Nanomaterials from Clay Minerals: A New Approach to Green Functional Materials details the structure, properties and modification of natural nanoscale clay minerals and their application as the green constituent of functional materials. Natural nanomaterials from clay minerals have diverse morphologies, from 1D to 3D, including nanorods, nanofibers, nanotubes, nanosheets and nanopores. These structures show excellent adsorption, reinforcing, supporter, electronic, catalytic and biocompatible properties and are great as sustainable alternatives for toxic or expensive artificial materials. This book provides systematic coverage of clay nanomaterials as eco-friendly resources, emphasizing the importance of such materials in a range of industries, including biomedicine, energy and electronics. This book will provide an important reference for materials scientists and engineers who have an interest in sustainable material development.

This brief examines recent developments in the Heterogeneous Vehicular NETworks (HETVNETs), integrating cellular networks with Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) for meeting the communications requirements of the Intelligent Transport System (ITS)services. Along with a review of recent literature, a unified framework of the HetVNET is presented. The brief focuses on introducing efficient MAC mechanisms for vehicular communications, including channel access protocols, broadcast/multicast protocols, the location-based channel congestion control scheme and the content-based resource allocation scheme. The cooperative communication between vehicles is discussed. This brief concludes with a discussion on future research directions, and provides the readers with useful insights into the future designs in the HetVNETs, to motivate new ideas for performance improvements in vehicular networks.