Böcker utgivna av Mdpi AG

This book presents a sample of theoretical and practical advances in applied sciences in the study of technical historical and/or industrial heritage. It covers several applications, such as geometric modelling and virtual reconstruction, computer-aided design and kinematic simulation, history of manufacturing, digital techniques in industrial heritage areas, building efficient management models, proposal for heritage intervention in a BIM environment, three-dimensional modelling using unmanned aerial vehicle imagery, computer-aided design, computer-aided engineering, and multi-criteria cataloging of the immovable items of industrial heritage. The contributions included in this book describe the state-of-the-art advances in this field and indicate the potential of studies of technical historical or industrial heritage in multidisciplinary applications in the fields of engineering and architecture.

This Special Issue focuses on the state-of-the-art results from the definition and design of filters for low- and high-frequency applications and systems. Different technologies and solutions are commonly adopted for filter definition, from electrical to electromechanical and mechanical solutions, from passive to active devices, and from hybrid to integrated designs. Aspects related to both theoretical and experimental research in filter design, CAD modeling and novel technologies and applications, as well as filter fabrication, characterization and testing, are covered. The proposed research articles deal with different topics as follows: Modeling, design and simulation of filters; Processes and fabrication technologies for filters; Automated characterization and test of filters; Voltage and current mode filters; Integrated and discrete filters; Passive and active filters; Variable filters, characterization and tunability.

Modern technology has eliminated barriers posed by geographic distances between people around the globe, making the world more interdependent. However, in spite of global collaboration within research domains, fragmentation among research fields persists and even escalates. Disintegrated knowledge has become subservient to the competition in the technological and economic race, leading in the direction chosen not by reason and intellect but rather by the preferences of politics and markets. To restore the authority of knowledge in guiding humanity, we have to reconnect its scattered isolated parts and offer an evolving and diverse but shared vision of objective reality connecting the sciences and other knowledge domains and informed by and in communication with ethical and esthetic thinking and being. This collection of articles responds to the second call from the journal Philosophies to build a new, networked world of knowledge with domain specialists from different disciplines interacting and connecting with the rest of the knowledge-producing and knowledge-consuming communities in an inclusive, extended natural-philosophic, human-centric manner. In this process of reconnection, scientific and philosophical investigations enrich each other, with sciences informing philosophies about the best current knowledge of the world, both natural and human-made, while philosophies scrutinize the ontological, epistemological, and methodological foundations of sciences.

Materials of extreme wetting properties have received significant attention, as they offer new perspectives providing numerous potential applications. Water- and oil-repellent surfaces can be used, for instance, in the automobile, microelectronics, textile and biomedical industries; in the protection and preservation of constructions, buildings and cultural heritage; and in several other applications relevant to self-cleaning, biocide treatments, oil-water separation and anti-corrosion, just to name a few. The papers included in this book present innovative production methods of advanced materials with extreme wetting properties that are designed to serve some of the abovementioned applications. Moreover, the papers explore the scientific principles behind these advanced materials and discuss their applications to different areas of coating technology.

Periodontitis is an infection-induced inflammatory disease accounting for huge healthcare costs and socio-economic impacts. Bacteria from the indigenous oral flora colonize the interspace between the tooth and the connective tissue, which induces an inflammatory response. If the bacteria proliferate and release virulence factors, they cause an imbalance in the host inflammatory response that induces degenerative processes in the surrounding tissues. This process is often slow, and the disease affects mainly older people, but the process could be rapid and affect young individuals if certain pathogens colonize the area. The two most studied periodontal pathogens, Porphyromonas gingivalis and Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, express virulence factors, including proteases and exotoxins. Periodontal bacteria and their products can be translocated to the peripheral circulation and are therefore linked to the risk pattern of several systemic diseases. However, it is not known if the increased risk for systemic disease associated with periodontitis is an effect of the invading bacteria and/or their released products, the release of components from the local inflammatory response, or a common host susceptibility pattern. The most studied periodontitis-associated systemic diseases are cardiovascular diseases and rheumatoid arthritis. Here, we want to shed light on mechanisms behind the associations of periodontal infections with systemic inflammation.

This book presents a compendium of the 10 articles published in the recent Special Issue "Distance and Domination in Graphs". The works appearing herein deal with several topics on graph theory that relate to the metric and dominating properties of graphs. The topics of the gathered publications deal with some new open lines of investigations that cover not only graphs, but also digraphs. Different variations in dominating sets or resolving sets are appearing, and a review on some networks'' curvatures is also present.

Nerve sheath tumors can be a significant cause of morbidity for many patients. These include benign tumors such as schwannomas, diffuse and plexiform neurofibromas, and atypical neurofibromas, as well as the aggressive soft tissue sarcoma known as the malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (MPNST). Nerve sheath tumors occur sporadically and in the context of the clinical neuro-genetic tumor predisposition syndromes neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and type 2 (NF2). Historically, the mainstay of treatment for nerve sheath tumors has been surgery. However, for both benign and malignant nerve sheath tumors, there is a high recurrence rate, highlighting the pressing need for novel therapies. As we have entered the genomic era, the hope is that an improved understanding of the genetics, and therefore the biology, of these tumors will ultimately lead to therapies that result in better outcomes. In this Special Issue, we include both review articles and original research related to the genomic understanding and modeling of schwannomas, plexiform and diffuse neurofibromas, atypical neurofibromas, and malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors as well as genomic methods being developed and applied to advance our understanding of these tumors.

TB is considered as one of the oldest documented infectious diseases in the world and is believed to be the leading cause of mortality due to a single infectious agent. Mtb, the causative agent responsible for TB, continues to afflict millions of people worldwide. Furthermore, one-third of the entire world''s population has latent TB. Consequently, there has been a worldwide effort to eradicate and limit the spread of Mtb through the use of antibiotics. However, management of TB is becoming more challenging with the emergence of drug-resistant and multi-drug resistant strains of Mtb. Furthermore, when administered, many of the anti-TB drugs commonly present severe complications and side effects. Novel approaches to enhance the host immune responses to completely eradicate Mtb infection are urgently needed. This Special Issue will therefore cover most recent advances in the area of host-directed therapies for TB.

This collection of 11 papers introduces broad topics covering various professional disciplines related to the research arena of land use and water quality. The papers exemplify the important links between agriculture and water quality in surface and ground waters as well as the pollution problems around urban areas. Advancement of new technologies for analyzing links between land use and water quality problems as well as insights into new tools for analyzing large monitoring datasets are highlighted in this collection of papers.

This Nutrients Special Issue focuses on neonatal nutritional advances for inflammatory disorders affecting infants such as necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). Nutrition can significantly impact the development of certain diseases that afflict infants. This Special Issue aims to bring together the latest research on the role of nutrition in preventing or impacting neonatal disorders. Specifically, this Special Issue focuses on the role of breast milk or donor breast milk and the various components in milk that have been demonstrated to protect against NEC and other inflammatory diseases. This issue provides a comprehensive composite of the advances in nutritional strategies that can modulate or prevent neonatal intestinal disorders.

Pharmaceuticals, due to their pseudo-persistence and biological activity as well as their extensive use in human and veterinary medicine, are a class of environmental contaminants that is of emerging concern. In contrast to some conventional pollutants, they are continuously delivered at low levels, which might give rise to toxicity even without high persistence rates. These chemicals are designed to have a specific physiological mode of action and to resist frequently inactivation before exerting their intended therapeutic effect. These features, among others, result in the bioaccumulation of pharmaceuticals which are responsible for toxic effects in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. It is extremely important to know how to remove them from the environment and/or how to implement procedures or treatments resulting in their biological inactivation. Although great advances have been made in their detection in aquatic matrices, there remains limited analytical methodologies available for the trace analysis of target and non-target pharmaceuticals in matrices such as soils, sediments, or biota. There are still many gaps in the data on their fate and behavior in the environment as well as on their threats to ecological and human health. This book has included nine current research and three review articles in this field.

The Industrial Internet of Things (Industrial IoT-IIoT) has emerged as the core construct behind the various cyber-physical systems constituting a principal dimension of the fourth Industrial Revolution. While initially born as the concept behind specific industrial applications of generic IoT technologies, for the optimization of operational efficiency in automation and control, it quickly enabled the achievement of the total convergence of Operational (OT) and Information Technologies (IT). The IIoT has now surpassed the traditional borders of automation and control functions in the process and manufacturing industry, shifting towards a wider domain of functions and industries, embraced under the dominant global initiatives and architectural frameworks of Industry 4.0 (or Industrie 4.0) in Germany, Industrial Internet in the US, Society 5.0 in Japan, and Made-in-China 2025 in China. As real-time embedded systems are quickly achieving ubiquity in everyday life and in industrial environments, and many processes already depend on real-time cyber-physical systems and embedded sensors, the integration of IoT with cognitive computing and real-time data exchange is essential for real-time analytics and realization of digital twins in smart environments and services under the various frameworks'' provisions. In this context, real-time sensor networks and systems for the Industrial IoT encompass multiple technologies and raise significant design, optimization, integration and exploitation challenges. The ten articles in this Special Issue describe advances in real-time sensor networks and systems that are significant enablers of the Industrial IoT paradigm. In the relevant landscape, the domain of wireless networking technologies is centrally positioned, as expected.

The book is a collection of original research and review articles addressing the intriguing field of the cellular and molecular players involved in muscle homeostasis and regeneration. One of the most ambitious aspirations of modern medical science is the possibility of regenerating any damaged part of the body, including skeletal muscle. This desire has prompted clinicians and researchers to search for innovative technologies aimed at replacing organs and tissues that are compromised. In this context, the papers, collected in this book, addressing a specific aspects of muscle homeostasis and regeneration under physiopathologic conditions, will help us to better understand the underlying mechanisms of muscle healing and will help to design more appropriate therapeutic approaches to improve muscle regeneration and to counteract muscle diseases.

Food processing by humans goes a long way back in time, e.g., heat for cooking was used 1.9 million years ago. However, meal preparation now seems to be moving out of the home kitchen, and preprocessed or processed/convenience food products are becoming a larger part of the daily diet. In addition, consumers are progressively focusing on the impact of food on their health, and they demand foods that have a high nutritional quality and an aroma and natural flavor that are similar to freshly-made products. Therefore, nutritional quality is concurrent with food safety, and sensory perception is becoming an increasingly important factor in food choices. The human digestive tract disintegrates food to allow the nutrients to be released and made available to the body. However, nutrients can undergo unwanted degradation upon processing and subsequent storage, negatively influencing the physiological effects. Different processing techniques will result in different food structures, thereby also affecting bioaccessibility and nutritional value. Hence, food scientists and industry have an increased interest in both conventional and innovative processing methods that can provide good-quality products with high nutritional value and stable shelf life. This Special Issue aims to shed some light on the latest knowledge about and developments within the effects of food processing and storage on changes of biochemical and nutritional compounds. Both original research articles and reviews are included in this book.

A variety of topics concerning ultrahigh-strength ferrous steels were collected in this book. At present, most of the ferrous steels are applied to cold sheet parts. However, they may be used as the materials of hot-forged parts in the future, because of the excellent performance of the mechanical properties. It is hoped that many researchers will have an interest in the applications of the ferrous steels to the hot-forging parts.

Medicinal plants or medicinal herbs have been identified and used since ancient times to improve the sensory characteristics of food. The main compounds found in plants correspond to four major biochemical classes: Polyphenols, terpenes, glycosides and alkaloids. Plants synthesize these compounds for a variety of purposes, including protection of the plant against fungi and bacteria, defense against insects and attraction of pollinators and dispersal agents to favor the dispersion of seeds and pollens.

It has been over 200 years since Fusarium pathogens were described for the first time, and they are still in the spotlight of researchers worldwide, mostly due to the mycotoxigenic abilities and the subsequent introduction of harmful metabolites into the food chain. The accelerating climatic changes are resulting in pathogen population and chemotype shifts all around the world, thus increasing the demand for continuous studies of factors that affect the virulence, disease severity and mycotoxin accumulation in plant tissues. This Special Issue summarizes recent advances in the field of Fusarium genetics, biology and toxicology.

This highly informative and carefully presented book discusses the preparation, processing, characterization and applications of different types of hybrid nanomaterials based on nanocellulose and/or nanocarbons. It gives an overview of recent advances of outstanding classes of hybrid materials applied in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, and materials science, among others. The content of this book is relevant to researchers in academia and industry professionals working on the development of advanced hybrid nanomaterials and their applications.

This book, Applications of Operational Research and Mathematical Models in Management, includes all the papers published in the Mathematics Special Issue with the same title. All the published papers are of high quality and were subjected to rigorous peer review. Mathematics is included in the Science Citation Index (Web of Science), and its current Impact Factor is 1.747. The papers in this book deal with on R&D performance models, methods for ranking the perspectives and indicators of a balance scorecard, robust optimization model applications, integrated production and distribution problem solving, demand functions, supply chain games, probabilistic optimization and profit research, coordinated techniques for order preference, robustness approaches in bank capital optimization, and hybrid methods for tourism demand forecasting. All the papers included contribute to the development of research.

The main objective of polymer materials scientists is to develop and design high performance polymer-based materials via the introduction of block copolymers, ionomers or inorganic-organic hybrids, in order to introduce functionalities such as mechanical reinforcement, gas barrier properties, fire retardancy, shape memory behavior or self-healing ability. In the last ten years, ionic liquids have demonstrated huge potential as new components within polymer-based materials, leading to a wide range of applications. Due to their many physical-chemical properties, as well as their various possible combinations, ionic liquids represent a new path to produce multifunctional materials.

This book gathers a collection of papers summarizing some of the latest developments in the thermomechanical processing of steels. The replacement of conventional rolling plus post-rolling heat treatments by integrated controlled forming and cooling strategies implies important reductions in energy consumption, increases in productivity and more compact facilities in the steel industry. The metallurgical challenges that this integration implies, though, are relevant and impressive developments that have been achieved over the last 40 years. The frequency of the development of new steel grades and processing technologies devoted to thermomechanically processed products is increasing, and their implementation is being expended to higher value added products and applications. In addition to the metallurgical peculiarities and relationships between chemical composition, process and final properties, the relevance impact of advanced characterization techniques and innovative modelling strategies provides new tools to achieve the further deployment of the TMCP technologies. The contents of the book cover low carbon microalloyed grades, ferritic stainless steels and Fe-Al-Cr alloys, medium-Mn steels, and medium carbon grades. Authors of the chapters of this "Thermomechanical Processing of Steels" book represent some of the most relevant research groups from both the steel industry and academia.

This Special Issue of Marine Drugs gathers recent investigations on the proteomes, metabolomes, transcriptomes, and the associated microbiomes of marine jellyfish and polyps, including bioactivity studies of their compounds and more generally, on their biotechnological potential, witnessing the increasingly recognized importance of Cnidaria as a largely untapped Blue Growth resource for new drug discovery. These researches evoke the outstanding ecological importance of cnidarians in marine ecosystems worldwide, calling for a global monitoring and conservation of marine biodiversity, so that the biotechnological exploitation of marine living resources will be carried out to conserve and sustainably use the natural capital of the oceans.

Recent years have seen the idea of a close association between nutrition and the modulation of cancer development/progression reinforced. An increasing amount of experimental and epidemiological evidence has been produced supporting the concept that many different bioactive components of food (e.g. polyphenols, mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids, methyl-group donors, etc.) may be implicated in either the promotion of or the protection against carcinogenesis. At the cellular level, such compounds can have an impact on different but sometimes intertwined processes, such as growth and differentiation, DNA repair, programmed cell death, and oxidative stress. In addition, compelling evidence is starting to build up of the existence of primary epigenetic targets of dietary compounds, such as oncogenic/oncosuppressor miRNAs or DNA-modifying enzymes, which in turn impair gene expression and function. Since there is a growing interest in the study of the biochemical and molecular role played by food components and its impact on cellular processes and/or gene expressions directed towards the fine-tuning of cancer phenotypes, in this Special Issue researchers contributed with either research or review articles presenting the latest findings on the intracellular pathways and mechanisms affected by natural bioactive dietary molecules.

The recovery of solid wastes for the preparation of innovative composite materials not only represents an economic advantage, but also offers an ecological opportunity for the utilization of by-products which would otherwise be landfilled. Specifically, the reuse and recycling of waste lead to important savings of raw materials and energy, since these by-products, generally deriv from agricultural or industrial activities, are abundant in nature. Moreover, a reduction of the environmental and related sanitary impacts can be also achieved. For this reason, a recycling operation is fundamental for the improvement of the environmental sustainability, because these secondary raw materials become a resource that can be easily reused without the modification of the peculiar characteristics, in order to obtain new and performing composites, with a low specific weight, high durability, and long life cycle.

Recent advancements in computer technology have allowed for designers to have direct control over the production process through the help of computer-based tools, creating the possibility of a completely integrated design and manufacturing process. Over the last few decades, "artificial intelligence" (AI) techniques, such as machine learing and deep learning, have been topics of interest in computer-based design and manufacturing research fields. However, efforts to develop computer-based AI to handle big data in design and manufacturing have not yet been successful. This Special Issue aims to collect novel articles covering artificial intelligence-based design, manufacturing, and data-driven design. It will comprise academics, researchers, mechanical, manufacturing, production and industrial engineers and professionals related to engineering design and manufacturing.

Preface Several countries have recently realized that the present paradigm of development in environmental and energy fields is unsustainable. As global awareness of environmental issues grows, governments worldwide are promoting policies which aim to limit the harmful effects of human development on the environment. In particular, these novel policies seek to address the rapid increase of the global temperature (especially in the polar regions) as well as to manage human plastic waste accumulating in seas. To resolve these issues will require a number of actions to be implemented; unfortunately, the recent COP 24 Conference was unsuccessful in establishing a global agreement to achieve these actions. In order for the upcoming 2020 COP 26 Conference to be successful in creating such an agreement, the scientific community must support the policymakers'' efforts. Within this framework, it is necessary to show the efforts of countries worldwide as they try to negotiate an agreement to increase the energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In addition, the research reports generated can provide quantitative measures of the necessary actions to be implemented in order to address sustainable and efficient energy use. Among other topics, the papers presented in this issue investigate innovations in novel efficient and environmentally friendly technologies mainly based on renewable energy sources. The study also highlights the different sectors involved in this task, such as energy conversion systems, urban areas, mobility, sustainability, water management, social aspects, etc. In this field, the Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES) conference provides the foremost forum for discussion on these topics. The 13th Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems Conference was held in Palermo, Italy in 2018. This Special Issue of Energies, precisely dedicated to 13th SDEWES Conference, features papers in three main topics: Energy policy and energy efficiency in urban areas, energy efficiency in industry, biomass and other miscellaneous energy systems.

This Special Issue explores underrepresented aspects of the political dimensions of global warming. It includes post- and decolonial perspectives on climate-related migration and conflict, intersectional approaches, and climate change politics as a new tool of governance. Its aim is to shed light on the social phenomena associated with anthropogenic climate change, as well as its multidimensional and far-reaching political effects, including climate-induced migration movements and climate-related conflicts in different parts of the world. In doing so, it critically engages with securitizing discourses and the resulting anti-migration arguments and policies in the Global North in order to identify and give a voice to alternative and hitherto underrepresented research and policy perspectives. In this way, it aims to contribute to a fact-based, critical, and holistic approach to human mobility and conflict in the context of political and environmental crisis.

Recent studies have highlighted that epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is not only about cell migration and invasion, but it can also govern many other important elements such as immunosuppression, metabolic reprogramming, senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), stem cell properties, therapy resistance, and tumor microenvironment interactions. With the on-going debate about the requirement of EMT for cancer metastasis, an emerging focus on intermediate states of EMT and its reverse process mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) offer new ideas for metastatic requirements and the dynamics of EMT/MET during the entire metastatic cascade. Therefore, we would like to initiate discussions on viewing EMT and its downstream signaling networks as a fulcrum of cellular plasticity, and a facilitator of the adaptive responses of cancer cells to distant organ microenvironments and various therapeutic assaults. We hereby invite scientists who have prominently contributed to this field, and whose valuable insights have led to the appreciation of epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity as a more comprehensive mediator of the adaptive response of cancer cells, with huge implications in metastasis, drug resistance, tumor relapse, and patient survival.

The book contains research articles and reviews recently published online for the MDPI journal Diversity, in the Special Issue "Genetic diversity of soil bacterial communities". The issue aimed to collect up to date information from the international scientific community to get insight in the "black box", as soil has been defined in the last decades, focusing in detail on the role that the microbial communities have in soil processes such as carbon and nutrient fluxes and on their genetic and functional diversity. The book meets the interests of scientific communities directly involved in the topics investigated, as well as of PhD students, scholars, professional organizations interested in improving their knowledge on a group of organisms considered vitally important to the maintenance and sustainability of the biosphere, where soil has a key role as an important natural resource.