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Bladder cancer is the second most common genitourinary malignancy, with 81,190 estimated new diagnoses in 2018, in the United States alone. Transurethral resection of the bladder and radical cystectomy with bilateral pelvic lymph node dissection constitute the standard treatment for non-muscle invasive or very high-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, respectively. However, survival expectations have not shown to improve in the last 20 years, and new diagnostic and therapeutic tools are urgently needed to improve the outcomes of this potentially lethal disease.

Even in ancient times, semi-solid preparations for cutaneous application, popularly known as ointments, played an important role in human society. An advanced scientific investigation of "ointments" as dosage forms was initiated in the 1950s. It was only from then on that the intensive physico-chemical characterization of ointments as well as the inclusion of dermatological aspects led to a comprehensive understanding of the various interactions between the vehicle, the active ingredient and the skin. From then on, many researchers were involved in optimizing semi-solid formulations with respect to continuously changing therapeutic and patient needs. Aspects that have been dealt with were the optimization of dermato-biopharmaceutical properties and many different issues related to patient compliance, such as skin tolerance, applicability, and cosmetic appeal. Moreover, processing technology has been improved and analytical techniques were developed and refined in order to enable the improved characterization of the formulation itself as well as its interaction with the skin. This Special Issue serves to highlight and capture the contemporary progress and current research on semi-solid formulations as dermal drug delivery systems. We invite articles on all aspects of semi-solid formulations, highlighting the research currently undertaken to improve and better understand these complex drug delivery systems with respect to their formulation, processing and characterization issues.

Health is defined as "the state of the organism when it functions optimally without evidence of disease". Surprisingly, the words "microbes" or "microorganism" are missing in this definition. The regulation of gut microbiota is mediated by an enormous quantity of aspects, such as microbiological factors, host characteristics, diet patterns, and environmental variables. Some protective, structural, and metabolic functions have been reported for gut microbiota, and these functions are related to the regulation of homeostasis and host health. Host defense against pathogens is, in part, mediated through gut microbiota action and requires intimate interpretation of the current microenvironment and discrimination between commensal and occasional bacteria. The present Special Issue provides a summary of the progress on the topic of intestinal microbiota and its important role in human health in different populations. This Special Issue will be of great interest from a clinical and public health perspective. Nevertheless, more studies with more samples and comparable methods are necessary to understand the actual function of intestinal microbiota in disease development and health maintenance.

Five years of Separations are celebrated by a collection of ten feature articles: one review and nine research articles on topics of current interest. Applications of Gas Chromatography for the Analysis of Tricyclic Antidepressants in Biological Matrices are presented focusing on novel extraction techniques and novel materials used for sample preparation due to the great demand for method development for the determination of TCAs in biofluids, especially for therapeutic drug monitoring. Original research articles include the following: 1. Insights into the Mechanism of Separation of Bisphosphonates by Zwitterionic Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography: Application to the Quantitation of Risedronate in Pharmaceuticals. 2. A method based on micro-matrix solid-phase dispersion (μ-MSPD) followed by gas-chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS), developed to analyze UV filters in personal care products. 3. The performance of a vibratory shear-enhanced process (VSEP) combined with an appropriate membrane unit for the treatment of simulated or industrial tannery wastewaters. 4. A method for the analysis of thyroid hormones by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry that was used for the dissolution testing of single- and dual-component thyroid hormone supplements via a two-stage biorelevant dissolution procedure. 5. A method involving the collection and determination of organic and inorganic gunshot residues on hands using online in-tube solid-phase microextraction (IT-SPME) coupled to miniaturized capillary liquid chromatography with diode array detection (CapLC-DAD) and scanning electron microscopy coupled to energy dispersion X-ray (SEM-EDX), respectively, for quantifying both residues. 6. The gas chromatographic retention behavior of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and alkylated PAHs on a new ionic liquid stationary phase, 1,12-di(tripropylphosphonium) dodecane bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (SLB®-ILPAH) intended for the separation of PAH mixtures, which was compared with the elution pattern on more traditional stationary phases: a non-polar phenyl arylene (DB-5ms) and a semipolar 50% phenyl dimethyl siloxane (SLB PAHms) column. 7. The Multiple-Stage Precursor Ion Separation and High Resolution Mass Spectrometry toward Structural Characterization of 2,3-Diacyltrehalose Family from Mycobacterium tuberculosis 8. The use of micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) for studying the hydrophobic character of modified Monomethyl Auristatin E derivatives, as Novel Candidates for the Design of Antibody-Drug Conjugates, which are promising state-of-the-art biopharmaceutical drugs for selective drug-delivery applications and the treatment of diseases such as cancer. 9. The use of recycled diatomaceous earth as the extraction phase in solid phase microextraction (SPME) technique for the determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in river water samples, with separation/detection performed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS).

The sustainable development of our planet depends on the use of energy. The growing population of the world inevitably causes an increase in the demand for energy, which, on the one hand, threatens the potential for shortages of energy supply, and, on the other hand, causes the deterioration of the environment.Therefore, our task is to reduce this demand through different innovative solutions (i.e., both technological and social). Social marketing and economic policies can also play a role in affecting the behavior of households and companies, by causing behavioral change oriented to energy stewardship, and an overall switch to renewable energy resources. This book provides a platform for the exchange of a wide range of ideas, which, ultimately, would facilitate the driving of societies to long-term energy efficiency.

The open access journal Micromachines invites manuscript submissions for the Special Issue "Silicon Photonics Bloom". The past two decades have witnessed a tremendous growth of silicon photonics. Lab-scale research on simple passive component designs is now being expanded by on-chip hybrid systems architectures. With the recent injection of government and private funding, we are living the 1980s of the electronic industry, when the first merchant foundries were established. Soon, we will see more and more merchant foundries proposing well-established electronic design tools, product development kits, and mature component libraries. The open access journal Micromachines invites the submission of manuscripts in the developing area of silicon photonics. The goal of this Special Issue is to highlight the recent developments in this cutting-edge technology.]

This volume consists of a collection of 14 accepted submissions (including several invited feature articles) to the Special Issue of MDPI''s journal Symmetry on the general subject area of integral transformations, operational calculus and their applications from many different parts around the world. The main objective of the Special Issue was to gather review, expository, and original research articles dealing with the state-of-the-art advances in integral transformations and operational calculus as well as their multidisciplinary applications, together with some relevance to the aspect of symmetry. Various families of fractional-order integrals and derivatives have been found to be remarkably important and fruitful, mainly due to their demonstrated applications in numerous diverse and widespread areas of mathematical, physical, chemical, engineering, and statistical sciences. Many of these fractional-order operators provide potentially useful tools for solving ordinary and partial differential equations, as well as integral, differintegral, and integro-differential equations; fractional-calculus analogues and extensions of each of these equations; and various other problems involving special functions of mathematical physics and applied mathematics, as well as their extensions and generalizations in one or more variables.

This book presents collective works published in the recent Special Issue (SI) entitled "Aero/Hydrodynamics and Symmetry". These works address the existence of symmetry and its breakdown in aero-/hydro-dynamics and their related applications. The presented problems are complex nonlinear, non-Newtonian fluid flow problems that are (in some cases) coupled with heat transfer, phase change, nanofluidic, and magnetohydrodynamics phenomena. The applications vary and range from polymer chain transfer in micro-channel to the evaluation of vertical axis wind turbines, as well as autonomous underwater hovering vehicles. Recent advances in numerical, theoretical, and experimental methodologies, as well as finding new physics, new methodological developments, and their limitations are presented within the scope of the current book. Among others, in the presented works, special attention is paid to validation and improving the accuracy of the presented methodologies. This book brings together a collection of inter-/multi-disciplinary works applied to many engineering applications in a coherent manner.

Complex systems with symmetry arise in many fields, at various length scales, including financial markets, social, transportation, telecommunication and power grid networks, world and country economies, ecosystems, molecular dynamics, immunology, living organisms, computational systems, and celestial and continuum mechanics. The emergence of new orders and structures in complex systems means symmetry breaking and transitions from unstable to stable states. Modeling complexity has attracted many researchers from different areas, dealing both with theoretical concepts and practical applications. This Special Issue fills the gap between the theory of symmetry-based dynamics and its application to model and analyze complex systems.

It is very well known that differential equations are related with the rise of physical science in the last several decades and they are used successfully for models of real-world problems in a variety of fields from several disciplines. Additionally, difference equations represent the discrete analogues of differential equations. These types of equations started to be used intensively during the last several years for their multiple applications, particularly in complex chaotic behavior. A certain class of differential and related difference equations is represented by their respective fractional forms, which have been utilized to better describe non-local phenomena appearing in all branches of science and engineering. The purpose of this book is to present some common results given by mathematicians together with physicists, engineers, as well as other scientists, for whom differential and difference equations are valuable research tools. The reported results can be used by researchers and academics working in both pure and applied differential equations.

The book deals with mycotoxins, their presence in various types of food, and how to prevent their presence in food . In addition to well-known molecules, such as aflatoxins or fumonisins, some contributors have dealt with emerging mycotoxins (e.g., alternaria toxins, botryodiplodin). Readers of the book can also find a new approach to reducing aflatoxins and fumonisins in food. In conclusion, the book presents both new mycotoxins and new information on old mycotoxins.

Advances in miniaturization of sensors, actuators, and smart systems are receiving substantial industrial attention, and a wide variety of transducers are commercially available or with high potential to impact emerging markets. Substituting existing products based on bulk materials, in fields such as automotive, environment, food, robotics, medicine, biotechnology, communications, and other technologies, with reduced size, lower cost, and higher performance, is now possible, with potential for manufacturing using advanced silicon integrated circuits technology or alternative additive techniques from the mili- to the nano-scale. In this Special Issue, which is focused on piezoelectric transducers, a wide range of topics are covered, including the design, fabrication, characterization, packaging, and system integration or final applications of mili/micro/nano-electro-mechanical systems based transducers.

When the domestic government, the private sector, and people in various professional fields talk about long-term care issues, they all focus on creating a warm and home-like care institution. However, we actively emphasize the importance of community-based long-term care. For "aging in place", the development of domestic non-institutional care is still in its infancy, and some long-term care needs must still be met through institutional care, and the facilitation of the extension or outreach of community-based care and respite service platforms for the development of community-based long-term care still rely on institutional care. The history of the development of long-term care in Taiwan is much shorter than that of Japan, Europe, the United States, and Canada. Despite years of hard work and rapid development, the long-term care resources needed to establish a complete system in terms of universalization, fairness, accessibility, and selectivity are not available. In the future, based on the soundness of institutional care, it hoped that outreach will move toward the goals of community care and aging in place. We hope the studies in this Special Issue will help further develop clinical medicine for healthcare and stainability.

The stratospheric ozone is important for the protection of the biosphere from the dangerous ultraviolet radiation of the sun, forms the temperature and dynamical structure of the stratosphere, and, therefore, has a direct influence on the general circulation and the surface climate. The tropospheric ozone can damage the biosphere, impact human health, and plays a role as a powerful greenhouse gas. That is why the understanding of the past and future evolution of the ozone in different atmospheric layers, as well as its influence on surface UV radiation doses, and human health is important. The problems of preventing further destruction of the ozone layer, the restoration of the ozone shield in the future, and air quality remain important for society. The interest in these problems was recently enhanced by the unexpected discovery of a negative ozone trend in the lower stratosphere and the appearance of a large ozone hole over the Arctic in spring 2020. This book includes papers describing several aspects of the ozone layer''s state and evolution based on the recent experimental, statistical, and modeling works. The book will be useful for readers, scientists, and students interested in environmental science.

When food is ingested, it remains in the mouth for a short period of time. Although this period is brief compared to the total food nutrient digestion and absorption time, it is crucially important, as it is the first step in digestion. It is also very important that, while the food is in the mouth, it is perceived by the senses and then a decision is made on swallowing. Oral sensory perception is an integrative response, which is generated in very short time (normally a few seconds) from complex information gathered from multiple sources during mastication and swallowing. Consequently, food oral processing studies include many orientations. This Special Issue brings together a small range of studies with a diversity of approaches that provide good examples of the complexity and multidisciplinarity of the subject.

Given that the threat of water shortage is expanding across the globe, the evolution of advanced technologies that enable water purification and, thus, water re-use in an energy and resource efficient manner are of great importance. In this regard, nanomaterials have been playing a crucial role and offering new opportunities for the construction of permeable and selective membranes and adsorbents. Such features are of paramount importance, particularly given the limited available energy resources. In this book, several recent studies are introduced that deal with water treatment via nanomaterial-based technologies. Such state-of-the-art technologies have employed nanomaterials that are made of polymer, composite, ceramic, and carbon, etc., and are shaped in various dimensionalities and forms such as particle (0D), fiber (1D), and film (2D-3D). The nanostructured membranes and adsorbents as well as photocatalytic nanosystems capable of active photodecomposition of organic pollutants, e.g., dyes, are the main focal points of discussion.

Each year, disasters such as storms, floods, fires, volcanoes, earthquakes, and epidemics cause thousands of casualties and tremendous damage to property around the world, displacing tens of thousands of people from their homes and destroying their livelihoods. The majority of these casualties and property loss could be prevented if better information were available regarding the onset and course of such disasters. Several remote sensing technologies, such as meteorological and Earth observation satellites, communication satellites, and satellite-based positioning, supported by geoinformation technologies, offer the potential to contribute to improved prediction and monitoring of potential hazards, risk mitigation, and disaster management which, in turn, would lead to sharp reductions in losses to life and property. This book explores most of the scientific issues related to spatially supported disaster management and its integration with geographical information system technologies in different disaster examples and scales. Dealing with disasters over space and time represents a long-lasting theme, now approached by means of innovative techniques and modelling approaches. Several priorities for actions are outlined toward preventing new and reduce existing disaster risks, including understanding disaster risk, strengthening disaster risk governance for management of disaster risk, investing in disaster reduction for resilience, and enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response. This book presents ideas to address the challenges facing different components of spatial patterns related to ecological processes, and the published articles extended versions of selected presentations from the Gi4DM Conference in 2019 in Prague.

This Systems Thinking Special Issue contains 12 papers on the nature of systems thinking as it applies to systems engineering, systems science, system dynamics, and related fields. Systems thinking can be broadly considered the activity of thinking applied in a systems context, forming a basis for fundamental approaches to several systems disciplines, including systems engineering, systems science, and system dynamics. Although these are somewhat distinct fields, they are bound by common approaches in regard to systems. Whereas systems engineering seeks to apply a multidisciplinary, holistic approach to the development of systems, systems science seeks to understand the basics related to systems of all kinds, from natural to man-made, and system dynamics seeks to understand system structures in order to influence its dynamics. Man-made systems have become more ubiquitous and complex. The study of systems, both natural and engineered, presents new challenges and opportunities to understand emergent, dynamic behaviors that inform the process of sense-making based on systems thinking.

The impacts of climate change on water resource management, as well as increasingly severe natural disasters over the last decades, have caught global attention. Reliable and accurate hydrological forecasts are essential for efficient water resource management and the mitigation of natural disasters. While the notorious nonlinear hydrological processes make accurate forecasts a very challenging task, it requires advanced techniques to build accurate forecast models and reliable management systems. One of the newest techniques for modeling complex systems is artificial intelligence (AI). AI can replicate the way humans learn and has great capability to efficiently extract crucial information from large amounts of data to solve complex problems. The fourteen research papers published in this Special Issue contribute significantly to the uncertainty assessment of operational hydrologic forecasting under changing environmental conditions and the promotion of water resources management by using the latest advanced techniques, such as AI techniques. The fourteen contributions across four major research areas: (1) machine learning approaches to hydrologic forecasting; (2) uncertainty analysis and assessment on hydrological modeling under changing environments; (3) AI techniques for optimizing multi-objective reservoir operation; (4) adaption strategies of extreme hydrological events for hazard mitigation. The papers published in this issue will not only advance water sciences but also help policymakers to achieve more sustainable and effective water resource management.

This Special Issue outlines the role of geoheritage and geotourism as potential touristic resources of a region. The term "geoheritage" refers to a particular type of natural resources represented by sites of special geological significance, rarity or beauty that are representative of a region and of its geological history, events, and processes. These sites are also known as "geosites" and, as well as archaeological, architectonic, and historical sites, can be considered as part of the cultural estate of a country. "Geotourism" is an emerging type of sustainable tourism, which concentrates on geosites, focusing on visitor knowledge, environmental education, and amusement. Geotourism may be very useful for geological sciences divulgation and may provide additional opportunities for the development of rural areas, generally not included among the main touristic attractions. The collected papers focused on these main topics with different methods and approaches and can be grouped as follows: i) papers dealing with geosite promotion and valorization in protected areas; ii) papers dealing with geosite promotion and valorization in non-protected areas; iii) papers dealing with geosite promotion by exhibition, remote sensing analysis, and apps; iv) papers investigating geotourism and geoheritage from tourists'' perspectives.

Rare kidney diseases comprise a large group of different life-threatening or chronically debilitating disorders that affect very small numbers of people (<1 in 2000 individuals in Europe and <200,000 in USA) with local or systemic manifestations. For several years, the research and development of treatments in this field have been neglected in favor of more common diseases. The main reasons for the lack of interest in rare kidney diseases seem to be the small numbers of patients and limited epidemiological data on the natural history of many of these diseases. Rare diseases can affect people differently. Even patients with the same condition can exhibit very different signs and symptoms, or there may be many subtypes of the same condition. This diversity constitutes a significant challenge to healthcare practitioners and scientists alike, in terms of being able to acquire sufficient experience for the most appropriate and timely definition, diagnosis, and management. Fortunately, in the last ten years, concerted efforts have led to a marked improvement in the understanding of these disorders. In particular, an important step forward has been taken with the employment of innovative technologies (including next-generation sequencing), in order to replace obsolete phenotypic classifications and to discover new useful diagnostic biomarkers. These new tools are, in fact, becoming part of routine clinical practice, increasing diagnostic accuracy and facilitating genetic counseling. Moreover, biomedical research, providing insights into the pathologies of these rare diseases and elucidating their underlying mechanisms, is revealing new therapeutic avenues and driving the industry to develop safer and more effective orphan drugs. Finally, in this field, it is desirable that, in the future, the crosstalk between basic scientists and clinicians could achieve a great clinical benefit by improving the quality of life of these patients as well. This Special Issue welcomes scientific contributions and critical reviews describing new pathogenetic insights, reporting novel and specific disease biomarkers, and underlying new pharmacological targets or therapies for rare diseases of the kidney and urinary tract.

In the field of Analytical Chemistry and, in particular, whenever a quali-quantitative analysis is required, until a few years ago, reference was made exclusively to instrumental methods (more or less hyphenated) which, once validated, were able to provide the answers to the questions present, even if only in a limited way to analytical targets. Nowadays, the landscape has become considerably complicated (natural adulterants, assessment of geographical origin, sophistication, need for non-destructive analysis, search for often unknown compounds), and new procedures for processing data have greatly increased the potential of analyses that are conducted (even routinely) in the laboratory. In this scenario, chemometrics is master, able to manage and process a huge amount of information based both on data relating only to the analytes of interest, but also by applying "general" procedures to process raw untargeted analysis data. It is within this strand of analysis that many of the works reported in this Special Issue fall. In the succession of works in this printed version, the criterion that guided us was to highlight how-starting exclusively from chromatographic techniques (HPLC and GC) with conventional detectors and moving to exclusively spectroscopic techniques (MS, FT-IR and Raman)-it is possible arrive at extremely powerful coupled techniques and procedures (HPLC and FT-IR) able to meet research needs. Finally, at the end of the printed volume, there are two reviews that surveying the state of the art regarding the assessment of authenticity through qualitative analyses and the application of chemometrics in the pharmaceutical field in the study of forced drug degradation products. From the succession of works (and, above all, from the various application fields) it can immediately be seen how the application of chemometrics and its procedures to both raw and processed data is a powerful means of obtaining robust, reproducible, and predictive information. In this manner, it is possible to create models able to explain and respond to the original problem in a much more detailed way. , and Honghe through Fourier transform mid infrared (FT-MIR) spectra combined with partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), random forest (RF), and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) methods. Melucci and collaborators apply chemometric approaches to non-destructive analysis of ATR-FT-IR for the determination of biosilica content. This value was directly evaluated in sediment samples, without any chemical alteration, using attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy, and the quantification was performed by combining the multivariate standard addition method (MSAM) with the net analyte signal (NAS) procedure to solve the strong matrix effect of sediment samples. Still in the food and food supplements field, Anguebes-Franseschi and collaborators report an article where 10 chemometric models based on Raman spectroscopy were applied to predict the physicochemical properties of honey produced in the state of Campeche, Mexico.

Climate change is increasing due to the anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases. The majority of these are due to the production and consumption of energy. According to the latest estimates, global energy demand could triple by 2050, and by then, 70% of the world''s population will live in cities. The challenge for future cities is the implementation of a mechanism that minimizes the need for injection of new energy resources in them, so that a high level of self-sufficiency can be achieved through the concept of circular economy, thus partially mitigating the impacts of climate change. Using solar energy today is considered to be one of the best solutions that can be installed in buildings to help with this issue. This book addresses several relevant aspects related to energy saving at cities, including a deep survey of research topics and scientific collaborations in energy saving. The main research topics carried out are related to sustainability, solar energy, the use of rooftops for energy generation, energy conversion from urban biomass or residues, wind energy, and public and private urban energy saving.

The recent years have witnessed tremendous growth in connected vehicles due to major interest in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) technology from both the research and industrial communities. VANET involves the generation of data from onboard sensors and its dissemination in other vehicles via vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, thus resulting in numerous applications such as steep-curve warnings. However, to increase the scope of applications, VANET has to integrate various technologies including sensor networks, which results in a new paradigm commonly referred to as vehicular sensor networks (VSN). Unlike traditional sensor networks, every node (vehicle) in VSN is equipped with various sensing (distance sensors, GPS, and cameras), storage, and communication capabilities, which can provide a wide range of applications including environmental surveillance and traffic monitoring. VSN has the potential to improve transportation technology and the transportation environment due to its unlimited power supply and resulting minimum energy constraints. However, VSN faces numerous challenges in terms of its design, implementation, network scalability, reliability, and deployment over large-scale networks, which need to be addressed before it is realized. This book comprises 12 outstanding research works related to vehicular sensor networks, addressing various aspects such as security, routing, SDN, and NDN.

Marine fungal natural products are well-known as the "blue gold," as they have been promising leads for drug discovery and development. Even though marine fungi are less explored in comparison to their terrestrial counterparts, a number of useful hits have been obtained from a drug discovery perspective. Topics discussed in this book include a review on novel natural products from extremophilic fungi, secondary metabolites from deep-sea fungi; natural products from fungi in a symbiotic relationship with marine macro-organisms; and bioactive metabolites from sediment-derived fungi. Marine biologists, chemists, and pharmacologists will find the book a good reference material. The book covers various bioactive marine fungal natural products, and it is hoped that this book aids scientists explore fungal chemical diversity.

This book aims at promoting new and innovative studies, proposing new architectures or innovative evolutions of existing ones, and illustrating experiments on current technologies in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of distributed and cluster systems when they deal with spatiotemporal data.

The current power system should be renovated to fulfill social and industrial requests and economic advances. Hence, providing economic, green, and sustainable energy are key goals of advanced societies. In order to meet these goals, recent features of smart grid technologies need to have the potential to improve reliability, flexibility, efficiency, and resiliency. This book aims to address the mentioned challenges by introducing advanced approaches, business models, and novel techniques for the management and control of future smart grids.

This book summarizes the efforts of ten papers collected by the Special Issue "Condensed-Matter-Principia Based Information & Statistical Measures: From Classical to Quantum". It calls for papers which deal with condensed-matter systems, or their interdisciplinary analogs, for which well-defined classical-statistical vs. quantum information measures can be inferred while based on the entropy concept. The contents have mainly been rested upon objectives addressed by an international colloquium held on October 2019, in UTP Bydgoszcz, Poland (see http://zmpf.imif.utp.edu.pl/rci-jcs/rci-jcs-4/), with an emphasis placed on the achievements of Professor Gerard Czajkowski, who commenced his research activity with open diffusion-reaction systems under the supervision of Roman S. Ingarden (Toruń), a father of Polish synergetics, and original thermodynamic approaches to self-organization. The active cooperation of Professor Czajkowski, mainly with German physicists (Friedrich Schloegl, Aachen; Werner Ebeling, Berlin), ought to be highlighted. In light of this, a development of his research, as it has moved from statistical thermodynamics to solid state theory, pursued in terms of nonlinear solid-state optics (Franco Bassani, Pisa), and culminated very recently with large quasiparticles termed Rydberg excitons, and their coherent interactions with light, is worth delineating.

Pharmacogenomics is one of the emerging approaches to precision medicine, tailoring drug selection and dosing to the patient''s genetic features. In recent years, several pharmacogenetic guidelines have been published by international scientific consortia, but the uptake in clinical practice is still poor. Many coordinated international efforts are ongoing in order to overcome the existing barriers to pharmacogenomic implementation. On the other hand, existing validated pharmacogenomic markers can explain only a minor part of the observed clinical variability in the therapeutic outcome. New investigational approaches are warranted, including a study of the pharmacogenomic role of the immune system genetics and of previously neglected rare genetic variants, reported to account for a large part of inter-individual variability in drug metabolism. In this book, we have collected a series of articles covering many aspects of pharmacogenomics. These include clinical implementation of pharmacogenomics in clinical practice, development of tools or infrastructures to support this process, research of new pharmacogenomics markers to increase drug efficacy and safety, and the impact of rare genetic variants in pharmacogenomics.

Based on their potent antioxidant properties, the possible exploitation of natural phenolic compounds as food supplements as well as functional ingredients in the food and cosmetic industry is gaining more and more attention. This book contains original research articles and a review reporting innovative applications of natural phenolic compounds in the field of nutrition and biomedicine, as active ingredients for the prevention of oxidative-stress-related diseases, and as additives in smart food packaging, biomedical devices, and cosmetic products. The growing importance of agri-food wastes as easily accessible sources of phenolic compounds as well as of synthetic derivatives of natural compounds with improved antioxidant properties is also highlighted. Finally, novel technologies to improve extraction yields, stability, bioavailability, and delivery of antioxidant compounds for healthcare products or for skin applications are described.