Technology & Engineering - General

Ankle-foot orthoses (AFOs) are crucial for those needing ankle support, but traditional designs are often bulky and lack personalization. This project explores 3D printing to revolutionize AFOs. By leveraging this additive manufacturing (ADM) technique, we aim to create AFOs that are both functional and...

Imagine a world where humanity has transcended the limitations of flesh and metal. Dive into "Ocean Cyborgs: Deep Ethnography," an exploration of a future where humans have merged with technology, venturing into the ocean's abyss not as visitors, but as inhabitants. This deep ethnography...

Infrastructure projects are the backbone of a thriving society, but cost overruns are a persistent headache. Uncertainty surrounding factors like material availability, labor costs, and unforeseen ground conditions can lead to significant budget shortfalls. This article explores strategies to reduce this uncertainty and improve...

Smart Moves: Choosing the Best Routes In today's fast-paced world, navigating from point A to point B efficiently is crucial. Whether it's your daily commute, a weekend road trip, or an important business meeting, choosing the best route can save you time, money, and...

Our buildings are like our skins - they shield us from the elements. But unlike our adaptable human bodies, traditional buildings can be energy guzzlers. The culprit? A poorly designed building envelope. The building envelope refers to everything that separates the conditioned space inside...

Clay Tech: Layered Silicates Boost Polymers The world of materials science is constantly evolving, and one exciting area of development involves the marriage of classic materials with cutting-edge technology. Clay Tech, a term encompassing the use of layered silicates to enhance polymers, exemplifies this...

Have you ever wondered how your car maintains a safe distance on the highway, or how traffic lights seem to magically adjust based on flow? The answer lies in radar sensors, a hidden technology quietly revolutionizing transportation. This book explores the fascinating world of...

Imagine a world where choices are made not on yesterday's data, but on the ever-flowing stream of information happening right now. This is the reality with Complex Event Processing (CEP). CEP analyzes real-time data like a fast-paced detective story, uncovering patterns and connections within...

From the blips and bleeps of early modems to the symphony of data flowing through today's internet, "Connecting With Sounds: A Network History" explores the fascinating story of how sound has shaped our digital world. This book takes you on a nostalgic journey, revisiting...

Imagine pipelines that transcend human limitations. No longer reliant on manual inspections, these arteries of our infrastructure utilize AI-powered drones for real-time monitoring. Self-healing materials automatically seal minor cracks, preventing catastrophic failures. Predictive analytics anticipate potential issues, allowing for preventative maintenance before problems arise....

China's economic rise is partly fueled by its strategic use of outsourcing combined with the unique concept of guanxi. Outsourcing allows China to leverage lower production costs abroad, while guanxi, a network of relationships built on reciprocity and trust, fosters smooth collaboration with foreign...

This book aims to perform an impartial analysis to evaluate the implications of the environmental costs and impacts of a wide range of technologies and energy strategies. This information is intended to be used to support decision-making by groups, including researchers, industry, regulators, and...

The concept of sustainability has been intensively used over the last decades since Brundtland s report was published in 1987. This concept, due to its transversal, horizontal and interdisciplinary nature, can be used in many disciplines, scenarios, spatio-temporal dimensions and different circumstances. The intensive...

Microelectrode arrays are increasingly used in a wide variety of situations in the medical device sector. For example, one major challenge in microfluidic devices is the manipulation of fluids and droplets effectively at such scales. Due to the laminar flow regime (i.e., low Reynolds...

The success of any activity and process depends fundamentally on the possibility of balancing (symmetry) needs and their satisfaction. That is, the ability to properly define a set of success indicators. The application of the developed new multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods can be eliminated...

This Special Issue highlights the latest enhancements in the abatement of noise and vibrations in aerospace and automotive systems. The reduction of acoustic emissions and the improvement of interior cabin comfort desired by all major transportation industries, as these areas have a direct impact...

In the modern world, the competitiveness of bioenergy- and/or bioresources-related activities heavily depends on the effectiveness of supply chain management. A large number of multidisciplinary topics are involved in the bioresources and bioenergy production fields. Although the technical issues that are related with the...

Concerns relating to energy supply and climate change have driven renewable energy targets around the world. Marine renewable energy could make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the consequences of climate change, while providing a high-technology industry. The conversion of...

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions-particularly from fossil fuel-powered vehicles and airplanes by means of weight savings and leaner fuel consumption, helps to restrain environmental impacts. In general, for a variety of industries, and specifically in the case of transport, where both weight savings...

This Special Issue "Sustainable Designed Pavement Materials" has been proposed and organized as a means to present recent developments in the field of environmentally-friendly designed pavement materials. For this reason, articles included in this special issue relate to different aspects of pavement materials, from...

Renewable energy is electricity generated by fuel sources that restore themselves over a short period of time and do not diminish. Although some renewable energy technologies impact the environment, renewables are considered environmentally preferable to conventional sources and, when replacing fossil fuels, have significant...

This multidisciplinary book covers a wide range of topics addressing critical challenges for advancing the understanding and management of shale oil and shale gas resources. Both fundamental and practical issues are considered. By covering a variety of technical topics, we aim to contribute to...

Graph theory is an important area of applied mathematics with a broad spectrum of applications in many fields. This book results from aSpecialIssue in the journal Mathematics entitled "Graph-Theoretic Problems and Their New Applications". It contains 20 articles covering a broad spectrum of graph-theoretic...

The V International Conference la ValSe-Food and VIII Symposium Chia-Link: Feeding Biodiversity and Mitigating the Effects of Climate Change: the Role of Ancestral Crops in Creating Healthy Food, was organized by the International la ValSe-Food (Iberoamerican Valuable Seeds) Network-CYTED. The conference was held from...

The maritime shipping sector toward intelligent and safe navigation is intrinsically tied to the integration of cutting-edge technologies (i.e., AI and big data). These technologies are being harnessed across multiple facets of the maritime domain. It is evident that these methodologies have the potential...

Nowadays, multi-UAV systems reveal great potential value in applications such as surveillance, disaster rescue, mapping, cargo delivery, etc. Through coordination among multiple or even a swarm of UAVs, multi-UAV systems can improve mission capability, survivability, and flexibility. Regarding the key technologies, multi-UAV networks are...

This Special Issue presents a collection of recent advancements in sediment transport research and hydraulic engineering that contribute to filling the knowledge gap in morphodynamic processes at different scales, with an outlook towards innovative river engineering approaches, monitoring systems, available technologies, and management practices...

"Advances in the Experimentation and Numerical Modeling of Material Joining Processes" is an innovative compilation offering a comprehensive exploration of the latest developments in material-joining techniques. With 22 chapters, this MDPI scientific reprint addresses adhesive bonding, welding, friction stir welding, hybrid joining, and miscellaneous...

Wood composites have shown very good performance, and substantial service lives when correctly specified for the exposure risks present. Selection of an appropriate product for the job should be accompanied by decisions about the appropriate protection, whether this is by design, by preservative treatment...

The massive increase in energy demand and the related rapid development of unconventional reservoirs has opened up exciting new energy supply opportunities along with new, seemingly intractable engineering and research challenges. The energy industry has primarily depended on a heuristic approach--rather than a systematic...

Nowadays, the sustainable built environment planning in most cities has come to a turning point as the growth in traffic and population has become a serious concern and put tremendous pressure on both the environment and people in these cities. It is therefore important...

This book presents interesting samples of theoretical and practical advances of symmetry in multidisciplinary engineering applications. It covers several applications, such as accessibility and traffic congestion management, path planning for mobile robots, analysis of shipment service networks, fault diagnosis methods in electrical circuits and...

With increasing power levels and power densities in electronics systems, thermal issues are becoming more and more critical. The elevated temperatures result in changing electrical system parameters, changing the operation of devices, and sometimes even the destruction of devices. To prevent this, the thermal...

Energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies are key contributors to curtailing the emission of greenhouse gases that continue to cause global warming. The efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions also strongly affect electrical power systems. Renewable sources, storage systems, and flexible loads provide new system...

Bionanoparticles such as microorganisms and exosomes are recoganized as important targets for clinical applications, food safety, and environmental monitoring. Other nanoscale biological particles, includeing liposomes, micelles, and functionalized polymeric particles are widely used in nanomedicines. The recent deveopment of microfluidic and nanofluidic technologies has...

Wind turbine aerodynamics is one of the central subjects of wind turbine technology. To reduce the levelized cost of energy (LCOE), the size of a single wind turbine has been increased to 12 MW at present, with further increases expected in the near future....

The editors of this Special Issue titled "Intelligent Control in Energy Systems" have attempted to create a book containing original technical articles addressing various elements of intelligent control in energy systems. In response to our call for papers, we received 60 submissions. Of those...

In recent years, wireless communications have significantly evolved due to the advanced technology of smartphones;, portable devices; and the rapid growth of Internet of Things, e-Health, and intelligent transportation systems . Moreover, there is anare increasing need fors of emerging intelligent services like positioning...

Riverbank filtration (RBF) schemes for the production of drinking water are increasingly challenged by new constituents of concern, such as organic micropollutants and pathogens in the source water and hydrological flow variations due to weather extremes. RBF and new technology components are integrated and...

Photovoltaics, among the different renewable energy sources (RES), has become more popular. In recent years, however, many research topics have arisen as a result of the problems that are constantly faced in smart-grid and microgrid operations, such as forecasting of the output of power...

Fluid flow and heat transfer processes play an important role in many areas of science and engineering, from the planetary scale (e.g., influencing weather and climate) to the microscopic scales of enhancing heat transfer by the use of nanofluids; understood in the broadest possible...

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...

There are many regions worldwide which are susceptible to extreme loads such as earthquakes. These can cause loss of life and adverse impacts on civil infrastructures, the environment, and communities. A series of methods and measures have been used to mitigate the effects of...

As computer and space technologies have been developed, geoscience information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) technologies, which deal with the geospatial information, have been rapidly maturing. Moreover, over the last few decades, machine learning techniques including artificial neural network (ANN), deep learning, decision...

HVAC systems, load shifting, indoor climate, and energy and ventilation performance analyses are the key topics when improving energy performance in new and renovated buildings. This development has been boosted by the recently established nearly zero energy building requirements that will soon be in...

The aim of this Special Issue is to present the latest theoretical and experimental achievements concerning the mechanisms of microstructural change in metallic materials subject to different processing methods, and their effect on mechanical properties. It is my pleasure to present a series of...

This book presents an interesting sample of the latest advances in optimization techniques applied to electrical power engineering. It covers a variety of topics from various fields, ranging from classical optimization such as Linear and Nonlinear Programming and Integer and Mixed-Integer Programming to the...

Challenging problems arise in all segments of energy industries--generation, transmission, distribution and consumption. Optimization models and methods play a key role in offering decision/policy makers better information to assist them in making sounder decisions at different levels, ranging from operational to strategic planning. This...

The book features contributions that report original research in the theoretical, technological, and social aspects of geoinformation methods, as applied to supporting citizen science. Specifically, the book focuses on the technological aspects of the field and their application toward the recruitment of volunteers and...

This Special Issue contains a series of excellent research works on telecommunications and signal processing, selected from the 2018 41st International Conference on Telecommunications and Signal Processing (TSP) which was held on July 4-6, 2018, in Athens, Greece. The conference was organized in cooperation...