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The World Health Organization recommends the consumption of plant foods instead of animal-origin foods due to their high levels of saturated fat and cholesterol. Consumption of plant products has led to research on the beneficial properties of their components beyond basic nutrients. Vegetable-derived peptides have shown multifunctional effects related to chronic diseases, attracting interest from the food, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical industries. This reprint highlights studies on various vegetable extracts, such as chestnut, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, and Protium heptaphyllum gum resin, which have demonstrated antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and cholesterol-regulating properties. Specific compounds derived from plants, such as methyl p-coumarate and lupin protein hydrolysate, have shown effectiveness in reducing inflammation and anxiety, respectively. A vegetable extract of rosemary has been studied for its potential to treat osteogenesis imperfecta. Moreover, this repprint reviews Lycium barbarum berries, essential oils from Annonaceae species, antioxidant compounds, phytosterols, and natural compounds for the prevention and treatment of oral mucositis was discussed. Overall, these studies suggest that vegetable-derived bioactive compounds could serve as new nutraceuticals to prevent and treat a wide range of chronic diseases.

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.

The plant kingdom, with its terrestrial and marine natural products, has been widely explored. Plant-based products have long been used to prevent and treat various ailments. Many natural compounds have been reported to have a variety of interesting and significant biological activities, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antitumor, antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, antiparasitic, analgesic, antidiabetic, anti-atherogenic, and antiproliferative, as well as cardioprotective and neuroprotective properties. Therefore, researchers pay special attention to the bioactive compounds synthesized by plants. Opportunities in functional ingredients and treatment of NCDs (oxidative stress, diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, etc.) are widely explored. However, many therapeutic properties of plants are still to be discovered. This Special Issue reprint intends to substantially contribute to our knowledge of their beneficial properties. Natural products could be a vast resource in respect of human well-being improvement. This Special Issue reprint also aims to disseminate some of the most recent and significant contributions in natural product research on phytochemicals and biological activity.

This is a collection of research articles reporting the most recent progress in organic optoelectronic materials and devices. The involved research work covers materials of organic and hybrid semiconductors, designs in micro and nano scales, structures for microcavity and random lasing, and devices for light emission or detection. Although these research results deal with only a narrow band of the broad topic of organic optoelectronics, they are believed to make excellent contributions to the new development of related fields. Appreciations should be delivered to all of the authors, whose support enabled the successful completion of this Special Issue.

The digital economy has significantly impacted countries throughout the world by contributing to the growth of the economy and the further progress of societies. Recent developments demonstrate that the information and innovation-driven era triggered integration of traditional activities and digital technologies. Moreover, the rise of innovation has been accelerating in emerging industries such as cleantech, the new generation of information technology, biotechnology, and high-end equipment manufacturing. The estimations provided by the World Economic Forum predict that "new value creation over the next decade will be based on digitally enabled platform business models". Therefore, organizations must change the traditional approaches adopted and capture value in the context of digital disruptions. These tendencies raise a number of management challenges that need to be solved by the efforts of the scientific community. Therefore, this Special Issue provides the platform for a fruitful discussion and the development of relevant theories.

Dietary habits differ from person to person and usually are determined by cultural habits and traditions that determine lifestyles linked to the socio-demographic characteristics associated with ethnicity. It is known that dietary habits, lifestyle and socio-demographic factors impact human health. Eating disorders, increasing consumption of less-healthy foods, lack of exercise, genetic predisposition, along with other factors, increase risk of diseases such as dyslipidemia, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and various mental disorders.This reprint entitled "Dietary Influence on Nutritional Epidemiology, Public Health and Our Lifestyle", addresses the associations between some dietary patterns, lifestyle and socio-demographic factors, analyzed either separately or in combination, with the risk and management of cardiovascular diseases and mental health problems, such as depression and dementia. This reprint includes nine original articles and one systematic review.

This Special Issue highlights fundamental changes to the questions that we can ask about both the recent past and deep time. Delve into the forefront of paleontological research with this Special Issue book. Renowned paleontologists from around the world share groundbreaking insights into ancient life on Earth. Discover the latest advances in fossil discovery, analytical techniques, interdisciplinary collaborations, and technological innovations that are shaping our understanding of evolution and the Earth's history. This collection of cutting-edge research is a must-read for scientists, researchers, and enthusiasts interested in the dynamic field of paleontology in the modern era.

The scope of this Special Issue focuses on the formation of the structure of light alloys, (particularly on an aluminum base) during solidification, deformation, and heat treatment and its relationship with mechanical and technological properties. The design of light alloys (including composite materials) based on experimental and theoretical studies is also considered. The Special Issue contains 11 papers, including 10 research papers and 1 review (on the asymmetric (hot, warm, cold, and cryo) rolling of light alloys).

Medical data can be defined as obtaining information from patients (such as signals, images, sounds, chemical components and their concentration, body temperature, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and different treatment measurements) to quantify the patient's status and disease stage. Computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) systems use classical image processing, computer vision, machine learning, and deep learning methods for image analysis. Using image classification or segmentation algorithms, they find a region of interest (ROI) pointing to a specific location within the given image or an outcome of interest in the form of a label pointing to a diagnosis or prognosis. Computer science, with the evolution of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, facilitates the modeling and interpretation of results-from carrying out measurements to experiments and observations. Employing technological tools for collection, processing, and analysis incorporates understanding the patient's status and developing the treatment plan. Achieving highly accurate models requires a huge dataset. This issue can be solved by having enough knowledge around medical data processing and their analysis. This book shows state-of-the-art research in the field of medical data processing and analysis. The medical data are represented in signals, images, raw data, protein sequences, etc. Processing and analysis of any kind can indicate specific issues in the medical sector such as diagnosis, detection, prediction, and segmentation to enhance the visualization of the processed data

This book focuses on the theme of agricultural landscape stability and sustainable land management, including the ecosystem service values of agricultural landscapes, the development of multifunctional agricultural landscapes, protection of agricultural landscapes, reform of rural land ownership, comprehensive rural development, and remote sensing monitoring of agricultural landscapes.

This book collects papers addressing valuable techniques to improve the efficiency and performance of power electronics when applied to power grids and electrical drives. The proposed techniques leverage several approaches, e.g., advanced converter topologies, innovative control algorithms, and wide bandgap power devices. Diverse application domains were covered: interfacing Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) and Energy Storage Systems (ESSs) with AC or DC microgrids; recharging ESSs in electric vehicles; increasing performance in variable speed electrical drives and direct online induction motors; applying electrical loss minimization techniques to microgrids based on RESs. After a short description of each contribution, some perspectives for future developments are also briefly given.

Advanced X-by-wire technologies for vehicular electrified chassis play an essential role in the development of new energy intelligent vehicles, which is the inevitable choice for intelligent vehicles in the future. This technology is involved in mechanical engineering, electronic and electrical engineering, computer technology, control engineering, signal processing, and artificial intelligence. Advanced electrified chassis control technology transmits control signals through cables and acts directly on the actuator to implement corresponding actions. The application of X-by-wire technologies for vehicular electrified chassis has changed the complex mechanical connections among actuators and hydraulic and pneumatic equipment in the past, greatly promoting energy efficiency, integration, and intelligence. This book focuses on advanced X-by-wire technologies in strong reliability design, modeling, integration control, thermal management, energy management, fault diagnosis, and fault-tolerant control with the vehicular electrified chassis. Therefore, the aim of this book is to solicit recent advanced X-by-wire technologies for vehicular electrified chassis.

The Printed Edition of the Special Issue "Organophosphorus Chemistry: A New Perspective" takes the reader on a journey through the chemistry of organophosphorus compounds. It contains seven original research articles and three reviews covering aspects of recent advances in the synthesis, transformation, and properties of P-compounds.

The aim of this book is to seek high-quality contributions that highlight novel research results and emerging applications, addressing recent breakthroughs in UAS autonomous navigation and related fields, such as flight mechanics and control, structural design, sensor design, etc.The topics of interest include the following: two-dimensional and three-dimensional mapping, target detection, and obstacle avoidance; the active perception of targets in cluttered environments (foliage, forests, etc.); vision-based and optical flow techniques; sensors and sensor fusion techniques; design models for guidance and controlled flight; state estimation, data analysis and filtering techniques (KF, EKF, particle filtering, fuzzy logic, etc.); path planning and path management; optimal control and strategies (neural networks, fuzzy logic, reinforcement learning, evolutionary and genetic algorithms, AI, etc.); navigation in GPS-denied environments; autolanding and safe landing area definition (SLAD); environmental effects on UAVs (wind, etc.); autonomous UAV or MAV swarms, and distributed architectures; BVLOS autonomous navigation.

The externalization of animals' genetic potential is determined by a number of external factors, of which feeding plays a major role. Animals' nourishment is one of the most important levers to ensure the efficiency of animal production due to both the high share of feed costs in the total cost of products and the influence this has on the growth, reproduction, and health of animals as well as the quality of products obtained from these. This field is one of the most dynamic in the field of husbandry sciences due to the takeover and permanent use of numerous results obtained from research on energy metabolism and nutrients related to the composition of feed and its influence on animal products. This is also due to the great advances in genetics, which create new types of animals with increasing productive potential, but also with different food requirements.This Special Issue collated innovative papers on animal nutrition, physiology, chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, reproduction, and breeding technologies. The articles covered a wide range of topics related to feed quality, the influence of food on the production level, the quality of production, and also on animals' health.

Antibodies are key reagents in diagnostics and experimental biology, capable of detecting numerous antigenic targets. Proteins are often in focus and are usually effective targets for antibody production. Occasionally, however, the native protein is known but not available, or a very specific target is required. In these cases, synthetic peptides, copying essential sequences from the target, are good alternatives for antibody production. Peptide antibodies have been used in diagnostics and experimental biology with great success, especially because they can be produced to multiple targets, for example, native and denatured targets. Traditional peptide antibody proteins encompass animal-based immunization with a synthetic peptide, usually conjugated to a carrier protein to enhance immune presentation, as small peptides tend not to be immunogenic by themselves. There are several strategies for the conjugation of peptides to carriers applied for immunization. This is the most used approach for peptide antibody production. In addition to traditional peptide antibody production, peptide antibodies can be produced using libraries or sequencing.This Special Issue, "Design, Production and Characterization of Peptide Antibodies", aims to describe the current state-of-the-art techniques and characterization/applications within the field as well as new and emerging uses of peptide antibodies.

During the last several decades, the creative and cultural industries (CCIs) have increasingly been recognized for their role in local, regional, national and supranational economies; as drivers of economic growth, development and regeneration; and for their social and cultural impact on well-being, place-making, inclusion, sustainability, diversity and culture. On the other hand, the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the fragility and precarity of an industry dominated by micro-businesses and freelance and informal work practices, as well as having few tangible assets, calling into question the sustainability of economic models based on a high level of precarity in labor practices. This has led to some efforts (by governments and public bodies) to protect the industry from the pandemic's impact. At the same time, lockdowns have also highlighted the importance of creative activity in maintaining individual well-being and community resilience as well as the innovative potential of the industry.In this context, this Special Issue addresses the broader research field of CCIs and its various subsectors, from media, arts, design, and more, as well as its role in developing pathways towards sustainability, resilience and recovery. This Special issue presents original research and the latest advances in both theoretical and practical approaches.

There has been significant growth in branches of industry directly related to new materials, such as metals, polymers, and composite materials. Considering the increase in material costs, it has become exceedingly important to produce lightweight constructions through the use of certified materials with appropriate mechanical properties. Many composite materials, especially in building engineering, are characterized by the use of waste materials, allowing them to meet environmental demands and often also positively affecting the performance (as well as mechanical) properties of the whole construction. A similar phenomenon has been noticed in polymers and metals, with the "ecologically friendly" factor having increasing influence in such materials. The main aim of our Special Issue is to gather novel research results concerning different materials available for all important industries-building engineering, the heavy industry, automotive, aerospace, and medicine. Such a general title has been proposed to also include different manufacturing technologies using various materials-conventional (milling, casting, forming, and turning) and novel (hybrid and additive manufacturing).

In the era of the Internet of Things, images have played important roles in human-computer interactions, and with the arrival of big data technology, people have higher requirements regarding image quality, especially for images collected in dark light. This can be addressed through the development of camera hardware quality, i.e., the resolution and exposure time of cameras, which may require high computational costs. As an alternative, image enhancement techniques can exact salient features to improve the quality of captured images according to the differences in diverse features, although they suffer from some challenges, i.e., a low contrast, artifacts, and overexposure, thus making it decidedly necessary to determine how to use advanced image enhancement techniques. The topic of advances in the image enhancement of electronics is presented in this reprint, which brings together the research accomplishments of researchers from academia and industry. The secondary goal of this reprint is to display the latest research results of advances in image enhancement.

This book focuses on relevant findings in the field of neuroscience, ranging from cognitive neuroscience, including studies on human consciousness, to clinical neurology, including studies on autism and epilepsy. Furthermore, the latest methods in the expanding field of neuroscience from cognitive to clinical subdisciplines will also be available to the readers.

Light is an essential factor for the growth and quality of horticultural plants and its effects depend upon parameters such as duration, intensity and quality. It is an energy source for photosynthesis as well as a signal triggering plant photomorphogenesis and physiological, biochemical and molecular responses. However, solar light strongly differs between winter and summer conditions, with excess light in open field cultivations imposing severe stress on plants, especially during summer months, while supplementary light sources are implemented in greenhouse crop production to complement natural light when it is insufficient. On the other hand, artificial lighting is used as the sole lighting source in plant factories and nurseries (i.e., healing chambers, plant tissue culture). In order to enhance sustainability and profitability, light must be studied and efficiently applied within horticultural crop production. Novel technologies such as light-emitting diodes, new transparent greenhouse covering materials, photoselective nettings, growth chambers and plant factories showcase the critical role of light interacting with plants from the level of seed germination to growth rate, product quality and postharvest storage.This Special Issue focuses on recent findings in horticultural crops with regard to light characteristics (i.e., quality, quantity etc.) presented as research papers, short communications and review articles.

The parallel robot, a kind of robot that utilizes multiple closed-loop branch chains jointly connecting and driving the moving platform, is an important part of modern robotics, with outstanding advantages of high stiffness, high precision and high speed. Parallel robots can efficiently change performance through the configuration of synthesis and design. The rich variety of configurations and the existence of a large number of passive joints also brought abundant challenges and research topics to the modeling, optimization, calibration and trajectory planning of parallel robots. This book focuses on the research frontiers of parallel robots from fundamental theory to application technology. Special attention is paid to kinematics/dynamics modeling, error modeling and calibration, impedance control and the machining stability of parallel robots. Notably, a considerable portion of the book focuses on cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs) that integrate cable-driven kinematic chains and parallel mechanism theory. CDPRs inherit the high dynamics and heavy load capacities of parallel robots and significantly improve the workspace, cost and energy efficiency simultaneously, following the cutting-edge trend of rigid-flexible fusion.

Several steps need to be considered in the management of disasters and emergencies. Establishing command and control, with leaders having communication skills, enables sufficient collaboration and engagement with other agencies and offers the opportunity for situational assessments of the incident as well as the ability to achieve a balance between available personnel and material resources and the need for successful management of the incident. Although these steps are necessary for the overall management of the incident, the medical part remains critical at the operational level. The triage, treatment, and transport of patients are vital steps in the management of the victims and influence the overall outcome of an incident. It is, therefore, critical to establish guidelines regarding how victims are triaged, treated, and transported to specialized medical facilities. These are vital parameters in a multiagency approach to disasters and major incidents, in which several organizations with diverse backgrounds, knowledge, limitations, and abilities need to work together.The aim of this issue is to bring researchers and practitioners together to discuss and describe issues and solutions regarding the evidence-based management of victims of disasters and major incidents, with a particular focus on triage, treatment, and transportation. Special consideration should be given to CBRNE events and their influence on the assessment and management of victims.

This book focuses on monitoring and analysis of the relationship between urbanization and ecosystem services on the different scales.The use of innovative technologies for land cover change monitoring, ecosystem services modeling and mapping, innovation in land use planning, and which highlight the potential of technologies to tackle challenges such as sustainability of urbanization, climate change adaptation, sustainable land management, and food security are of particular interest.

The delivery of genome sequences for most livestock species over the past 10-15 years has generated the potential to revolutionise livestock production globally, by providing farmers with the ability to match individual animals to rapidly changing climates, production systems and markets. Initially, technologies such as marker-assisted selection, functional genomics, gene expression, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics were hailed as technologies with the greatest promise of delivering on that potential. To date, however, their potential for the delivery of practical solutions for livestock farmers is still to be realised, though they do provide supportive evidence of value to other approaches. Gene editing using tools such as CRISPR-Cas9 also show strong promise, but face regulatory hurdles before practical applications can be delivered for use by farmers. The technology that has had the greatest impact to date is genomic selection. This year marks 20 years since genomic selection was developed by Meuwissen, Hayes and Goddard (Genetics, 2001, 157: 1819-1829) and genomic selection has been successfully applied in livestock, plants and even human health applications. However, genomic selection also faces ongoing limitations around lack of essential phenotypes, particularly for expensive or difficult-to-measure traits and possibly the need for faster/greater computational capacity. It is therefore timely to examine the impact of genomic technologies generally, and to identify successes and limitations that need to be overcome in order to achieve practical applications for livestock producers in future.

This reprint delves into the relationship between religious leaders and movements and secular political systems. While the secularisation thesis predicted the decline of religion in both private and public life, this reprint challenges this narrative by exploring the diverse approaches of religious actors towards politics within secular systems. The reprint includes theoretical explorations and country case studies, analyzing the roles of religious leaders in the political arena of secular countries. From radical movements seeking to establish a religious state to those embracing participation in electoral processes, the authors examine the practical and prescriptive dimensions of religion's engagement with politics. With its interdisciplinary approach and timely subject matter, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the complex and dynamic relationship between religion and politics in the modern world.

This Special Issue contains eleven accepted and published submissions to a Special Issue of the MDPI journal Axioms on the subject of "Nonlinear Dynamical Systems with Applications". In this volume, the invited authors have submitted their latest results on nonlinear dynamical systems and related applications. All papers have been accepted after a rigorous review process.

This reprint covers 27 papers published in the Special Issue entitled "Corporate Finance, Governance, and Social Responsibility," which examines several topics related to corporate finance, financial modeling, corporate governance, and corporate social responsibility. Corporate finance-related articles (Anton and Afloarei Nucu, 2021; Bae et al., 2023; Kedzior et al., 2020; Lääts and Lukason, 2022; Miglo, 2020; Mihail et al., 2021; Mota and Moreira, 2023; Tsolas, 2021; Tudose et al., 2021; and Wen et al., 2021) focus on the drivers of the capital structure and firm performance, the effect of working capital management on profitability, and the link between derivative use and profitability. Regarding financial modeling, stock market volatility was explored during COVID-19 (Gherghina et al., 2021). Corporate governance studies (Aluchna and Kuszewski, 2020; Ararat et al., 2021; Ding and Chea, 2021; Kjærland et al., 2020; Lourenço et al., 2021; Lukason and Camacho-Miñano, 2020; Maier and Yurtoglu, 2022; Mihail and Dumitrescu, 2021; Mihail et al., 2022; Mihail and Micu, 2021; and Pourmansouri et al., 2022) examine the effect of corporate governance compliance practices, board attributes, or employee stock option plans on bankruptcy risk, performance, firm value, or earnings management. Regarding CSR (Bozos et al., 2022; Rossi et al., 2021; Saeed and Sroufe, 2021; Singh and Hong, 2023; and Tseng and Shih, 2022), the research focuses on how CSR affects financial performance, risk management, or analyst profits estimates.

Applied computing and artificial intelligence methods have attracted a growing interest in recent years due to their effectiveness at solving technical problems. Recent developments in applied mathematics have largely led to benefits for industrial tasks in different fields, including the aerospace industry, manufacturing, transportation, energy, robotics, materials, informatics, etc. The objective of this Special Issue is to present advanced methods in applied computing and artificial intelligence to address the practical challenges in the related areas. The response of the scientific community has been remarkable, and a large number of papers have been submitted. After a careful peer-review process, 22 high-quality papers have been accepted and published. It is hoped that the papers will have an impact on international scholars in this field and promote further remarkable research in this area.

This reprint deals with the central theme of philosophy of law and legal theory, namely the relationship between truth and justice. This presupposes that we always have true knowledge-that is, verifiable facts-and the intellectual ability to theoretically and historically correctly ascertain and analyse the question of justice.A modern philosopher of law who has formulated this issue excellently in his work is Ronald Dworkin (1931-2013). Therefore, he is the common point of reference for all our contributions to "Justice based on Truth".In addition, great philosophers of the past such as Thomas Aquinas, Baruch de Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz or Lon Fuller, to whom our authors devote themselves, have commented on these questions. Finally, time-tested folk wisdom such as the traditional Chinese doctrine of the use of stratagems in life or the modern theory of transitional justice in civil war-like conflicts can also perform these functions.