Böcker utgivna av Mdpi AG

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lifestyle associated with good quality of food is well known for its widely recognized health benefits, especially when rich in bioactive compounds. Reduced risks of some types of cancer and other diseases have been associated with the adoption of such a diet, as have increased antioxidants, inhibitors of lipid peroxidation, decrease of pro-inflammatory cytokine production, etc. The focus of this Special Issue of Toxins was to gather advances related to the cytotoxicity of natural toxins and the potential for the cytoprotection of natural compounds present in food or plants. In this context, this Special Issue of Toxins comprises eight original contributions. Special attention is given to Fridericia chica (Bignoniaceae) leaves grown in Colombia, extract from Polygonum cuspidatum, Artemisia annua and coffee extracts against mycotoxins¿ effects. Studies of mycotoxins in different animal and human cell lines are also presented for zearalenone, beauvericin, ¿-zearalenol and ¿-zearalenol, among others.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism had permeated all spaces of experience, reaching every country, region, settlement, and corner of the globe. In recent decades, the meanings, implications, and roles of tourism have also significantly expanded. This Special Issue focuses on unconventional tourism mobilities and same-day visits, which are an important but often neglected part of the tourism system, constantly challenging both scholars and tourism industry stakeholders. Unconventional tourism is an umbrella term that covers most kinds of unregistered or unaccounted tourist mobilities (e.g., second homes, same-day visits, illegal home rentals, visiting friends and relatives, etc.), some of which might not appear to be 'tourism' but are in certain localities and under certain conditions. Given the growth of unregistered tourist flows and unaccounted leisure mobilities, there is a need in tourism studies to apply innovative research methods and to reconceptualize the meanings of tourism in different geographical and social contexts. It is expected that people's cravings for travel in the post-pandemic era will educe new spatial and temporal tourism experiences and behaviors in which unconventional tourism will play an important role. This Special Issue helps to explore unconventional tourism mobilities as described in all their forms, focusing on the geographical patterns, processes, and hidden aspects of it.

There has been a rapid development in the academic literature over the last ten years on papers relating to individualization, personalization, patient-, client-, consumer- and person-centredness, with work on conceptual, instrumental, observational, and experimental levels. This Special Issue presents papers that can further establish the current state of science on these topics relating to personalized nursing and health care. We collected papers that highlight and further the knowledge base conceptually, instrumentally, observationally, and experimentally with sound theoretical and methodological underpinnings and implications for research, theory, and clinical work in the disciplines of nursing, medicine, allied health, and beyond.

This reprint contains the articles accepted for publication in the Special Issue of Micromachines (MDPI) on 'Micro/Nanophotonic Devices in Europe'. It aims at presenting an overview, limited but still representative, of the research in the field of photonics being carried out by European groups (often in collaboration with colleagues abroad). The reprint includes, among others, a review paper on photonic devices fabricated by Germanium implantation and two review articles illustrating the fundamentals of non-linear photonic phenomena and devices, and their main applications.

The papers collected in this Special Issue deal with the effects of ionizing radiation at molecular and cellular levels, as well as possible applications in medicine and radiation protection. In particular, some works analysed the early stages of the interaction between ionizing radiation and DNA focusing on DNA cluster damage, which is widely considered as an important step towards subsequent endpoints. Other studies investigated the consequences of hypoxia on the evolution of the initial DNA damage, and one work analysed genome-wide DNA alterations in irradiated human cells. Concerning radiation therapy, the response of cancer cells to different radiation types was characterized both in vitro and in vivo, and possible strategies to enhance such response were investigated; furthermore, FLASH radiotherapy was reviewed. In the framework of cancer therapy side effects, the consequences of high doses on gene expression in healthy cells were analyzed, and the RBE (Relative Biological Effectiveness) for late effects in the central nervous system was predicted by the BIANCA biophysical model. Finally, the protective role of melatonin and Vitamin D, as well as hypothermia, was reviewed, valine radiolysis was investigated, the changes in radio-sensitivity of embrios during the early developmental stages of the preimplantation were analyzed, and epigenetic modifications induced by ionizing radiation were reviewed.

This book focuses on advanced techniques to reduce the impact of the transport sector and, more specifically, of Spark-Ignition (SI) Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs) on atmospheric air pollution and climate change. Hybrid vehicles represent the most suitable option for addressing these issues in the medium term, since hybridization allows us to overcome the major disadvantages of ICEs, electric units, and energy storage devices and merge their respective benefits. In this scenario, ICEs will remain the core component of automotive propulsion systems in the years to come. Of course, further efforts to improve the efficiency and reduce the pollutant and CO2 emissions of ICEs are necessary.

This book focuses on the application of ventilation and indoor air quality (IAQ) in different settings, and is centred around different indoor environments and policymaking issues. It also explores how issues around health, IAQ and ventilation have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis.In connection with the growing need to determine and assess IAQ, new research seeks to test and investigate new methodologies based on research topics which include an increasing number of harmful substances and test methods. Ventilation and Indoor Air Quality ultimately aims to provide the reader with a comprehensive range of case studies, seeking to solve ventilation and IAQ issues from different perspectives. It presents 19 chapters related to regulations, homes, modelling, field studies, and technology related to ventilation and IAQ.Overall, this book provides state-of-the-art analysis and reviews so that readers with any level of prior knowledge of ventilation and IAQ are introduced to the latest research on these issues. This book was written to inspire and stimulate the development of further multidisciplinary research on IAQ issues.

In this Special Issue "2D Nanostructures for Optoelectronic and Green Energy Devices", we have collected nine high-quality, original research papers and one comprehensive review paper by outstanding scientists and engineers from relevant fields, covering the topics in optical properties and couplings in 2D nanostructures, spectroscopic analysis in atomic scale, 2D transistors, 2D optoelectronics, and 2D energy storage applications. This Special Issue is expected to attract and enrich readers by providing innovative research articles and a review paper in the field of 2D nanostructures.

Dear Colleagues,Many structural metal materials work under the coupling condition of the load and corrosion environment. Therefore, it is very necessary to study the corrosion and mechanical behavior of metal structural materials. The corrosion behaviors of metals under the coupling condition of the mechanics and corrosion environment mainly include stress corrosion cracking, hydrogen-induced cracking, corrosion fatigue, erosion corrosion, wear corrosion, etc. From the macroscopic or microscopic point of view, these corrosion damages all involve the fracture process, and fractures are caused by environmental factors, also known as environmental fractures. Thus, this Special Issue, "Corrosion and Mechanical Behavior of Metal Materials", will focus on the environmental fracture behavior of metal materials, including but not limited to experimental, computational, or theoretical studies on environmental corrosion fracture of high-strength metal materials.

Subsistence smallholder agriculture in East Asia was highly recognized by Dr. Franklin Hiram King in his book Farmers of Forty Centuries or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan though it has been abandoned due to industrialization and urbanization since the end of the 20th century. This reprint consists of research on the transformation of agricultural systems and the mechanism behind these phenomena in China and Japan. We believe that this reprint is practically important, and we appreciate your understanding of the imperfections and hope you enjoy this reprint.

This reprint is devoted to studying RE-doped bulk and nanocrystalline materials from a scientific point of view and to presenting their possible applications in any field.This reprint is intended to serve as a unique multidisciplinary forum covering all aspects of science, technology and applications of rare-earth-doped crystals, starting from the growth techniques with specific attention to the optical and spectroscopic properties of these materials and their applications.