Books published by Mdpi AG

Environmental problems derived from the massive use of conventional energy resources are one of the main issues that our society has been facing in recent decades. Renewable energies (and particularly solar energy) have become a highly competitive means to meet the world’s increasing energy demands in a sustainable and clean manner. One of the key research challenges for the commercial deployment of several solar energy technologies is focused on the development of feasible and durable coatings that withstand appropriate optical and thermal performance over the lifetime of the solar facilities. This book addresses a number of relevant aspects related to coatings for renewable energies, including a deep survey of coatings used in photovoltaic solar energy, the development of a superhydrophobic and thermal stable silica coating that is potentially suitable for various industrial applications related to renewable technologies, the development of coatings to improve the resistance of structural materials used in concentrating solar thermal technologies with molten salts, and several research works related to solar reflectors for concentrating solar thermal technologies (such us the advanced analysis of the corrosion, the suitability of anti-soiling coatings, and the development of top protective coatings for high-temperature secondary concentrators).

Advances in materials are crucial to the development of sports equipment, from tennis rackets to skis to running shoes. Materials-driven improvements in equipment have helped athletes perform better, while enhancing safety and making sport more accessible and enjoyable. This book brings together a collection of 10 papers on the topic of sports materials, as published in a Special Issue of Applied Sciences. The papers within this book cover a range of sports, including golf, tennis, table tennis and baseball. State-of-the-art engineering techniques, such as finite element modelling, impact testing and full-field strain measurement, are applied to help further our understanding of sports equipment mechanics and the role of materials, with a view to improving performance, enhancing safety and facilitating informed regulatory decision making. The book also includes papers that describe emerging and novel materials, including auxetic materials with their negative Poisson’s ratio (fattening when stretched) and knits made of bamboo charcoal. This collection of papers should serve as a useful resource for sports engineers working in both academia and industry, as well as engineering students who are interested in sports equipment and materials.

Energy markets are already undergoing considerable transitions to accommodate new (renewable) energy forms, new (decentral) energy players, and new system requirements, e.g. flexibility and resilience. Traditional energy markets for fossil fuels are therefore under pressure, while not-yet-mature (renewable) energy markets are emerging. As a consequence, investments in large-scale and capital intensive (traditional) energy production projects are surrounded by high uncertainty, and are difficult to hedge by private entities. Traditional energy production companies are transforming into energy service suppliers and companies aggregating numerous potential market players are emerging, while regulation and system management are playing an increasing role. To address these increasing uncertainties and complexities, economic analysis, forecasting, modeling and investment assessment require fresh approaches and views. Novel research is thus required to simulate multiple actor interplays and idiosyncratic behavior. The required approaches cannot deal only with energy supply, but need to include active demand and cover systemic aspects. Energy market transitions challenge policy-making. Market coordination failure, the removal of barriers hindering restructuring and the combination of market signals with command-and-control policy measures are some of the new aims of policies. The aim of this Special Issue is to collect research papers that address the above issues using novel methods from any adequate perspective, including economic analysis, modeling of systems, behavioral forecasting, and policy assessment.The issue will include, but is not be limited to: Local control schemes and algorithms for distributed generation systems Centralized and decentralized sustainable energy management strategies Communication architectures, protocols and properties of practical applications Topologies of distributed generation systems improving flexibility, efficiency and power quality Practical issues in the control design and implementation of distributed generation systems Energy transition studies for optimized pathway options aiming for high levels of sustainability

Research without statistics is like water in the sand; the latter is necessary to reap the benefits of the former. This collection of articles is designed to bring together different approaches to applied statistics. The studies presented in this book are a tiny piece of what applied statistics means and how statistical methods find their usefulness in different fields of research from theoretical frames to practical applications such as genetics, computational chemistry, and experimental design.This book presents several applications of the statistics: A new continuous distribution with five parameters-the modified beta Gompertz distribution; A method to calculate the p-value associated with the Anderson-Darling statistic; An approach of repeated measurement designs; A validated model to predict statement mutations score; A new family of structural descriptors, called the extending characteristic polynomial (EChP) family, used to express the link between the structure of a compound and its properties.This collection brings together authors from Europe and Asia with a specific contribution to the knowledge in regards to theoretical and applied statistics.