Böcker utgivna av Mdpi AG

The provision of affordable housing for low-income households is a very complex issue that has long been debated in many countries around the world. Social housing (SH) is one of the tools for achieving fairness, social sustainability, and economic feasibility, and it is interrelated with politics, ethics, and economics, as well as the environment, architecture, and technology. In other words, national and local policies, as well as public and private financial resources, are all needed to provide SH.SH also involves social and urban transformations and is, consequently, linked to urban planning and redevelopment projects, real estate market dynamics, and cooperation between public and private stakeholders. Furthermore, decision-making on SH policies and projects has to be supported by assessments of economic feasibility and social and environmental sustainability.This volume presents studies on various topics to recompose the multi-faceted subjects of social housing within a unified framework.

Advanced ceramics are referred to in various parts of the world as technical ceramics, high-tech ceramics, and high-performance ceramics. Advanced ceramics have better performances in quality as well as new applications that traditional ones do not have. They have multiple physical and mechanical properties including high hardness, high strength, thermal shock resistance, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, and high-temperature resistance. In view of these characteristics, advanced ceramics are often high value-added products. Developments in advanced ceramics continue at a rapid pace, constituting what can be considered a revolution in the kind of materials and properties obtained.This reprint is intended for material researchers and application developers who seek information on the microstructural design and processing control of advanced ceramics, including piezoelectric ceramics, high-temperature ceramic composites, ceramic coatings, metal glasses, etc.

We invite you to read the Special Issue on innovation for sustainable business. It is a collection of 7 articles published in a Special Issue of Sustainability MDPI in 2021-2022.Many of the articles in this reprint are related to leadership. In the context of sustainable development, issues such as dynamic capabilities, CSR, succession management and innovative projects were addressed.Sustainable innovation is also considered from other perspectives. One of them is the topic of introducing sustainable innovations to new ventures. In addition, drivers and impacts of eco-innovation were also examined. There was also research in the area of ¿¿live commerce, which includes the perspective of consumer behavior.

The current reprint presents studies of uncertain variational problems. It aims to develop the research in this field by formulating and demonstrating some characterization results of well-posedness and robust efficient solutions in new classes of (multiobjective) variational (control) problems governed by multiple and/or path-independent curvilinear integral cost functionals and robust mixed and/or isoperimetric constraints involving first- and second-order partial differential equations.

Data have become an immensely valuable resource. They are the key driver that puts the smart into smart services. This is fundamentally fueled by two technological achievements, namely the Internet of Things (IoT), which enables the continuous and comprehensive collection of all kinds of data, and blockchain technologies, which provide secure data management and exchange. In addition to those information security measures, data privacy solutions are also required to protect the sensitive data involved. In this book, eight research papers address security and privacy challenges when dealing with blockchain technologies and the IoT. Solutions are presented to the issue of how IoT group communication can be secured and how trust within IoT applications can be increased. In the context of blockchain technologies, approaches to enhance query-processing capabilities and efficiently apply a proof-of-work consensus protocol in IoT environments are introduced. Furthermore, how blockchain technologies can be used in IoT environments to control access to confidential IoT data as well as enable privacy-aware data sharing is discussed. Finally, two reviews offer an overview of the state-of-the-art in in-app activity recognition based on convolutional neural networks and the prospects for blockchain technology applications in ambient assisted living.

Contemporary research has been enriched by new directions in which light plays a key role as a tool for the modulation of cellular activity and the invasive monitoring of intracellular ions and other components. The progress in molecular biology, imaging techniques and other modern technologies has led to the emergence of three main areas in which light is the main tool: optogenetics, photopharmacology, and optosensorics. The main advantages of these approaches are the possibilities to investigate the functions of cells; modulate the activity of ion channels, synaptic transmission and neuronal circuits; measure concentrations of ions and other cellular components; and even control the behaviour of organisms.Due to the development of these powerful molecular and genetic tools, our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the functioning of the nervous system has greatly advanced. This reprint is intended to highlight the latest advances in these areas with a primary focus on light-based analysis and control of neuronal functions.

The Special Issue "Demand Response in Smart Grids" includes 11 papers on a variety of topics. The success of this Special Issue demonstrates the relevance of demand response programs and events in the operation of power and energy systems at both the distribution level and at the wide power system level. This reprint addresses the design, implementation, and operation of demand response programs, with focus on methods and techniques to achieve an optimized operation as well as on the electricity consumer.

This book focuses on experimental and applied research on sustainable recycling techniques for pavement materials. The recycling of waste materials in pavement infrastructures could be successfully facilitated based on such techniques.Sustainability in civil engineering has attracted more attention in recent decades, the lack of natural resources, serious environmental pollution, and high carbon dioxide emissions are the main issues regarding traditional infrastructure materials. This book provides the most recent innovations and applications of recycling wastes as high-performance pavement materials, aiming to provide methods for producing green low-carbon and durable pavement structures. In particular, several treatment methods and 3D construction techniques are proposed for the efficient recycling of waste materials.

This reprint features 12 research articles that contribute to the research on lubricated bearings. The articles focus on the latest steps in understanding bearing operating behavior, its interaction with lubricants, and its role as a component in the drive train.In addition to the description of novel modeling approaches, a variety of experimental data are presented to provide interesting identification results as well as validation data for the research and engineering community.

This collection focuses on the legacy of Old English poetry and includes new interpretations of works such as Exeter Book Riddle 5, which provides an enduring legacy of social critique crafted through humor; the three manuscripts that contain the Solomon and Saturn dialogues, which reveal a shift in the use of poetry over time; Fates of the Apostles in which a previously unseen eighth rune is semiotically operative along with Cynewulf's signature; The Wife's Lament, in which the cave occupied by the wife has its archeological antecedents in early medieval rock-cut buildings; The Ruin, in which both the poem's text and the silent spaces of wyrd's traces are inscribed upon the material manuscript; the history of the reception of the riddles, which is instrumental in inspiring one of the acknowledged classic ghost stories of the twentieth century; tears and weeping in the whole corpus of Old English literature; and Beowulf, in which the figures of the stag and wolf play an important role in the thematic design of the poem but have not been examined before. The reprint is prefaced with a detailed account of the scholarly contributions to Old English studies by John D. Niles.

This reprint is comprised of eleven articles that are screened by our hard-working peer reviewers. It mainly focuses on the recent advances in electric motors and drives, to adapt to the ongoing trends of electrification in both transportation and industry. New structural motors, such as the axial flux machine and the multi-phase machine, are introduced because of their enhanced reliability for use in next-generation electrified transportation. Special attention is also given to the micro PM motor, which has a broad use in many areas. In addition, advanced control techniques, such as position sensorless control and fault-tolerant control, are also incorporated to fulfill the demand for safe crucial applications, and the modeling of the bearing voltage and a line-start permanent magnet motor can be of particular interest to the industrial sectors.Through this reprint, we hope to provide a new perspective for the readers to manage their encountered problems, as well as stimulate innovative ideas for the electrified transportation of the next generation.

The 10th International Conference on Modern Circuit and System Technologies on Electronics and Communications (MOCAST 2021) will take place in Thessaloniki, Greece, from July 5th to July 7th, 2021. The MOCAST technical program includes all aspects of circuit and system technologies, from modeling to design, verification, implementation, and application. This Special Issue presents extended versions of top-ranking papers in the conference. The topics of MOCAST include:Analog/RF and mixed signal circuits;Digital circuits and systems design;Nonlinear circuits and systems;Device and circuit modeling;High-performance embedded systems;Systems and applications;Sensors and systems;Machine learning and AI applications;Communication; Network systems;Power management;Imagers, MEMS, medical, and displays;Radiation front ends (nuclear and space application);Education in circuits, systems, and communications.

This reprint contains fourteen chosen articles on robust design optimization of electrical machines and devices. Optimization is essential for the research and design of electromechanical devices, especially electrical machines. Finding optimal solutions may lead to cheaper and more efficient production of electrical machines. However, optimizing such a complex system as an electrical machine is a computationally expensive optimization problem, where many physical domains should be considered together. However, a good, practical design should be insensitive to parameter changes and the manufacturing tolerances. The collected papers show how modern artificial intelligence (AI) tools can be used for the robust design optimization of electric machines and electrical devices. The articles which are published in this Special Issue present the latest results of current research fields. Hopefully, the presented models and various application fields will provide useful information for researchers and professionals interested in these techniques themselves or who have other problems from different fields.

In 2020-2022, much of the world was at risk for catching COVID-19. This reprint, "Crimmigration in the Age of COVID-19," contributes to understanding immigration during the pandemic. It engages a cross-national and interdisciplinary case-study approach to show how countries carved out exceptions to public health protocols for migrants. In the immigration context a variety of governments weaponized public health protocols to criminalize and exclude migrants. The Trump Administration sadistically misplayed the pandemic at almost every turn. Trump came to power on the backs of migrants, referring to them as murderers and rapists. The intersection of Trump's COVID-19 and migration policies carved out space for the exceptional dehumanization of migrants in 2020-21. This reprint documents the weaponization of public through crimmigration. Crimmigration is the criminalization of migration and migrants via state-of-the-art surveillance and militarized technologies. During the worst of COVID-19, crimmigration strategies--mandatory detention and harsh exclusions- exacerbated the risk of transmission among migrants. Policies not migrants were to blame here. The ostensibly public health related Title42 actually pushed migrants, already at great risk, into unregulated shantytowns controlled by Mexican drug cartels. Additionally, migrants contended with detention facilities, medium security prisons, that functioned as Petrie dishes for the disease.We hope this reprint contributes to understanding the intersection of public health and crimmigration, and border penologies during these exceptional times.

Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites, and their biology is closely interlinked with that of their host cells. However, this relationship is two-sided. Virus-host cell interactions are clearly essential to allow viruses to facilitate their life cycles, but they also give the host cell a chance to recognize and combat virus infections. This Special Issue of Cells compiles review papers on emerging themes related to virus-host cell interactions of RNA viruses, including mechanistic details of virus uncoating, new insights into the nature and function of viral replication compartments, and the role of RNA methylation in the virus life cycle. This is complemented by primary research papers addressing virus-host cell interactions from diverse perspectives.

The global binder production for construction materials is approximately 7.5 billion tons per year, contributing ~6% to the global anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 emissions. Reducing this carbon footprint is a key aim of the construction industry, and current research focuses on developing new innovative ways to attain more sustainable binders and concrete/mortars as a real alternative to the current global demand for Portland cement.With this aim, several potential alternative binders are currently being investigated by scientists worldwide, based on calcium aluminate cement, calcium sulfoaluminate cement, alkali-activated binders, calcined clay limestone cements, nanomaterials, or supersulfated cements. This Special Issue presents contributions that address research and practical advances in i) alternative binder manufacturing processes; ii) chemical, microstructural, and structural characterization of unhydrated binders and of hydrated systems; iii) the properties and modelling of concrete and mortars; iv) applications and durability of concrete and mortars; and v) the conservation and repair of historic concrete/mortar structures using alternative binders.We believe this Special Issue will be of high interest in the binder industry and construction community, based upon the novelty and quality of the results and the real potential application of the findings to the practice and industry.

In this edition, we focused on big data analytics methods and tools that have been specifically developed for the domain of cultural heritage, as well as on experiences from the adaptation and/or application of general-purpose solutions in the domain of cultural heritage. The aim was to gather solutions, but also to summarise the lessons learnt, methodologies, and good practices that researchers and practitioners can use as a basis for their own work in the domain.

This reprint highlights the ecological importance of forest litter in nutrient cycling, the sequestration of soil carbon, and the formation of soil organic matter. The results presented would be of great importance for the improvement of forest services against the background of the global climate change scenario.

This reprint focuses on data-driven software solutions and their impact on research and development at the academic, industry, business, and government levels to exploit the hidden knowledge and big data that can be offered to cities and citizens in the future. Data-driven software solutions are different from "traditional" software development projects, as the focus of the main development core is on managing the data (e.g., data store and data quality) and designing behavioral models with the aid of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques. To this end, new life cycles, algorithms, methods, processes, and tools are required. This reprint is centered on the recent trends and advancements in the field of engineering data-intensive software solutions to address the challenges in developing, testing, and maintaining such data-driven systems, with a focus on the application of data-driven solutions to real-life problems and techniques and algorithms addressing the different challenges of data-driven software engineering.

The reprint is devoted to the phenomena associated with exact or approximate axial symmetry in different areas of technical physics and mechanical engineering science. How can the symmetry of the problem be used most efficiently for its analysis? Why is the symmetry broken or why is it still approximately retained? These and other questions are discussed based on systems from different fields of engineering.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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