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Summary: This reprint, as a continuation of a previous Special Issue entitled "Efficiency and Optimization of Buildings Energy Consumption", gives an up-to-date overview of new technologies based on Machine Learning (ML) and Internet of Things (IoT) procedures to improve the mathematical approach of algorithms that allow control systems to be improved with the aim of reducing housing sector energy consumption.

Summary: Dear Colleagues, I am very happy to have this Special Issue of the journal Energies on the topic of Design and Control of Electrical Motor Drives published. Electrical motor drives are widely used in the industry, automation, transportation, and home appliances. Indeed, rolling mills, machine tools, high-speed trains, subway systems, elevators, electric vehicles, air conditioners, all depend on electrical motor drives.However, the production of effective and practical motors and drives requires flexibility in the regulation of current, torque, flux, acceleration, position, and speed. Without proper modeling, drive, and control, these motor drive systems cannot function effectively.To address these issues, we need to focus on the design, modeling, drive, and control of different types of motors, such as induction motors, permanent magnet synchronous motors, brushless DC motors, DC motors, synchronous reluctance motors, switched reluctance motors, flux-switching motors, linear motors, and step motors.Therefore, relevant research topics in this field of study include modeling electrical motor drives, both in transient and in steady-state, and designing control methods based on novel control strategies (e.g., PI controllers, fuzzy logic controllers, neural network controllers, predictive controllers, adaptive controllers, nonlinear controllers, etc.), with particular attention to transient responses, load disturbances, fault tolerance, and multi-motor drive techniques. This Special Issue include original contributions regarding recent developments and ideas in motor design, motor drive, and motor control. The topics include motor design, field-oriented control, torque control, reliability improvement, advanced controllers for motor drive systems, DSP-based sensorless motor drive systems, high-performance motor drive systems, high-efficiency motor drive systems, and practical applications of motor drive systems. I want to sincerely thank authors, reviewers, and staff members for their time and efforts. Prof. Dr. Tian-Hua Liu Guest Editor

Summary: Processing and Conversion of Oil and Gas: Modeling, Control, Simulation, and Optimization describes the core of the activity of petrochemical engineers, process controller engineers, industrial engineers, energy engineers, and researchers in the oil and gas field. This reprint explores the modeling, control, simulation, and optimization of new and revamped petrochemical processes using proven software. Thus, it offers novel illustrative examples, prospective applications, and solutions to improve these processes. This reprint aims to combine theoretical principles with examples modeled by commonly used simulation software employing steady-state or dynamic process simulation. Furthermore, applying numerical methods and optimization at both the theoretical and practical levels is within the scope of this reprint.

Summary: Silica and silicon-based nanostructures are now well-understood materials for which the technologies are mature. The most obvious applications, such as electronic devices, have been widely explored over the last two decades. The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together the state of the art in the field and to enable the emergence of new ideas and concepts for silicon and silica-based nanostructures.

Summary: Electrical machines are one of the most important components of the industrial world. They are at the heart of the new industrial revolution, brought forth by the development of electromobility and renewable energy systems. Electric motors must meet the most stringent requirements of reliability, availability, and high efficiency in order, among other things, to match the useful lifetime of power electronics in complex system applications and compete in the market under ever-increasing pressure to deliver the highest performance criteria. Today, thanks to the application of highly efficient numerical algorithms running on high-performance computers, it is possible to design electric machines and very complex drive systems faster and at a lower cost. At the same time, progress in the field of material science and technology enables the development of increasingly complex motor designs and topologies. The purpose of this Special Issue is to contribute to this development of electric machines. The publication of this collection of scientific articles, dedicated to the topic of electric machine design and application, contributes to the dissemination of the above information among professionals dealing with electrical machines.

Summary: The year 2021 saw the publication of the Special Issue ""Diseases of the Salivary Glands" (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jcm/special_issues/Salivary_Glands), Part I, covering recent and novel advancements as well as future trends in the field of research evaluating diagnostic and therapeutic treatment of salivary gland (SGs) diseases. Given the enormous success of Part I, the Special Issue "Diseases of the Salivary Glands" Part II has been launched, with the firm belief that it will enrich the panorama of world research in this field. Topics include: 1) Clinical features and presentation of potentially malignant SG disorders; 2) Risk factors and etiopathogenesis of SGs tumors; 3) Etiopathogenesis and molecular mechanisms involved in the chronic inflammatory condition characterizing Sjӧgren's syndrome; 4) New discoveries in the field of micro RNAs associated with Sjӧgren's syndrome; 5) Molecular markers linked to development and progression of SG diseases: current knowledge and future implications; 6) More innovative techniques for the study of the SG diseases: current limitations and future directions.

Summary: Arts therapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses artistic media, the creative process, and artwork as its primary forms of communication. The arts therapies cover six areas of specialization: visual arts, music, dance and movement, drama, psychodrama, and bibliotherapy. Several studies and reviews have demonstrated its effectiveness for adult populations (e.g., Regev and Cohen-Yatziv, 2018), as well as for children and adolescents (e.g., Cohen-Yatziv and Regev, 2019). Academic writing and research, which have evolved extensively in recent decades, have underscored the considerable significance of arts therapies especially for children and adolescents.This Special Issue, "Arts Therapies with Children and Adolescents", is dedicated to presenting research and clinical writing in the field of the Arts Therapies with Children and Adolescents in a variety of settings, including hospitals, the education system, mental health clinics, and others. I hope that this Special Issue will serve as a repository of knowledge for arts therapists and as a fertile terrain for further research in the field. It should also pave the way for more professionals working with children and adolescents to better understand the meaning and uniqueness of the therapeutic work in arts therapies and the dedicated ways in which arts therapists use assessment tools and arts-based interventions to better understand the world of children and adolescents.

Summary: This book represents one of the most up-to-date collections of articles on clinical practice and research in the field of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The scholars who contributed to this book are experts in their field, carrying out cutting edge research in prestigious institutes worldwide (e.g., Harvard Medical School, University of California, MIND Institute, King's College, Karolinska Institute, and many others). The book addressed many topics, including (1) The COVID-19 pandemic; (2) Epidemiology and prevalence; (3) Screening and early behavioral markers; (4) Diagnostic and phenotypic profile; (5) Treatment and intervention; (6) Etiopathogenesis (biomarkers, biology, and genetic, epigenetic, and risk factors); (7) Comorbidity; (8) Adulthood; and (9) Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP). This book testifies to the complexity of performing research in the field of ASD. The published contributions underline areas of progress and ongoing challenges in which more certain data is expected in the coming years. It would be desirable that experts, clinicians, researchers, and trainees could have the opportunity to read this updated text describing the challenging heterogeneity of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Summary: Up until the latter years of the twentieth century, there was very little critical analysis of child protection policies and practices. The core assumption was that it was concerns about child abuse and neglect that provided the rationale and focus for child protection policies, practices, and systems, and they were assumed to be benign in both intent and impact. Increasingly, however, it has been recognised that a whole range of political, cultural, and sociological influences bear on the development and operation of child protection policies, practices, and systems and that these can have a whole range of negative consequences. The aim of this edited book, based on the Special Edition of the same title, is to provide a range of international cutting-edge papers that critically analyse different aspects of child protection, and which also provide suggestions about how child protection can be positively reformed.

Summary: The main purpose of this Special Issue of "Advances in Fluid Power Systems" was to present new scientific work in the field of fluid power systems for hydraulic and pneumatic control of machines and devices used in various industries. Advances in fluid power systems are leading to the creation of new smart devices that can replace tried-and-true solutions from the past. The development work of authors from various research centres has been published. This Special Issue focuses on recent advances and smart solutions for fluid power systems in a wide range of topics, including: • Fluid power for IoT and Industry 4.0: smart fluid power technology, wireless 5G connectivity in fluid power, smart components, and sensors.• Fluid power in the renewable energy sector: hydraulic drivetrains for wind power and for wave and marine current power, and hydraulic systems for solar power. • Hybrid fluid power: hybrid transmissions, energy recovery and accumulation, and energy efficiency of hybrid drives.• Industrial and mobile fluid power: industrial fluid power solutions, mobile fluid power solutions, eand nergy efficiency solutions for fluid power systems.• Environmental aspects of fluid power: hydraulic water control technology, noise and vibration of fluid power components, safety, reliability, fault analysis, and diagnosis of fluid power systems.• Fluid power and mechatronic systems: servo-drive control systems, fluid power drives in manipulators and robots, and fluid power in autonomous solutions.

Summary: The last decade has contributed to the rapid progress in developing high-power microwave sources. This Special Issue aims to bring together information about the most striking theoretical and experimental results, new trends in development, remarkable modern applications, new demands in parameter enhancement, and future goals. Although only a tiny part of the achievements of recent years is included in this Issue, we hope that the presented articles will be useful for experts and students focusing on modern vacuum electronics.

Summary: This book is a collection of manuscripts on breast reconstruction, the topic of a Special Issue of Medicina Journal. The book begins with a review of the literature on the most recent reconstructive strategies using biological dermal matrices and moves toward the management of pain and infections. Some aspects of regenerative surgery are also clarified and an analysis focuses on social disparities in access to breast reconstruction. The final part of this book is dedicated to nipple-areola reconstruction, the last surgical step of breast reconstruction.

Summary: In recent years, the global climate has become variable due to intensification of the greenhouse effect, and natural disasters are frequently occurring, which poses challenges to the situation awareness of intelligent distribution networks. Aside from the continuous grid connection of distributed generation, energy storage and new energy generation not only reduces the power supply pressure of distribution network to a certain extent but also brings new consumption pressure and load impact. Situation awareness is a technology based on the overall dynamic insight of environment and covering perception, understanding, and prediction. Such means have been widely used in security, intelligence, justice, intelligent transportation, and other fields and gradually become the research direction of digitization and informatization in the future. We hope this Special Issue represents a useful contribution. We present 10 interesting papers that cover a wide range of topics all focused on problems and solutions related to situation awareness for smart distribution systems. We sincerely hope the papers included in this Special Issue will inspire more researchers to further develop situation awareness for smart distribution systems. We strongly believe that there is a need for more work to be carried out, and we hope this issue provides a useful open-access platform for the dissemination of new ideas.

Summary: The foundations of sports cardiology include promoting physical activity and providing a safe environment for training and competition for all athletes at all levels, from professional to recreational. To combine these two aims, reliable tools to perform preparticipation screenings are needed. Moreover, those at high risk of potentially life-threatening events should be advised to limit their training load, while others should be reassured that there is no exercise-related cardiovascular risk. We are currently witnessing the advent of new portable devices for remote and mobile heart monitoring and several new and promising biochemical markers, which can support athletes' diagnostic processes. In this Special Issue of the Diagnostics journal entitled "Diagnostic Challenges in Sports Cardiology", we present a series of 13 manuscripts, including eight original works, three reviews, and two case reports, which give a glimpse into the current research topics in the area of sports cardiology.

Summary: This Special Issue provides an overview of the applied experimental and numerical flow, models, which are used to investigate fluid flow in complex situations. The investigated problems are related to fundamental processes or new applications. As demonstrated, the field of the application of experimental and numerical flow models is constantly expanding.

Summary: This book presents the latest research published in the Special Issue Preventing the Adverse Effects of SARS-CoV-2 Infection and COVID-19 through Diet, Supplements, and Lifestyle in the journal Nutrients. In this book, we explore the role of supplements, lifestyle choices, and nutritional status on COVID-19 patient outcomes and risk reduction.

Summary: Functional nutrition is deeply connected with healthy lifestyle and sustainable food production, due to its positive health benefits and the use of economically underexplored and natural raw materials. Expectedly, it appeals to large number of interested consumers while becoming lucrative segment of the food industry with a fast-growing market fueled by new sociodemographic trends. Accordingly, functional juices and beverages made of indigenous fruits are interesting niche for various food market stakeholders. Here, biologically active compounds (BACs) and probiotics that have positive health effects in functional foods (juices) are mostly thermolabile. This is especially important for industry that still employs classical heat treatments (e.g., pasteurization), while being concerned with degradation of food quality in the final products. To prevent this, focus is on designing economic and ecological technologies that are able to preserve nutritional and sensory quality while maintaining microbiological stability in products. Such approaches are based on low-energy consumption and low-impact processing, e.g. "hurdle technology" that combines advanced and conventional methods (e.g., high-power ultrasound, pulse electric field). Food design is another important focus point for consumers' sensory appeal and economic success of foods. Hence, technologies as 3D food printing can be particularly useful for manufacturing. Based on the above, presented topics are relevant to sustainable functional food production, functional fruit juices, BACs, "hurdle technology," advanced food processing, 3D food printing, and authentic fruits.

Summary: According to a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), achieving safe and healthier foods was one of the top ten achievements of public health in the 20th century. However, considerable persisting challenges currently exist in developed nations and developing economies for further assuring the safety and security of the food supplies. According to CDC estimates, as many as 3000 American adults, as an example, and based on a recent epidemiological estimate of the World Health Organization, around 420,000 individuals around the globe, lose their lives annually due to foodborne diseases. This emphasizes the need for innovative and emerging interventions, for further prevention or mitigation of the risk of foodborne microbial pathogens during food processing and manufacturing. The current publication discusses recent advancements and progress in the elimination and decontamination of microbial pathogens during various stages of manufacturing and production. Special emphasis is placed on hurdle validation studies, investigating decontamination of non-typhoidal Salmonella enterica serovars, various serogroups of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli, public health-significant serotypes of Listeria monocytogenes, and pathogenic species of Cronobacter.

Summary: Rural areas have a very important role in society and the economy. They provide residence and employment and also serve as recreational sites, enabling visitors to enjoy unspoiled nature. Rural areas not only supply raw materials and products, but they also provide space for other functions. Spatial planning has a very important role in the process of rural space modeling. It is also important to study local and external conditions. A rural development framework can be proposed based on an evaluation of the observed phenomena. The following list provides some examples of topics of interest to ensure the consistency of the papers in this Special Issue: - Spatial planning;- Spatial order;- Institutional efficiency;- Spatial, financial, and environmental effects of planning studies;- The urbanization of rural areas;- Town-village relationships;- Social, cultural, economic, environmental, and spatial aspects of rural development. Dynamically growing new technologies (e.g., multi-criteria methods and GIS tools) are gaining popularity worldwide as tools for use in spatial analysis. This Special Issue focuses on the practice and theory of the application of modern technologies in rural space modeling and rural area development planning.The monograph includes papers on contemporary research directions on rural space modeling in areas such as spatial planning, spatial order, spatial-temporal analysis, land use change, environmental aspects, etc. The integration of different data, GIS tools and modeling can provide valuable support for rural space modeling and decision making.

Summary: This reprint provides information on the novel analytical methods used to address challenges occurring at academic, regulatory, and commercial level. All topics covered include information on the basic principles, procedures, advantages, limitations, and applications. Integration of biological reagents, (nano)materials, technologies, and physical principles (spectroscopy and spectrometry) are discussed. This reprint is ideal for professionals of the food industry, regulatory bodies, as well as researchers.

Summary: In this Special Issue, we present a collection of articles that cover the unique opportunities and challenges of parenting in the 21st century. We have identified three themes across the articles: managing stress; support for effective parenting; and emphasis on fostering competence for an uncertain future. First, although the studies did not use data to test for differences between cohorts of parents, the results suggested that stress is a normal state for parents today, and especially for certain groups of parents. Second, despite high stress among parents, the articles point at some important support systems for parents in the 21st century. For example, although technology can be a stressor, it can also be a useful tool to enhance the parent-child relationship for parents of adolescents or young adults. Finally, in the third theme, we saw an emphasis on promoting a mix of competencies emphasizing both autonomy and relatedness in children and speculate that parents see these competences as tools to help the child to deal with an uncertain future.Results from this Special Issue illustrate the impact of societal changes on parenting. The findings can be used to develop programs and policies to provide support to diverse parents in handling today's stressors, ranging from technology to racism to excessive pressures for parental "success". They also point to important research gaps in understanding the task of parenting in the 21st century.

Summary: Stroke is a common cause of death and disability worldwide. Malnutrition is prevalent in stroke rehabilitation patients, and has serious negative effects on outcomes. In addition, there is growing interest in new concepts related to malnutrition, such as sarcopenia, frailty, cachexia, chronic inflammation, dysphagia, and oral problems, all of which contribute to a poor prognosis. Therefore, it is necessary to assess nutritional status early and, if needed, provide appropriate nutritional interventions to improve patient outcomes. A multidisciplinary approach is strongly recommended in this setting; as such, high-quality clinical evidence regarding clinical nutrition in stroke rehabilitation is needed. This reprint updates our knowledge of clinical nutrition for stroke patients and includes interesting studies on topics including nutrition and weight management in the early stages of stroke, the relationship between frailty and improved physical function, weight gain by providing stored energy, physical activity and diet quality, L-carnitine and cognitive levels, and the prediction of stroke prognosis using temporal muscles. The Guest Editor hopes that this reprint will help provide clinicians with up-to-date knowledge of nutritional management in stroke rehabilitation.

Summary: p38 Mitogen activated protein kinases (p38MAPK) are a group of evolutionary conserved protein kinases which are central for cell adaptation to environmental changes as well as for immune response, inflammation, tissue regeneration and tumour formation. The interest in this group of protein kinases has grown continually since their discovery. Recent studies using new genetic and pharmacological tools are providing helpful information on the function of these stress-activated protein kinases and show that they have an acute impact on the development of prevalent diseases related to inflammation, diabetes, neurodegeneration, and cancer. In this Special Issue we present novel advances and review the knowledge on the identification of p38MAPK substrates, functions, and regulation; mechanisms underlying the role of p38MAPK in malignant transformation and other pathologies; and therapeutic opportunities associated with regulation of p38MAPK activity.

Summary: In recent years, improving the sustainability of the steel industry and reducing its CO2 emissions has become a global focus. To achieve this goal, further process optimization in terms of energy and resource efficiency and the development of new processes and process routes are necessary. Modeling and simulation have established themselves as invaluable sources of information for otherwise unknown process parameters and as an alternative to plant trials that involves lower costs, risks, and time. Models also open up new possibilities for model-based control of metallurgical processes. This Special Issue focuses on recent advances in the modeling and simulation of unit processes in iron and steelmaking. It includes reviews on the fundamentals of modeling and simulation of metallurgical processes, as well as contributions from the areas of iron reduction/ironmaking, steelmaking via the primary and secondary route, and continuous casting.

Summary: Energy storage currently plays an important role in the electricity systems. Innovative energy storage solutions will play an important role in ensuring the integration of renewable energy sources into the electrical grids in the European Union. Pumped storage hydropower systems are the most mature technology of energy storage and account for over 90% of installed energy storage capacity wordwide. However, PSH technology is constrained by topography and land availability in flat areas. In addition, PSH plants are controversial due to their impacts on landscape, land use and the environment. Conversely, underground energy storage systems may be an interesting alternative to increase the energy storage capacity with low envoronmental impacts.To help address and resolve these types of questions, this book is comprised of eleven chapters that explore new ways of energy stororage reducing the environmental impacts caused by the installation of conventional energy storage systems, as well as to increase the energy storage capacity and promote the use of disused underground space, such as abandoned mines and quiarries.The chapters included in this book cover a wide spectrum of issues related to underground energy storage systems. Advances in underground pumped storage hydropower, compressed air energy storage and hydrogen energy storage systems are presented. Finally, we would like to thank both the MDPI publishing and editorial staff for their excellent work and support, as well as the authors who collaborated with your interesting research works.

Summary: Effective environmental decision-making is often challenging and complex, where final solutions frequently possess inherently subjective political and socio-economic components. Consequently, complex sustainability applications in the "real world" frequently employ computational decision-making approaches to construct solutions to problems containing numerous quantitative dimensions and considerable sources of uncertainty. This volume includes a number of such applied computational analytics papers that either create new decision-making methods or provide innovative implementations of existing methods for addressing a wide spectrum of sustainability applications, broadly defined. The disparate contributions all emphasize novel approaches of computational analytics as applied to environmental decision-making and sustainability analysis - be this on the side of optimization, simulation, modelling, computational solution procedures, visual analytics, and/or information technologies.

Summary: Unlike other construction materials, road materials have developed minimally over the past 100 years. However, since the 1970s, the focus has been on more sustainable road construction materials such as recycled asphalt pavements. Recycling asphalt involves removing old asphalt and mixing it with new (fresh) aggregates, binders, and/or rejuvenators. Similarly, there are various efforts to use alternative modifiers and technical solutions such as crumb rubber, plastics, or various types of fibres. For the past two decades, researchers have been developing novel materials and technologies, such as self-healing materials, in order to improve road design, construction, and maintenance efficiency and reduce the financial and environmental burden of road construction. This Special Issue on "Advances in Asphalt Pavement Technologies and Practices" curates advanced/novel work on asphalt pavement design, construction, and maintenance. The Special Issue comprises 19 papers describing unique works that address the current challenges that the asphalt industry and road owners face.

Summary: This reprint focused on the advancements in the field of shoulder arthroplasty in recent years. These concern surgical indications that have dramatically evolved and planification and navigation. The rapid development of surgical techniques and new prosthetic designs, as well as glenoid and humeral reconstruction for various conditions, is also overviewed. Despite the important progress highlighted in this reprint, there is currently a myriad of prosthetic designs, highlighting the evolving nature of this field.

Summary: This reprint focuses on data-driven software solutions and their impact on research and development at the academic, industry, business, and government levels to exploit the hidden knowledge and big data that can be offered to cities and citizens in the future. Data-driven software solutions are different from "traditional" software development projects, as the focus of the main development core is on managing the data (e.g., data store and data quality) and designing behavioral models with the aid of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques. To this end, new life cycles, algorithms, methods, processes, and tools are required. This reprint is centered on the recent trends and advancements in the field of engineering data-intensive software solutions to address the challenges in developing, testing, and maintaining such data-driven systems, with a focus on the application of data-driven solutions to real-life problems and techniques and algorithms addressing the different challenges of data-driven software engineering.

Summary: The inverse dynamics problem was developed in order to provide researchers with the state of the art in inverse problems for dynamic and vibrational systems. Contrasted with a forward problem, which solves for the system output in a straightforward manner, an inverse problem searches for the system input through a procedure contaminated with errors and uncertainties. An inverse problem, with a focus on structural dynamics, determines the changes made to the system and estimates the inputs, including forces and moments, to the system, utilizing measurements of structural vibration responses only. With its complex mathematical structure and need for more reliable input estimations, the inverse problem is still a fundamental subject of research among mathematicians and engineering scientists. This book contains 11 articles that touch upon various aspects of inverse dynamic problems.

Summary: This book contains 10 reviewed papers published as a Special Issue "Global and International Logistics" in the journal Sustainability, edited by Prof. Dr. Ryuichi Shibasaki, Prof. Dr. Daisuke Watanabe, and Dr. Tomoya Kawasaki. The topics of the papers contain the impact of logistics development under the China's Belt and Road initiative (BRI) by using the improved gravity model, strategies against barriers to the BRI from a logistics and supply chain management perspective, the dynamic interaction between international logistics, and cross-border e-commerce trade, the effect of China's restrictive programs on the international trade of waste products, the empty container repositioning problem of shipping companies with foldable containers, port capacity and connectivity improvement in the hub and feeder network in Indonesia, GHG emission scenarios for the maritime shipping sector using system dynamics, incorporating a shipping and shipbuilding market model, the emission inventory and bunker consumption from a LNG fleet from an automatic identification system database, the factors that can help select between land transport and maritime shipping in long-distance inter-regional cross-border transport, and container transport simulations in Myanmar with the global logistics intermodal network assignment model including both maritime shipping and land transport in the land-based Southeast Asia region. Some papers are related to the 8th International Conference on Transportation and Logistics (T-LOG 2020) which was held online on 6-7 September 2020 hosted by Universitas Internasional Semen Indonesia.

Summary: This reprint, which was edited by Prof. Dr. Nazar R. Ikhsanov, Prof. Dr. Galina L. Klimchitskaya, and Prof. Dr. Vladimir M. Mostepanenko, contains research and review articles published in a Special Issue of the journal Universe in memory of outstanding astrophysicist Prof. Dr. Yuri N. Gnedin, who organized and led the Department of Astrophysics at the famous Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences for several decades. In these articles, the reader will find new and intriguing ideas in several topical problems of astrophysics as well as comprehensive and readily accessible sketches of a few recently performed investigations.

Summary: Cardiology and cardiovascular sciences are two rapidly growing areas in medicine, with heart diseases being the number one cause of death worldwide. The last four decades have witnessed many developments in various cardiological sciences, including coronary artery disease, valve disease, heart failure, congenital heart diseases, and cardiovascular imaging, with a number of newly developed concepts, such as cardio-oncology, cardio-renal diseases, and preventive cardiology. This Special Issue (SI) of the Journal of Clinical Medicine, entitled "JCM-Advances in Cardiology", focuses on recent advances in the cardiological sciences. It published 8 research articles of significant clinical and scientific value.

Summary: In this new book, we present a collection of the advanced developments in reconfigurable antennas and metasurfaces. It begins with a review of reconfigurability technologies, and proceeds to the presentation of a series of reconfigurable antennas, UWB MIMO antennas and reconfigurable arrays. Then, reconfigurable metasurfaces are introduced and the latest advances are presented and discussed.

Summary: Quantum field theory has achieved some extraordinary successes over the past sixty years; however, it retains a set of challenging problems. It is not yet able to describe gravity in a mathematically consistent manner. CP violation remains unexplained. Grand unified theories have been eliminated by experiment, and a viable unification model has yet to replace them. Even the highly successful quantum chromodynamics, despite significant computational achievements, struggles to provide theoretical insight into the low-energy regime of quark physics, where the nature and structure of hadrons are determined. The only proposal for resolving the fine-tuning problem, low-energy supersymmetry, has been eliminated by results from the LHC. Since mathematics is the true and proper language for quantitative physical models, we expect new mathematical constructions to provide insight into physical phenomena and fresh approaches for building physical theories.

Summary: The present book contains nine articles that were accepted and published in the Special Issue "Modeling and Control of Energy Conversion during Underground Coal Gasification Process" of the MDPI Energies journal. This book focuses on the energy conversion processes in underground coal gasification (UCG), as well as on the modeling and control of this process. The articles published in this book can be divided into three thematic parts of research in the field of underground coal gasification technology: the first part is the impact of technology on the environment, the second is research (studies) on the coal areas and coal properties of UCG technology, and the third is the monitoring, modeling, and control processes within UCG. We hope that this book will be interesting and useful for workers and researchers in the field of underground coal gasification technology, as well as for those who are interested in the mathematical modeling and control of this process.

Summary: Medicine has evolved into a high level of specialization using the very detailed imaging of organs. This has impressively solved a multitude of acute health-related problems linked to single-organ diseases. Many diseases and pathophysiological processes, however, involve more than one organ. An organ-based approach is challenging when considering disease prevention and caring for elderly patients, or those with systemic chronic diseases or multiple co-morbidities. In addition, medical imaging provides more than a pretty picture. Much of the data are now revealed by quantitating algorithms with or without artificial intelligence. This Special Issue on "Systems Radiology and Personalized Medicine" includes reviews and original studies that show the strengths and weaknesses of structural and functional whole-body imaging for personalized medicine.

Summary: Thin films are important in many of the technologies used every day, impacting major markets for energy, medicine, and coatings. Scientists and engineers have been producing thin films on a wide range of surfaces for many decades but now have begun to explore giving these films new and controlled structures at the nanometer scale. These efforts are part of the new horizons opened by the field of nanoscience and impart novel structures and properties to these thin films. This book covers some of the methods for making these nanostructured thin films and their applications in areas impacting on health and energy usage.

Summary: Recently, aluminium scandium nitride (AlScN) emerged as a material with superior properties compared to aluminium nitride (AlN). Substituting Al with Sc in AlN leads to a dramatic increase in the piezoelectric coefficient as well as in electromechanical coupling. This discovery finally allowed us to overcome the limitations of AlN thin films in various piezoelectric applications while still enabling us to benefit from all of the advantages of the parent material system, such as a high temperature stability, CMOS compatibility, and good mechanical properties. Potential applications include RF filters (bulk acoustic wave (BAW) or surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators), energy harvesting, sensing applications, and infra-red detectors. The recent progress in MOCVD- and MBE-grown AlScN has led to high-frequency and -power electronics, (high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs)). AlScN is the first wurtzite III-nitride where ferroelectric switching was observed, allowing for many new possible applications in semiconductor memories additionally, it enables the additional functionality of switching to applications where piezoelectric materials are already in use. This Special Issue was very successful in covering all of the main aspects of AlScN research, including its growth, the fundamental and application-relevant properties, and device fabrication and characterization. We can see that AlScN technology is mature enough to be utilized in wafer-level material development and complicated devices, but there is still much to discover in terms of deposition process control, anisotropy, and, in particular, ferroelectric behavior.

Summary: Agricultural productivity should increase to meet the growing food demand. Tillage is defined as the mechanical manipulation of agricultural soil, and it is an extremely vital part of crop production, particularly for seedbed preparation and weed control. Tillage operations are carried out using mechanical force, commonly with a tractor-drawn tool to achieve the cutting, inversion, pulverization, and disturbance of soil. A significant part of the energy (from fossil fuels) used in crop production is expended in tillage. This energy use results in greenhouse gas emissions. It is essential that we reduce energy use (hence, greenhouse gas emissions) to achieve sustainable farming practices and improve crop production and design new tillage tools or optimize the existing tools. Although the design and evaluation of tillage tools are generally carried out using analytical methods and field experiments, with recent technological improvements, computer technology has been used for the design and evaluation of tillage tools. Additionally, sensor technology can improve the efficiency of tillage tools. This Special Issue collated innovative papers that make a significant contribution to the design and application of agricultural equipment in tillage systems. It involved original research and review papers from different research fields, such as agricultural engineering, engineering simulation, and precision agriculture.

Summary: The impetus behind this Special Issue emerged from a quest to move beyondbinary thinking in the contemporary period about people who sell sexual services,including recent disputes about "sex trafficking vs. prostitution" and"criminalization vs. decriminalization", to encourage theoretical and empiricalscholarship by exploring how sex work actually operates under different regulatoryregimes. The volume includes contributions from scholars of different socialsciences backgrounds based in five countries- New Zealand, the United Kingdom,Brazil, the United States and Canada. The article topics range widely,and both quantitative and qualitative research methods are showcased. The empiricalevidence presented adds to our current understanding of the complexityof this phenomenon of sex commerce/prostitution, which is found to be largelya problem of social inequality within and across capitalist societies. The authorscall for policies to address occupational and societal wide inequities faced by sexworkers across many countries.

Summary: Food, by nature, is a biological substrate and is therefore capable of supporting the growth of microbials that are potential producers of toxic compounds. Among them mycotoxins, marine biotoxins, plant toxins, cyanogenic glycosides, and toxins occurring in poisonous mushrooms pose not only a risk to both human and animal health but also impact food security and nutrition by reducing people's access to healthy food. This book collects some of the recent key improvements of analytical methodologies for the detection of natural toxins and their metabolites in food, and highlights the challenges yet to be resolved. Special emphasis is given to emerging or less-investigated toxins, to provide the scientific community with new tools and/or data supporting a better understanding of related food safety issues.

Summary: This Special Issue contains selected papers from works presented at the 8th EASN-CEAS (European Aeronautics Science Network-Council of European Aerospace Societies) Workshop on Manufacturing for Growth and Innovation, which was held in Glasgow, UK, 4-7 September 2018. About 150 participants contributed to a high-level scientific gathering providing some of the latest research results on the topic, as well as some of the latest relevant technological advancements. ?ine interesting articles, which cover a wide range of topics including characterization, analysis and design, as well as numerical simulation, are contained in this Special Issue.

Summary: In the competitive business environment or public domain, the sustainability assessment in supply chain and infrastructure management are important for any organization. Organizations are currently striving to improve their sustainable strategies through preparedness, response, and recovery because of increasing competitiveness, community, and regulatory pressure. Thus, it is necessary to develop a meaningful and more focused understanding of sustainability in supply chain management and infrastructure management practices. In the context of a supply chain, sustainability implies that companies identify, assess, and manage impacts and risks in all the echelons of the supply chain, considering downstream and upstream activities. Similarly, the sustainable infrastructure management indicates the ability of infrastructure to meet the requirements of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to address their needs. The complexities regarding sustainable supply chain and infrastructure management have driven managers and professionals to seek different solutions. This Special Issue aims to provide readers with the most recent research results on the aforementioned subjects. In addition, it offers some solutions and also raises some questions for further research and development toward sustainable supply chain and infrastructure management.

Summary: This book consists of original and review papers which describe basic and applied studies for the modifications of metallic and inorganic materials by using energetic ion/electron beams. When materials are irradiated with energetic charged particles (ions /electrons), their energies are transferred to electrons and atoms in materials, and the lattice structures of the materials are largely changed to metastable or non-thermal-equilibrium states, modifying several physical properties. Such phenomena will engage the interest of researchers as a basic science, and can also be used as promising tools for adding new functionalities to existing materials and for the development of novel materials. The papers in this book cover the ion/electron-beam-induced modifications of several properties (optical, electronic, magnetic, mechanical, and chemical properties) and lattice structures. This book will, therefore, be useful for many scientists and engineers who have been involved in fundamental material science and the industrial applications of metallic and inorganic materials.

Summary: Additive Manufacturing (AM), more popularly known as 3D printing, is transforming the industry. AM of metal components with virtually no geometric limitations has enabled new product design options and opportunities, increased product performance, shorter cycle time in part production, total cost reduction, shortened lead time, improved material efficiency, more sustainable products and processes, full circularity in the economy, and new revenue streams. This Special Issue of Metals gives an up-to-date account of the state of the art in AM.

Summary: Human activity recognition (HAR) and human behavior recognition (HBR) play increasingly important roles in the digital age. High-quality sensory observations applicable to recognizing users' activities and behaviors, including electrical, magnetic, mechanical (kinetic), optical, acoustic, thermal, and chemical biosignals, are inseparable from sensors' sophisticated design and appropriate application. Traditional sensors suitable for HAR and HBR, including external sensors for smart homes, optical sensors such as cameras for capturing video signals, and bioelectrical, biomagnetic, and biomechanical sensors for wearable applications, have been studied and verified adequately. They continue to be researched in depth for more effective and efficient usage, and brand-new areas facilitated by sensor-based HAR/HBR are emerging, such as interactive edutainment, single-motion duration analysis, time series information retrieval, handcrafted and high-level feature design, and fall detection. Meanwhile, innovative sensor research for HAR or HBR is also very active in the academic community, including new sensors appropriate for HAR/HBR, new designs and applications of the above-mentioned traditional sensors, and the usage of non-traditional HAR-/HBR-related sensor types, among others.

Summary: This book contains original peer-reviewed articles written by some of the most prominent international physicists active in the field of hydrodynamics. The topic is entirely devoted to the study of the transitional regimes of incompressible viscous flow found at the onset of turbulent flows. Nine articles written for this 2020 Special Issue of the journal Entropy (MDPI) have been gathered at the crossroads of fluid mechanics, statistical physics, complexity theory, and applied mathematics. They include experimental, analytic, and computational material of an academic level that has not been published anywhere else.

Summary: With the progress in nanotechnology and associated production methods, composite materials are becoming lighter, cheaper, more durable, and more versatile. At present, great progress has been made in the design, preparation, and characterization of composite materials, making them smarter and versatile. By creating new properties using suitable fillers and matrix, functional composites can meet the most challenging standards of users, especially in high-tech industries. Advanced composites reinforced by high-performance carbon fibers and nanofillers are popular in the automotive and aerospace industries thanks to their significant advantages, such as high specific strength to weight ratio and noncorrosion properties. In addition to the improvement of the mechanical performance, composite materials today are designed to provide new functions dealing with antibacterial, self-cleaning, self-healing, super-hard, and solar reflective properties for desired end-use applications. On the other hand, composite materials can contribute to mitigating environmental issues by providing renewable energy technologies in conjunction with multifunctional, lightweight energy storage systems with high performance and noncorrosive properties. They are also used to prepare a new generation of batteries and directly contribute to H2 production or CO2 reduction in fuels and chemicals. This Special Issue aims to collect articles reporting on recent developments dealing with preparative methods, design, properties, structure, and characterization methods as well as promising applications of multifunctional composites. It covers potential applications in various areas, such as anticorrosion, photocatalyst, absorbers, superhydrophobic, self-cleaning, antifouling/antibacterial, renewable energy, energy storage systems, construction, and electronics. The modeling and simulation of processes involving the design and preparation of functional and multifunctional composites as well as experimental studies involving these composites are all covered in this Special Issue.

Summary: The present reprint contains all of the articles accepted and published in the Special Issue "Probability and Stochastic Processes with Applications to Communications, Systems and Networks" from the MDPI Mathematics journal. This Special Issue is devoted to probability, statistics, stochastic processes and their different applications in system and network analysis. The Special Issue includes works related to the analysis and applications of different queuing models, which begin with general approaches in modeling queuing systems and networks; an analysis of probabilistic and statistical methods in telecommunication; an asymptotic analysis of queuing networks in the condition of a large load; general complex networks and their structures, e.g., topology and graph theory; mathematical methods and models in smart cities; exclusive statistical methods, such as statistical estimates in bio/ecology, medicine and neural networks; and studies that estimate parameters in complex technical systems, etc. We hope that the scientific results collected in this reprint will help foster future research related to probability, stochastic processes and their applications.