Böcker utgivna av Mdpi AG

Preeclampsia is a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy, diagnosed after the 20th week of gestation in women experiencing new-onset hypertension along with symptoms affecting the liver, kidneys, or brain. In some cases, women with preeclampsia develop novel seizures or unexplained coma, at which time they are diagnosed with eclampsia. The mechanisms contributing to preeclampsia and eclampsia are not fully elucidated, although the placenta seems to play a critical role. Previous studies suggest that improper placentation stimulates mitochondrial dysfunction and the exaggerated release of placental-derived molecules including inflammatory cytokines, anti-angiogenic factors, reactive oxygen species, and cell-free nucleic acids into the maternal circulation that cause systemic vascular dysfunction. These, along with maternally derived molecules, act in concert, leading to hypertension and target organ damage during pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia and eclampsia.In this reprint, we present the original research articles and review papers published as part of the Special Issue: "The Pathophysiology of Preeclampsia and Eclampsia" in Cells.

In the last decade, the Industrial Revolution 4.0 brought flexible supply chains and flexible design projects to the forefront. Nevertheless, the recent pandemic, the accompanying economic problems, and the resulting supply problems have further increased the role of logistics and supply chains. Therefore, planning and scheduling procedures that can respond flexibly to changed circumstances have become more valuable both in logistics and projects.There are already several competing criteria of project and logistic process planning and scheduling that need to be reconciled. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that even more emphasis needs to be placed on taking potential risks into account. Flexibility and resilience are emphasized in all decision-making processes, including the scheduling of logistic processes, activities, and projects.

This reprint includes 22 research papers and an editorial, collected from the Special Issue "Modelling, Monitoring, Control and Optimization for Complex Industrial Processes", highlighting recent research advances and emerging research directions in complex industrial processes. This reprint aims to promote the research field and benefit the readers from both academic communities and industrial sectors.

This reprint summarizes recent advances in the production and research of biobased and biodegradable polymeric composites for various applications. The development and characterization of environmentally friendly, conductive and biomedical materials as well as materials with barrier and antimicrobial properties have been considered and discussed.

A major challenge for the future is combining both the profitability and sustainability of agriculture. The European H2020 project SoilCare aims to identify, test, and evaluate soil-improving cropping systems (SICS) which contribute to the implementation of agricultural solutions across Europe (See: https://soilcare-project.eu/en/ for the project website). The project includes 16 study sites distributed across Europe. Each study site implemented short-term experiments during the duration of the project, and most also ran long-term experiments comparing soil quality as a function of different treatments, such as soil amendments, tillage, cover crops, nutrients, and organic matter inputs. In addition, eight work-packages assess different aspects encompassing reviewing the soil-improving cropping systems, the participatory analysis of implementation and selection, methodology and analysis, upscaling at the European level, policy analysis and support, and dissemination and communication. In this way, SoilCare works on a providing a holistic approach to soil quality, spanning from biophysical to human interactions at different scales.In this Special Issue, we aim to compile scientific findings on soil-improving cropping systems (SICS) based on field experiments, including the study of policy, upscaling, and dissemination.

The 2020 IEEE International Conference on High Voltage Engineering (ICHVE 2020) was held on 6-10 September 2020 in Beijing, China. The conference was organized by the Tsinghua University, China, and endorsed by the IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society. This conference has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers around the world in the field of high voltage engineering. The forum offered the opportunity to present the latest developments and different emerging challenges in high voltage engineering, including the topics of ultra-high voltage, smart grids, and insulating materials.

This reprint focuses on the application of the combination of synthetic aperture radars and depth learning technology. It aims to further promote the development of SAR image intelligent interpretation technology.A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an important active microwave imaging sensor, whose all-day and all-weather working capacity give it an important place in the remote sensing community. Since the United States launched the first SAR satellite, SAR has received much attention in the remote sensing community, e.g., in geological exploration, topographic mapping, disaster forecast, and traffic monitoring. It is valuable and meaningful, therefore, to study SAR-based remote sensing applications.In recent years, deep learning represented by convolution neural networks has promoted significant progress in the computer vision community, e.g., in face recognition, the driverless field and Internet of things (IoT). Deep learning can enable computational models with multiple processing layers to learn data representations with multiple-level abstractions. This can greatly improve the performance of various applications.This reprint provides a platform for researchers to handle the above significant challenges and present their innovative and cutting-edge research results when applying deep learning to SAR in various manuscript types, e.g., articles, letters, reviews and technical reports.

Advanced Blood-Brain Barrier Drug Delivery is a reprint with a summary editorial, followed by 16 chapters that cover five areas of brain drug delivery, including receptor-mediated transport (RMT), carrier-mediated transport (CMT), active efflux transport (AET), Trojan horse lipid nanoparticles (LNP), and in vivo methods for measurement of drug transport across the blood-brain barrier (BBB).

We are honored and privileged to edit this Special Issue, "Fungal Taxonomy, Phylogeny, and Ecology: A Themed Issue Dedicated to Academician Wen-Ying Zhuang". In this Special Issue, we are pleased to publish a comprehensive assemblage of 23 papers covering fungal taxonomy, phylogeny, and ecology, in which 76 new taxa from a broad taxonomic group and different ecological habitats are reported.

Water resource systems planning and management issues are often very complex. The pressures on water resources are increasing with the expanding scale of global development involving ecological and hydrological consequences in river basins and groundwater aquifers, and water-quality deterioration. All this leads to the increasing need for investigating the effects of different human influences and impacts on the hydrological regime and on water quality like as land-use changes, climatic variability and climate changes, and intensified water and land-use practices. The Special Issue "Advances in Flow Modeling for Water Resources and Hydrological Engineering" presents a collection of scientific contributions that provides a sample of the state-of-the-art and forefront research in this field. In particular, basin-wide water resources planning, watershed management, flood forecasting, droughts, climate change impacts on flood risk and water resources, reservoir operation and management, river morphology and sediment transport, river water quality, and irrigation were the main research and practice targets that the papers published in this Special Issue aimed to address.

Metal 3D printing, as an advanced forming, can manufacture parts directly from digital model by using layer by layer material build-up approach. This manufacturing method can prepare complex shape metal parts in short time, with and high precision. Three-dimensional printing processes can be classified into two major groups: Powder Bed Fusion-based technologies and Directed Energy Deposition. Three-dimensional printing features freedom of part complexity, part design, and light-weighting for aerospace, automobile, and other industries application. The Global Metal 3D Printing Market is mainly driven by the the fast developing of aerospace and automobile industry. The Global Metal 3D Printing Market size was valued at USD 534.18 Million in 2020 and is projected to reach USD 4458.76 Million by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 30.38% from 2021 to 2028.

The purpose of this Special Issue on inclusive research is to capture internationally, "How far have we come?" and "Where do we need to go?" Such questions are relevant now that it has been close to two decades since Walmsley and Johnson (2003) first introduced the inclusive research paradigm in their text, Inclusive research with people with learning disabilities: past, present, and futures. Within this Special Issue we have reprinted 18 articles that promote inclusive research as a paradigm that has succeeded in transferring power to people with intellectual disabilities who were once the "researched" to now being and becoming the "researchers". The articles draw upon the work of co-researchers both with and without the lived experience of disability who have adopted inclusive research as a paradigm to redress the exclusion of people with intellectual disabilities as researchers. All the 18 articles have an eye on the future and are sequenced across the following themes: the individual impact of being and becoming an inclusive researcher; building inclusive research relationships as a duo; being part of an inclusive research network; and using inclusive research to push boundaries and facilitate issues of importance identified by people with disabilities. The reprint concludes with two articles where inclusive researchers of long standing reflect on how to continue to walk forward on the road that aided by this reprint will become more well-travelled?

The researchers involved in this reprint will continue their studies to improve the existent dental biomaterials in order to achieve optimal dental treatment with biocompatible, bioactive, and stable properties. As the Guest Editors, we sincerely value and thank the reviewers for their insightful comments and the support of the team at Bioengineering. Finally, we express our gratitude to all contributing authors for their valuable research. Altogether, the 16 research papers/reviews in this Special Issue entitled "Recent Advances in Biomaterials and Dental Disease" reflect the importance of in vitro and in vivo studies for improving the efficacy of using biomaterials in dental treatment.

The Special Issue "Future Trends in Advanced Materials and Processes" contains original high-quality research papers and comprehensive reviews addressing the relevant state-of-the-art topics in the area of materials focusing on relevant or innovative applications such as radiological hazard evaluations of non-metallic materials, composite materials' characterization, geopolymers, metallic biomaterials, etc.

This reprint is a printed edition of the Special Issue on Maritime Autonomous Vessels that was published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering. It contains an editorial and 17 peer-reviewed research studies in the field of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS), Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs), Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), and underwater gliders, to name a few. The main goal of this reprint is to address key challenges, thereby promoting research on marine autonomous ships. There are many topics on autonomous vessels involved in this reprint, for instance, automatic control, manoeuvrability, collision avoidance, ship target identification, motion planning, and buckling analysis.

This book encompasses a number of articles that focus on the molecular blueprint of brain tumors. A collection of relevant papers in the rapidly expanding field of brain tumor molecular genetics broadens our knowledge about the biology of brain tumors, and inspires further studies that will improve the diagnosis and clinical management of brain tumors. Due to the great heterogeneity of brain tumors it is important to research and understand every aspect of their initiation, progression and metastasis in order to design better diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for their clinical management and patient benefit.

The sustainable development of our planet depends on the use of energy. The increasing world population inevitably causes an increase in the demand for energy, which, on the one hand, threatens us with the potential to encounter a shortage of energy supply, and, on the other hand, causes the deterioration of the environment.Therefore, our task is to reduce this demand through different innovative solutions (i.e., both technological and social). Social marketing and economic policies can also play their role by affecting the behavior of households and companies and by causing behavioral change oriented to energy stewardship, with an overall switch to renewable energy resources. This reprint provides a platform for the exchange of a wide range of ideas, which, ultimately, would facilitate driving societies toward long-term energy efficiency.

The purpose of this Special Issue was to attract papers in the new era of sustainability and food packaging that address all major sectors of the food industry from cereals and confectionery to fruits and vegetables, meat, and dairy products.

In natural languages, filler-gap dependencies can straddle across an unbounded distance. Since the 1960s, the term "island" has been used to describe syntactic structures from which extraction is impossible or impeded. While examples from English are ubiquitous, attested counterexamples in the Mainland Scandinavian languages have continuously been dismissed as illusory and alternative accounts for the underlying structure of such cases have been proposed. However, since such extractions are pervasive in spoken Mainland Scandinavian, these languages may not have been given the attention that they deserve in the syntax literature. In addition, recent research suggests that extraction from certain types of island structures in English might not be as unacceptable as previously assumed either. These findings break new empirical ground, question perceived knowledge, and may indeed have substantial ramifications for syntactic theory. This volume provides an overview of state-of-the-art research on island phenomena primarily in English and the Scandinavian languages, focusing on how languages compare to English, with the aim to shed new light on the nature of island constraints from different theoretical perspectives.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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