This book provides a general overview of virtual power plants (VPP) as a key technology in future energy communities and active distribution and transmission networks for managing distributed energy resources, providing local and global services, and facilitating market participation of small-scale managing distributed energy resources and prosumers. The book also aims at describing some practi…
Drawing upon a variety of empirical and theoretical perspectives, The Urban Climate Challenge provides a hands-on perspective about the political and technical challenges now facing cities and transnational urban networks in the global climate regime. Bringing together experts working in the fields of global environmental governance, urban sustainability and climate change, this volume explores…
Renewable energy deployment as an alternative to traditional energy sources is the cornerstone of the emission-reduction energy policies that aim to facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy. This transition poses risks and opportunities for companies with business models that rely directly or indirectly on renewables, which will be reflected in the revaluation of assets and in the real…
Anti-cancer immunotherapies have generated spectacular outcomes in the clinical environment and changed treatment schemes for cancer patients. Adoptive cell therapies (ACTs), including using autologous tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, and checkpoint blockades have emerged as the most effective treatments for certain cancers. The current challenge for c…
The rapid increase in new power electronic devices and converters for electric transportation and smart grid technologies requires a deep analysis of their component performances, considering all of the different environmental scenarios, overload conditions, and high stress operations. Therefore, evaluation of the reliability and availability of these devices becomes fundamental both from techn…
Rabbit livestock is especially important in the Mediterranean area and in the semi-arid zones of Africa, Asia, and America, representing a valuable alternative source of good animal protein of high quality (low fat and low cholesterol). However, rabbit husbandry should adapt to be a competitive and sustainable sector. In addition, it must maintain a balance between rabbit welfare, customer dema…
Challenges and Advances in Tuberculosis and Mycobacterial
Primary and secondary solar concentrators are of vital importance for advanced solar energy and solar laser researches. Some of the most recent developments in primary and secondary solar concentrators were firstly presented. A novel three-dimensional elliptical-shaped Fresnel lens analytical model was put forward to maximize the solar concentration ratio of Fresnel-lens-based solar concentrato…
The measurement of economic entities' financial strength is one of the significant challenges of modern economic and financial research. With increased financial globalization, faster economic changes, and a new dimension of increased financial risk in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis due to its biological nature and broad scope, affecting the whole world simultaneously, the issue of…
This chapter delineates an evolutionary approach to the comparative analysis of economic systems and illustrates its usefulness via an exemplary application to recent developments in the European Union. The first part of the chapter describes the meta-theoretical foundations of the approach, i.e. its particular ontological and epistemological vantage points. This allows for an easier comparison…