components.

Laser-based additive manufacturing (LAM) is a revolutionary advanced digital manufacturing technology developed in recent decades, which is also a key strategic technology for technological innovation and industrial sustainability. This technology unlocks the design and constraints of traditional manufacturing and meets the needs of complex geometry fabrication and high-performance part fabrication. A deeper understanding of the design, materials, processes, structures, properties and applications is desired to produce novel functional devices, as well as defect-free structurally sound and reliable LAM parts.The topics in this Special Issue reprint include macro- and micro-scale additive manufacturing with lasers, such as structure/material design, fabrication, modeling and simulation, in situ characterization of additive manufacturing processes and ex situ materials characterization and performance, with an overview that covers various applications in aerospace, biomedicine, optics and energy.In this Special Issue reprint, papers on different subjects were published after the high-quality reviewing process, with a total of 17 contributions (1 editorial, 2 review papers and 14 original research papers) and times viewed being over 13K (as of Nov 15 2022). Six articles were selected as Editor's Choice, and one article was selected as the Issue Cover (Volume 13, Issue 8).

This reprint collects 10 original research contributions published in the Special Issue entitled "Artificial Intelligence for Multisource Geospatial Information" of the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information. The focus is on different methods of Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) based on deep learning using different network architectures, clustering, soft computing, and semantic approaches. They are proposed to deal with a variety of Geospatial Big Data (GBD), such as georeferenced texts and photos in social networks, remote sensing images, cartographic maps, multidimensional geo databases, metadata in spatial data infrastructures, and for different tasks, such as for multisource georeferenced text integration and geodata flexible querying, for social sensing by applying sentiment analysis, clustering and geo analysis, for segmentation of roads, clouds and snow, and for detection of small targets and people on the streets.

Operational oceanography is maturing rapidly. Its capabilities are being noticeably enhanced in response to a growing demand for regularly updated ocean information. Today, several core forecasting and monitoring services, such as the Copernicus Marine ones focused on global and regional scales, are well-stablished. The sustained availability of oceanography products has favored the proliferation of specific downstream services devoted to coastal monitoring and forecasting. Ocean models are a key component of these operational oceanographic systems (especially in a context marked by the extensive application of dynamical downscaling approaches), and progress in ocean modeling is certainly a driver for the evolution of these services.The goal of this Special Issue is to publish research papers on ocean modeling that benefit model applications that support existing operational oceanographic services. This Special Issue is addressed to an audience with interests in physical oceanography and especially on its operational applications. There is a focus on the numerical modeling needed for a better forecasts in marine environments and using seamless modeling approaches to simulate global to coastal processes.

Human society's progress has increased the quantity of pollutants emitted into the environment. Water is one of the natural resources most affected by economic activity, with pollutants reaching water bodies without proper treatment. In this context, this book presents the latest advances and developments in statistical approaches for evaluating and forecasting water resources quality. New methodologies for analyzing and predicting the water quality that can be applied in related fields are also presented.

This reprint aims to collect state-of-the-art research contributions that address challenges in the emerging 5G networks design, dimensioning and optimization.Designing, dimensioning and optimization of communication networks resources and services have been an inseparable part of telecom network development. The latter must convey a large volume of traffic, providing service to traffic streams with highly differentiated requirements in terms of bit-rate and service time, required quality of service and quality of experience parameters. Such a communication infrastructure presents many important challenges, such as the study of necessary multi-layer cooperation, new protocols, performance evaluation of different network parts, low layer network design, network management and security issues, and new technologies in general, which will be discussed in this book.

This book is a reprint of the Special Issue "Urban-Rural-Partnerships: Sustainable and Resilient" in Land, which, based on the URP2020 objectives, invited original contributions dealing with interactions in regional systems, particularly between urban and rural actors, institutions and projects to tackle great societal challenges. The 16 contributions published included conceptual and methodological papers, as well as case studies dedicated to striking examples and providing transferable knowledge and solutions. The guest editors hope that the contributions will stimulate learning processes on various levels, i.e. cross- and transdisciplinary as well as from the local level to entire regions to the broader European and international levels, in order to foster an understanding of integrated regional and urban-rural development.

This reprint focuses on recent aspects of gravitational theory and cosmology. It contains subjects of particular interest for modified gravity theories and applications to cosmology, special attention is given to Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet, f(R)-gravity, anisotropic inflation, extra dimension theories of gravity, black holes, dark energy, Palatini gravity, anisotropic spacetime, Einstein-Finsler gravity, off-diagonal cosmological solutions, Hawking-temperature and scalar-tensor-vector theories.

Stem cells are an attractive tool for cell-based therapies in regenerative medicine, both for humans and animals. The research and review articles published in this first book of the Collection "Stem Cells in Domestic Animals: Applications in Health and Production" are excellent examples of the recent advances made in the field of stem/stromal cell research in veterinary medicine. In this field, sophisticated and new treatments are now required for improving patients' quality of life; in livestock animals, the goal of regenerative medicine is to improve not only animal welfare but also the quality of production, aiming to preserve human health. The contributions collected in this book concern both laboratory research and clinical applications of mesenchymal stem/stromal cells. The increasing knowledge of cell-based therapies may constitute an opportunity for researchers, veterinary practitioners, and animal owners to contribute to animal and human health and well-being.

Mathematical fuzzy logic (MFL) specifically targets many-valued logic and has significantly contributed to the logical foundations of fuzzy set theory (FST). It explores the computational and philosophical rationale behind the uncertainty due to imprecision in the backdrop of traditional mathematical logic. Since uncertainty is present in almost every real-world application, it is essential to develop novel approaches and tools for efficient processing. This book is the collection of the publications in the Special Issue "Mathematical Fuzzy Logic in the Emerging Fields of Engineering, Finance, and Computer Sciences", which aims to cover theoretical and practical aspects of MFL and FST. Specifically, this book addresses several problems, such as:- Industrial optimization problems- Multi-criteria decision-making- Financial forecasting problems- Image processing- Educational data mining- Explainable artificial intelligence, etc.

With the increasing requirements for energy, resources, and space, numerous rock engineering projects (e.g., mining, tunnelling, underground storage, and geothermal and petroleum engineering) are more often being constructed and operated in large-scale, deep underground, and complex geology environments. Meanwhile, more and more unconventional rock failures and rock instabilities (e.g., rockbursts, large-scale collapses, and mine earthquakes) are occurring and severely threatening the safety of underground operations. It is well-recognized that rocks have multiscale structures from minerals, particles, fractures, fissures, joints, and stratification to faults and involve multiscale fracture processes. In the deep earth, rocks are commonly subjected to complex high-stress and strong-dynamic disturbances simultaneously. In addition, there are many multiphysics coupling processes, such as the coupled thermo-hydromechanical interaction in fractured porous rocks. It is still difficult to understand rock mechanics and to characterize rock behaviors with complex stress conditions, multiphysics processes, and multiscale changes. The primary aim of this Special Issue is to bring together original research discussing innovative efforts on analytical, numerical, and big-data-based methods in rock mechanics. It includes 25 manuscripts that illustrate the richness and challenging nature of deep rock mechanics.

This Special Issue on CFS/ME collects 18 papers with an interdisciplinary view on the current demographic and epidemiological data and immunological characteristics of CFS/ME and examines the different pathogenic hypotheses, as well as giving information about the latest knowledge on diagnostic investigations, pharmacological, integrative, physical, cognitive-behavioral and psychological curative approaches.

This Special Issue focuses on the application of innovative materials in water decontamination, the synthesis and characterization of engineered nanocomposites,water decontamination by photocatalysis, adsorption and other techniques, and computational and theoretical studies of the reaction mechanisms, kinetics and thermodynamics of water depollution processes. Engineered nanomaterials with magnetic properties allow the adsorption of contaminants, followed by magnetic separation, while other nanomaterials allow the contaminant's photodegradation. The use of these innovative materials, whether for pollutant adsorption or decomposition by photocatalysis, or for constructing low-cost sensors for the detection of contaminants, has gained interest in the preceding decades.

This Special Issue addresses both new scientific insights and technological advances of gluten-free product development exploring alternative ingredients for the development of gluten-free products aiming to mimic the unique viscoelastic properties of gluten as a gas retention ingredient during fermentation, water binding and enabler of starch gelatinization on baking, and a bread flavor enhancer via gluten-related proteases.

This Special Issue, "Temperature Reduction Technologies Meet Asphalt Pavement: Green and Sustainability", covers various subjects related to advanced temperature reduction technologies in bituminous materials. It can help civil engineers and material scientists better identify underlying views for sustainable pavement constructions.

This book contains several articles where the molecular mechanisms and structural changes in target proteins on interaction with various viruses and bacteria were studied. In addition, drug-protein interactions, drug-drug interaction mechanisms, anti-Glycating, antioxidant, binding affinity, network pharmacology-driven investigations, and targeted anticancer treatments were also investigated.

The question of how to classify the different varieties of spoken Arabic is a long-standing problem in the fields of Arabic and Semitic linguistics, and it has been addressed by several authors and from a number of different perspectives. This collection of articles represents a further contribution to the vast collective effort of attempting to more effectively assess, organize, and understand the varieties of spoken Arabic, applying a classification of Arabic dialects in the broadest possible sense. The authors who contribute to this volume tackle this issue by examining varieties spoken from the Maghreb to the Mashreq and employing various approaches and perspectives, e.g., diatopic and diachronic, syntactical, and typological.

The rapid expansion of aquaculture around the world is increasingly being impacted by toxins produced by harmful marine microalgae, which threaten the safety of seafood. In addition, ocean climate change is leading to changing patterns in the distribution of toxic dinoflagellates and diatoms which produce these toxins. New approaches are being developed to monitor for harmful species and the toxins they produce. This Special Issue covers pioneering research on harmful marine microalgae and their toxins, including the identification of species and toxins; the development of new chemical and biological techniques to identify and monitor species and toxins; the uptake of marine biotoxins in seafood and marine ecosystems; and the distribution and abundance of toxins, particularly in relation to climate change.