The amide bond represents a privileged motif in chemistry. The recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the development of new chemical transformations of amides. These developments cover an impressive range of catalytic N–C bond activation in electrophilic, Lewis acid, radical, and nucleophilic reaction pathways, among other transformations. Equally relevant are structural and theoretical studies that provide the basis for chemoselective manipulation of amidic resonance. This monograph on amide bonds offers a broad survey of recent advances in activation of amides and addresses various approaches in the field.

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The effort of the Editors has received global attention. Indebtedness is due to Saha and Asif and coworkers from Canada, Joseph and Mahapatra and coworkers from Poland and India, Ramirez-Montoya and coworkers from Spain and Mexico, Mota-Panizio and coworkers from Portugal and Brazil, Izquierdo and Lopez-Coca and coworkers from Spain, Vinitnantharat and coworkers from Thailand and the UK, Roy and Fini and coworkers from India and the USA, Lawson and Luyima and coworkers from Ghana and South Korea, Fouad El Mansouri and coworkers from Morocco and Spain, and Man Zhang and Yaning Zhang and coworkers from China for the 10 scholarly research papers dealing with the synthesis, characterization, properties, and applications of new carbon materials. The applications are mainly centered around environmental remediation owing to the intensity of the problem and comprise of water decontamination and the removal of heavy metals and organic compounds like tannic acid from contaminated sources. The use of biochar in agriculture for preventing nitrogen leaching for soil has also been included. Unconventional carbon-related materials like rice husk ash and carbon steel slag were also used for exotic applications.

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This reprint is devoted to understanding the unique and combined effects of family risk and protective factors on child development across multiple dimensions of functioning (e.g., physical, mental, emotional, behavioral, social, and cognitive).

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In a context where the role of biofuels will continue to grow, it is necessary to take into account the current state of their various manufacturing processes and to anticipate the expansion of the market. Thus, current biodiesel production processes generate a significant amount of glycerol as a by-product (about 100 kg per ton of processed vegetable oil). An explosion of the biodiesel market must integrate the valorization of glycerol whose current market of distribution (cosmetics, drugs, polymers, etc.) is not guaranteed such an expansion. This valuation will contribute effectively to the profitability and sustainability of the processes from which it derives. Glycerol physicochemical and toxicological properties give it the potential to be used as solvent, biolubricant, dispersant, and surfactant, among others. It is also widely used in the food industry as a preservative and sweetener. Beyond these applications, glycerol can also be used as a raw material for a wide range of chemicals. Glycerol is a highly functionalized molecule with specific physico-chemical properties, which can be used in different reactions as a reactant or a building block. For example, glycerol can be used as a starting material for antibiotic production, biosurfactants, organic acid production (lactic, propionic, succinic, citric acid, glyoxylic acid, glyoxalic acid, amino acids, etc.), alcohols (propanediols), glycerol esters, acrolein production, etc. These products can be obtained either through chemical reactions such as acetalization, dehydration, glycerolysis, esterification, etherification, aqueous phase reforming, oxidation, carboxylation, electrochemical routes, or through enzymatic reactions. However, it must be kept in mind that the development of industrial processes relies on the use of crude glycerol from biodiesel production. For that purpose, robust processes involving impurities-insensitive catalysts or pre-purification have to be developed. Finally, the separation of the chemical products obtained after glycerol conversion is also a key step toward the development of viable glycerol-based processes.

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This reprint addresses the unique opportunities and challenges associated with human–computer interaction with intelligent systems. First, state-of-the-art reviews are presented about speech emotions, automatic spelling correction, and art usage in virtual reality. We encouraged authors to submit reports describing systems built for different languages and multilingual systems. The linguistic, emotional, prosodic, and dialogue aspects of speech communication are investigated. Special attention is given to sentiment and emotional analysis from text and speech. Speech audiometry, offline speech recognition, and text-independent speaker verification systems are elaborated. The rapidly growing domain of virtual reality applications is of interest both as an application domain in which new interfaces and interaction methods are needed and as a potential testbed for evaluating speech and other interface modalities.

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The use of Advanced Oxidation Technologies (AOTs) for wastewater treatment is an important area of research which has not yet been fully exploited at an industrial level and has significant potential in the disposal of many industrial effluents. In particular, this includes effluents that are difficult to treat by conventional biological treatment processes. This reprint covers the latest advances in the field of wastewater treatment by Advanced Oxidation Technologies, with a focus on treatments based on photolysis, TiO2/solar light, ozone/ultraviolet irradiation, oxidant/ultraviolet irradiation, oxidant/catalyst/ultraviolet irradiation, high-energy electron beam irradiation (E-beam), sonication/photocatalysis, etc.

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This book, titled “Ionic Conductive Membranes for Fuel Cells”, from the journal Membranes, discusses the state of the art and future developments in the field of polymer electrolyte membranes for fuel cells, an efficient and clean system for converting fuel into energy.

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Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) is one of the most successful polymers used for producing therapeutic devices, such as drug carriers (DC). PLGA is one of the few polymers that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved for human administration due to its biocompatibility and biodegradability. In recent years, DC produced with PLGA has gained enormous attention for its versatility in transporting different type of drugs, e.g., hydrophilic or hydrophobic small molecules, or macromolecules with a controlled drug release without modifying the physiochemical properties of the drugs. These drug delivery systems have the possibility/potential to modify their surface properties with functional groups, peptides, or other coatings to improve the interactions with biological materials. Furthermore, they present the possibility to be conjugated with specific target molecules to reach specific tissues or cells. They are also used for different therapeutic applications, such as in vaccinations, cancer treatment, neurological disorder treatment, and as anti-inflammatory agents. This book aims to focus on the recent progress of PLGA as a drug carrier and their new pharmaceutical applications.

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The development of porous materials has attracted the attention of the research community for years. Porosity characteristics have specific impacts on the material properties and materials that are applied in many areas, such as pollutant removal, CO2 capture, energy storage, catalytic oxidation and reduction processes, the conversion of biomass to biofuels, and drug delivery. Examples of porous materials are activated carbons, clays, and zeolites. The aim of this book is to collect the recent advances and progress regarding porous materials and their applications in the environmental area.

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How are activation programs for the young unemployed implemented? How do street-level bureaucrats deal with competing rationalities and demands for action? Transition policies increasingly aim at promoting self-regulation and constructing employable subjects. Stephan Dahmen explores the practical regulation of biographical transitions in activation programs for the young unemployed by focusing on the interactive accomplishment of activation work. The study reveals how the critical tensions of activation policies are continually re-interpreted and adapted to local contingencies and describes the various organisational technologies used for creating employable subjects.

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Das neuartige Arbeitsmarktinstrument "Soziale Aktivierung" versammelt Maßnahmen, deren Wirkungen über die dominierenden Ziele der direkten und zeitnahen Integration in den Arbeitsmarkt hinausgehen sollen. Anhand von Fallbeispielen wie Kung-Fu-Kursen oder Theatergruppen rekonstruiert Carolin Freier, wie Langzeitarbeitslose und andere arbeitsmarktferne Personen hierdurch "sozial aktiviert" und zur sozialen Teilhabe befähigt werden sollen, u.a. durch das (Wieder-)Erlernen von Alltagskompetenzen. Die Studie zeichnet nach, wie diese Maßnahmen in der täglichen Praxis der Arbeitsvermittlung entstanden, auf welche Strategien sie sich zurückführen lassen und welche Folgen sich für die Arbeitslosen ergeben.

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The articles featured in this Special Issue cover different aspects of the design, testing, and application of various types of supplementary cementitious materials in concrete. The results of the research, conducted by over 50 international universities and scientific centers, prove the great interest in the SCM topic.

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This reprint was proposed and organized as a means to present recent developments in the field of testing of materials and elements in civil engineering. For this reason, the articles highlighted in this editorial relate to different aspects of this topic, from building materials to building structures. The current trend in the development of materials testing in civil engineering is mainly concerned with the detection of flaws and defects in elements and structures using destructive, semidestructive, and nondestructive testing.

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This reprint was proposed and organized as a means to present recent developments in the field of testing of materials and elements in civil engineering. For this reason, the articles highlighted in this editorial relate to different aspects of this topic, from building materials to building structures. The current trend in the development of materials testing in civil engineering is mainly concerned with the detection of flaws and defects in elements and structures using destructive, semidestructive, and nondestructive testing.

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Fuzzy Logic is a good model for the human ability to compute words. It is based on the theory of fuzzy set. A fuzzy set is different from a classical set because it breaks the Law of the Excluded Middle. In fact, an item may belong to a fuzzy set and its complement at the same time and with the same or different degree of membership. The degree of membership of an item in a fuzzy set can be any real number included between 0 and 1. This property enables us to deal with all those statements of which truths are a matter of degree. Fuzzy logic plays a relevant role in the field of Artificial Intelligence because it enables decision-making in complex situations, where there are many intertwined variables involved. Traditionally, fuzzy logic is implemented through software on a computer or, even better, through analog electronic circuits. Recently, the idea of using molecules and chemical reactions to process fuzzy logic has been promoted. In fact, the molecular word is fuzzy in its essence. The overlapping of quantum states, on the one hand, and the conformational heterogeneity of large molecules, on the other, enable context-specific functions to emerge in response to changing environmental conditions. Moreover, analog input–output relationships, involving not only electrical but also other physical and chemical variables can be exploited to build fuzzy logic systems. The development of “fuzzy chemical systems” is tracing a new path in the field of artificial intelligence. This new path shows that artificially intelligent systems can be implemented not only through software and electronic circuits but also through solutions of properly chosen chemical compounds. The design of chemical artificial intelligent systems and chemical robots promises to have a significant impact on science, medicine, economy, security, and wellbeing. Therefore, it is my great pleasure to announce a Special Issue of Molecules entitled “The Fuzziness in Molecular, Supramolecular, and Systems Chemistry.” All researchers who experience the Fuzziness of the molecular world or use Fuzzy logic to understand Chemical Complex Systems will be interested in this book.

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