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The 15th Estuarine and Coastal Modeling Conference provides a venue for commercial, academic, and government scientists and engineers from around the world to present and discuss the latest results and techniques in applied estuarine and coastal modeling. Prospective authors are invited to submit papers on a wide range of topic areas, including:• Pollutant Transport and Water Quality Prediction• Coastal Response to Climate Change• Modeling Techniques and Sensitivity Studies• Model Assessment• Modeling Specific Estuarine and Coastal Systems• Visualization and Analysis• Wave and Sediment Transport Modeling• Modeling of Chemicals and Floatables• Oil Spill Transport and Fate Modeling• Inverse Methods• Circulation Modeling• Facility Siting and CSO Studies• Data Assimilation• Nowcast/Forecast Modeling Systems• Modeling Systems with Strong Buoyancy Forcing• Modeling of Coupled Systems• Risk Analysis (Nuclear Reactors, Flood Forecasting) This Special Issue presents a selection of papers from the conference; the papers give insight into current research and commercial developments while highlighting some of the areas where further research is required.

This collection represents successful invited submissions from the papers presented at the 8th Annual Conference of Energy Economics and Management held in Beijing, China, 22–24 September 2017. With over 500 participants, the conference was co-hosted by the Management Science Department of National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Society of Energy Economics and Management, and Renmin University of China on the subject area of “Energy Transition of China: Opportunities and Challenges”. The major strategies to transform the energy system of China to a sustainable model include energy/economic structure adjustment, resource conservation, and technology innovation. Accordingly, the conference and its associated publications encourage research to address the major issues faced in supporting the energy transition of China. Papers published in this collection cover the broad spectrum of energy economics issues, including building energy efficiency, industrial energy demand, public policies to promote new energy technologies, power system control technology, emission reduction policies in energy-intensive industries, emission measurements of cities, energy price movement, and the impact of new energy vehicle.

This Special Issue presents selected papers from the 8th Symposium on Micro–Nano Science and Technology on Micromachines, 31 October–2 November, 2017, in Hiroshima, Japan. We encouraged contributions of significant and original works in order to deeply understand physical, chemical, and biological phenomena at the micro/nano scale and to develop applied technologies. The conference covered the following main topics: 1: Precision machinery lubrication design 2: Material dynamics strength 3: Hydrodynamics 4: Thermal engineering 5: Production processing mechanical materials 6: Robotics mechatronics 7: Medical biotechnology 8: Micro/nano system The papers that attracted the most interest at the conference, or that provided novel contributions, were selected for publication in Micromachines. These papers were peer-reviewed for validation of the research results, developments and applications.

Electronic engineering and design innovation are both academic and practical engineering fields that involve systematic technological materialization through scientific principles and engineering designs. Technological innovation via electronic engineering includes electrical circuits and devices, computer science and engineering, communications and information processing, and electrical engineering communications. The Special Issue selected excellent papers presented at the International Conference on Knowledge Innovation and Invention 2018 (IEEE ICKII 2018) on the topic of electronics and their applications. This conference was held on Jeju Island, South Korea, 23–27 July 2018, and it provided a unified communication platform for researchers from all over the world. The main goal of this Special Issue titled “Selected papers from IEEE ICKII 2018” is to discover new scientific knowledge relevant to the topic of electronics and their applications.

This Special Issue presents selected papers from the 8th Symposium on Micro–Nano Science and Technology on Micromachines, 31 October–2 November, 2017, in Hiroshima, Japan. We encouraged contributions of significant and original works in order to deeply understand physical, chemical, and biological phenomena at the micro/nano scale and to develop applied technologies. The conference covered the following main topics: 1: Precision machinery lubrication design 2: Material dynamics strength 3: Hydrodynamics 4: Thermal engineering 5: Production processing mechanical materials 6: Robotics mechatronics 7: Medical biotechnology 8: Micro/nano system The papers that attracted the most interest at the conference, or that provided novel contributions, were selected for publication in Micromachines. These papers were peer-reviewed for validation of the research results, developments and applications.

This Special Issue contains a series of excellent research works on telecommunications and signal processing, selected from the 2018 41st International Conference on Telecommunications and Signal Processing (TSP) which was held on July 4–6, 2018, in Athens, Greece. The conference was organized in cooperation with the IEEE Region 8 (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), IEEE Greece Section, IEEE Czechoslovakia Section, and IEEE Czechoslovakia Section SP/CAS/COM Joint Chapter by seventeen universities from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Turkey, Taiwan, Japan, Slovak Republic, Spain, Bulgaria, France, Slovenia, Croatia, and Poland, for academics, researchers, and developers, and serves as a premier international forum for the annual exchange and promotion of the latest advances in telecommunication technology and signal processing. The aim of the conference is to bring together both novice and experienced scientists, developers, and specialists, to meet new colleagues, collect new ideas, and establish new cooperation between research groups from universities, research centers, and private sectors worldwide. This collection of 10 papers is highly recommended for researchers, and believed to be interesting, inspiring, and motivating for readers in their further research.

This Special Issue of Cancers (Basel) is mainly dedicated to selecting papers from the talks given during the first Joint Meeting on Lung Cancer (JMLC) between the MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, Texas USA) and the Hospital University Federation (HUF) OncoAge (University Côte d’Azur, Nice, France) (Nice, September 2018). The central theme of JMLC is to discuss new advances and exchange ideas regarding lung cancer. Notably, the talks covered different topics on new therapeutic strategies (targeted therapy and immuno-oncology), molecular and cellular biology, biomarkers, and the epidemiology of lung cancer. Special attention was also given to lung cancer in elderly patients. The articles published in this Special Issue covered subjects such as the assessment of new biomarkers and new approaches for the early detection of lung cancer, epidemiological data, and emphasized a place for the newly characterized cellular pathways in lung cancer, which opens room for therapeutic perspectives for lung cancer patients.

“Processes” is a commonly used term to describe engineered systems such as oil refineries, polymer production plants, and pharmaceutical manufacturing processes that serve a commercial and societal purpose. However, the term can also capture the underlying processes that drive the behavior of complex natural systems such as communities of different organisms in the environment and networked collections of neurons in the human brain. This book provides a representative overview of current challenges and recent advances in the broadly-defined “processes” field. Contributions from leading researchers in the field are conveniently ordered according to five applications domains: chemical systems, biological systems, materials processes, computational methods, and other related topics. The 19 contributions demonstrate the broad range of application domains within the process field, including fluid flow systems, fuel gases, chemical production, polymer manufacturing, food processing, protein synthesis and separation, pharmaceutical production, and water systems. This collection shows that “processes” remain a vibrant area of research, and continued advances in the field can be expected to have a positive impact on our economy, environment, and quality of life.

In parallel with a decrease/stabilization in the use of internationally controlled drugs, the market of novel psychoactive substances (NPS) continues increasing, year after year, with the Internet playing a pivotal role in contributing to this complex scenario. At times, although misleading, the terms ‘legal highs’ or ’research chemicals’ have been used to describe these molecules. Overall, about 5% of 19–24-year-old European people have already experimented with them, because both NPS’ intense psychoactive effects and their virtual non-detectability in routine drug screenings. Although ‘novel’ typically refers to molecules that have recently become a reason of current/potential public health concern, at times, the NPS scenario may indeed focus on pharmaceutical molecules. These may have either not entered the market, or are currently prescribed, with their potential for misuse resulting from the relating high dosages/idiosyncratic ways of self-administration. A concurrent use of a range of different NPS, and/or medications, is frequently being reported and this may be a reason of further clinical complications. Given their complex pharmacodynamics, there are increasing levels of concern about the onset of acute/chronic psychopathological associated with NPS intake. This Special Issue aims at providing an overview of a range of NPS-related issues, e.g., preclinical, epidemiological, and clinical pharmacological; the medical and psychopathological consequences associated with their intake; and, finally, the analytical chemistry and forensic analysis challenges associated with the NPS phenomenon.

EU energy policy is more and more promoting a resilient, efficient and sustainable energy system. Several agreements have been signed in the last few months that set ambitious goals in terms of energy efficiency and emission reductions and to reduce the energy consumption in buildings. These actions are expected to fulfill the goals negotiated at the Paris Agreement in 2015. The successful development of this ambitious energy policy needs to be supported by scientific knowledge: a huge effort must be made in order to develop more efficient energy conversion technologies based both on renewables and fossil fuels. Similarly, researchers are also expected to work on the integration of conventional and novel systems, also taking into account the needs for the management of the novel energy systems in terms of energy storage and devices management. Therefore, a multi-disciplinary approach is required in order to achieve these goals. To ensure that the scientists belonging to the different disciplines are aware of the scientific progress in the other research areas, specific Conferences are periodically organized. One of the most popular conferences in this area is the Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES) Series Conference. The 12th Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems Conference was recently held in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The present Special Issue of Energies, specifically dedicated to the 12th SDEWES Conference, is focused on five main fields: energy policy and energy efficiency in smart energy systems, polygeneration and district heating, advanced combustion techniques and fuels, biomass and building efficiency.

Seven Years of Membranes: Feature Paper 2017

Integrated Soil and Water Management: Selected Papers from 2016 International SWAT Conference

Selected Papers from 2017 International Conference on Micro/Nanomachines

Selected Papers from the 5th International Symposium on Mycotoxins and Toxigenic Moulds: Challenges and Perspectives

Selected Papers from 6th Annual Conference of Energy Economics and Management

An Updated View on an Emerging Target: Selected Papers from the 8th International Conference on Protein Kinase CK2

Selected Papers from the 14th Estuarine and Coastal Modeling Conference

Selected Papers from ASEPFPM2015

Feature Papers to Celebrate the Landmarks of Catalysts

Selected Papers from Building A Better New Zealand (BBNZ 2014) Conference

Selected Papers from the 13th Estuarine and Coastal Modeling Conference

The development of solid state gas sensors based on microtransducers and nanostructured sensing materials is the key point in the design of portable measurement systems able to reach sensing and identification performance comparable with analytical ones. In such a context several efforts must be spent of course in the development of the sensing material, but also in the choice of the transducer mechanism and its structure, in the electrical characterization of the performance and in the design of suitable measurement setups. This call for papers invites researchers worldwide to report about their novel results on the most recent advances and overview in design and measurements for applications in gas sensors, along with their relevant features and technological aspects. Original research papers are welcome (but not limited) on all aspects that focus on the most recent advances in: (i) basic principles and modeling of gas and VOCs sensors; (ii) new gas sensor principles and technologies; (iii) Characterization and measurements methodologies; (iv) transduction and sampling systems; (vi) package optimization; (vi) gas sensor based systems and applications.

This Special Issue of the journal Entropy, titled “Information Geometry I”, contains a collection of 17 papers concerning the foundations and applications of information geometry. Based on a geometrical interpretation of probability, information geometry has become a rich mathematical field employing the methods of differential geometry. It has numerous applications to data science, physics, and neuroscience. Presenting original research, yet written in an accessible, tutorial style, this collection of papers will be useful for scientists who are new to the field, while providing an excellent reference for the more experienced researcher. Several papers are written by authorities in the field, and topics cover the foundations of information geometry, as well as applications to statistics, Bayesian inference, machine learning, complex systems, physics, and neuroscience.

Current efforts to limit the ravages of schistosomiasis are pushing the world closer to eliminating a chronic infection that has been associated with human life in the tropics since time immemorial. This notwithstanding, the disease remains a scourge for large populations in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, and the main part of this book is made up by papers dealing with its current distribution, discussing ways and means to establish and implement improved control approaches. While chemotherapy limits the symptoms caused by schistosomiasis, the number of infected people will not decrease until the parasite's life cycle is interrupted. To that end, some papers focus on the intermediate snail host, which is notoriously difficult to control, while others discuss human hygiene and sanitation. The latter approach not only prevents infection through avoiding people being infected from the snail, but more importantly, also stops people infecting the snail by leaving contagious feces and urine in nature. With morbidity reduced by chemotherapy, the immediate target now is the interruption of transmission to be achieved by new tools, such as the novel chemotherapies, improved diagnostics (for humans, animals, and snails), and vaccines discussed in several of the papers. As made clear in this book, a complex infection requires new tools as well as work on many fronts, above all; however, a clear idea is needed as to how to skillfully combine the tools available and sustain implemented control activities.

The fluid flow in fracture porous media plays a significant role in the assessment of deep underground reservoirs, such as through CO2 sequestration, enhanced oil recovery, and geothermal energy development. Many methods have been employed—from laboratory experimentation to theoretical analysis and numerical simulations—and allowed for many useful conclusions. This Special Issue aims to report on the current advances related to this topic. This collection of 58 papers represents a wide variety of topics, including on granite permeability investigation, grouting, coal mining, roadway, and concrete, to name but a few. We sincerely hope that the papers published in this Special Issue will be an invaluable resource for our readers.

This Special Issue features recent data concerning thioredoxins and glutaredoxins from various biological systems, including bacteria, mammals, and plants. Four of the sixteen articles are review papers that deal with the regulation of development of the effect of hydrogen peroxide and the interactions between oxidants and reductants, the description of methionine sulfoxide reductases, detoxification enzymes that require thioredoxin or glutaredoxin, and the response of plants to cold stress, respectively. This is followed by eleven research articles that focus on a reductant of thioredoxin in bacteria, a thioredoxin reductase, and a variety of plant and bacterial thioredoxins, including the m, f, o, and h isoforms and their targets. Various parameters are studied, including genetic, structural, and physiological properties of these systems. The redox regulation of monodehydroascorbate reductase, aminolevulinic acid dehydratase, and cytosolic isocitrate dehydrogenase could have very important consequences in plant metabolism. Also, the properties of the mitochondrial o-type thioredoxins and their unexpected capacity to bind iron–sulfur center (ISC) structures open new developments concerning the redox mitochondrial function and possibly ISC assembly in mitochondria. The final paper discusses interesting biotechnological applications of thioredoxin for breadmaking.

Recently, new wide-band energy gap semiconductors can be grown by ALD, PLD, sputtering, or MOCVD. They have great potential for the fabrication and application to TFTs. Inorganic semiconductors have good stability against environmental degradation over their organic counterparts, whereas organic materials are usually flexible, transparent, and when solution-processed at low temperatures, are prone to degradation when exposed to heat, moisture, and oxygen. For this Special Issue, we invited researchers to submit papers discussing the development of new functional and smart materials, and inorganic as well as organic semiconductor materials, such as ZnO, InZnO, GaO, AlGaO, AnGaO, AlN/GaN, conducting polymers, molecular semiconductors, perovskite-based materials, carbon nanotubes, carbon nanotubes/polymer composites, and 2D materials (e.g., graphene, MoS2) and their potential applications in display drivers, radio frequency identification tags, e-paper, gas, chemical and biosensors, to name but a few.

This collection represents successful invited submissions from the papers presented at the 8th Annual Conference of Energy Economics and Management held in Beijing, China, 22–24 September 2017. With over 500 participants, the conference was co-hosted by the Management Science Department of National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Society of Energy Economics and Management, and Renmin University of China on the subject area of “Energy Transition of China: Opportunities and Challenges”. The major strategies to transform the energy system of China to a sustainable model include energy/economic structure adjustment, resource conservation, and technology innovation. Accordingly, the conference and its associated publications encourage research to address the major issues faced in supporting the energy transition of China. Papers published in this collection cover the broad spectrum of energy economics issues, including building energy efficiency, industrial energy demand, public policies to promote new energy technologies, power system control technology, emission reduction policies in energy-intensive industries, emission measurements of cities, energy price movement, and the impact of new energy vehicle.

Information management is a common paradigm in modern decision-making. A wide range of decision-making techniques have been proposed in the literature to model complex business and engineering processes. In this Special Issue, 16 selected and peer-reviewed original research articles contribute to business information management in various current real-world problems by proposing crisp or uncertain multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) models and techniques, mostly including multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) approaches, in addition to a single paper proposing an interactive multi-objective decision-making (MODM) approach. Particular attention is devoted to information aggregation operators—65% of papers dealt with this item. The topics of this Special Issue gained attention in Europe and Asia. A total of 48 authors from seven countries contributed to this Issue. The papers are mainly concentrated in three application areas: supplier selection and rational order allocation, the evaluation and selection of goods or facilities, and personnel selection/partner selection. A number of new approaches are proposed that are expected to attract great interest from the research community.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to investigate topics related to sustainability issues in the new era, especially in Industry 4.0 or other new manufacturing environments. Under Industry 4.0, there have been great changes with respect to production processes, production planning and control, quality assurance, internal control, cost determination, and other management issues. Moreover, it is expected that Industry 4.0 can create positive sustainability impacts along the whole value chain. There are three pillars of sustainability, including environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and social sustainability. This Special Issue collects 15 sustainability-related papers from various industries that use various methods or models, such as mathematical programming, activity-based costing (ABC), material flow cost accounting, fuel consumption model, artificial intelligence (AI)-based fusion model, multi-attribute decision model (MADM), and so on. These papers are related to carbon emissions, carbon tax, Industry 4.0, economic sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR), etc. The research objects come from China, Taiwan, Thailand, Oman, Cyprus, Germany, Austria, and Portugal. Although the research presented in this Special Issue is not exhaustive, this Special Issue provides abundant, significant research related to environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Nevertheless, there still are many research topics that require our attention to solve problems of sustainability.

This Special Issue presents research papers on various topics within many different branches of mathematics, applied mathematics, and mathematical physics. Each paper presents mathematical theories, methods, and their application based on current and recently developed symmetric polynomials. Also, each one aims to provide the full understanding of current research problems, theories, and applications on the chosen topics and includes the most recent advances made in the area of symmetric functions and polynomials.

This Special Issue on the Systematics and Phylogeny of Weevils presents 31 new research papers on one of the most diverse and successful groups of animals on Earth, the beetle superfamily Curculionoidea. It was in part inspired to commemorate the extraordinary life and scientific achievements of Guillermo (“Willy”) Kuschel (1918–2017), who shaped this field of science over the last century like no other weevil systematist. The papers in this memorial issue span weevil faunas from all over the globe, including South and Central America, Africa, Europe and the Near East, South-East Asia, New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand. They include major advances on the phylogeny and classification of the “broad-nosed” weevils (Entiminae), on the weevils associated with American cycads and on the unique extinct weevil fauna preserved in the 100-million-year-old Burmese amber, when weevils started to diversify alongside the oldest angiosperm plants. They comprise a tribute to Willy Kuschel, the proceedings of a weevil symposium held in his honor in 2016 in Orlando, Florida, 24 systematic studies (including seven phylogenetic analyses) and five other contributions on the diversity, biology, distribution, evolution and fossil history of weevils. In the papers collated in this volume, 30 new genera and 92 new species of weevils are described and a new family of extinct weevils is recognized.

This Special Issue "Multi-Agent Systems" gathers original research articles reporting results on the steadily growing area of agent-oriented computing and multi-agent systems technologies. After more than 20 years of academic research on multi-agent systems (MASs), in fact, agent-oriented models and technologies have been promoted as the most suitable candidates for the design and development of distributed and intelligent applications in complex and dynamic environments. With respect to both their quality and range, the papers in this Special Issue already represent a meaningful sample of the most recent advancements in the field of agent-oriented models and technologies. In particular, the 17 contributions cover agent-based modeling and simulation, situated multi-agent systems, socio-technical multi-agent systems, and semantic technologies applied to multi-agent systems. In fact, it is surprising to witness how such a limited portion of MAS research already highlights the most relevant usage of agent-based models and technologies, as well as their most appreciated characteristics. We are thus confident that the readers of Applied Sciences will be able to appreciate the growing role that MASs will play in the design and development of the next generation of complex intelligent systems. This Special Issue has been converted into a yearly series, for which a new call for papers is already available at the Applied Sciences journal’s website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci/special_issues/Multi-Agent_Systems_2019.

A topic of utmost importance in civil engineering is finding optimal solutions throughout the life cycle of buildings and infrastructural objects, including their design, manufacturing, use, and maintenance. Operational research, management science, and optimization methods provide a consistent and applicable groundwork for engineering decision-making. These topics have received the interest of researchers and, after a rigorous peer-review process, eight papers have been published in this Special Issue. The articles in this Printed Edition demonstrate how solutions in civil engineering, which bring economic, social, and environmental benefits, are obtained through a variety of methodologies and tools. Usually, decision-makers need to take into account not just a single criterion, but several different criteria and, therefore, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approaches have been suggested for application in five of the published papers; the rest of the papers apply other research methods. Most approaches suggested decision models under uncertainty, proposing hybrid MCDM methods in combination with fuzzy or rough set theory, as well as D-numbers. The application areas of the proposed MCDM techniques mainly cover production/manufacturing engineering, logistics and transportation, and construction engineering and management. We hope that a summary of the Special Issue as provided here will encourage a detailed analysis of the papers included in the Printed Edition.

This book is comprised of important reviews and cutting-edge original research papers concerning electrospun and electrosprayed formulations in drug delivery. Electrospinning and electrospraying have, in recent years, attracted increasing attention in the pharmaceutical sector, with research in the area advancing rapidly. It is now possible to prepare extremely complex systems using multi-fluid processes, and to increase production rates to an industrial scale. Electrospun formulations can be produced under GMP conditions and are in clinical trials. In this volume, we explore a range of topics around electrospinning and electrospraying in controlled drug delivery. Four reviews cover the exciting potential of cyclodextrin-containing fibers and the many potential biomedical applications of electrospun fibers. The use of electrospinning to prepare amorphous systems and improve the dissolution rate and solubility of poorly soluble active ingredients is addressed, and the possibilities of such materials in tissue engineering are comprehensively covered. The six original research papers cover the effect of molecular properties on API release from Eudragit-based electrospun fibers; ferulic acid solid dispersions; electrospun medicines to treat psoriasis; scale up of electrospinning and its use to produce low-dose tablets; transepithelial permeation of drugs released from electrospun fibers, and the possibilities for the synergistic chemophotothermal treatment of cancer.

A major source of active compounds, natural products from different sources supply a large variety of molecules that have been approved for clinical use or used as the starting points of optimization programs. This book features nine papers (eight full articles and one review paper) written by more than 45 scientists from around the world. These papers illustrate the development and application of a broad range of computational and experimental techniques applied to natural product research. On behalf of the contributors to the book, our hope is that the research presented here contributes to advancements in the field, and encourages multidisciplinary teams, young scientists, and students to further advance in the discovery of pharmacologically-active natural compounds

Acute inflammation is a highly regulated process, and its dysregulation can lead to the development of a chronic inflammatory state which is believed to play a main role in the pathogenesis of many diseases, including cancer. In recent years, the need to find new anti-inflammatory molecules has raised the scientific community´s interest for marine natural products. In this regard, the marine environment represents a source for isolating a wealth of bioactive compounds. In this Special Issue, the reported products have been obtained from microalgae, sea cucumber, octopus, squid, red alga-derived fungus, cnidarians, hard-shelled mussel, and sponges. This Special Issue of Marine Drugs covers both the in vitro and in vivo studies of marine agents with anti-inflammatory activities, in addition to clinical trials conducted in humans. Among the bioactive molecules reported in the papers are lipid compounds, such as glycolipids, which, for the first time, demonstrated their preventive effects in an inflammatory model of skin hyperplasia. In addition, beneficial effects of the carotenoid fucoxanthin were shown in the same model of skin hyperplasia, in UVB-induced damage and in a model of inflammatory pain. Moreover, frondanol, a lipid extract from Cucumaria frondosa, attenuated inflammation in an acute colitis model. Another paper evaluated the fatty acid compositions of lipid extracts from some common seafood organisms, reporting the highest level of omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and the highest anti-inflammatory activity in the extracts from octopus and squid byproducts. Additionally, the anti-inflammatory effects of other marine compounds have been reported, including hirsutanol A, a sesquiterpene from the red alga-derived marine fungus Chondrostereum sp. NTOU4196, two zoanthamine alkaloids from the zoantharian Zoanthus cf. pulchellus, an α-D-glucan from the hard-shelled mussel (Mytilus coruscus), and the polyphenol pyrogallol-phloroglucinol-6,6-bieckol from an edible marine brown alga.Finally, this Special Issue is supplemented by three reviews focused on the occurrence of prostaglandins in the marine environment and their anti-inflammatory role; fish lipid emulsions used to improve patient outcomes in an inflammatory environment, such as postoperative; and the chemically induced production of compounds with anti-inflammatory activity from microalgae.

This book presents a selection of papers representing current research on using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for realising image processing algorithms. These papers are reprints of papers selected for a Special Issue of the Journal of Imaging on image processing using FPGAs. A diverse range of topics is covered, including parallel soft processors, memory management, image filters, segmentation, clustering, image analysis, and image compression. Applications include traffic sign recognition for autonomous driving, cell detection for histopathology, and video compression. Collectively, they represent the current state-of-the-art on image processing using FPGAs.

Since their discovery in 1895, the detection of X-rays has had a strong impact on and various applications in several fields of science and human life. Impressive efforts have been made to develop new types of detectors and new techniques, aiming to obtain higher precision both in terms of energy and position. Depending on the applications, solid state detectors, microcalorimeters, and various types of spectrometers currently serve as the best options for spectroscopic and imaging detectors. Recent advancements in micron and meV precision have opened the door for groundbreaking applications in fundamental physics, medical science, astrophysics, cultural heritage, and several other fields. The aim of this Special Issue is to compile an overview, from different communities and research fields, of the most recent developments in X-ray detection and their possible impacts in various sectors, such as in exotic atom measurements, quantum physics studies, XRF, XES, EXAFS, plasma emission spectroscopy, monochromators, synchrotron radiation, telescopes, and space engineering. All the papers included in this Special Issue contribute to emphasizing the importance of X-ray detection in a very broad range of physics topics; most of these topics are covered by the published works, and several others are mentioned in the paper references, providing an interesting and very useful synopsis, from a variety of different communities and research fields, of the most recent developments in X-ray detection and their impact in fundamental research and societal applications.

To date, most published health literacy research has focused on assessing and improving personal skills and abilities. More recently, a better understanding has emerged of the extent to which these skills and abilities are mediated by environmental demands and situational complexities — the context in which health literacy is developed and applied. This has led to much greater attention being given to ways of reducing the situational demands and complexity in which an individual makes a health decision. This collection of papers examines current progress in understanding health literacy "in context", by improving our understanding of the mutual impact of a range of social, economic, environmental, and organisational influences on health literacy. These papers provide unique and original perspectives on the concept, distribution, and application of health literacy in very diverse populations, offering cultural insights and a clear indication of the impact of social and environmental context on health literacy. These perspectives include an examination of differing national policy responses to health literacy illustrating how policy and practice can (and should) respond to this more complete but complex understanding of health literacy. Other papers look at the application of new digital media and the creative harnessing of popular culture as routes to extend the reach and customisation of communications. These papers also illustrate good progress in the evolution of research in the contexts in which health literacy is developed and applied, as well as signaling some areas in which more research would be useful.

Two-dimensional (2D) materials and their vertical/lateral heterostructures are currently the subject of massive research interests, both for fundamental science and for technological applications in diverse fields, such as electronics, optoelectronics, quantum metrology, spintronics, membranes, energy conversion/storage, and sensing. Integration of 2D materials within real device structures currently represents the main challenge to move from the laboratory stage to industrial applications, especially in the fields of electronics/optoelectronics. This Book is a collection of 9 papers, covering the different key topics of this rapidly developing research field. These include: synthesis of 2D materials, progress in relevant processing issues (contact, doping and mobility engineering), advanced characterization techniques, novel device applications based on the integration of these 2D materials. Many of the papers of this collection are review papers, providing the general introductory information and a broad overview of the most recent advances in the specific topic. Hence, this book can serve both as a general introduction for non-experts in the field and as a guide for scientists/engineers working in the field of 2D materials integration.

Electrochemical surface science (EC-SS) is the natural advancement of traditional surface science (where gas–vacuum/solid interfaces are studied) to liquid (solution)/electrified solid interfaces. Such a merging between two different disciplines—i.e., surface science (SS) and electrochemistry—officially advanced ca. three decades ago. The main characteristic of EC-SS versus electrochemistry is the reductionist approach undertaken, inherited from SS and aiming to understand the microscopic processes occurring at electrodes on the atomic level. A few of the exemplary keystone tools of EC-SS include EC-scanning probe microscopies, operando and in situ spectroscopies and electron microscopies, and differential EC mass spectrometry (DEMS). EC-SS indirectly (and often unconsciously) receives a great boost from the requirement for rational design of energy conversion and storage devices for the next generation of energetic landscapes. As a matter of fact, the number of material science groups deeply involved in such a challenging field has tremendously expanded and, within such a panorama, EC and SS investigations are intimately combined in a huge number of papers. The aim of this Special Issue is to offer an open access forum where researchers in the field of electrochemistry, surface science, and materials science could outline the great advances that can be reached by exploiting EC-SS approaches. Papers addressing both the basic science and more applied issues in the field of EC-SS and energy conversion and storage materials have been published in this Special Issue.

The last two decades have witnessed a rapid development of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) involving gas microflows in various technical fields. Gas microflows can, for example, be observed in microheat exchangers designed for chemical applications or for cooling of electronic components, in fluidic microactuators developed for active flow control purposes, in micronozzles used for the micropropulsion of nano and picosats, in microgas chromatographs, analyzers or separators, in vacuum generators and in Knudsen micropumps, as well as in some organs-on-a-chip, such as artificial lungs. These flows are rarefied due to the small MEMS dimensions, and the rarefaction can be increased by low-pressure conditions. The flows relate to the slip flow, transition or free molecular regimes and can involve monatomic or polyatomic gases and gas mixtures. Hydrodynamics and heat and mass transfer are strongly impacted by rarefaction effects, and temperature-driven microflows offer new opportunities for designing original MEMS for gas pumping or separation. Accordingly, this Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers, short communications, and review articles that focus on novel theoretical and numerical models or data, as well as on new experimental results and technics, for improving knowledge on heat and mass transfer in gas microflows. Papers dealing with the development of original gas MEMS are also welcome.

Mercury is a global pollutant that affects the health of both humans and ecosystems. This Special Issue collects three review papers and six research articles that report on the latest findings on the mechanisms of mercury toxicology and its impacts on environmental health. This collection of papers provides useful, new information on the mechanisms of mercury toxicity and methods of improving the risk assessment of mercury exposure.

This book contains twenty-one original papers and one review paper published by internationally recognized experts in the Atmosphere Special Issue "Recent Advances in Urban Ventilation Assessment and Flow Modelling", years 2017–2019. The Special Issue includes contributions on recent experimental and modelling works, techniques, and developments mainly tailored to the assessment of urban ventilation on flow and pollutant dispersion in cities. The study of ventilation is of critical importance, as it addresses the capacity with which a built urban structure is capable of replacing the polluted air with ambient fresh air. Here, ventilation is recognized as a transport process that improves local microclimate and air quality and closely relates to the term “breathability”. The efficiency with which street canyon ventilation occurs depends on the complex interaction between the atmospheric boundary layer flow and the local urban morphology.The individual contributions to this Issue are summarized and categorized into four broad topics: (1) outdoor ventilation efficiency and application/development of ventilation indices, (2) relationship between indoor and outdoor ventilation, (3) effects of urban morphology and obstacles to ventilation, and (4) ventilation modelling in realistic urban districts. The results and approaches presented and proposed will be of great interest to experimentalists and modelers, and may constitute a starting point for the improvement of numerical simulations of flow and pollutant dispersion in the urban environment, for the development of simulation tools, and for the implementation of mitigation strategies.

MEDER 2018, the IFToMM International Symposium on Mechanism Design for Robotics, was the fourth event in a series that was started in 2010 as a specific conference activity on mechanisms for robots. The aim of the MEDER Symposium is to bring researchers, industry professionals, and students together from a broad range of disciplines dealing with mechanisms for robots, in an intimate, collegial, and stimulating environment. In the 2018 MEDER event, we received significant attention regarding this initiative, as can be seen by the fact that the Proceedings contain contributions by authors from all around the world.The Proceedings of the MEDER 2018 Symposium have been published within the Springer book series on MMS, and the book contains 52 papers that have been selected after review for oral presentation. These papers cover several aspects of the wide field of robotics dealing with mechanism aspects in theory, design, numerical evaluations, and applications.This Special Issue of Robotics (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/robotics/special_issues/MDR) has been obtained as a result of a second review process and selection, but all the papers that have been accepted for MEDER 2018 are of very good quality with interesting contents that are suitable for journal publication, and the selection process has been difficult.

The mitigation of oil spills is an important facet of environmental protection. Understanding oil spills is a first step toward preventing and minimizing their damage to the environment. This compilation presents several of the current studies related to such an understanding of oil spills and the environment.This book is a compilation of 14 papers presenting new developments in the field of oil spills, giving insight into the rapidly changing world of oil spill studies and technology. The 14 papers included cover topics varying from risk analysis to oil spill remote sensing. Broadly categorized, included are six papers on modeling, four papers on remote sensing, three papers on risk assessment, and one paper on oil spill countermeasures. Each paper presents a unique insight into a facet of oil spill research and technology. The authors of these papers represent many different countries and affiliations around the world.

This book looks at key research covering a wide range of aspects of environmental sustainability and the mitigation of environmental impacts of livestock production, including emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide), nitrogen and phosphorus excretion, ammonia emissions, land use and land management, and use of energy and other resources. All the globally most important livestock species (beef and dairy cattle, pigs, broiler chicken and laying hens) are covered in the book. The mitigation methods assessed in the papers include general system changes, changes in feeding, improvement of animal health, and new technologies of manure management. The scope of the papers included in this book ranges from farm level mitigation methods to national level system changes. This book also addresses methodological development in assessing the environmental sustainability of the livestock production chains, including holistic methods, such as environmental and social life cycle assessment (LCA) and other modeling approaches.

This book is a collection of 13 innovative papers describing the state of the art and the future perspectives in solid-phase extraction covering several analytical fields prior to the use of gas or liquid chromatographic analysis. New sorptive materials are presented including carbon nanohorn suprastructures on paper support, melamine sponge functionalized with urea–formaldehyde co-oligomers, chiral metal–organic frameworks, UiO-66-based metal–organic frameworks, and fabric phase sorptive media for various applications. Solid-phase extraction can be applied in several formats aside from the conventional cartridges or mini-column approach, e.g., online solid-phase extraction, dispersive solid-phase microextraction, and in-syringe micro-solid-phase extraction can be very helpful for analyte pre-concentration and sample clean-up. Polycyclic musks in aqueous samples, 8-Nitroguanine in DNA by chemical derivatization antibacterial diterpenes from the roots of salvia prattii, perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in aater samples by bamboo charcoal-based SPE, parabens in environmental water samples, benzotriazoles as environmental pollutants, organochlorine pesticide residues in various fruit juices and water samples and synthetic peptide purification are among the applications cited in this collection. All these outstanding contributions highlight the necessity of this analytical step, present the advantages and disadvantages of each method and focus on the green analytical chemistry guidelines that have to be fulfilled in current analytical practices.

In recent years, wireless communications have significantly evolved due to the advanced technology of smartphones;, portable devices; and the rapid growth of Internet of Things, e-Health, and intelligent transportation systems . Moreover, there is anare increasing need fors of emerging intelligent services like positioning and sensing in athe future intelligence society. Recent years have witnessed the growing research interests and activities in the communication and intelligencet services in the optical wireless spectrum, as a complementary technology to more established radio frequency (RF)-based systems, to overcome the spectrum sparsity and increases data rates in crowded locations, due to the limited transmission range and interference. The OWC technology offers advantages such as free license, wide bandwidth, inherent security, no RF electromagnetic interference, and immunity to electromagnetic interference. The attractive applications of the optical spectrum include ultra-violet tactic communication, blue/green underwater communication, visible light positioning, and vehicular communication/sensing in intelligent transportation systems. The present Iissue, as named "Visible Light Communication and Positioning", focuses on visible light communication and visible light positioning, where four papers are on visible light communication and three papers are on visible light positioning. For visible light communication, the published works focus on the devices, the physical-layer techniques, and the system work aspects. Besides VLC, visible light positioning works include fingerprint-based indoor positioning system for multiple reflections, the impact of LED tilt on visible light positioning accuracy, and a mobile optoelectronic tracking system based on feedforward control.