Böcker utgivna av Mdpi AG

The purpose of this Special Issue, "The Role of Nutrition in Cardiometabolic Health: Experimental, Clinical, and Community-Based Evidence", is to publish a focused, coherent, impactful, and well-cited volume on how nutrition influences diverse cardiometabolic risk factors. Cardiometabolic diseases such as coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and obesity are the leading causes of death worldwide. In recent years, dietary habits have shifted all over the globe. At the same time, a constantly growing body of evidence demonstrates the role of caloric intake and dietary composition as determinants of cardiometabolic health. A suboptimal diet predisposes to a myriad of cardiometabolic risk factors such as impaired glucose metabolism, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, and high blood pressure. The goal of this Special Issue is to provide rigorous evidence from novel experimental and observational studies that support the association between dietary factors and cardiometabolic risk and evaluate the diverse diet-related risk pathways.

Around 20%-30% of nonmetastatic prostate cancer patients have high-risk localized disease. The best treatment for high-risk localized disease is still unclear, and the reliability of the definition of "high-risk" may need to be validated first. Although recent advances in radiotherapy for prostate cancer have yielded excellent long-term results, even in high-risk localized disease, there are no studies directly comparing it with local treatment options, such as prostatectomy. To address current challenges in high-risk localized and locally advanced prostate cancer, 12 original and 3 review articles covering aspects from basic research to clinical trials are published in this Special Issue.

This reprint focuses on applying remote sensing techniques in watersheds in terms of hydrology, ecology, environment, and human activities. It aims to contribute to the current understanding of integrating research scopes and developing advanced methods in the field of remote sensing of watershed.The development of the multiscalar, multidimensional, and interdisciplinary nature of the application of remote sensing in watershed studies is of particular interest. Special attention is given to watershed mapping, monitoring of underlying surface elements in the watershed, inversion of water cycle parameters, water resource assessment, acquisition of watershed ecological environment parameters, monitoring natural disasters, analyzing upstream and downstream, supporting water governance priorities, water resource development, and irrigation water management. The studies propose a series of advanced data, models, and strategies to serve watershed research better.

In the last couple of years, the awareness of climate change and high pollution levels have raised our sense of ecological responsibility. Pharmaceutical industries play a major role in these issues; as such, alternatives must be found. New environmentally friendly approaches to deal with the growing concern associated with antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are also in great demand. The excessive consumption and misuse of these agents have accelerated the rise of such pathogens responsible for compromising global health-not only the health of humans, but also the health of all living systems. Considering that our natural resources are in great danger, finding green and less environmentally impactful alternatives for fighting these resistant microbials is imperative. From green chemistries, natural extracts and waste products, the sources of these alternate antimicrobial agents can be immense, and their implications are of great impact for future generations.

In recent years, applied marine sciences and engineering has attracted worldwide attention, which includes basic theoretical research and applied research on marine hydrology, meteorology, physics and geology. Besides, new viewpoints, new developments, new theories, new methods, new applications and new experiences of investigation, research and management in the marine environment and big data, ocean and coastal engineering, marine/coastal disaster and risk assessment, river dynamics, marine ecological environment, marine instruments and equipment, etc. are also included. This Special Issue aims to address the recent advances in marine environmental information and the application of marine environmental information.

Chapter 1. Theoretical Principles of a New Media and Technology Education. Description: Theoretical approach to the problems addressed in the book. Chapter 2. Outside Training of Spanish University Students of Education for the Didactic Application of Cinema: Formal, Non-Formal, and Informal Perspectives.Description: Study on the effect of training on perceptions of the educational potential of cinema in universities as a teaching instrument.Chapter 3. The Development of the Competency of "Cultural Awareness and Expressions" Using Movie-Induced Tourism as a Didactic Resource. Description: Analysis of the role of film tourism in the development of skills in the cultural sphere.Chapter 4. Assessment of Digital Competencies of University Faculty and Their Conditioning Factors: Case Study in a Technological Adoption Context.Description: Ex post facto methodology for the study of the development of digital competences among university teaching staff. Chapter 5. Tourism and ICT. Bibliometric Study on Digital Literacy in Higher Education.Description: Literature review on digital literacy and tourism in universities. Chapter 6. Portuguese Primary and Secondary Education in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic: An Exploratory Study on Teacher Training and Challenges.Description: Exploratory analysis of ICT teacher training in Portuguese primary and secondary education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The book provides a comprehensive exploration of cutting-edge developments in aluminum alloy casting and forming processes. Comprising a collection of articles, it delves into the diverse processing techniques, metallurgical complexities, and mechanical characteristics of these extraordinary materials. Each contribution serves as a catalyst for progress in advanced aluminum alloy applications, meticulously addressing challenges and offering innovative solutions.

The sustainable development of agriculture is not only dependent on economics and policy but also relies on decisions to increase sustainability through either (1) specialization (e.g., sustainable intensification) or (2) diversification (e.g., ecological intensification). Understanding the historical context of the region being evaluated is critical to selecting ideal development strategies. Depending on the emphasis on either specialization or diversification, sustainable development can follow different pathways. Specialization during agricultural development is typically concentrated in specific geographic areas with comparative advantages in terms of agricultural production. However, tradeoffs to agricultural specialization include greater reliance on purchased external inputs, greater dependence on government support, and international and interregional interdependence. Addressing the economic and environmental challenges of specialized agricultural production requires a focus on detailed models and field experiments to help balance productivity with reduced environmental impacts. Diversification can incorporate both enterprise diversification as well as ecological intensification strategies, such as integrating livestock and agroforestry with crops. Despite the promises of maintaining the diversity of small shareholders in the developing world, challenges remain. Regional case studies can be used to inspire and implement diversified agricultural systems for the creation of more sustainable future food systems around the world.

This book presents two reviews and thirteen research articles dealing with a broad range of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationships. Each article provides in-depth discussion of the various aspects of BEF relationships in naturally and experimentally assembled communities. This book will help to substantially deepen our understanding of BEF interactions and elaborate biodiversity conservation in a changing world. Thus, this publication is not only of interest to scientists in the field, but also for students, university teachers, policymakers, and those who are interested in BEF in general.

The following reprint is based on the discussions initiated at the 28th International Conference on Coordination and Bioinorganic Chemistry (ICCBIC), which was held between 5 and 10 June 2022 at Smolenice Castle, Slovakia. As is apparent, this year's ICCBIC established a partnership with the MDPI publishing house. Therefore, we invite you to form a picture of the spirit of the conference by reading this reprint version of Special Issue of Inorganics, which is devoted to this conference. In total, ten contributions were submitted, of which eight are original papers and two are perspectives.

One of the most important aspects of the engineering assessment of the technical condition of structures and materials is the ability to assess the fatigue behavior of materials and structures. In addition, another important topic is the design of materials or structures that can resist fatigue and fracture. Modern science provides us with an increasing number of new materials, from superalloys of metals manufactured conventionally as well as via additive manufacturing to functionally advanced composites. Against this background, fundamental knowledge of the fatigue behavior and fracture mechanics of different material groups provides a convenient platform for communication between different interested groups and fields: from material science, numerical engineering and mathematical modeling to hybrid methods for fatigue life prediction. This Special Issue facilitates such an exchange of ideas on recent developments in the field of fatigue and fracture and is especially focused on fatigue crack growth analysis, the description of fatigue damage in metals and composites, probabilistic approaches and fracture mechanics analysis, as well as fatigue failure analysis and lifetime prediction.

This book delves into the realm of efficient intelligence, encompassing fundamental and applied research. It explores the applications of embedded sensing in a variety of embedded devices, including industrial robots, unmanned vehicles, elevator traction machines, fuel cells, and more. Special attention is given to collaborative autonomous navigation, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), target object tracking, LiDAR point cloud analysis, prognostic methods for fuel cells, fabric defect detection in manufacturing, elevator traction machine recognition, object detection, vision-based autonomous forklifts, among others.

This Special Issue of Cancers contains research and review articles on "PARPs, PAR and NAD metabolism and their inhibitors in Cancer". It focuses on selected papers from the PARP2019 conference on "New Avenues in Basic and Translational PARP research", that took place in Budapest (Hungary), on 20-23 May 2019.

This Special Issue, "Sustainability in Maritime Transport: Advances, Solutions and Pending Tasks", provides an up-to-date overview of the use of new technologies to develop more sustainable maritime transport based on new combustibles, working procedures and related industries, all of which are in agreement with the technical limitations indicated by safety on board.

This book presents original research as well as reviews on current food safety issues. A wide range of biological hazards, food commodities and measures to assess, control and manage hazards are covered. With respect to food commodities, meat, milk/dairy and fish/seafood are covered, but also wild game and edible insects. The epidemiology of parasites and pathogenic bacteria (Clostridioides difficile and Listeria monocytogenes) in various food chains is reviewed, as well as the impact of food technology on food safety.

Regarding the increasing use of nanomaterials in almost every area of our daily life, toxicological risk assessment is one of the major requirements for their safe handling. Especially at workplaces, inhalation is the major route of exposure and potential toxicity, and effects on the lung need to be considered. Furthermore, neurotoxicity associated with exposure to nanomaterials is a growing field of scientific investigation. However, not every single nanomaterial can be assessed in long-term animal inhalation studies, due to limited resources as well as political and societal efforts to reduce animal experiments according to the 3R principles. Thus, during the last few years, significant efforts have been dedicated to grouping nanomaterials, mainly based on advanced in vitro models. These new approach methodologies (NAMs) include detailed characterization of the respective materials in physiologically relevant media, but also more realistic exposure systems, such as co-cultures, also at the air-liquid interface, combined with comprehensive cellular investigations that provide quite detailed toxicological profiles. Thus, nanoparticles show differences in toxicity depending on their size, surface reactivity, and dissolution kinetics. Adverse cellular effects include inflammation, genotoxicity, oxidative stress, and epigenetic alterations.This Special Issue aims to highlight the recent advances in the mechanisms of nanomaterial toxicity, as well as the approaches for risk assessment, linking nanoparticle characteristics as well as in vitro toxicity to in vivo observations for advanced risk assessment.

Fibrous composites are one type of high-performance composite material featuring the presence of fiber-like reinforcement impregnated with different matrix bases, which have taken a prominent position in diverse engineering applications because of their unique mechanical/physical properties and outstanding structural functions. Manufacturing is a critical procedure to ensure the target dimensions and desired quality of fibrous composites. This involves technical issues frequently encountered in the fabrication, processing, and machining of these composite materials. To date, great endeavors have been made in the past few decades to address manufacturing issues associated with the engineering applications of fibrous composites. Precision manufacturing of these advanced composites has thus become a hot research topic in both academia and industry. Recent advances have been achieved covering both experimental and numerical investigations of manufacturing science and technology of fibrous composites.This Special Issue seeks to report the latest research findings achieved by scholars worldwide focusing on the manufacturing science of fibrous composites for engineering applications. Well-organized papers covering both experimental and numerical studies of fabricating, processing, and machining fibrous composites are all welcome. It is our hope that this Special Issue will provide a platform for academic and industrial researchers to share and disseminate their original research results on all manufacturing aspects of fibrous composites.

Obesity represents the most prevalent metabolic disease in the world, posing a significant public health threat. Obesity shortens life expectancy by increasing the risk of developing comorbidities such as type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease. A better understanding of the ethiopathology of excess adiposity represents the pillar on which to base the effective management of obesity. In this sense, this book expands our knowledge about the wide array of drivers that can facilitate or contribute to the development of obesity. Moreover, some of the latest progress made in lifestyle, pharmacological and surgical approaches in the treatment of obesity are summarised. Novel concepts regarding the different obesity phenotypes, the use of telemedicine for the treatment of overweight and obesity, or the use of personalised avatars in the management of obesity are also reviewed. This book will be of interest for specialists in Endocrinology and Nutrition, but also for any individual interested in health issues related to nutrition.

Seventy-one percent of the Earth is covered by oceans, which plays an important role in human life (ecological regulation, living resources, mineral resources, etc.). Underwater equipment including sonar and radar can help us to better understand the ocean. Using these technologies, topography, underwater communication, target detection, localization, imaging, and ocean monitoring can be easily carried out. Signal processing and electronics techniques have achieved great progress in recent years. Thanks to these developments, the novel theories, mechanisms, and processing techniques of underwater equipment have also been pushed into a new era.This Special Issue aims to highlight recent advancements, developments, and applications in underwater signal processing methodologies including characterization, simulation, real data processing, as well as applications to underwater engineering. In general, any contributions related to underwater signal processing or ocean signal processing will be considered.

This book focuses on the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on STEM education and measures (teaching tools and research practices) taken to combat the learning gaps in STEM education in the post-pandemic era. Contributions were collected from researchers engaged in STEM education research, including the methods, pedagogical approaches, and environments they utilize in the post-pandemic era.

Thrombosis is a pathophysiological phenomenon observed in acute and chronic coronary syndrome, stroke, and peripheral artery disease. Exposure of the Tissue Factor (TF) to flowing blood is followed to its binding to other coagulation factors leading to thrombin formation. Together with platelet activation, TF ultimately promotes thrombus formation. Recent advances in platelet pathophysiology have shown that these cells are able to regulate their gene/protein expression, engage in de novo protein synthesis, and release different mediators that may interfere with different cell functions. Several clinical trials have clearly shown the efficacy of anticoagulation and/or anti-platelet aggregation in different thrombotic disorders. Real-world practice clearly indicates that antithrombotic strategies need to be personalized according to patient characteristics. The combination of multiple antithrombotic drugs represents a challenging scenario and was the focus of multiple recent randomized controlled trials, with more still to come. As knowledge about platelets and the coagulation system has substantially evolved within the last few years, so should our approach to antithrombotic treatment; focused on current hurdles of antithrombotic treatments in patients with cardio- and cerebrovascular diseases, starting from the molecular mechanisms involved, proposing practical solutions to compelling clinical scenarios using a pathophysiology-oriented approach on the basis of current clinical evidence.

The construction industry makes a significant contribution to the global economy. Effective management of construction projects is essential to ensuring timely completion that meets quality standards within a project's prescribed scope and budget. Furthermore, assuring sustainability is crucial to reducing the impact of construction on the environment. The construction industry is also affected by globalization and increasing susceptibility to disasters highlighting the need for health and safety and resilience in the industry, especially after global pandemics and natural disasters. Digitalization and industrialization pave the way to the solution or mitigation of numerous issues in the construction industry by transforming business operations, improving productivity and safety, ensuring quality and compliance to standards, increasing sustainability, among other measures. It is imperative for project managers and other construction stakeholders to be digitally oriented.This reprint comprises of a collection of cutting-edge research articles in construction and project management that explores advances in digital, sustainable, and industrialized construction solutions for prevalent issues in construction and project management and investigates the needs of health and safety and resilience in the construction industry.

This reprint is a Special Issue titled "Innovative Economic Technologies and Policies in the Energy Sector" that was published in Energies.

The present reprint, "Causal Inference for Heterogeneous Data and Information Theory", is a special issue of Journal Entropy. This Special Issue belongs to the section "Information Theory, Probability, and Statistics". The reprint gathers thirteen original contributions of leading experts in the theory of causal inference, focusing namely on the utilization of instrumental variables in a causal model, estimation of average treatment effect, the role of interventions in causal models, graphical causal modeling, causal algebras, causal modeling using the theory of categories, temporal causal model, heterogeneous data, and information-theoretic approaches.

This reprint focuses on research on atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis causes catastrophic thrombotic cardiovascular events, threatening not only individual healthy longevity but also socio-financial burden for the infrastructural emergent medical system. In the field of cardiovascular medicine, atherosclerosis has the largest number of patients and is an important disease that determines healthy life expectancy. There is currently no other way to control the disease than to maximize the use of medical resources and save lives. It has been clarified that local and systemic inflammation, along with risk factors, are closely related to the etiology of atherosclerosis.

The forum is for scientists doing research in different fields of cell science including, but not limited to, stem cells, autophagy, aging, intracellular organelles, proteomics, genomics, metabolism, and cell physiology. The goal of the symposium was to bring scientists together to facilitate the exchange of data and novel ideas to advance cell science as well as discussing the challenges facing cell biologists.

Metamaterials and metasurfaces have recently attracted increasing attention due to their anomalous and largely flexible properties. Their performance mainly depends on their subwavelength separation and geometric parameters. Metamaterials comprise a class of artificial materials whose physical properties can be engineered to exhibit various desired characteristics. A metasurface is a 2D metamaterial whose thickness is well below the wavelength of impinging lights. Metamaterials and metasurfaces have unique interface transmission and reflection properties resulting from surface impedance, which can cause multiple advanced functionalities such as light focusing, hologram generation, polarization control, etc. Their extremely small hardware footprint enables them to be embedded in various components of the environment in a cost-effective way. In recent years, they have emerged as a powerful technology with a broad range of applications; however, there are many challenges yet to be addressed in order for them to fulfil their potential in practical applications.This Special Issue reprint covers all aspects of metamaterials and metasurfaces. It also aims to highlight the exciting developments, ongoing trends, and latest achievements in their design and construction.

The field of material science and engineering has witnessed a surge of interest in the development of novel xerogels-solid materials derived from gels-for a wide range of applications. Despite potential shrinkage, xerogels possess remarkable properties, including high porosity and a large surface area, owing to the interconnected network of pores formed during drying. Consequently, xerogels find valuable applications as catalysts, adsorbents, sensors, membranes, and drug delivery systems. The ability to conveniently control the structures and morphologies of xerogels during synthesis has garnered significant attention within the scientific community. In light of these considerations, this Special Issue of Gels compiles high-quality papers that showcase the latest advancements and breakthroughs in xerogel science, covering various aspects from design to application. Both theoretical and experimental cutting-edge studies exploring the structural, chemical, rheological, and dynamical properties of xerogels and their derivatives are included in this collection.

This reprint focuses on the biomimetic and bioinspired developments based on the biomechanical and morphological studies of plants and animals. The articles cover basic research in biology, the modeling of functional principles and the transfer into bioinspired materials systems, as well as hands-on models for teaching and education.

This reprint presents a collection of significant contributions to advancement of the application of the mathematical modeling to biomechanics and the biomedical engineering. This publication contains a particularly diverse set of contributions. For instance, Latif and co-authors review the specifications to model the upper airways before mandibular advancement surgery. Calvo-Gallego et al. propose local stress and strain tensors-derived variables as candidates for bone mechanical stimuli. Sohail et al. present a methodology for total knee arthroplasty. Latorre et al. propose the use of estimated strains to develop a methodology for plaque segmentation in arterial vessels. Lertxundi et al. simulate the blood flow and the microsphere transport during radioembolization for liver cancer treatment. Mañosas et al. combine tissue clarification, advanced microscopy and image analysis to develop a one-dimensional computational model of murine microvasculature hemodynamics. Talygin et al. obtain new quantitative parameters that characterize the normal and pathological aorta. Nje¿i¿ et al. analyze the motion of nanoparticles in a ferrofluid environment. Hernández-López and co-workers study the parameter influence on lesion growth using a mechanobiological model of atherosclerosis. Jerbi et al present an adaptive learning tracking controller of a wearable robotic knee system. Gahima et al. introduce a novel formulation for a linear elastic model of a heterogeneous arterial section. Urdeitx et al. develop a novel hybrid 3D agent-based model to study multiple myeloma cell growth. Finally, Bayod et al. evaluate the stress generated by medializing calcaneal osteotomyin in hindfoot and forefoot bones.