mdpi ag sep 2017 (10 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are released from both static and mobile sources (e.g., industrial, transport, household, fossil fuels use, and many other sources). They are emitted into the atmosphere, taken up by plants, and ingested by animals to be bio accumulated along the food chain up to the apex predator. Many of these pollutants are classified as being toxic/carcinogenic by varying degrees and pose a worldwide risk to the environment and human health. Exposure (through different exposure pathways, i.e., inhalation, dermal absorption, ingestion, etc.) to those hazardous pollutants can damage the immune, neurological, reproductive (e.g., reduced fertility), developmental, and respiratory systems of humans and animals. More efforts are thus needed to improve the method of their detection and treatment. This Special Issue aims to present articles emphasizing more than one of all the available tools to monitor or treat VOCs: (1) measurement techniques for VOC; (2) treatment techniques for VOC; and (3) all important environmental issues associated with the management of VOCs.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The discovery of monolayer graphene led to a Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded in 2010. This has stimulated further research on a wide variety of two-dimensional (2D) layered materials. The coupling of metallic graphene, semiconducting 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) and black phosphorus have attracted a tremendous amount of interest in new electronic and optoelectronic applications. Together with other 2D materials, such as the wide band gap boron nitride nanosheets (BNNSs), all these 2D materials have led towards an emerging field of van der Waal 2D heterostructures. The papers in this book were originally published by Electronics (MDPI) in a Special Issue on 'Two-Dimensional Electronics and Optoelectronics'. The book consists of eight papers, including two review articles, covering various pertinent and fascinating issues concerning 2D materials and devices. Further, the potential and the challenges of 2D materials are discussed, which provide up to date guidance for future research and development.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Major oil spills attract the attention of the public and the media. This was especially the case after the Deepwater Horizon spill. In recent years, this attention has created a global awareness of the risks of oil spills and the damage they do to the environment. Oil is a necessity in our industrial society, however, and a major component of our lifestyle. This means that the risk of major spills continues as does the interest in spills.The Deepwater Horizon spill began a new series of scientific studies that have greatly increased our understanding of oil spills. This book contains 10 such studies. These studies vary from toxicity studies to social studies of human reaction to spills and risk. Importantly, the book is a sampling of important new topics that have become important after the Deepwater Horizon spill. These new topics include new chemical and tracing techniques, new risk perception techniques, perspectives on human health and spills, and discussion on new fuels. This book makes a significant contribution to the understanding of facets of spills and explores 10 very different facets of oil spills.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - In the face of climate change and resource scarcity, energy supply systems are on the verge of a major transformation, which mainly includes the introduction of new components and their integration into the existing infrastructures, new network configurations and reliable topologies, optimal design and novel operation schemes, and new incentives and business models. This revolution is affecting the current paradigm and demanding that energy systems be integrated into multi-carrier energy hubs. It is highly increasing the interactions between today's energy systems at various scales and future intelligent energy systems, which are able to incorporate an increasing amount renewable energy sources. This transformation is also accommodating active participation of end-users as responsive prosumers at different scales which in turn helps to reduce energy costs and to mitigate carbon footprints. This book covers the mentioned promising and dynamic areas of research and development, and reports on contributions in design, control and optimization of integrated energy systems. The contents of the book which are gathered based on the accepted articles in the special issue on Advances in Integrated Energy systems Design, Control and Optimization also covers a variety of topics, ranging from operation and control of small-scale electrical networks to the complex energy systems design and planning.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The MYTOX association research platform, MYTOX 'Mycotoxins and Toxigenic Moulds' was established in 2007 and consists of more than 50 researchers from 12 research laboratories in the Ghent University Association. MYTOX deals with mycotoxin research in a multi-disciplinary way, based on four main themes: (1) mycotoxins; (2) toxigenic fungi; (3) mycotoxins and animal health; and (4) mycotoxins and human health. In this way, MYTOX tackles the mycotoxin issue along the production chain from the field to the end consumer, within the 'One Health' concept. We welcomed over 100 scientists, researchers and representatives from industry, government as well as academia at the 5th edition of the MYTOX International Symposium, held in Ghent on May 11, 2016. The program included oral and poster presentations related to fungal-related disease monitoring and mycotoxin production; mycotoxin analysis in food and feed, as well as in animal and human biological samples; prevention on the field; management strategies during food and feed storage and processing.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Complex systems is a new approach to science, engineering, health and management that studies how relationships between parts give rise to the collective emergent behaviours of the entire system, and how the system interacts with its environment.A system can be thought of as complex if its dynamics cannot be easily predicted, or explained, as a linear summation of the individual dynamics of its components. In other words, the many constituent microscopic parts bring about macroscopic phenomena that cannot be understood by considering a single part alone ('the whole is more than the sum of the parts'). There is a growing awareness that complexity is strongly related to criticality: the behaviour of dynamical spatiotemporal systems at an order/disorder phase transition where scale invariance prevails. Complex systems can also be viewed as distributed information-processing systems. Consciousness emerging from neuronal activity and interactions, cell behaviour resultant from gene regulatory networks and swarming behaviour are all examples of global system behaviour emerging as a result of the local interactions of the individuals (neurons, genes, animals). Can these interactions be seen as a generic computational process This question shapes the special issue, linking computation to complexity and criticality.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Microfluidics has developed rapidly over the past three decades. Relentless diagnostic, medical and chemical applications have been demonstrated in various applications, plateforms and tools. Have microfluidics realized its full potential Or is it only a leveraging academic tool In this Special Issue, we focus on both insights and advancements in microfluidics. We invite emerging investigators and pioneers to contribute commentaries, perspectives and insightful reviews on related topics. The various insights from esteemed colleagues will be collated. We will also discuss technological breakthrough of original works in both short communications and full papers. The main idea is to stimulate the community and to provide an unique collection of insightful papers. We will also cover various topics ranging from 3D printing, paper-based microfludics to conventional polymer-based microfluidics which contributes to the technological advancements.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This book consists of the articles published in the special issues of this Symmetry journal based on two-by-two matrices and harmonic oscillators. The book also contains additional articles published by the guest editor in this Symmetry journal. They are of course based on harmonic oscillators and/or two-by-two matrices. The subject of symmetry is based on exactly soluble problems in physics, and the physical theory is not soluble unless it is based on oscillators and/or two-by-two matrices. The authors of those two special issues were aware of this environment when they submitted their articles. This book could therefore serve as an example to illustrate this important aspect of symmetry problems in physics.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - In 1692, Newton wrote: 'That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else by and through which their action or force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters any competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this agent be material or immaterial is a question I have left to the consideration of my readers'. One of them who, just over 200 years later, picked up the baton of Newton was Albert Einstein. His General Theory of Relativity, which had its centenary in 2015, opened up new windows on our comprehension of Nature, disclosed new, previously unpredictable, phenomena occurring when relative velocities dramatically change in intense gravitational fields reaching values close to the speed of light and, for the first time after millennia of speculations, put Cosmology on the firm grounds of empirically testable science. This Special Issue was dedicated to this grand achievement of the human thought.

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Symmetry is found everywhere, to a greater or lesser degree. It is essential in all sciences and also as the basic substrate in all arts. The same happens with Complex Networks, which are the majority of all those that interest for advanced knowledge, that is, for research. That is why these two themes have been unified here, whose intersection we are dealing with: in its first part, of fundamentals, and in its second part of applications, which are multiple in the world today.