Böcker utgivna av Mdpi AG

Landscapes and cultural heritage have faced many challenges over time, including modifications and degradation that appear with time, overlaps with other challenges not previously observed, and the influence of cities and management. One of the most visible and globally discussed challenges is climate change. Therefore, there is an urgent need to launch initiatives to tackle climate change and other current challenges from the perspective of landscape and cultural heritage protection. This Special Issue presents selected papers of studies conducted in relation to the 28th Conference on the Series of Garden Art and Historical Dendrology entitled "Climate Change and Current Challenges for Landscapes and Cultural Heritage" that was held on 28 and 29 October 2021. This collection serves as a platform for the exchange of experiences among researchers from different scientific domains.

Numerical methods have become crucial in recent years and have been applied in many research fields. Among these, environmental and energy research has become increasingly relevant. This Special Issue comprises a recent advances in research relating to numerical modeling applied to energy and environment.

This Special Issue of Religions focuses on the epistemology of religious experience. The overall driving question is the question as to what evidential force religious experiences have. This discussion involves several subtopics, including the following: (1) In what ways is religious experience like other kinds of experience? (2) To what extent does religious experience influence religious doctrine, and to what extent is it influenced by it? (3) What are the implications of religious diversity/disagreement for claims of religious experience? (4) How, if in any way, has the cognitive science of religion shed light on these issues? This issue approaches these questions from a variety of religious traditions, with input from a variety of academic disciplines. The result is a collection of high-quality papers that can inform further research in a variety of academic fields.

The increase in the volume of industrially processed products in the global food supply has coincided with an increasing prevalence of obesity and non-communicable diseases in many countries, suggesting that ultra-processed food consumption may be detrimental for human health. However, studies are still limited and underline the need to better understand the main determinants of their consumption and the mechanisms that may explain the associations between these products and human health. This Special Issue collected new studies investigating the relationship between the consumption of ultra-processed foods, diet quality and human health, including those aiming to: Develop new tools to better determine the rate of consumption of ultra-processed foods in the population; Investigate the rate of consumption of ultra-processed foods in different subgroups of the population, including subjects following different dietary patterns; Analyse the relationship between the consumption of ultra-processed foods and markers of health status; Explore possible mechanisms behind associations between the consumption of processed foods and healthBy providing up-to-date assessments of ultra-processed foods consumption and health implications, these reports will contribute to understanding if future public health nutrition policies are needed.

This Special Issue, "Advances in Environmental Applied Physics", collected original papers from eminent researchers in the field of environmental pollutants, which constitute a health risk to the population, increasing the likelihood of incurring cancer.

Plants under natural conditions often face multiple stresses, including drought, salinity, temperature extremes, submergence stress, bacteria, viruses, fungi, insects, etc. These biotic and abiotic stresses negatively influence plant growth and productivity. Various approaches have recently been used to overcome stresses in plants. It is necessary to evaluate and explore how diverse molecular techniques can be applied to different biological studies to improve biotic and abiotic stress tolerance in plants. This will help reduce production losses and increase crop tolerance to various stresses. It is now the time to make a difference by developing plants that can withstand biotic and abiotic stresses.

"Health and Public Health Applications for Decision Support Using Machine Learning" is a reprint that explores the intersection of machine learning and health sciences. It presents a collection of research and innovations showcasing how data-driven algorithms can transform patient care, disease diagnosis, and public health management. The reprint covers a wide range of topics, including natural language processing for biomedical relation extraction, ensemble learning for blood glucose level forecasting in diabetes management, machine learning for predicting walking stability and fall risk among the elderly, deep learning for pneumonia-infected lung volume quantification, and more.The reprint also discusses applications in precision medicine, early detection of renal damage, cardiac health monitoring, stress classification for mental health assessment, and early diagnosis of intracranial internal carotid artery stenosis. It emphasizes the role of machine learning in managing health crises, such as COVID-19 detection using ECG, voice, and X-ray systems, and reviews AI models in diagnosing adult-onset dementia disorders.Overall, this reprint aims to inspire researchers and healthcare professionals by showcasing the transformative potential of machine learning in healthcare. It hopes to encourage further research and collaboration to advance healthcare and technological innovations for a healthier future.

The Special Issue constitutes the collection of the selected papers, which results were presented during the XVIII Conference on Automation, Operation and Maintenance of Control and Communication Systems ASMOR 2022. The conference took place in W¿adys¿awowo (Poland) on 12-14 October 2022. The scope of the conference was mainly focused on automation and exploitation aspects of the control and communications systems. In order to meet the highest quality standards for published papers, only the articles selected by the ASMOR Scientific Committee and the Electronics Editors were qualified for an extensive reviewing process.

Plants under natural conditions often face multiple stresses, including drought, salinity, temperature extremes, submergence stress, bacteria, viruses, fungi, insects, etc. These biotic and abiotic stresses negatively influence plant growth and productivity. Various approaches have recently been used to overcome stresses in plants. It is necessary to evaluate and explore how diverse molecular techniques can be applied to different biological studies to improve biotic and abiotic stress tolerance in plants. This will help reduce production losses and increase crop tolerance to various stresses. It is now the time to make a difference by developing plants that can withstand biotic and abiotic stresses.

The concept of distance is important for establishing the degree of similarity and/or closeness between functions, populations, or distributions. As a result, distances are related to inferential statistics, including problems related to both estimation and hypothesis testing, as well as modelling with applications in regression analysis, multivariate analysis, actuarial science, portfolio optimization, survival analysis, reliability theory, and many other areas. Thus, entropy and divergence measures are always a central concern for scientists, researchers, medical experts, engineers, industrial managers, computer experts, data analysts, and other professionals.This reprint focuses on recent developments in information and divergence measures and presents new theoretical issues as well as solutions to important practical problems and case studies illustrating the great applicability of these innovative techniques and methods. The contributions in this reprint highlight the diversity of topics in this scientific field.

With the advancements in the medical and scientific fields, the global community has acquired a comprehensive understanding about brain insults and pathologies. In addition, new findings and discoveries are being made globally every day, which keep our curiosity high and drive a knowledge gain. Any brain insult or pathology is multifactorial, including a cascade of inflammation, necrotic, and apoptotic pathways; can be influenced by genetic or environmental factors; and may lead to chronic neurodegeneration or disabilities. This Special Issue, entitled "Brain Injury and Neurodegeneration: Molecular, Functional, and Translational Approach", has addressed various important aspects of brain injury and neurodegeneration, such as TBI, cerebral hypoxia, epilepsy, AD, and SARS-CoV-2-mediated brain damage. It received appreciable global response, and published 18 peer-reviewed articles, including 10 research articles and 8 reviews. Briefly, it explores the recent coronavirus infection-mediated cerebral damage; discusses the mechanism of TBI, ischemia, hypoxia, and epilepsy; talks about neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and CONDCA; and, finally, reviews the translational values of phytochemicals in brain pathologies. In conclusion, this Special Issue provides a unique review on brain injury and neurodegeneration, and will be a good tool in enhancing knowledge in terms of brain disease-related pathology, mechanisms, and translational approach.

This Proceedings reprint is a collection of papers from the E-Textiles 2022 Conference and represents the state of the art from both academia and industry in the development of smart fabrics that incorporate electronic and sensing functionality. The Proceedings reprint presents a wide range of applications of the technology, including wearable textile devices for healthcare applications such as ECG measurements and functional electrical stimulation. Manufacturing approaches include printed smart materials, knitted e-textiles and flexible electronic circuit assembly within fabrics and garments. Supplying power is a constant challenge for all wireless wearable technologies, and therefore this collection includes papers on triboelectric energy harvesting and zinc-ion batteries fabricated on top of textile substrates.

Robotic manipulators are becoming increasingly complex systems in order to meet market demands for their safer and more flexible use. Complex robotic systems are modifying the way robots are perceived and exploited in several areas. The effectiveness of these systems is challenged by new problems regarding their design, control, and planning, among others. This Special Issue explores recent advances in the dynamics and control of robot manipulators, spanning from linkages to non-conventional serial and parallel robots.

The integration of various omics information-such as DNA, RNA, protein, and epigenetic regulation-brings new opportunities for the mining of important economic traits of animals and the analysis of molecular genetic mechanisms. Over the last three decades, world milk production has increased by more than 59%, from 530 million tonnes to 843 million tonnes. However, the genetic mechanisms behind milk fat traits remain largely undetermined. Milk is rich in fatty acids, proteins, and eight essential amino acids needed by the human body. The fatty acids in milk, namely, dodecylic acid, myristic acid, stearic acid, and palmitic acid, are the main energy substances in the human body, accounting for approximately 5, 10, 8, and 27 % of total fatty acids, respectively. Thus, decoding the genetics of milk fat traits can have a potential impact on product development, international trade, and consumption of milk components. This Special Issue focuses on applying the aforementioned advances to explore gene regulation and its molecular mechanisms in milk fat traits. The topics include but are not limited to: Research and application surrounding the genetic basis of important milk fat traits; Mining and function of excellent genetic resources for milk fat traits; Genetics of nutrition metabolism regulation and efficient production of milk fat; Epigenetic research on genes implicated in milk fat traits; High-throughput sequencing research surrounding genetics of milk fat traits; Construction of gene (including circRNA, lincRNA, miRNA, and mRNA) expression regulatory network maps.

Interconnections between graph theory and algebraic structure theory have always led to innovative solutions to problems in both areas and new research topics in Mathematics and other scientific fields. This reprint aims to emphasize the new theoretical aspects and practical applications of these two research areas. It contains 18 articles selected for publication in the Special Issue "Algebraic Structures and Graph Theory," printed by the MDPI journal Mathematics.The topics addressed by the manuscripts within this reprint cover different aspects principally related to transformation semigroups, Gamma-semigroups, differential graded algebras, BL-algebras, hypergroups and hyperfields, Cayley graphs, graph energy, crossing number, Laplacian spectral radius, hypergraphs, t-graphs, and ideal-based dot total graphs.

Due to global climate change, environmental issues have become more conscious. Seaweeds play a major role in blue carbon, which fixes carbon to the ocean by taking in carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and producing polysaccharides. In addition to environmental problems, marine polysaccharides have various modifying groups and have been found to have different functionality from land plants. Marine polysaccharides have been used in foods and medicines. Recently, novel biocatalysis of polysaccharide-relating enzymes has been discovered. As a result, the functionality of oligosaccharides from marine polysaccharides has been clarified, e.g., health functionality such as anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory effect, intestinal regulation and antioxidant activity. This Special Issue aims to accumulate the knowledge of preparation, function, structure, and application of bioactive oligosaccharides and polysaccharides-relating enzymes from marine organisms. This Special Issue aimed to contribute to the achievement of multiple goals of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (No. 2, 3, 12, 14), and we invited scientists to submit their latest research findings in this field. Comprehensive review papers are also welcomed.

The reprint entitled "Metal-Based Drugs: Past, Present, and Future" covers some recent research and review articles in the field of metal-based drugs used in medicine. By purpose and content, this Book is addressed to the vast number of life science researchers and health care workers (chemists, pharmacists, biochemists, physicists, and doctors). Our initiative to publish in Molecules Journal the Special Issue entitled "Metal-Based Drugs: Past, Present, and Future" was honored by 13 groups totaling 74 scientists from Asia (India, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan), Europe (Bulgaria, France, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.K.), North America (Canada), and Africa (Egypt and South Africa). The number of involved researchers and the geographic distribution of their academic institutions indicate the great interest of the worldwide scientific community in discovering new metal-based drugs that can treat different diseases.

Today, more than ever, the world needs to be considered a finite and limited system, characterised by scarce resources and as a place where restocking is not possible in an infinite way. As such, careful resource management needs to be planned and set by the concurrent actions of heterogeneous stakeholders, from policymakers up to academics and practitioners, to effectively implement the Circular Economy. This reprint highlights new opportunities and challenges for the Circular Economy and Sustainable Business Performance Management, focusing on technological advancements and management initiatives, including public-private partnerships between stakeholders.

This second Special Issue was compiled because of the interest demonstrated by the great success of the first Special Issue devoted to "Sensor Systems for Gesture Recognition".We believe this reprint acts as a meaningful window towards "Gesture Recognition" and the related sensors allowing the gathering of necessary data.

This reprint contains a summary of what has been presented at the 19th "Calorimetry for High Energy Physics Experiment" (CALOR) conference, which was held at the University of Sussex (Brighton, UK) in May 2022.The state of the art of particle detection, as well as of simulation tools for particle interactions with material, is presented and discussed by world leaders in the Research & Development of particle detectors, as well as early career researchers, sparking very exciting conversations within the detector development community during the five days of the conference.

Amid challenging environmental conditions throughout their life cycle, plants display an extraordinary ability to sense, process, and respond to a diverse array of stimuli with adaptability. The complexity of their stress responses unfolds across various levels-physiological, biochemical, transcriptomic, and cellular-demanding a profound comprehension of the intricate mechanisms at work. These stresses intertwine, triggering cellular damage and initiating a cascade of responses within plants. Critical growth phases under severe stress encounter mechanical damage and alterations in cellular macromolecule synthesis. While plants possess inherent defense mechanisms against oxidative damage, excessive oxygen production overwhelms their detoxification capacity, leading to detrimental reactions like loss of osmotic responsiveness, wilting, and necrosis. This reprint undertakes a comprehensive analysis, exploring multiple perspectives such as gas exchange, metabolomics, proteomics, isotopic, and genomic approaches, to unveil the drivers and specific strategies that empower plants to adapt to stressful growth conditions. By examining trait selection, phenotypic plasticity, and other factors, this reprint uncovers the physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying plant resilience amidst adversity. A valuable resource for scientists, academics, and professionals, this reprint unveils the mysteries of plant resilience and productivity, fostering innovative strategies for sustainable agriculture in our ever-changing world.