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“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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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 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.

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.