Books published by Mdpi AG

Plasma catalysis is gaining increasing interest for various gas conversion applications, such as CO2 conversion into value-added chemicals and fuels, N2 fixation for the synthesis of NH3 or NOx, methane conversion into higher hydrocarbons or oxygenates. It is also widely used for air pollution control (e.g., VOC  remediation). Plasma catalysis allows thermodynamically difficult reactions to proceed at ambient pressure and temperature, due to activation of the gas molecules by energetic electrons created in the plasma. However, plasma is very reactive but not selective, and thus a catalyst is needed to improve the selectivity.In spite of the growing interest in plasma catalysis, the underlying mechanisms of the (possible) synergy between plasma and catalyst are not yet fully understood. Indeed, plasma catalysis is quite complicated, as the plasma will affect the catalyst and vice versa. Moreover, due to the reactive plasma environment, the most suitable catalysts will probably be different from thermal catalysts. More research is needed to better understand the plasma–catalyst interactions, in order to further improve the applications.

Since its conception 90 years ago, the quantum uncertainty principle introduced by Werner Heisenberg lies behind most important features of quantum physics, and its implications have an impact that goes far beyond the physics community. This book focuses on the quantum uncertainty principle, providing an up-to-date examination of recent developments of its applications in quantum information theory. The book brings together several renowned experts working in the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information theory. The authors provide different approaches to the study of uncertainty relations and other fundamental aspects of the quantum formalism. Topics addressed include entanglement and Bell inequalities, the application of entropic information measures to the study of uncertainty inequalities, the characterization of deep learning networks in the context of adiabatic quantum computation, and the study of general properties of the set of quantum states. The content of this book will surely benefit both experienced and new researchers specializing in quantum information theory and the foundations of quantum mechanics.

Libraries are places of learning and knowledge creation. Over the last two decades, digital technology—and the changes that came with it—have accelerated this transformation to a point where evolution starts to become a revolution.The wider Open Science movement, and Open Access in particular, is one of these changes and is already having a profound impact. Under the subscription model, the role of libraries was to buy or license content on behalf of their users and then act as gatekeepers to regulate access on behalf of rights holders. In a world where all research is open, the role of the library is shifting from licensing and disseminating to facilitating and supporting the publishing process itself.This requires a fundamental shift in terms of structures, tasks, and skills. It also changes the idea of a library’s collection. Under the subscription model, contemporary collections largely equal content bought from publishers. Under an open model, the collection is more likely to be the content created by the users of the library (researchers, staff, students, etc.), content that is now curated by the library.Instead of selecting external content, libraries have to understand the content created by their own users and help them to make it publicly available—be it through a local repository, payment of article processing charges, or through advice and guidance. Arguably, this is an overly simplified model that leaves aside special collections and other areas. Even so, it highlights the changes that research libraries are undergoing, changes that are likely to accelerate as a result of initiatives such as Plan S.This Special Issue investigates some of the changes in today’s library services that relate to open access.

Wine aging is a desirable and valuable process, commonly used to improve wine quality, and traditionally carried out in oak wooden casks. The correct use of oak barrels and the ever-increasing demand for barrels in the different production areas of the world has led to a constant search for technological alternatives to reproduce the chemical and physical processes undergone by wines during their stay in barrels.The aim of this Special Issue is to publish a compilation of original research and revision works that cover different aspects of the ageing processes of wine in casks and other alternative systems that reproduce, with different technologies, the transformations that take place in the barrel.Important aspects to be addressed are:the type of technological solutions that exist for wine agingthe impact of these new technologies on the final productcomparison of the effect of emerging and traditional technologies on the wine ageddifferentiation of wines undergoing different systems to avoid fraudcharacterization of the new materials used in barrel productionaccelerated aging of wines with wood and oxygen

In this unique supplement, we have compiled several state-of-the-art topics that are based on lectures delivered by eminent mycology experts during the 37th ICHS meeting. We hope that the esteemed audience of the Journal of Fungi will enjoy and appreciate the ever-evolving and complex field of fungal infections in vulnerable hosts.

The quality of drinking water is paramount for public health. Despite important improvements in the last decades, access to safe drinking water is not universal. The World Health Organization estimates that almost 10% of the population in the world do not have access to improved drinking water sources. Among other diseases, waterborne infections cause diarrhea, which kills nearly one million people every year, mostly children under 5 years of age. On the other hand, chemical pollution is a concern in high-income countries and an increasing problem in low- and middle-income countries. Exposure to chemicals in drinking water may lead to a range of chronic non-communicable diseases (e.g., cancer, cardiovascular disease), adverse reproductive outcomes, and effects on children’s health (e.g., neurodevelopment), among other health effects. Although drinking water quality is regulated and monitored in many countries, increasing knowledge leads to the need for reviewing standards and guidelines on a nearly permanent basis, both for regulated and newly identified contaminants. Drinking water standards are mostly based on animal toxicity data, and more robust epidemiologic studies with accurate exposure assessment are needed. The current risk assessment paradigm dealing mostly with one-by-one chemicals dismisses the potential synergisms or interactions from exposures to mixtures of contaminants, particularly at the low-exposure range. Thus, evidence is needed on exposure and health effects of mixtures of contaminants in drinking water. Finally, water stress and water quality problems are expected to increase in the coming years due to climate change and increasing water demand by population growth, and new evidence is needed to design appropriate adaptation policies. This Special Issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) focuses on the current state of knowledge on the links between drinking water quality and human health.

The current Special Issue of Minerals entitled “New Mineral Species and Their Crystal Structures” contains articles with full descriptions of recently discovered mineral species (verneite, thermaerogenite, parafiniukite, nöggerathite-(Ce), cerromojonite, aurihydrargyrumite, sharyginite, fiemmeite, oyonite, tiberiobardiite, and ariegilatite) and with recent results in the investigation of structures for minerals which were insufficiently studied in the crystal chemical aspect (rusinovite, barioferrite, kurchatovite, and clinokurchatovite). The described new minerals demonstrate a great chemical and structural diversity and are characterized by different formation conditions and mineral associations. The mineralogical discoveries come from many different localities around the world. All articles were prepared to a high scientific level, and the authors used a lot of modern methods for their investigation of the solid.The papers published in this Special Issue can be of interest not only to mineralogists and mineral collectors but also to physicists and chemists of solid, and specialists in the field of materials science.

There is no denying the role of empirical research in finance and the remarkable progress of empirical techniques in this research field. This Special Issue focuses on the broad topic of “Empirical Finance” and includes novel empirical research associated with financial data. One example includes the application of novel empirical techniques, such as machine learning, data mining, wavelet transform, copula analysis, and TV-VAR, to financial data. The Special Issue includes contributions on empirical finance, such as algorithmic trading, market efficiency, market microstructure, portfolio theory and asset allocation, asset pricing models, liquidity risk premium, currency crisis, return predictability, and volatility modeling.

Electromagnetic (EM) radio-wave technologies for medical imaging represent an emerging alternative diagnostic modality with some unique features, which is attracting the attention of many researchers worldwide. Diagnostic devices based on EM technology have no side-effects, as they exploit non-ionizing radiation, and their intrinsic low cost makes them sustainable for healthcare systems. This Special Issue provides a comprehensive account of this very active research area by gathering contributions that cover a variety of topics ranging from fundamental research questions to experimental validation and clinical translation.

This volume examines the applicability of central place theory in contemporary archaeological practice and thought in light of ongoing developments in landscape archaeology, by bringing together ‘central places’ and ‘un-central landscapes’ and by grasping diachronically the complex relation between town and country, as shaped by political economies and the availability of natural resources. Moving away from model-bounded approaches, central place theory is used more flexibly to include all the places that may have functioned as loci of economic or ideological centrality (even in a local context) in the past. Fourteen chapters examine centrality and un-central landscapes from Prehistory to the late Middle Ages in different geographical contexts, from Cyprus and the Levant, through Greece and the Balkans to Italy, France, and Germany.

Fertilizer application can increase crop yields and improve global food security, and thus has the potential to eliminate hunger and poverty. However, excessive amounts of fertilizer application can contribute to groundwater pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, eutrophication, deposition and disruptions to natural ecosystems, and soil acidification over time. Small farmers in many countries think inorganic fertilizers are expensive and degrade soils, and thus policymakers want to promote organic instead of inorganic fertilizers. To develop practical fertilizer recommendations for farmers, yield responses to applied fertilizers from inorganic and organic sources, indigenous nutrient supply from soil, and nutrient use efficiency require consideration. There is a lack of sufficient scientific understanding regarding the need and benefit of integrated nutrient management (i.e., judicious use of inorganic and organic sources of nutrients) to meet the nutrient demand of high-yielding crops, increase yields and profits, and reduce soil and environmental degradation. Inadequate knowledge has constrained efforts to develop precision nutrient management recommendations that aim to rationalize input costs, increase yields and profits, and reduce environmental externalities. This Special Issue of the journal provided some evidence of the usefulness of integrated nutrient management to sustain soil resources and supply nutrients to crops grown with major cereal and legume crops in some developing countries.

Mobile learning has become one of the more influential aspects of the field of educational technology, given the ubiquity of modern mobile devices and proliferation of educational applications or ‘apps’. Within this volume, there are a range of studies and reviews which cover a breadth of current topics in the field, namely user motivations for using mobile learning, issues in evaluation, as well as domain-specific considerations (e.g., use within language learning or audio-based applications). Together, these studies represent the synthesis of a range of methods, approaches, and applications that highlight benefits and areas of future growth of mobile technologies and how they can be useful and most effective in education.

The combination of global warming and urban sprawl is the origin of the most hazardous climate change effect detected at urban level: Urban Heat Island, representing the urban overheating respect to the countryside surrounding the city. This book includes 18 papers representing the state of the art of detection, assessment mitigation and adaption to urban overheating. Advanced methods, strategies and technologies are here analyzed including relevant issues as: the role of urban materials and fabrics on urban climate and their potential mitigation, the impact of greenery and vegetation to reduce urban temperatures and improve the thermal comfort, the role the urban geometry in the air temperature rise, the use of satellite and ground data to assess and quantify the urban overheating and develop mitigation solutions, calculation methods and application to predict and assess mitigation scenarios. The outcomes of the book are thus relevant for a wide multidisciplinary audience, including: environmental scientists and engineers, architect and urban planners, policy makers and students.

This Special Issue deals with crystal–chemical aspects of the zinc triad elements, thereby spanning a broad range from alloys, metal–organic compounds, and ionic compounds, through to molecular species. 

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.

Emergent quantum mechanics explores the possibility of an ontology for quantum mechanics. The resurgence of interest in "deeper-level" theories for quantum phenomena challenges the standard, textbook interpretation. The book presents expert views that critically evaluate the significance—for 21st century physics—of ontological quantum mechanics, an approach that David Bohm helped pioneer. The possibility of a deterministic quantum theory was first introduced with the original de Broglie-Bohm theory, which has also been developed as Bohmian mechanics. The wide range of perspectives that were contributed to this book on the occasion of David Bohm’s centennial celebration provide ample evidence for the physical consistency of ontological quantum mechanics. The book addresses deeper-level questions such as the following: Is reality intrinsically random or fundamentally interconnected? Is the universe local or nonlocal? Might a radically new conception of reality include a form of quantum causality or quantum ontology? What is the role of the experimenter agent? As the book demonstrates, the advancement of ‘quantum ontology’—as a scientific concept—marks a clear break with classical reality. The search for quantum reality entails unconventional causal structures and non-classical ontology, which can be fully consistent with the known record of quantum observations in the laboratory.

The present Special Issue brings together recent research findings from renowned scientists in the field of water treatment and assembled contributions on advanced technologies applied to the treatment of wastewater and drinking water, with emphasis on novel membrane treatment technologies. 12 research contributions have highlighted various processes and technologies, which can achieve effective treatment and purification of wastewater and of drinking water, aiming (occasionally) for water reuse. The main topics which are analyzed are the use of novel type membranes in bioreactors, the use of modified membranes, for example using vacuum membrane distillation, the fouling of membranes, the problem of arsenic, antimony and chromium contamination in groundwaters and its removal and the use of novel technologies for more efficient ozonation.

   Neutrosophy (1995) is a new branch of philosophy that studies triads of the form (<A>, <neutA>, <antiA>), where <A> is an entity {i.e. element, concept, idea, theory, logical proposition, etc.}, <antiA> is the opposite of <A>, while <neutA> is the neutral (or indeterminate) between them, i.e., neither <A> nor <antiA>.Based on neutrosophy, the neutrosophic triplets were founded, which have a similar form (x, neut(x), anti(x)), that satisfy several axioms, for each element x in a given set.   This collective book presents original research papers by many neutrosophic researchers from around the world, that report on the state-of-the-art and recent advancements of neutrosophic triplets, neutrosophic duplets, neutrosophic multisets and their algebraic structures – that have been defined recently in 2016 but have gained interest from world researchers.    Connections between classical algebraic structures and neutrosophic triplet / duplet / multiset structures are also studied.    And numerous neutrosophic applications in various fields, such as: multi-criteria decision making, image segmentation, medical diagnosis, fault diagnosis, clustering data, neutrosophic probability, human resource management, strategic planning, forecasting model, multi-granulation, supplier selection problems, typhoon disaster evaluation, skin lesson detection, mining algorithm for big data analysis, etc. 

Plants possess a rather complex and efficient immune system. During their evolutionary history, plants have developed various defense strategies in order to recognize and distinguishing between self and non-self, and face pathogens and animal pests. Accordingly, to study the plant innate immunity represents a new frontier in the plant pathology and crop protection fields. This book is structured in 6 sections. The first part introduces some basic and general aspects of the plant innate immunity and crop protection. Sections 2–5 focus on fungal and oomycete diseases (section 2), bacterial and phytoplasma diseases (section 3), virus diseases (section 4), and insect pests (section 5), with a number of case studies and plant–pathogen/pest interactions. The last section deals with plant disease detection and control. The book aims to highlight new trends in these relevant areas of plant sciences, providing a global perspective that is useful for future and innovative ideas.

The main aim of the current policy is to keep the environment in orbit witheconomics at the center, not considering nature or environment as simplecommodities. Preserving planet Earth’s biodiversity is crucial in order to keep itsecosystems in equilibrium.For this purpose, it is necessary to produce goods and tools using bio and ecocompatiblemethodologies whilst also increasing knowledge on the concept ofindustrial sustainability. In fact, sustainability has to be based on the 3P pillars:Planet, People and Profit, i.e., (a) the preservation of the planet’s environment; (b)the respect of people’s safety and well-being, to meet the social expectations; (c) themaintenance of the industrial profit to manufacture and compete at a global level.Without entering into any kind of neoliberal education policy, this book aimsto present new ideas to encourage those in the manufacturing industry to use bothindustrial and agricultural biomass in order to produce goods in a greener way. Itmay also encourage scientists and marketing professionals to educate theconsumer on the necessity of maintaining biodiversity without impoverishing ourplanet of crucial raw materials.This book represents a good asset for graduate students, researchers,academicians, and industrial experts working in the field of natural polymers whowish to maintain the biodiversity of our planet, improving our quality of life by theuse of green bionanotechnologies.

   Neutrosophy (1995) is a new branch of philosophy that studies triads of the form (<A>, <neutA>, <antiA>), where <A> is an entity {i.e. element, concept, idea, theory, logical proposition, etc.}, <antiA> is the opposite of <A>, while <neutA> is the neutral (or indeterminate) between them, i.e., neither <A> nor <antiA>.Based on neutrosophy, the neutrosophic triplets were founded, which have a similar form (x, neut(x), anti(x)), that satisfy several axioms, for each element x in a given set.   This collective book presents original research papers by many neutrosophic researchers from around the world, that report on the state-of-the-art and recent advancements of neutrosophic triplets, neutrosophic duplets, neutrosophic multisets and their algebraic structures – that have been defined recently in 2016 but have gained interest from world researchers.    Connections between classical algebraic structures and neutrosophic triplet / duplet / multiset structures are also studied.    And numerous neutrosophic applications in various fields, such as: multi-criteria decision making, image segmentation, medical diagnosis, fault diagnosis, clustering data, neutrosophic probability, human resource management, strategic planning, forecasting model, multi-granulation, supplier selection problems, typhoon disaster evaluation, skin lesson detection, mining algorithm for big data analysis, etc.