Electromagnetic Radiation and Human Environment

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Applied Sciences aims to gather high-quality original research articles, reviews, and technical notes on the topic of electromagnetic radiation and the human environment.

The human environment has attracted the interest of different scientific disciplines. Radiation in the environment, or, alternatively, environmental radiation, is a topic with several branches, from radon to UV and solar radiation. The human radiation environment, as a term, includes the health effects of all types of radiation. Hence, this Issue focuses on the electromagnetic part of environmental radiation and all of its effects. 

Several types of electromagnetic emissions have been detected in the environment. These include ultra low frequency (ULF) (<10Hz, typically below 1 Hz), extremely low frequency (ELF) (typically alternating current (AC) fields and other electromagnetic and non-ionising radiation from 10 Hz to 300 Hz), low frequency (LF) (between approximately 3 kHz and 300 kHz),  and high frequency (HF) (between 3 MHz and 300 MHz) emissions; microwaves (300 MHz to 300 GHz); infrared (IR); visible and ultraviolet (UV) radiation; X-rays; γ-rays; and, finally, solar flares.

The effects of electromagnetic radiation on the human environment are multifaceted. Non-ionising ELF and microwave emissions are under continuous investigation. Research has focused on radiation from AC power lines, mobile phones, base stations, and digital communications. On the other hand, the effects of ionising radiation have been the subject of many papers and the focus of international organisations. This includes naturally emitted x-rays, γ-rays, and emissions from artificial sources. In particular, γ-rays are emitted from natural radionuclides as radons and from the soil due to the natural radionuclides that it contains (U-238, Th-232, K-40, Ra-226, isotopes, etc.). Artificial sources of x-rays and γ-rays come from the field of medical physics; therefore, they are excluded from this Special Issue.

There is significant research into electromagnetic radiation in relation to humans in the form of the electromagnetic emissions seen prior to earthquakes. Several types of emissions are detected before earthquakes, and these are a potential data source for seismic forecasting. Although this is still an open topic, many papers exist on the known precursors of electromagnetic radiation, including ULF between 0.001 and 1 Hz, LF between 1 and 10 kHz, HF between 40 and 60 MHz, and very high frequencies (VHF) up to 300 MHz. Recently, solar flares have been used for earthquake forecasting and they have been investigated as a possible triggering mechanism. These methodological approaches are related to the stochastic and statistical behaviour of earthquake-related systems and include fractals, long-memory, fractal dimensions, Hurst exponents, entropy, symbolic dynamics, DFA and MFDFA, R/S analyses, spectral analyses, Fourier analyses and wavelets, signal analyses, and signal processing.

Finally, remote sensing techniques have recently played an important role in recording and accessing big data from several sources, including satellites. Techniques like these, which are related to electromagnetic radiation and the human environment, are within the scope of this Special Issue.

I invite you to send me a short abstract briefly explaining the purpose of your research and the principal results obtained, in order to verify that the contribution you intend to submit fits within the objectives of this Special Issue. These objectives are better outlined in the keywords given below.

Prof. Dr. Dimitrios Nikolopoulos
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.