Böcker utgivna av Mdpi AG

This Special Issue focuses mainly on techniques and the relative formalism typical of numerical methods and therefore of numerical analysis, more generally. These fields of study of mathematics represent an important field of investigation both in the field of applied mathematics and even more exquisitely in the pure research of the theory of approximation and the study of polynomial relations as well as in the analysis of the solutions of the differential equations both ordinary and partial derivatives. Therefore, a substantial part of research on the topic of numerical analysis cannot exclude the fundamental role played by approximation theory and some of the tools used to develop this research. In this Special Issue, we want to draw attention to the mathematical methods used in numerical analysis, such as special functions, orthogonal polynomials, and their theoretical tools, such as Lie algebra, to study the concepts and properties of some special and advanced methods, which are useful in the description of solutions of linear and nonlinear differential equations. A further field of investigation is dedicated to the theory and related properties of fractional calculus with its adequate application to numerical methods.

The development of a closed-loop cycle is a necessary condition so as to develop a circular economy model as an alternative to the linear model, in order to maintain the value of products and materials for as long as possible. For this motive, the definition of the value must be demonstrated for both the environment and the economy. The presence of these analyses should be associated with the social dimension and the human component. A strong cooperation between social and technical profiles is a new challenge for all researchers. End of life of products attract a lot of attention, and the final output could be the production of technologies suitable for managing this waste.

Supply chains are currently globalized and companies operate internationally owing to the fact that raw materials, production processes, and the consumption of the final products are carried out in different countries. This implies high material and information flow, which incurs high costs associated with the supply chain and logistics, sometimes up to 60% of the total cost of the product. Therefore, companies seek to optimize their resources to reduce these costs and improve sustainability in a globalized market. This book, entitled Tools, Methodologies and Techniques Applied to Sustainable Supply Chains, contains 15 chapters that report case studies applied to industrial and service sectors. The authors come from areas such as Mexico, Colombia, Italy, Sweden, Slovakia, China, and Australia. They indicate how managers make use of tools and techniques to solve problems associated with supply chains to reduce their cost and remain competitive. A great effort has been made to analyze this problem, and the methodologies are clearly described here to facilitate the reproducibility of each technique and tool. This was done in the hope that hoping that they may one day be applied in more companies.

Dietary trace minerals are pivotal and hold a key role in numerous metabolic processes. Trace mineral deficiencies (except for iodine, iron, and zinc) do not often develop spontaneously in adults on ordinary diets; infants are more vulnerable because their growth is rapid and their intake varies. Trace mineral imbalances can result from hereditary disorders (e.g., hemochromatosis, Wilson disease), kidney dialysis, parenteral nutrition, restrictive diets prescribed for people with inborn errors of metabolism, or various popular diet plans. The Special Issue “Dietary Trace Minerals” comprised 13 peer-reviewed papers on the most recent evidence regarding the dietary intake of trace minerals, as well as their effect on the prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases. Original contributions and literature reviews further demonstrated the crucial and central part that dietary trace minerals play in human health and development. This editorial provides a brief and concise overview of the content of the Dietary Trace Minerals Special Issue.

Seaweeds are recognized as highly nutritious, and their use in gastronomy is increasing. Their health benefits and their potential to prevent several diseases have also been established. In this Special Issue several health effects are discussed, with more emphasis on their antitumor activity and potential use to treat Alzheimer’s disease. The key bioactive metabolites, from which phlorotannins can be highlighted, are presented, as well as some important in vivo studies. Altogether, the chapters provide in-depth information about the biological activities of seaweed metabolites, contributing to elucidate the health effects of seaweed.

Non-Newtonian (non-linear) fluids are common in nature, for example, in mud and honey, but also in many chemical, biological, food, pharmaceutical, and personal care processing industries. This Special Issue of Fluids is dedicated to the recent advances in the mathematical and physical modeling of non-linear fluids with industrial applications, especially those concerned with CFD studies. These fluids include traditional non-Newtonian fluid models, electro- or magneto-rheological fluids, granular materials, slurries, drilling fluids, polymers, blood and other biofluids, mixtures of fluids and particles, etc.

The cytoplasm of Gram-negative bacteria is bound by three layers: an inner membrane, a layer of peptidoglycan, and an outer membrane. The outer membrane is an asymmetric lipidic bilayer, with phospholipids on its inner surface and lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) on the outside, with the latter being the major component of the outer leaflet and covering nearly three-quarters of the total outer cell surface. All LPSs possess the same general chemical architecture independently of bacterial activity (pathogenic, symbiotic, commensal), ecological niche (human, animal, soil, plant, water), or growth conditions. Endotoxins are large amphiphilic molecules consisting of a hydrophilic polysaccharide component and a covalently bound hydrophobic and highly conserved lipid component, termed lipid A (the endotoxin subunit). The polysaccharide component can be divided into two subdomains: the internal and conserved core region as well as the more external and highly variable O-specific chain, also referred to as the O-antigen due to its immunogenic properties. LPSs are endotoxins, one of the most potent class of activators of the mammalian immune system; they can be released from cell surfaces of bacteria during multiplication, lysis, and death. LPS can act through its biological center (lipid A component) on various cell types, of which macrophages and monocytes are the most important.

Widening International Entrepreneurship Research addresses several unresolved questions and thus moves forward by acknowledging that future international entrepreneurship research needs to find new ways to further enrich its knowledge. The book presents the results of six studies that explain how human resource management contributes to the strategy of early internationalization, compares different experiences in several countries, assesses innovation in international entrepreneurship education teaching, analyses the effects of entrepreneurial education on entrepreneurial skills, and provides new knowledge about the effect of digitalization on firm performance in international markets. This collection of papers reviews the main factors that have been identified as having a high explanatory power at different levels.

Nowadays, the sustainable built environment planning in most cities has come to a turning point as the growth in traffic and population has become a serious concern and put tremendous pressure on both the environment and people in these cities. It is therefore important to find new ways or lifestyles—such as compact city, transit-oriented development (TOD) formulations—that are more flexible, inclusive, and sustainable. Furthermore, for the sustainable built environment and urban growth management, not only should the growth management principles—which include smart growth, sustainable growth, and inclusive growth—be taken into account but innovative/smart planning strategies—such as mixed use design, green transport, and new urbanism—are also utilized in planning sustainable built environments in order to prevent the urban sprawl development that has occurred.

Industrial process tomography (IPT) is becoming an important tool for Industry 4.0. It consists of multidimensional sensor technologies and methods that aim to provide unparalleled internal information on industrial processes used in many sectors. This book showcases a selection of papers at the forefront of the latest developments in such technologies.

Virus bioinformatics is evolving and succeeding as an area of research in its own right, representing the interface of virology and computer science. Bioinformatic approaches to investigate viral infections and outbreaks have become central to virology research, and have been successfully used to detect, control, and treat infections of humans and animals. As part of the Third Annual Meeting of the European Virus Bioinformatics Center (EVBC), we have published this Special Issue on Virus Bioinformatics.

Electronically Active Textiles (e-textiles) are a type of textile material that has some form of electronic functionality. This can be achieved by attaching electronics onto the surface of the textile, incorporating electronic components as part of the fabrication of the textile itself, or by integrating electronics into the yarns or fibers that comprises the textile. The addition of electronic components can give textiles a wide range of new functions from lighting or heating to advanced sensing capabilities. As such, e-textiles have provided a platform for developing a range of new novel products in fields, such as healthcare, sports, protection, transport, and communications. The purpose of this volume is to report on the advances in the integration of electronics into textiles, and presents original research in the field of e-textiles as well as a comprehensive review of the evolution of e-Textiles. Topics include the fabrication and illumination of e-textiles and the use of e-textiles for temperature sensing.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small regulatory RNAs that play a crucial role in posttranscriptional gene regulation. Over two thousand miRNAs have been identified in humans, and many of them are conserved in other species. miRNAs are implicated in fundamental cellular functions, including development and disease. In the last decade, there has been an overwhelming amount of data contributing to the understanding of miRNA biogenesis and their target genes. Moreover, a significant amount of work has been carried out in developing miRNA biomarkers and therapeutics for various disease conditions. RNA-based markers and therapeutics have been proven to have a clinical impact, and many of these miRNA-based therapies are at various stages of human clinical trials and clinical applications. Notably, miRNAs are also found in exosomes, and are considered to impart intercellular communication and function via several different modalities, including tunneling nanotubes. In spite of our understanding of miRNA biology and function, there are many challenges in effectively using miRNAs as biomarkers and therapeutic agents in clinical applications. In this Special Issue, we are inviting reviews, perspectives, and original research articles to address some of these challenges. Topics will include, but are not limited to, miRNA biogenesis, clinical applications, extracellular function, biomarkers, miRNA immune regulation, signaling pathways, and preclinical models.

Crop models and remote sensing techniques have been combined and applied in agriculture and crop estimation on local and regional scales, or worldwide, based on the simultaneous development of crop models and remote sensing. The literature shows that many new remote sensing sensors and valuable methods have been developed for the retrieval of canopy state variables and soil properties from remote sensing data for assimilating the retrieved variables into crop models. At the same time, remote sensing has been used in a staggering number of applications for agriculture. This book sets the context for remote sensing and modelling for agricultural systems as a mean to minimize the environmental impact, while increasing production and productivity. The eighteen papers published in this Special Issue, although not representative of all the work carried out in the field of Remote Sensing for agriculture and crop modeling,  provide insight into the diversity and the complexity of developments of RS applications in agriculture. Five thematic focuses have emerged from the published papers: yield estimation, land cover mapping, soil nutrient balance, time-specific management zone delineation and the use of UAV as agricultural aerial sprayers. All contributions exploited the use of remote sensing data from different platforms (UAV, Sentinel, Landsat, QuickBird, CBERS, MODIS, WorldView), their assimilation into crop models (DSSAT, AQUACROP, EPIC, DELPHI) or on the synergy of Remote Sensing and modeling, applied to cardamom, wheat, tomato, sorghum, rice, sugarcane and olive. The intended audience is researchers and postgraduate students, as well as those outside academia in policy and practice.

In the last few decades, research on the elaboration by palladium-catalytic processes of C-C bonds or the activation of C–H bonds has increased considerably. Yet there is still room for much improvement in terms of selectivity, or enantioselectivity, via the development of new ligands or the study of the catalytic effect of other metals to carry out the same chemical transformations. In addition, the attention paid to environmentally friendly methods in terms of the quantities of catalysts, ligands, and solvents is currently indispensable. The Mizoroki-Heck reaction is one of these important catalytic methods which generates C-C bonds in organic synthesis and is also possible by C-H activation. This book, titled “Catalyzed Mizoroki-Heck Reaction or C-H activation” focuses on new advances in the formation of C-C bonds or new C-H activation methods. It contains original research papers and short reviews on the synthesis of biologically active compounds using these catalytic processes, the identification of new catalysts, of new conditions allowing selectivity or enantioselectivity, the activity and stability of catalyst under turnover conditions, and all improvements in catalytic processes.

Modern dynamics was established many centuries ago by Galileo and Newton before the beginning of the industrial era. Presently, we are in the presence of the fourth industrial revolution, and mechanical systems are increasingly being integrated with electronic, electrical, and fluidic systems. This trend is present not only in the industrial environment, which will soon be characterized by the cyber-physical systems of industry 4.0, but also in other environments like mobility, health and bio-engineering, food and natural resources, safety, and sustainable living. In this context, purely mechanical systems with quasi-static behavior will become less common and the state-of-the-art will soon be represented by integrated mechanical systems, which need accurate dynamic models to predict their behavior. Therefore, mechanical system dynamics are going to play an increasingly central role. Significant research efforts are needed to improve the identification of the mechanical properties of systems in order to develop models that take non-linearity into account, and to develop efficient simulation tools. This Special Issue aims at disseminating the latest research achievements, findings, and ideas in mechanical systems dynamics, with particular emphasis on applications that are strongly integrated with other systems and require a multi-physical approach.

The way plants grow and develop organs significantly impacts the overall performance and yield of crop plants. The basic knowledge now available in plant development has the potential to help breeders in generating plants with defined architectural features to improve productivity. Plant translational research effort has steadily increased over the last decade due to the huge increase in the availability of crop genomic resources and Arabidopsis-based sequence annotation systems. However, a consistent gap between fundamental and applied science has yet to be filled. One critical point often brought up is the unreadiness of developmental biologists on one side to foresee agricultural applications for their discoveries, and of the breeders to exploit gene function studies to apply to candidate gene approaches when advantageous on the other. In this book, both developmental biologists and breeders make a special effort to reconcile research on the basic principles of plant development and organogenesis with its applications to crop production and genetic improvement. Fundamental and applied science contributions intertwine and chase each other, giving the reader different but complementary perspectives from only apparently distant corners of the same world.

Since 2017, the United States and Europe—among many other refugee-hosting countries—have made significant changes in their refugee policies. New visa restrictions, travel bans, and other regulations were imposed by national governments. At the local level, towns and cities responded in different ways: some resisted national policy by declaring themselves “sanctuary cities”, while others supported exclusionary policies. These different responses influenced refugees’ ability to settle and become integrated. The Refugees in Towns (RIT) project at Tufts University explores local urban integration experiences, drawing on the knowledge and perspectives of refugees and citizens in towns around the world. Since 2017, more than 30 RIT case studies have deepened our local knowledge about the factors that enable or obstruct integration, and the ways in which migrants and hosts co-exist, adapt, and struggle with integration. In this Special Issue, seven articles explore urban integration in towns in Europe (Frankfurt-Rödelheim, Germany; Newcastle, UK; Ambertois, France; Italy’s cities; and Belgrade, Serbia) and in North America: Bhutanese refugee-hosting US cities, and Antigonish, Canada. The papers explore how refugees and citizens interact; the role of officials and politicians in enabling or obstructing integration; the social, economic, and cultural impact of migration; and the ways—inclusive or exclusive—locals have responded.

This Special Issue focuses specifically on the topic of commiseration with the “enemy” within war literature. The articles included in this Special Issue show authors and/or literary characters attempting to understand the motives, beliefs, and cultural values of those who have been defined by their nations as their enemies. This process of attempting to understand the orientation of defined “enemies” often shows that the soldier has begun a process of reflection about why he or she is part of the war experience. The texts included in this issue also show how political authorities often resort to propaganda and myth-making tactics that are meant to convince soldiers that they are fighting opponents who are evil, sub-human, etc., and are therefore their direct enemies. Literary texts that show an author and/or literary character trying to reflect against state-supported definitions of good/evil, right/wrong, and ally/enemy often present an opportunity to reevaluate the purposes of war and one’s moral responsibility during wartime.

In many industrialized countries, there is a sharp increase of the aging population due to a decrease in fertility rate and an increase in life expectancy. Due to which, the age dependency ratio rises and may cause increased economic burden among working age population. One strategy to combat this problem is to prolong peoples working career. A sufficient work ability is a requirement for a sustainable and prolonged employment. Work ability is primarily a question of balance between work and personal resources. Personal resources change with age, whereas work demands may not change parallel to that, or only change due to globalization or new technology. Work ability, on average, decreases with age, although several different work ability pathways exist during the life course. Work-related factors, as well as general lifestyle, may explain the declines and improvements in work ability during aging. A sustainable work ability throughout the life course is a main incentive for a prolonged working career and a healthy aging. Work ability and work-related factors, are therefore important occupational and public health issues when the age of the population increases. This Special Issue, “Sustainable Work Ability and Aging”, includes in all 16 original articles and one opinion paper, organized in three sections. The research topics cover   wide aspects of work ability, from determinants, older employee´s coping with their work, methodological issues as well as results of interventions on promoting work ability.

This book covers the most recent research activities and achievements regarding to the solid phase microextraction (SPME) technique. It is a powerful sample preparation tool that addresses the new challenges of analytical laboratories. Among others, its fundamental applications involved the sampling of volatile compounds from various matrixes. The demonstrated topics ranged from aroma characterization of various fruits, essential oils to the utilization of SPME for in-tube extraction and isolation of selected compounds from complex samples followed by state-of-the-art analytical techniques.

Cooperative connected and automated mobility (CCAM) has the potential to reshape the transportation ecosystem in a revolutionary way. Transportation systems will be safer, more efficient and more comfortable. Cars are going to be the third living space, as passengers will have the freedom to use their car to live, work and travel. Despite the massive effort devoted, both by academia and industry, to developing connected and automated vehicles, there are still many issues to be addressed, including not only scientific and technological, but also regulatory and political issues. This book, mostly centered on the scientific and technological aspects of CCAMs, features seven articles highlighting recent advances of the state of the art in different CCAM technologies. Two papers address vehicular platooning, a key application for day-1 automated driving, other presents a scheme to improve the resource utilization of vehicular networks, while another paper addresses critical train communications, proposing an architecture based on 5G, SDN and MPTCP to provide path diversity and end-to-end redundancy. One paper describes the status of roadside deployment activities and analyzes the policies and practices of cooperative driving in the European Union. Finally, two review papers, one on congestion control techniques for VANETs and the other on fault tolerance techniques for vehicular networks, conclude the book.

The extraction of apatite minerals is becoming more and more crucial with the depletion of high-grade ores. At the same time, many streams of waste are continuously being produced by the phosphate industry, including calcareous and siliceous waste rocks, clayey sludge and phosphogypsum. These waste products are produced in huge volumes reaching a ratio of between 5 to 10 tons of waste per each ton of concentrated phosphate. The management of these waste products is becoming a real issue in terms of growing public awareness and environmental and financial aspects. In addition, phosphate ores are known to contain other critical raw materials (CRM) such as rare earth elements and uranium. The recovery of these vital elements from phosphate waste may help to develop the needs of the green energy of the future and contribute to the achievement of the sustainable development goals. In this Special Issue, insights related to the following aspects were studied: phosphate extraction and beneficiation, novel phosphate ores, the fine characterization of phosphate ores and waste, phosphoric acid production, critical raw material (CRM) recovery from phosphate ores and waste, reprocessing of phosphate wastes and finally the valorization and reuse of phosphate waste and phosphogypsum.

Iron is an essential element for almost all organisms, a cofactor playing a crucial role in a number of vital functions, including oxygen transport, DNA synthesis, and respiration. However, its ability to exchange electrons renders excess iron potentially toxic, since it is capable of catalyzing the formation of highly poisonous free radicals. As a consequence, iron homeostasis is tightly controlled by sophisticated mechanisms that have been partially elucidated. Because of its biological importance, numerous disorders have been recently linked to the deregulation of iron homeostasis, which include not only the typical disorders of iron overload and deficiency but also cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. This leads iron metabolism to become an interesting therapeutic target for novel pharmacological treatments against these diseases. Several therapies are currently under development for hematological disorders, while other are being considered for different pathologies. The therapeutic targeting under study includes the hepcidin/ferroportin axis for the regulation of systemic iron homeostasis, complex cytosolic machineries for the regulation of the intracellular iron status and its association with oxidative damage, and reagents exploiting proteins of iron metabolism such as ferritin and transferrin receptor. A promising potential target is a recently described form of programmed cell death named ferroptosis, in which the role of iron is essential but not completely clarified. This Special Issue has the aim to summarize the state-of-the-art, and the latest findings published in the iron field, as well as to elucidate future directions.

A significant number of d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) children and adolescents experience challenges in acquiring a functional level of English language and literacy skills in the United States (and elsewhere). To provide an understanding of this issue, this book explores the theoretical underpinnings and synthesizes major research findings. It also covers critical controversial areas such as the use of assistive hearing devices, language, and literacy assessments, and inclusion. Although the targeted population is children and adolescents who are d/Dhh, contributors found it necessary to apply our understanding of the development of English in other populations of struggling readers and writers such as children with language or literacy disabilities and those for whom English is not the home language. Collectively, this information should assist scholars in conducting further research and enable educators to develop general instructional guidelines and strategies to improve the language and literacy levels of d/Dhh students. It is clear that there is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ concept, but, rather, research and instruction should be differentiated to meet the needs of d/Dhh students. It is our hope that this book stimulates further theorizing and research and, most importantly, offers evidence- and reason-based practices for improving language and literacy abilities of d/Dhh students.

The Neuroproteomics Special Issue overviews the unique challenges that must be addressed to carry out meaningful MS/proteomics analyses on neural tissues and the technologies that are available to meet these challenges. The articles on Alzheimer’s disease, addiction, and schizophrenia illustrate how MS/proteomics technologies can be used to improve our ability to diagnose and understand the molecular basis for neurological diseases. Several articles will be of interest to investigators beyond the field of neurological disorders. The review on the discovery of biofluid biomarkers of neurodegenerative dementias will be of interest to investigators searching for other disease biomarkers. Similarly, the review on the role of neuroproteomics in elucidating mechanisms of drug addiction provides an overview of the utility of MS/proteomics approaches for addressing critical questions in addiction neuroscience that should be applicable to investigators involved in virtually any area of biomedical research. Likewise, the article on developing targeted MS approaches for quantifying postsynaptic density proteins will be useful for any investigator who wishes to design targeted assays for virtually any protein. Finally, the peroxidase-mediated proximity labeling technology, described in the article on mapping the proteome of the synaptic cleft, will be of interest to investigators interested in mapping other spatially restricted proteomes.

The biennial Congress of the Italian Society of Oral Pathology and Medicine (SIPMO) is an International meeting dedicated to the growing diagnostic challenges in the oral pathology and medicine field. The III International and XV National edition will be a chance to discuss clinical conditions which are unusual, rare, or difficult to define. Many consolidated national and international research groups will be involved in the debate and discussion through special guest lecturers, academic dissertations, single clinical case presentations, posters, and degree thesis discussions. The SIPMO Congress took place from the 17th to the 19th of October 2019 in Bari (Italy), and the enclosed copy of Proceedings is a non-exhaustive collection of abstracts from the SIPMO 2019 contributions.

The 11th International Conference on Atomic and Molecular Data and their Applications (ICAMDATA) was held on November 11–15, 2018, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was organized by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. This meeting is a continuation of a series which began in 1997 that was chartered to promote the use of atomic and molecular (AM) data in various fields of science and technology, to provide a forum for the interaction of AM data producers and users, and to foster crossdisciplinary cooperation between AM data producers and users as the coordination of AM data activities and databases worldwide.

The number of bilingual and multilingual speakers around the world is steadily growing, leading to the questions: How do bilinguals manage two or more language systems in their daily interactions, and how does being bilingual/multilingual affect brain functioning and vice versa? Previous research has shown that cognitive control plays a key role in bilingual language management. This hypothesis is further supported by the fact that foreign languages have been found to affect not only the expected linguistic domains, but surprisingly, other non-linguistic domains such as cognitive control, attention, inhibition, and working memory. Somehow, learning languages seems to affect executive/brain functioning. In the literature, this is referred to as the bilingual advantage, meaning that people who learn two or more languages seem to outperform monolinguals in executive functioning skills. In this Special Issue, we first present studies that investigate the bilingual advantage. We also go one step further, by focusing on factors that modulate the effect of bilingualism on cognitive control. In the second, smaller part of our Special Issue, we focus on the cognitive reserve hypothesis with the aim of addressing the following questions: Does the daily use of two or more languages protect the aging individual against cognitive decline? Does lifelong bilingualism protect against brain diseases, such as dementia, later in life?