Books published by Mdpi AG

The book is a collection of original research and review articles addressing the intriguing field of the cellular and molecular players involved in muscle homeostasis and regeneration. One of the most ambitious aspirations of modern medical science is the possibility of regenerating any damaged part of the body, including skeletal muscle. This desire has prompted clinicians and researchers to search for innovative technologies aimed at replacing organs and tissues that are compromised. In this context, the papers, collected in this book, addressing a specific aspects of muscle homeostasis and regeneration under physiopathologic conditions, will help us to better understand the underlying mechanisms of muscle healing and will help to design more appropriate therapeutic approaches to improve muscle regeneration and to counteract muscle diseases.

Food processing by humans goes a long way back in time, e.g., heat for cooking was used 1.9 million years ago. However, meal preparation now seems to be moving out of the home kitchen, and preprocessed or processed/convenience food products are becoming a larger part of the daily diet. In addition, consumers are progressively focusing on the impact of food on their health, and they demand foods that have a high nutritional quality and an aroma and natural flavor that are similar to freshly-made products. Therefore, nutritional quality is concurrent with food safety, and sensory perception is becoming an increasingly important factor in food choices. The human digestive tract disintegrates food to allow the nutrients to be released and made available to the body. However, nutrients can undergo unwanted degradation upon processing and subsequent storage, negatively influencing the physiological effects. Different processing techniques will result in different food structures, thereby also affecting bioaccessibility and nutritional value. Hence, food scientists and industry have an increased interest in both conventional and innovative processing methods that can provide good-quality products with high nutritional value and stable shelf life. This Special Issue aims to shed some light on the latest knowledge about and developments within the effects of food processing and storage on changes of biochemical and nutritional compounds. Both original research articles and reviews are included in this book.

A variety of topics concerning ultrahigh-strength ferrous steels were collected in this book. At present, most of the ferrous steels are applied to cold sheet parts. However, they may be used as the materials of hot-forged parts in the future, because of the excellent performance of the mechanical properties. It is hoped that many researchers will have an interest in the applications of the ferrous steels to the hot-forging parts.

Medicinal plants or medicinal herbs have been identified and used since ancient times to improve the sensory characteristics of food. The main compounds found in plants correspond to four major biochemical classes: Polyphenols, terpenes, glycosides and alkaloids. Plants synthesize these compounds for a variety of purposes, including protection of the plant against fungi and bacteria, defense against insects and attraction of pollinators and dispersal agents to favor the dispersion of seeds and pollens.

It has been over 200 years since Fusarium pathogens were described for the first time, and they are still in the spotlight of researchers worldwide, mostly due to the mycotoxigenic abilities and the subsequent introduction of harmful metabolites into the food chain. The accelerating climatic changes are resulting in pathogen population and chemotype shifts all around the world, thus increasing the demand for continuous studies of factors that affect the virulence, disease severity and mycotoxin accumulation in plant tissues. This Special Issue summarizes recent advances in the field of Fusarium genetics, biology and toxicology.

This highly informative and carefully presented book discusses the preparation, processing, characterization and applications of different types of hybrid nanomaterials based on nanocellulose and/or nanocarbons. It gives an overview of recent advances of outstanding classes of hybrid materials applied in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, and materials science, among others. The content of this book is relevant to researchers in academia and industry professionals working on the development of advanced hybrid nanomaterials and their applications.

This book, Applications of Operational Research and Mathematical Models in Management, includes all the papers published in the Mathematics Special Issue with the same title. All the published papers are of high quality and were subjected to rigorous peer review. Mathematics is included in the Science Citation Index (Web of Science), and its current Impact Factor is 1.747. The papers in this book deal with on R&D performance models, methods for ranking the perspectives and indicators of a balance scorecard, robust optimization model applications, integrated production and distribution problem solving, demand functions, supply chain games, probabilistic optimization and profit research, coordinated techniques for order preference, robustness approaches in bank capital optimization, and hybrid methods for tourism demand forecasting. All the papers included contribute to the development of research.

The main objective of polymer materials scientists is to develop and design high performance polymer-based materials via the introduction of block copolymers, ionomers or inorganic-organic hybrids, in order to introduce functionalities such as mechanical reinforcement, gas barrier properties, fire retardancy, shape memory behavior or self-healing ability. In the last ten years, ionic liquids have demonstrated huge potential as new components within polymer-based materials, leading to a wide range of applications. Due to their many physical-chemical properties, as well as their various possible combinations, ionic liquids represent a new path to produce multifunctional materials.

This book gathers a collection of papers summarizing some of the latest developments in the thermomechanical processing of steels. The replacement of conventional rolling plus post-rolling heat treatments by integrated controlled forming and cooling strategies implies important reductions in energy consumption, increases in productivity and more compact facilities in the steel industry. The metallurgical challenges that this integration implies, though, are relevant and impressive developments that have been achieved over the last 40 years. The frequency of the development of new steel grades and processing technologies devoted to thermomechanically processed products is increasing, and their implementation is being expended to higher value added products and applications. In addition to the metallurgical peculiarities and relationships between chemical composition, process and final properties, the relevance impact of advanced characterization techniques and innovative modelling strategies provides new tools to achieve the further deployment of the TMCP technologies. The contents of the book cover low carbon microalloyed grades, ferritic stainless steels and Fe-Al-Cr alloys, medium-Mn steels, and medium carbon grades. Authors of the chapters of this "Thermomechanical Processing of Steels" book represent some of the most relevant research groups from both the steel industry and academia.

This Special Issue of Marine Drugs gathers recent investigations on the proteomes, metabolomes, transcriptomes, and the associated microbiomes of marine jellyfish and polyps, including bioactivity studies of their compounds and more generally, on their biotechnological potential, witnessing the increasingly recognized importance of Cnidaria as a largely untapped Blue Growth resource for new drug discovery. These researches evoke the outstanding ecological importance of cnidarians in marine ecosystems worldwide, calling for a global monitoring and conservation of marine biodiversity, so that the biotechnological exploitation of marine living resources will be carried out to conserve and sustainably use the natural capital of the oceans.

Recent years have seen the idea of a close association between nutrition and the modulation of cancer development/progression reinforced. An increasing amount of experimental and epidemiological evidence has been produced supporting the concept that many different bioactive components of food (e.g. polyphenols, mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids, methyl-group donors, etc.) may be implicated in either the promotion of or the protection against carcinogenesis. At the cellular level, such compounds can have an impact on different but sometimes intertwined processes, such as growth and differentiation, DNA repair, programmed cell death, and oxidative stress. In addition, compelling evidence is starting to build up of the existence of primary epigenetic targets of dietary compounds, such as oncogenic/oncosuppressor miRNAs or DNA-modifying enzymes, which in turn impair gene expression and function. Since there is a growing interest in the study of the biochemical and molecular role played by food components and its impact on cellular processes and/or gene expressions directed towards the fine-tuning of cancer phenotypes, in this Special Issue researchers contributed with either research or review articles presenting the latest findings on the intracellular pathways and mechanisms affected by natural bioactive dietary molecules.

The recovery of solid wastes for the preparation of innovative composite materials not only represents an economic advantage, but also offers an ecological opportunity for the utilization of by-products which would otherwise be landfilled. Specifically, the reuse and recycling of waste lead to important savings of raw materials and energy, since these by-products, generally deriv from agricultural or industrial activities, are abundant in nature. Moreover, a reduction of the environmental and related sanitary impacts can be also achieved. For this reason, a recycling operation is fundamental for the improvement of the environmental sustainability, because these secondary raw materials become a resource that can be easily reused without the modification of the peculiar characteristics, in order to obtain new and performing composites, with a low specific weight, high durability, and long life cycle.

Recent advancements in computer technology have allowed for designers to have direct control over the production process through the help of computer-based tools, creating the possibility of a completely integrated design and manufacturing process. Over the last few decades, "artificial intelligence" (AI) techniques, such as machine learing and deep learning, have been topics of interest in computer-based design and manufacturing research fields. However, efforts to develop computer-based AI to handle big data in design and manufacturing have not yet been successful. This Special Issue aims to collect novel articles covering artificial intelligence-based design, manufacturing, and data-driven design. It will comprise academics, researchers, mechanical, manufacturing, production and industrial engineers and professionals related to engineering design and manufacturing.

Preface Several countries have recently realized that the present paradigm of development in environmental and energy fields is unsustainable. As global awareness of environmental issues grows, governments worldwide are promoting policies which aim to limit the harmful effects of human development on the environment. In particular, these novel policies seek to address the rapid increase of the global temperature (especially in the polar regions) as well as to manage human plastic waste accumulating in seas. To resolve these issues will require a number of actions to be implemented; unfortunately, the recent COP 24 Conference was unsuccessful in establishing a global agreement to achieve these actions. In order for the upcoming 2020 COP 26 Conference to be successful in creating such an agreement, the scientific community must support the policymakers'' efforts. Within this framework, it is necessary to show the efforts of countries worldwide as they try to negotiate an agreement to increase the energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In addition, the research reports generated can provide quantitative measures of the necessary actions to be implemented in order to address sustainable and efficient energy use. Among other topics, the papers presented in this issue investigate innovations in novel efficient and environmentally friendly technologies mainly based on renewable energy sources. The study also highlights the different sectors involved in this task, such as energy conversion systems, urban areas, mobility, sustainability, water management, social aspects, etc. In this field, the Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES) conference provides the foremost forum for discussion on these topics. The 13th Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems Conference was held in Palermo, Italy in 2018. This Special Issue of Energies, precisely dedicated to 13th SDEWES Conference, features papers in three main topics: Energy policy and energy efficiency in urban areas, energy efficiency in industry, biomass and other miscellaneous energy systems.

This Special Issue explores underrepresented aspects of the political dimensions of global warming. It includes post- and decolonial perspectives on climate-related migration and conflict, intersectional approaches, and climate change politics as a new tool of governance. Its aim is to shed light on the social phenomena associated with anthropogenic climate change, as well as its multidimensional and far-reaching political effects, including climate-induced migration movements and climate-related conflicts in different parts of the world. In doing so, it critically engages with securitizing discourses and the resulting anti-migration arguments and policies in the Global North in order to identify and give a voice to alternative and hitherto underrepresented research and policy perspectives. In this way, it aims to contribute to a fact-based, critical, and holistic approach to human mobility and conflict in the context of political and environmental crisis.

Recent studies have highlighted that epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is not only about cell migration and invasion, but it can also govern many other important elements such as immunosuppression, metabolic reprogramming, senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), stem cell properties, therapy resistance, and tumor microenvironment interactions. With the on-going debate about the requirement of EMT for cancer metastasis, an emerging focus on intermediate states of EMT and its reverse process mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) offer new ideas for metastatic requirements and the dynamics of EMT/MET during the entire metastatic cascade. Therefore, we would like to initiate discussions on viewing EMT and its downstream signaling networks as a fulcrum of cellular plasticity, and a facilitator of the adaptive responses of cancer cells to distant organ microenvironments and various therapeutic assaults. We hereby invite scientists who have prominently contributed to this field, and whose valuable insights have led to the appreciation of epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity as a more comprehensive mediator of the adaptive response of cancer cells, with huge implications in metastasis, drug resistance, tumor relapse, and patient survival.

The book contains research articles and reviews recently published online for the MDPI journal Diversity, in the Special Issue "Genetic diversity of soil bacterial communities". The issue aimed to collect up to date information from the international scientific community to get insight in the "black box", as soil has been defined in the last decades, focusing in detail on the role that the microbial communities have in soil processes such as carbon and nutrient fluxes and on their genetic and functional diversity. The book meets the interests of scientific communities directly involved in the topics investigated, as well as of PhD students, scholars, professional organizations interested in improving their knowledge on a group of organisms considered vitally important to the maintenance and sustainability of the biosphere, where soil has a key role as an important natural resource.

Oral, periodontal diseases, chewing disorders, and many destructive inflammatory diseases of the supporting tissues of the teeth are caused by an imbalance between the host defense and environmental factors like bacteria, smoking, and poor nutrition. For these reasons, the focus should not only be on plaque control and removal of bacteria but also on improving host resistance through smoking abstention, stress reduction, and a healthy diet. The importance of micronutrients has been extensively reviewed, and it was concluded that prevention and treatment of periodontitis daily nutrition should include sufficient antioxidants, probiotics, natural agents, vitamin D, and calcium. Regarding antioxidants, vitamin C has attracted the attention of periodontal researchers. To date, there is limited available research investigating the effect of diet supplementation on the oral and periodontal condition.

The synergy between artificial intelligence and power and energy systems is providing promising solutions to deal with the increasing complexity of the energy sector. Multi-agent systems, in particular, are widely used to simulate complex problems in the power and energy domain as they enable modeling dynamic environments and studying the interactions between the involved players. Multi-agent systems are suitable for dealing not only with problems related to the upper levels of the system, such as the transmission grid and wholesale electricity markets, but also to address challenges associated with the management of distributed generation, renewables, large-scale integration of electric vehicles, and consumption flexibility. Agent-based approaches are also being increasingly used for control and to combine simulation and emulation by enabling modeling of the details of buildings'' electrical devices, microgrids, and smart grid components. This book discusses and highlights the latest advances and trends in multi-agent energy systems simulation. The addressed application topics include the design, modeling, and simulation of electricity markets operation, the management and scheduling of energy resources, the definition of dynamic energy tariffs for consumption and electrical vehicles charging, the large-scale integration of variable renewable energy sources, and mitigation of the associated power network issues.

This Special Issue presents high-quality research papers as well as review articles addressing recent advances in the use of marine bioactives in animal nutrition. The marine environment constitutes a relatively untapped source of biologically active compounds that can be applied in various areas, such as improvement of animal performance, health maintenance, and disease prevention. Numerous marine-based compounds isolated from marine organisms (especially seaweeds) have diverse biological activities, including antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral activities that can be beneficial to animal health. Additionally, the application of marine bioactives as feed additives can increase the nutritional value of products of animal origin. In this Special Issue, the main attention was focused on seaweeds and their application in poultry (laying hen and broiler chickens) and pig feed. The suitable processing of marine resources required for their optimal use as feed/feed additives was underlined. The contained publications present scientific evidence for the use of various seaweeds as feed additives that improve health (enhanced immunity, prebiotic effect), growth performance, and production. Inclusion of this unconventional material in animal nutrition can enrich products with active compounds, such as micro- and macroelements, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and pigments which are beneficial for consumers.

Cyanobacterial blooms are a water quality problem that is widely acknowledged to have detrimental ecological and economic effects in drinking and recreational water supplies and fisheries. There is increasing evidence that cyanobacterial blooms have increased globally and are likely to expand in water resources as a result of climate change. Of most concern are cyanotoxins, along with the mechanisms that induce their release and determine their fate in the aquatic environment. These secondary metabolites pose a potential hazard to human health and agricultural and aquaculture products that are intended for animal and human consumption; therefore, strict and reliable control of cyanotoxins is crucial for assessing risk. In this direction, a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that determine cyanobacterial bloom structure and toxin production has become the target of management practices. This Special Issue, entitled "Advancing Knowledge on Cyanobacterial Blooms in Freshwaters", aims to bring together recent multi- and interdisciplinary research, from the field to the laboratory and back again, driven by working hypotheses based on any aspect of mitigating cyanobacterial blooms, from ecological theory to applied research.

In all spheres of life, relationships among public and private organizations are built in order to deal with complex societal problems and to address economic challenges that cannot be dealt with by single organizations. Because of the interdependencies, interorganizational collaboration is essential, yet working across organizational boundaries is far from simple. It involves a multitude of different organizations, each having its own interests, perspectives, and identities while also varying in power and size. Further, the societal problems that are dealt with are often severe. This volume focuses on the relational complexities of interorganizational collaboration, captured by the term dynamics, referring to: (a) the social and psychological processes that occur when organizations and their representatives interact to engage in cross-boundary or collaborative work (e.g., trust and distrust, intergroup stereotyping and conflict, conflict avoidance, inclusion and exclusion of stakeholders, power dynamics), as well as (b) the development of these processes over time, in view of external and internal events and/or as a consequence of deliberate interventions to enhance collaborative success. The perspective put forward is largely psychological and sociological, both in terms of understanding the group and intergroup processes as well as efforts to intervene to develop collaborative relationships, based on action research and an organizational development approach.

Changes in land use and land cover can have many drivers, including population growth, urbanization, agriculture, demand for food, evolution of socio-economic structure, policy regulations, and climate variability. The impacts of these changes on water resources range from changes in water availability (due to changes in losses of water to evapotranspiration and recharge) to degradation of water quality (increased erosion, salinity, chemical loadings, and pathogens). The impacts are manifested through complex hydro-bio-geo-climate characteristics, which underscore the need for integrated scientific approaches to understand the impacts of landscape change on water resources. Several techniques, such as field studies, long-term monitoring, remote sensing technologies, and advanced modeling studies, have contributed to better understanding the modes and mechanisms by which landscape changes impact water resources. Such research studies can help unlock the complex interconnected influences of landscape on water resources in terms of quantity and quality at multiple spatial and temporal scales. In this Special Issue, we published a set of eight peer-reviewed articles elaborating on some of the specific topics of landscape changes and associated impacts on water resources.

ΓÇóThe aim of this Special Issue is to examine the current major topics concerning the use of social media and big data in sustainable tourism practices and to encourage interdisciplinary discussion among researchers regarding these issues. ΓÇóThis Special Issue covers all relevant areas of the debate, including 15 selected papers based on the following core ideas: smart tourism and big data, social media in the tourism industry, and online reviews and tourist behaviors. ΓÇóThis Special Issue discusses wide-ranging topics and research questions with regard to the smart tourism city, the impact of social media, online reviews, and tourist behaviors, and it represents a call to action for scholars to engage with broader social issues.

Food safety is a major problem around the world, both with regard to human suffering and with respect to economic costs. Scientific advances have increased our knowledge surrounding the nutritional characteristics of foods and their effects on health. This means that a large proportion of consumers are much more conscious with respect to what they eat and their demands for quality food. Food quality is a complex term that includes, in addition to safety, other intrinsic characteristics, such as appearance, color, texture and flavor, and also extrinsic characteristics, such as perception or involvement.

One of the most significant of the many challenges we face is how to sustain the production of food for a growing population without compromising the health of our planet. This book addresses the growing challenges of the interrelated issues of food security, social stability, and the increasing scarcity of the planet''s resources to propose sophisticated modeling innovations leading to practical approaches and solutions to multiple facets of these challenges.

Remote sensing data and techniques have been widely used for disaster monitoring and assessment. In particular, recent advances in sensor technologies and artificial intelligence-based modeling are very promising for disaster monitoring and readying responses aimed at reducing the damage caused by disasters. This book contains eleven scientific papers that have studied novel approaches applied to a range of natural disasters such as forest fire, urban land subsidence, flood, and tropical cyclones.

The appearance of the new generation in higher plants is ensured by the presence of viable seeds in the mother plant. A good number of signaling networks is necessary to provoke germination. Phytohormones play a key role in all stages of seed development, maturation, and dormancy acquisition. The dormancy of some seeds can be relieved through a tightly regulated process called after-ripening (AR) that occurs in viable seeds stored in a dry environment. Although ABA is directly involved in dormancy, recent data suggest that auxin also plays a preponderant role. On the other hand, the participation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the life of the seed is becoming increasingly confirmed. ROS accumulate at different stages of the seed''s life and are correlated with a low degree of dormancy. Thus, ROS increase upon AR and dormancy release. In the last decade, the advances in the knowledge of seed life have been noteworthy. In this Special Issue, those processes regulated by DOG1, auxin, and nucleic acid modifications are updated. Likewise, new data on the effect of alternating temperatures (AT) on dormancy release are here present. On the one hand, the transcriptome patterns stimulated at AT that encompasses ethylene and ROS signaling and metabolism together with ABA degradation were also discussed. Finally, it was also suggested that changes in endogenous ╬│-aminobutyric acid (GABA) may prevent seed germination.

The management of natural resources can be approached using different data sources and techniques, from images registered by sensors of onboard satellites to UAV platforms, using remote sensing techniques and geographic information systems, among others. The variability of problems and projects to be analyzed, studied, and solved is very wide. This book presents a collection of different experiences, ranging from the location of areas of interest to the simulation of future scenarios of a territory at local and regional scales, considering spatial resolutions ranging from centimeters to hundreds of meters. The common objective of all the works compiled in this book is to support decision-making in environmental management.

This book collects 25 scientific articles from laboratories around the world, all of which use botulinum neurotoxins as the main protagonists of their studies. The use of botulinum neurotoxin in medicine, following its ability to inhibit the effects of various disorders of different etiology on the human organism, constitutes the main topic of each article presented here. This book, which is aimed at both students and medical professionals, attempts to summarize current knowledge about the use of botulinum toxin as a therapeutic agent in many diseases, ranging from spasticity to tremor, form motor dysfunction after stroke to neuropathic pain, from hyperactive muscle to migraine, and so on. Thanks to its simplified writing, accessible to an audience who may not be familiar with the mysteries of science, readers will get new insights into this biological toxin and its multiple applications, not simply relegated to its historical use to correct of face wrinkles. Both review and research articles are presented, not only concerning animal studies, but also clinical reports. This book will provide an up-to-date picture of the state-of-the-art of the possible development of novel applications of botulinum neurotoxins for future therapeutic purposes.