**14. Conclusions**

However, in the presence of MBs the amount of required power is substantially reduced because the MBs decrease the amount of energy needed for the process of cavitation, leading to MB collapse due to excessive oscillations induced by ultrasound pulses. Furthermore, cavitation of MBs in capillary beds leads to a capillary permeability increase, thus improving local access of the released therapeutic drug [139]. The clinical use of virus-based vectors for gene therapy is limited. This is due to the fact that immune response can be induced by viral proteins in the target tissue and elicit a strong inflammatory activation of endothelial cells. However, it has been shown that when e.g. plasmids and antisense oligonucleotides are used in non-viral delivery vehicles, transfection efficiency is decreased and the expression of the gene product is transient. Commonly used MB preparation Levovist enhanced the beta-Gal gene transfection efficiency more than 6-fold and Optison were used for gene transfer to cardiomyocytes. The transfection efficiencies are significantly higher than that of no MB and

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a specialized system of capillary endothelial cells preventing harmful substances in the blood stream from entering the brain.  The BBB regulates transport through both tight junctions and metabolic barriers and is often a rate-limiting factor in determining permeation of therapeutic drugs into the brain. It is a significant obstacle affecting delivery of both small molecules and macromolecular agents. Despite the fact that a variety of drugs could be potentially used to treat brain diseases, no method exists that would allow non-invasive-

Ultrasound can be used to locally deliver a drug or gene to a specific region of interest in the brain. The benefit of the MB technique is that it can be used on a very small area of the BBB. MBs are used in combination with ultrasound exposure. The effects of ultrasound can be focused upon the vasculature to reduce the acoustic intensity required for BBB opening production. Several pathways of transcapillary passage after ultrasound sonication have been recognized, including transcytosis, passage through endothelial cell cytoplasmic openings holeyed by "nanoschrapnels" produced by explosion of MB, opening of tight junctions by

The major cause of death in Western countries is thrombo-occlusive cardiovascular disease, with acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) being a serious medical condition leading to high morbidity and mortality. Two main treatment strategies have been developed during the past years. Their aim is to immediately restore coronary blood flow. In the first studies it was shown that fibrinolysis may be accelerated by ultrasound alone. Besides that, fibrinolysis can be even more increased by the addition of MBs which are destroyed by ultrasound induced high pressure. Three mechanisms leading to this increase have been proposed. The first is the occurrence of complete stress based on micro-jets formed after the destruction of the MBs by ultrasound. The second mechanism is the generation of reactive oxygen species in endothelial cells. The third proposed mechanism is a temperature increase,

oscillating MBs and free passage through injured endothelium [136, 140, 141].

it is similar to Levovist [97, 100, 114].

targeted delivery through the BBB.

**13.3. Thrombolysis and thrombus destruction**

**13.2. Blood-brain barrier**

104 Advances in Bioengineering

LNPs and MBs are examples of the successful transfer of basic and applied research into commercial medicinal products. Biocompatibility and biodegradability of LNPs together with versatility in modification and functionalization are features which put together favour their application in medicine. Combinations of LNPs and MBs make best use of both technologies to form new theranostic systems that could form the basis of future advanced therapeutics.


*4.11. Analysis of Cell Cycle and Cell Death Using Fluorescence-Activated Cell Scanning (FACS) Flow Cytometry*

For FACS based analysis of the cell cycle changes upon *LINC01133* knockdown, we used standard propidium iodide (PI) DNA staining protocol. In brief, transfected cells were harvested 72 h after siRNA knockdown and 1 × 106 cells were fixed in 70% precooled ethanol for 2 h on ice. After washing with PBS (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA) the cells were re-suspended in 0.5 mL PI/RNAse containing staining buffer (550825), BD Pharminogen™, Heidelberg, Germany) supplemented with 10 µL PI staining solution (51-6621-1E, BD Pharmingen™, Heidelberg, Germany). After incubation for 15 minutes at room temperature, the number of PI positive cells was measured by flow cytometry. The effect of *LINC01133* on cellular apoptotic rate was evaluated using staining with AnnexinV (FITC-conjugated antibody (640906), BioLegend, San Diego, CA, USA; Annexin V Binding Buffer, (422201), BioLegend, San Diego, CA, USA) in conjunction with the vital dye 7-amino-actomycin D (00-6993-50) eBioscience, San Diego, CA, USA) followed by flow cytometry measurement. A total of 1 × 106 cells 72 h after transfection was used in the analysis, with a total of 10,000 events recorded for each sample, and unstained cells being used as assay control.


*Edited by Omar M. Basha and Badie I. Morsi*

This book covers a wide variety of topics related to the application of experimental methods, in addition to the pedagogy of chemical engineering laboratory unit operations. The purpose of this book is to create a platform for the exchange of different experimental techniques, approaches and lessons, in addition to new ideas and strategies in teaching laboratory unit operations to undergraduate chemical engineering students. It is recommended for instructors and students of chemical engineering and natural sciences who are interested in reading about different experimental setups and techniques, covering a wide range of scales, which can be widely applied to many areas of chemical engineering interest.

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Laboratory Unit Operations and Experimental Methods in Chemical Engineering

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Allana Azevedo do Nascimento Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil

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**1. Introduction**

As a result of significant agricultural and industrial advancements in parallel with the peace and security afforded after the second world war, the global population has almost tripled from 2.7 billion to 7.5 billion in just seventy years [1]. This increase, accompanied by the changes in lifestyle (including eating habits) seen in many regions, is now placing significant stress on various natural resources (including but not limited to water) vital for human requirements. These requirements are categorized into basic, psychological, and self-fulfilment needs, based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs [2,3]. This research focuses on the water requirement, which might be considered the most important yet basic requirement for humans to survive. Nevertheless, the demand for this resource has never been greater than in the last few decades [4–6], especially in developing countries, where exceptional population growth, increased urbanization [7], and expansion in industrial and agricultural sectors have resulted in extreme water demand and water stress. The previous conditions could highly exacerbate the situation in some arid and semi-arid regions (ASAR) where limited natural water resources (WR) are available. Therefore, special attention and preparation should be given to this issue to ensure the longevity of these crucial resources, especially in regions with difficult climatic and weather-related issues, such as ASAR.

**Citation:** Alsaeed, B.S.; Hunt, D.V.L.; Sharifi, S. Sustainable Water Resources Management Assessment Frameworks (SWRM-AF) for Arid and Semi-Arid Regions: A Systematic Review. *Sustainability* **2022**, *14*, 15293. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su142215293

Academic Editors: Luis Garrote, Alban Kuriqi and Hossein Bonakdari

Received: 29 June 2022 Accepted: 11 November 2022 Published: 17 November 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

The term arid is typically used to describe the climate of regions that suffer from very high temperature and receive less than 100 mm of rainfall per year [8]. In contrast, the term semi-arid describes regions where the annual rainfall is between 250 and 500 mm/year [9]. Both types of regions feature evapotranspiration rates that are higher than the precipitation rate, with the potential for frequent severe droughts and infrequent but considerable floods [10]. Moreover, these regions are globally characterized as the most water-stressed areas, where the groundwater (GW), stored in aquifers, is the primary water source [11]. However, since some ASAR are characterized by low rainfall rates, and rain is essential to the speed and recharge time of aquifers, the use of GW is not very sustainable [12,13]. Furthermore, high dependence on GW with intensive pumping makes it prone to pollution, such as salinity intrusion [14,15]. Conversely, in coastal regions, water supply from desalination plants with many of the current technologies is unsustainable, given the high energy, environmental impact, and economic cost [16–18]. Therefore, water resources management (WRM) in such regions requires careful planning and assessment of sustainability, and thus requires appropriate tools.

Furthermore, global warming phenomena and the impacts of climate change are further pressurizing WR over the globe [5,19–22], not least in ASAR, requiring new solutions and approaches on both the demand and supply sides. Thus, the scientific community has conducted several meetings and studies during the last decades to address the consequences of such a trend [23–27]. One of the early attempts to deal with this issue was in 1992 during the International Conference on Water and the Environment [28], which ended with the declaration of the four Dublin principles, the third one stating clearly that any "development and management" in regard to water "should be based on a participatory approach ... at all levels". Hence, this principle informed one of the main strategies to enhance WRM and ensure the continuity of WR.

Assessing and managing WR in ASAR in a way that usefully informs decision-making is fraught with difficulty, especially with what appears to be a lack of region-specific frameworks, a lack of data collection and in the context of the natural and socio-economic (i.e., Sustainability) settings in which this needs to happen. A research gap exists in terms of identifying what general sustainable water resources management (SWRM) assessment frameworks exist, and whether they are applicable to ASAR. This is a key underlying philosophy behind this paper, the findings of which will be used to identify whether (a) existing frameworks are fit-for-purpose in ASAR; or (b) a bespoke framework should be derived. Moreover, if the latter outcome is found to be true, and in order to avoid reinventing the wheel, the systematic review and analysis of existing frameworks can be used to inform its derivation.

#### *1.1. Sustainability and Sustainable Water Resources Management (SWRM)*

The water cycle and its impact on related ecosystems represent a great example of a sustainable process that has existed for millions of years. However, current water demands and global climatic changes are impacting its ability to remain so [29,30].

The use of the terms "sustainability" and "sustainable development" has become ever more popular since Bruntland's [31] definition: "*to ensure that the current development meets the needs of current generation's without negatively impacting the capability of future generations to meet their needs*". This has never been more important than for SWRM in ASAR, where GW is becoming depleted, negatively impacting the ability of future generations to draw down water and meet their needs—which due to growing populations, will be greater than today.

Another definition or principle for sustainability was introduced by Elkington [32] as: "*sustainability aims to ensure that the range of economic*, *social*, *and environmental options would stay open and not limited for the future generations because they were not hindered by the current human actions.*" This has paved the way for the introduction of 17 sustainable development goals (SDG), the sixth of which is to "*ensure availability and sustainable management of water*

*and sanitation for all*" [33]. This study is significant and motivated by such a global goal, and has never been more relevant in ASAR.

Sustainability itself has been widely recognized to stand on three common pillars or dimensions: the environment, the economy, and the society [34–38]. In other words, to obtain a sustainable system, its environment should be protected, the economy should be viable, and social equity and acceptance should be considered as much as possible.

Meanwhile, the importance of achieving a balance (rather than a trade-off) between these dimensions of sustainability has been a catalyst for much discussion [39–42]. For example, selling water in plastic bottles is both profitable for companies (economic) and satisfies the needs of many people (Social). However, the impact of this business on the environment is harmful if the bottles are not recycled. Therefore, to enhance the sustainability of any system, all three pillars need to be in balance. Moreover, for ASAR, the points at which the pillars interact for SWRM need to be considered ever more readily.


**5.4 Expanding on limitations and challenges**

Continuing the discussion on the challenges of implementing AI, blockchain, and cloud computing in energy management:

decision-making, critical for efficient energy management. Data security remains a concern, as sensitive energy consumption data stored in the cloud could be vulnerable to breaches. Moreover, the financial implications of long-term cloud service usage, coupled with potential vendor lock-in, require consideration.

Common challenges: Overcoming resistance to change and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration is essential. Organizations must navigate complex regulatory landscapes and ensure compliance with data protection laws. Comprehensive cost– benefit analyses are vital to assess the viability of these technologies in the context of energy savings. Ultimately, addressing these challenges demands a holistic approach that balances technological innovation, energy efficiency goals, and practical considerations.

While AI, blockchain, and cloud computing offer solutions to IoT-enabled energy management challenges, their successful integration require careful consideration of their respective limitations and the unique demands of energy systems. By thoughtfully applying these technologies, energy management can be transformed, enhancing efficiency, security, and sustainability.


**3. PFASs as a threat to sub-Saharan African medicinal plants**

For centuries, medicine plants have played a therapeutic role in the lives of millions of people in developing countries worldwide, and in sub-Saharan African regions, in particular. In addition, it has been reported that, due to their bioactive organic chemical compounds content, also referred to as phytochemicals, these plants have been able to play a defensive role against major chronic ailments in both host-metabolic or genetic dysfunctional and infectious diseases, thus making them beneficial for human and animal health [86, 87]. In sub-Saharan African countries (**Figure 1**), millions of people depend on medicinal plants for their primary healthcare therapy for obvious reasons such as, these people are inhabitants who live closer to the natural vegetation such as forests, with an estimated 216,634,000 ha of closed forest [12] and savannas\_ the later having been reported to be rich in biodiversity with an estimated 71% of vegetation of these ecosystems being medicinal plants, the easy and free access to these plants, as well as the prohibitive cost of orthodox products [87, 88].

Furthermore, the reviewed literature has reported that many different plant species might be used to treat specific ailment(s) in various sub-Saharan African countries, as well as a particular plant being used for the same kind of illness in two or more countries, thus implying the variety and abondance of these plants in the region and the history that these countries previously shared. For example, a recent article reported on antimalarial medicinal plants used in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DRC, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Namibia, Nigeria, Uganda, Senegal, South Africa, Rwanda, Togo, Zambia and Zimbabwe (thus representing all the sub-Saharan regions, see **Figure 1**), with the following plant species used in numerous countries, namely: *Azadirachta indica* (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Togo, Uganda and Zimbabwe), *Nauclea latifolia* (Benin, Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo), *Carica papaya* (Benin, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe*), Cassia siamea* (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, Togo,

#### *Medicinal Plants Threatened by Undocumented Emerging Pollutants: The Sub-Saharan African… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103825*

Zambia and Zimbabwe)*, Ficus sur Forssk* (Burkina Faso, Gabon, Guinea, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Togo and Uganda), *Cassia occidentalis* L*.* (Benin, Kenya, Ghana, Namibia, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe), *Jatropha curcas* L (Benin, Ghana, Guinea, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia)*, Maytenus* sp. *nov.* A. (Benin, Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan and Zambia), *Tamarindus* indica L. (Benin, Ethiopia, Guinea, Kenya, Uganda, Togo and Zambia)*, Vernonia amygdalina* (Benin, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia), *Tithonia diversifolia* A. Gray (Burkina Faso, Guinea, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda and Zimbabwe), *Adansonia* digitata L. (Benin, Namibia, Nigeria, Togo and Zambia), *Momordica foetida* Schumach. (Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe), *Securidaca longepeduculata* Fresen (Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia), and *Flueggea virosa* (Willd.) Voigt (Benin, Kenya, Togo and Uganda), *Ximenia americana* L. (Guinea, Kenya, South Africa and Zambia), and *Zanthoxylum chalybeum* Engl (Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia) [11]; and for the management of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the sub-Saharan region, *Ximenia americana* has been in use (Zambia, Uganda and Kenya), and *Azadirachta indica* (Uganda and Kenya) [89–91]. Similarly, numerous studies have highlighted the antidiabetic potential of several hundreds of sub-Saharan African medicinal plants [4].

Additionally, a valuable review article has highlighted the commercial importance of African medicinal plants, including 13 species (i.e., *Catharanthus roseus*, *Centella asiatica*, *Coffea arabica*, *Cissampelos pareira*, *Cyclopia genistoides*, *Pausinystalia johimbe*, *Synsepalum dulcificum*, *Sclerochiton illicifolius*, *Strophanthus gratus*, *Physostigma venenosum*, *Thaumatococcus daniellii, Voacanga africana* and *V. thouarsii*) which are sources of commercially important chemical constituents, and has, to some extents, represented approximately 10% of commercially developed medicinal plants [13]. The review has further suggested that presently Africa is home to more than 80 beneficial commercial medicinal plant species that are on international markets, and this, in our view confirms the argument that the demand for medicinal plants, including African, is increasing at an alarming rate [7]. Interested readers are encouraged to read this remarkable review article [13] as it depicts a well-informed selection of most popular and important medicinal plants distributed in the different sub-Saharan regions (**Figure 1**).

Nevertheless, albeit the promising prospects of these plants as alluded to, knowledges on African medicinal plants are still very limited in comparison to other societies, such as the Chinese and Indian; this is so because, unlike in China and India where medicinal plants have extensively been researched and documented, studies of African medicinal plants have not been taken seriously. For example, recent evidence from sub-Saharan-southern African region highlighted 257 plant species from this region that are used traditionally for the treatment of viral respiratory ailments, but only one of these plants has this far been tested for its ability to constrain respiratory viruses by means of its ethnobotanical usage [92]; while of the 555 medicinal plants identified to treat inflammation and pain, from the same region, only few have been relatively screened for their anti-inflammatory properties, which prompted the researchers to recommend that further studies be undertaken in that regard [93]. Substantial, this lack of seriousness in this domain has led to information on African medicinal plants either being unavailable or fragmented and, in the end, incompletely documented [12, 13].

Certainly, the challenges that sub-Saharan African medicinal plants are subjected to are numerous [4]. For instance, it has been indicated that there's an urgent need to increase the documentation on sub-Saharan African medicinal plants because of their accelerated losses due to anthropogenic activities [12]. For example, the rate of the loss of natural forest cover or deforestation on the African continent is one of the highest globally [7, 12]. Basically, the global deforestation rate stands at 0.6%, but this rate is at 6.5%, 5.0% and 2.1% in sub-Saharan Africa for countries such as the Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria and the DRC respectively [12, 94]. Additionally, sub-Saharan African medicinal plants are affected by unsustainable harvesting methods [7, 11, 13, 16, 87], fires, wattle expansion or eradication program and grazing [7, 87], coupled with human settlement expansions, including urbanization, as well as inexistent or weak legislations and/or enforcement failure of existing rules and regulations [16].

Moreover, the most recent challenge threatening the prospects of sub-Saharan African medicinal plants, in our opinion, is the contamination of these plants by PFASs. Hence, unlike in the developed world, where the assessment and monitoring of PFASs prevalence in the natural environment are at an advanced stage [4], it is only recently that PFAS studies from the sub-Saharan African region have started emerging [54]. Thus, during the last two decades there has been reports on PFAS from South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Ivory coast, Tanzania and Uganda [4, 54, 95, 96]. It is worth mentioning that the continent has over 50 countries, which suggests that PFAS studies are still limited on the continent at large. All available evidence has reported higher level concentrations of specific PFASs in analyzed samples, compared to allowed international standards. For example, higher levels of PFOS and PFOA were reported in tap water from Ghana, but lower in tap and bottled water from Burkina Faso [95]. Similarly, PFASs have been reported in wastewater from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and ultimately in several surface water systems in sub-Saharan Africa, including in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Ethiopia [54, 95–97]. Hence, it can be argued that inefficiently treated wastewater represents a risk to plants, including medicinal plants, to which PFAS-contaminated water is or might be applied to. And this is substantiated by the literature that has confirmed that WWTPs are PFAS-contamination hotspots, are considered as the most common point sources of PFASs to surface water [98, 99]. Similarly, available evidence has indicated that the cultivation of medicinal plants at a commercial scale has started emerging from the sub-Saharan African region, with countries such as South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and the DRC having taken the initiatives toward the commercial cultivation of these plants, with high probabilities that surface water (e.g., river water) is used or luckily to be used, like it is the case in South Africa, to irrigate the lands on which medicinal plants are planted with such water, to alleviate the burden of water shortage, for instance. This is a huge potential risk and a threat to medicinal plants.

Furthermore, there are considerable evidence on the prevalence of PFASs in edible plants we have previously alluded to, in the general environment worldwide [80–85], but the state of these substances, in this regard, in the sub-Saharan African region remains largely unknown and undocumented. However, several countries from this region have been commercially trading with world leading economies (e.g., China and USA) from which PFASs have been reported not only in their natural environments, but also in consumer products that are imported from these world greatest economies by their African commercial patterners [58, 79]; this implies the potential prevalence of PFASs in the general environment of this region as previously alluded by Ssebugere et al. [95] who suggested that the likelihood of PFASs in African environments would certainly be due to the uncontrollable and unregulated importation of PFAS-carrier products from these mass manufacturers to the African countries. Further studies are overdue to substantiate these conjectures, which, if confirmed, represent substantial threats to the general African environment.

*Medicinal Plants Threatened by Undocumented Emerging Pollutants: The Sub-Saharan African… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103825*

Similarly, available data further suggest a greater need for investigations to be conducted on the uptake of these compounds by medical plants. In fact, to our knowledge, there is only a single article that has recently reported on the susceptibility of medical plants to PFASs, with the African marigold (*Tagetes erecta* L.) as a typical example [100]. The results from the later study have become a wakeup call, as they suggested medicinal plants as possible conduits of PFASs, including PFOA (94.83 ng/g), PFOS (5.03 ng/g) and PFBS (1.44 ng/g), into humans; and thus represent a huge threat to the entire potential medicinal plants industry of the sub-Saharan African region; and the situation is expected to be exacerbated as the continent embarks on developmental trajectories. Therefore, for this region to remain certain that it maintains its remarkable medicinal plants history and keep its population safe, we are of the opinion that studies, in this regard, should be expanded and diversified in the region, in order for a database of these chemicals on medicinal plants to be efficiently established for the whole of the sub-Saharan African region.

### **4. Conclusions**

The use of medicinal plants to combat diseases and illnesses from which humans suffer is not new. It can thus be said that these plants have a long history. In sub-Saharan Africa the history of medicinal plants is remarkable, huge and divers, transmitted by word of mouth from one generation to another using the thousands of dialects present in the region. Owing it to its tropical and subtropical geographical positions, sub-Saharan Africa is said to be home to an enormous biodiversity of medicinal plants, with over fifty thousand plant species, a quarter of which is well known for their curative potentials. Notwithstanding these possibilities, the region still lacks its own drugs on the global markets due to the limited and/or small-scale type of cultivation of medicinal plants still in practice in the region, coupled with several other challenges that medicinal plants are faced with, including not being sufficiently undocumented, deforestation, conservation inefficiencies, overexploitation or overharvesting, etc. Hence, there isn't any doubt that medicinal plants in sub-Saharan African region are subjected to several encounters. But the most recent of these encounters have been the potential threats from emerging pollutants, i.e., PFASs. These substances are the results of anthropogenic activities unlike their predecessors, the heavy metals, which are naturally find in the environment. To date, there has been over 5000 PFASs manufactured since their dawn in the 1950s. During the manufacturing process that gives life to PFASs, they're given unique properties that make them wanted by several manufacturers of consumer products. Unfortunately, due to these compounds being heavily applied in industrial processes, they have now been detected in different environmental matrices, including water, soil and plants, as well as in animals. PFASs have been even detected in samples from remote areas, far from the places where they were manufactured, with PFOA and PFOS being predominantly studied, owing it to their health concerns. Regardless of PFASs being extensively researched and documented in different parts of the world, the chemicals have remained undocumented in sub-Saharan Africa, to a large extent. This situation is highly concerning in the context of medicinal plants of this region, because PFASs have been proven to translocate and bioaccumulate in plants, and linked to numerous severe diseases, including cancer and diabetes. This state implies that plants, medicinal plants in this case, being a possible pathway through which humans get exposed to these human-made substances. And with medicinal plants being the first line of

defense to combat diseases, illnesses and other daily health needs for millions of low-income people from sub-Saharan Africa, there is cause for serious concern. It is therefore recommended that PFAS studies be expanded and diversified in sub-Saharan Africa. Future studies should also investigate the prevalence of novel or the so called PFAS-substitutes in African environments. The region needs trade-agreements and regulations that make provisions for PFASs from countries with the reputation of manufacturing these chemicals and their alternatives. To valorize its current medicinal plant diversity, the region needs to shift from small to large-scale cultivation of medicinal plants. Routine-based assessment and monitoring of PFASs, their precursors and alternatives in general African environments is also recommended, with an emphasis on the cultivation, harvest or collection, and storing of medicinal plants in areas free of any possible contamination.


**Preface to "Corrosion and Protection of Steels in Marine Environments: State-of-the-Art and Emerging Research Trends"**

#### How and why did the book come about?

During times when so many academic publications are available to the public through open access, it is important for those who are more attuned to the cutting edge of a particular scientific field to put forward a formal recommendation on the works of those that have made a noticeable contribution to the niche field of marine corrosion science. Therefore, this book came about.

#### Why were the selected papers and authors chosen over others?

Unfortunately, there is a lack of appreciation for how much risk undetected marine corrosion could create for many of our existing and new steel infrastructures and devices. Because of the relatively stealthy and slow nature of corrosion reactions, it is difficult to quantitatively appreciate their consequences. To this end, various researchers around the world have researched systems, methods, and technologies that allow for not only early prediction but also timely intervention and thus protection for steel structures. Some researchers, such as the various authors and their teams selected for this Special Issue have accumulated so much experience and knowledge that a compilation of their work for exposure to a wider audience is certainly prudent.

How and why was the book organized/written?

Aiming to target a wider scientific and engineering-focused audience, this book gathered research papers focused on marine corrosion (and protection) of iron-based alloys, i.e., steel. The articles first cover fundamental scientific advancements and understanding of the chemical and electrochemical kinetics underpinning marine corrosion processes, followed by an advanced understanding of the uniquely specialized cases of microbiologically influenced corrosion with the ability to rapidly exacerbate durability losses, with closing works of various advanced protection systems that can be used in the pursuit of cost-effective practical solutions.

#### **Philippe Refait and Igor Chaves**

*Editors*


Entrepreneurship - New Insights

*Edited by Muhammad Mohiuddin, Mohammad Nurul Hasan Reza, Elahe Hosseini and Slimane Ed-Dafali*

Published in London, United Kingdom

#### Entrepreneurship - New Insights http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104246 Edited by Muhammad Mohiuddin, Mohammad Nurul Hasan Reza, Elahe Hosseini and Slimane Ed-Dafali

#### Contributors

Nguyen Xuan Truong, Dang Van My, Anissa Lestari Kadiyono, Indri Yuliafitri, Azucena De María Arredondo Perez, Sheyla Verónica Morales Palma, Somnoma Edouard Kaboré, Seydou Sané, Moindi Meroka Rose Meroka, Alison Theaker, Altanchimeg Zanabazar, Sarantuya Jigjiddorj, Victor Mignenan, Gabriela Prelipcean, Alexandra Ungureanu, Aslican Kalfa Topates, Pritpal Singh, Teuku Shadiq, Hani Hasanah, Pfano Mashau, Andrisha Beharry, Sameera Henri, Darma Rika Swaramarinda, Badrul Isa, Norhayati Mohd. Yusof, Mohd. Ali Bahari Abdul Kadir

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