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This open access book studies breath and breathing in literature and culture and provides crucial insights into the history of medicine, health and the emotions, the foundations of beliefs concerning body, spirit and world, the connections between breath and creativity and the phenomenology of breath and breathlessness. Contributions span the classical, medieval, early modern, Romantic, Victorian, modern and contemporary periods, drawing on medical writings, philosophy, theology and the visual arts as well as on literary, historical and cultural studies. The collection illustrates the complex significance and symbolic power of breath and breathlessness across time: breath is written deeply into ideas of nature, spirituality, emotion, creativity and being, and is inextricable from notions of consciousness, spirit, inspiration, voice, feeling, freedom and movement. The volume also demonstrates the long-standing connections between breath and place, politics and aesthetics, illuminating both contrasts and continuities.

Summary: This Special Issue will focus on assistive technology (AT) to address biomechanical and control of movement issues in individuals with impaired health, whether as a result of disability, disease, or injury. All over the world, technologies are developed that make human life richer and more comfortable. However, there are people who are not able to benefit from these technologies. Research can include development of new assistive technology to promote more effective movement, the use of existing technology to assess and treat movement disorders, the use and effectiveness of virtual rehabilitation, or theoretical issues, such as modeling, which underlie the biomechanics or motor control of movement disorders. This Special Issue will also cover Internet of Things (IoT) sensing technology and nursing care robot applications that can be applied to new assistive technologies. IoT includes data, more specifically gathering them efficiently and using them to enable intelligence, control, and new applications.

Summary: Autophagy ("auto-digestion"), a lysosome-dependent process, degrades and turns over damaged or senescent organelles and proteins. Autophagy is a highly regulated process that impacts several vital cellular responses, including inflammation, cell death, energy metabolism, and homeostasis of organelles (mitochondria and others). Although the role of autophagy in the maintenance of tissue homeostasis is well documented, its role during tissue injury and regeneration is still emerging. In this Special Issue on "Autophagy in Tissue Injury and Homeostasis", we focus on the roles of autophagy in systemic, specific tissue (organs/cells) injury or organ failure associated with sepsis, inflammation, metabolic disorder, toxic chemicals, ischemia-reperfusion injury, hypoxic oxidative stress, tissue fibrosis, trauma, and nutrient starvation. The knowledge gained from the identification and characterization of new molecular mechanisms will shed light on biomedical applications for tissue protection through the modulation of autophagy.

Summary: In this Special Issue on human health engineering, we invited submissions exploring recent contributions to the field of human health engineering, which is the technology used for monitoring the physical or mental health status of individuals in a variety of applications. Contributions focused on sensors, wearable hardware, algorithms, or integrated monitoring systems. We organized the different papers according to their contributions to the main aspects of the monitoring and control engineering scheme applied to human health applications, including papers focusing on measuring/sensing physiological variables, contributions describing research on the modelling of biological signals, papers highlighting health monitoring applications, and finally examples of control applications for human health. In comparison to biomedical engineering, the field of human health engineering also covers applications on healthy humans (e.g., sports, sleep, and stress) and thus not only contributes to develop technology for curing patients or supporting chronically ill people, but also more generally for disease prevention and optimizing human well-being.

Summary: This book provides a review of the management of chronic diseases (evaluation and treatment) through eHealth. Studies that examine how eHealth can help to prevent, evaluate, or treat chronic diseases and their outcomes are included.