The following commemorative Special Issue on bioactive compounds from the ocean is in honor of Prof. Dr. Peter Proksch on his 70th birthday. Prof. Dr. Proksch is an internationally recognized scientist in research on both terrestrial and marine natural products. Prof. Dr. Proksch worked with terrestrial plants in the early stage of his career and started to work on marine natural products some thirty years ago. He once said, “When I started to work on marine natural products, I was attracted to this fascinating field of science by the exotic environment, the colorful shapes of (mostly) marine invertebrates, and their complex ecological interactions”. In parallel to marine macroorganisms, he soon embarked on studying natural products from marine-derived microorganisms, discovering a huge amount of biodiversity and highly unusual and complex microbial natural products. The topics of this Special Issue include but are not limited to the following: The isolation, structural elucidation, and bioactivity of new molecules from marine organisms; The characterization of proteins, enzymes, and saccharides from marine organisms; The biosynthesis of bioactive compounds from marine organisms; The design, synthesis, modification, and structure–activity relationship of bioactive compounds from marine organisms; The pharmacological mechanisms of bioactive compounds from marine organisms.

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Research on molecule-based magnetic materials was systematized in the 1980s and expanded rapidly. A Special Issue focusing on molecule-based magnetic substances was published in Magnetochemistry. However, the functionalities of the substances increase daily; therefore, the researchers’ quest is not yet in decline. Research on molecule-based magnetism developed across many fields, including chemistry, physics, material chemistry, and applied physics, and the use of the various functionalities of these molecule-based magnetic substances has greatly influenced research on spin-based devices. In honor of Professor Masahiro Yamashita, who contributed greatly to this field, I have put together a Special Issue that highlights ten groundbreaking articles. The issue is entitled, “A Themed Issue of Functional Molecule-Based Magnets: Dedicated to Professor Masahiro Yamashita on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday”. I wish to thank the authors for their dedicated work, and the referees and editorial staff for the time they invested commenting on the articles.

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This book covers a wide range of topics in the orthopaedic fields and can be used as a textbook for the final undergraduate engineering course or as a topic on tribology at the postgraduate level. This book can serve as a useful reference for academics, tribology, and materials researchers; mechanical, materials, and physics engineers; biomedical scientists and professionals in tribology; and related industries. The scientific interest in this book will be evident for many important centres of research, including laboratories and universities throughout the world.

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This reprint is concerned with the microstructural characterization and the defect analysis of metallic additively manufactured (AM) materials and parts. Special attention is paid to the determination of residual stress in such parts and to online monitoring techniques devised to predict the appearance of defects. Finally, several non-destructive testing techniques are employed to assess the quality of AM materials and parts.

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The recent studies focused on development of advanced carbon nanostructured materials, functionalized carbons, nanostructured oxides, electrocatalysts, and catalytic composite materials are collected in this reprint. The advantage of using novel catalytic materials and adsorbents in various applications is demonstrated.

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The use of biomass and organic waste material as a primary resource for the production of fuels, chemicals, and electric power is of growing significance in light of the environmental issues associated with the use of fossil fuels. For this reason, it is vital that new and more efficient technologies for the conversion of biomass are investigated and developed. Today, various advanced methods can be used for the conversion of biomass. These methods are broadly classified into thermochemical conversion, biochemical conversion, and electrochemical conversion. This book collects papers that consider various aspects of sustainability in the conversion of biomass into valuable products, covering all the technical stages from biomass production to residue management. In particular, it focuses on experimental and simulation studies aiming to investigate new processes and technologies on the industrial, pilot, and bench scales.

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This reprint provides the most recent advancements and trends in the analysis of cultural heritage samples, including archaeological and bio-archaeological samples, confirming the growing public and academic interest in this field. The submitted papers cover different aspects of cultural and archaeological heritage protection, conservation, and restoration. The complexity of such samples, including archaeological samples, generally requires a multi-analytical approach. The integrated use of different analytical techniques, with the preference for noninvasive or micro-invasive ones, allows an in-depth understanding of the original materials and their degradation processes and helps obtain innovative solutions for the restoration and conservation of artworks.

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Electrochemical energy storage is becoming essential for portable electronics, electrified transportation, integration of intermittent renewable energy into grids, and many other energy and power applications. The electrode materials and their structures, in addition to the electrolytes, play key roles in supporting a multitude of coupled physicochemical processes that include electronic, ionic, and diffusive transport in electrode and electrolyte phases, electrochemical reactions and material phase changes, as well as mechanical and thermal stresses, thus determining the storage energy density and power density, conversion efficiency, performance lifetime, and system cost and safety. Different material chemistries and multiscale porous structures are being investigated for high performance and low cost. The aim of this Special Issue is to report the recent advances in materials used in electrochemical energy storage that encompass supercapacitors and rechargeable batteries.

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This Special Issue, “Advances in Environmental Applied Physics”, collected original papers from eminent researchers in the field of environmental pollutants, which constitute a health risk to the population, increasing the likelihood of incurring cancer.

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Functional inorganic materials are an indispensable part of innovative technologies that are essential to the development of many fields of industry. The use of new materials, nanostructures, or multicomponent composites with specific chemical or physical properties promotes technological progress in electronics, optoelectronics, catalysis, biomedicine, and many other areas that are concerned with many aspects of human life. Due to the broad and diverse range of potential applications of functional inorganic materials, the development of superior synthesis pathways, reliable characterization, and a deep understanding of the structure–property relationships in materials are rightfully considered to be fundamentally important scientific issues. Only synergetic efforts of scientists dealing with the synthesis, functionalization and characterization of materials will lead to the development of future technologies.

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In this Special Issue, we have gathered work on simulations of polycrystalline metals and alloys at various length scales to model multiscale localization phenomena such as slip bands, cracks, and twins. The series highlights innovative techniques that combine simulation and experiments to capture material production and guide the development of forming theories. The published work helps to understand the effect of microstructure characteristics on deformation and damage behavior under multiaxial load conditions. Furthermore, these models and the studies can be used with machine learning technologies to optimize microstructure functions for materials application and process paths.

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With daily signals, Nature is communicating us that its unconscious wicked exploitation is no more sustainable. Our socio-economic system focuses on production increasing without considering the consequences. We are intoxicating ourselves on a daily bases just to allow the system to perpetuate itself. The time to switch into more natural solutions is come and the scientific community is ready to offer more natural product with comparable performance then the market products we are used to deal with. This book collects a broad set of scientific examples in which research groups from all over the world, aim to replace fossil fuel-based solutions with biomass derived materials. In here, some of the most innovative developments in the field of bio-materials are reported considering topics which goes from biomass valorization to the synthesis of high preforming bio-based materials.

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This book describes the recent advances in natural product chemistry and biodiversity in the Red Sea. All previous marine natural products isolated from different Red Sea organisms and microbes were collected in a comprehensive review. Additionally, newly discovered marine natural products and their biological activities are described.

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A growing interest has been devoted to the development of host systems for ionic and neutral species based on calixarenes. These cyclic oligomers show important host–guest properties, which has led to numerous applications in a broad range of fields, including organocatalysis, sensing, extraction and separation, and, more recently, biomedical applications. The relative ease of the functionalization of their upper and lower rims and the presence of a pre-organized cavity that is available in different sizes and conformations make calixarenes attractive building blocks for the construction of supramolecular assemblies. This book presents the most recent developments on the host–guest properties of calixarenes, as well as the new synthetic methods and applications.

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This Special Issue is aimed at presenting the state of the art of the multidisciplinary science concerning all aspects of volcanic plumes, of relevance to the volcanology, climatology, atmospheric science, and remote sensing communities.

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This Special Issue on “Cement-Based Composites: Advancements in Development and Characterization” presents the latest research and advances in the field of cement-based composites. This Special Issue covers a variety of experimental studies related to fiber-reinforced, photocatalytic, lightweight, and sustainable cement-based composites. Moreover, simulation studies are presented in this Special Issue to provide fundamental knowledge of designing and optimizing the properties of cementitious composites. The presented publications in this Special Issue show the most recent technology in the cement-based composite field.

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In 2015, the first pharmaceutical cocrystal was approved by the FDA. Since then, the number of cocrystals on the market and in the development pipeline has been slowly but steadily growing. It is now well established that cocrystals are a versatile new approach to oral drug formulation. This Reprint Book is a collection of articles that show the utility of pharmaceutical cocrystals and various aspects of cocrystal research: • Cocrystals as a strategy to modify the physicochemical properties of a drug such as dissolution behaviour, tabletability, and melting point; • Development of new coformers; • Screening studies for multiple cocrystal forms; • Cocrystals in nano-sized drug delivery.

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The Special Edition 'Compounds with Polar Metallic Bonding' is a collection of eight original research reports presenting a broad variety of chemical systems, analytical methods, preparative pathways and theoretical descriptions of bonding situations, with the common aim of understanding the complex interplay of conduction electrons in intermetallic compounds that possess different types of dipoles. Coulombic dipoles introduced by electronegativity differences, electric or magnetic dipoles, polarity induced by symmetry reduction—all the possible facets of the term 'polarity'—can be observed in polar intermetallic phases and have their own and, in most cases, unique consequences on the physical and chemical behaviour. Elucidation of the structure–property relationships in compounds with polar metallic bonding is a modern and growing scientific field which combines solid state physics, preparative chemistry, metallurgy, modern analytic methods, crystallography, theoretical calculations of the electronic state and many more disciplines.

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Conservation of painted surfaces, metal leaves, and finishes requires a deep knowledge of both the materials themselves and the supports and the interaction phenomena occurring among them. Superficial treatments, operations, and materials adopted during the conservation intervention can modify the complex system of existing interactions. Therefore, it is fundamental to predict possible induced changes of the chemical-physical properties of the systems. This Special Issue aims at contributing to the definition of the state-of-the-art in the approach to conservation problems of painted surfaces, metal leaves, and finishes. In particular, the topic of interest includes but is not limited to: Methodological approaches for the conservation treatments of the painted surfaces, metal leaves, and finishes; Analytical tools and protocols for the validation of the treatment efficacy and recognizability; Analytical tools for the characterization of surface materials and their decay processes; New materials and treatments.

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The chemistry of silicon has always been a field of major concern due to its proximity to carbon on the periodic table. From the molecular chemist’s viewpoint, one of the most interesting differences between carbon and silicon is their divergent coordination behavior. In fact, silicon is prone to form hyper-coordinate organosilicon complexes, and, as conveyed by reports in the literature, highly sophisticated ligand systems are required to furnish low-coordinate organosilicon complexes. Tremendous progress in experimental, as well as computational, techniques has granted synthetic access to a broad range of coordination numbers for silicon, and the scientific endeavor, which was ongoing for decades, was rewarded with landmark discoveries in the field of organosilicon chemistry. Molecular congeners of silicon(0), as well as silicon oxides, were unveiled, and the prominent group 14 metalloid proved its applicability in homogenous catalysis as a supportive ligand or even as a center of catalytic activity. This book focuses on the most recent advances in the coordination chemistry of silicon with transition metals as well as main group elements, including the stabilization of low-valent silicon species through the coordination of electron donor ligands. Therefore, this book is associated with the development of novel synthetic methodologies, structural elucidations, bonding analysis, and also possible applications in catalysis or chemical transformations using related organosilicon compounds.

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Marine corrosion is a very ancient topic, as humankind has, since antiquity, struggled with the corrosiveness of seawater to exploit the countless and essential natural resources of the sea. It is also a broad topic because it combines chemical, biological, and mechanical factors. Among the numerous materials used for marine applications, iron-based alloys (i.e., steels) are essential in various industrial domains such as (of course) the naval industry (ships, submarines, etc.), the energy industry (pipelines, offshore platforms, renewable energy devices, etc.), and buildings (seaport structures, bridges, steel reinforcement in concrete, etc.). Marine corrosion is still an issue to this day, and the recent and necessary development of marine renewable energy devices has motivated innovative research. Currently, complete mastery of corrosion issues is a key aspect in the profitability of produced energy. Simultaneously, the requirements for environmentally friendly anticorrosion methods and processes are clearly expressed. Numerous fundamental and recent advances in marine corrosion and protection of steels, including carbon steel, low alloy steel, and stainless steel, can then be noted. This Special Issue is necessary to acknowledge the recent and sudden increase in the understanding of steel corrosion processes in marine environments and the associated optimization of anticorrosion methods. Last but not least, a large part of our cultural heritage lies at the bottom of seas and oceans, and it will definitely be lost if scientific research does not include current and historical concerns as well.

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With the second volume, we continue our mission to providing theoretical and experimental research that contribute new insights and practical findings in the field of crystal plasticity-related topics. Once again, a completely new set of 26 original works (including 22 research articles, 3 communications, and 1 review) has been collected. As in the case of the first volume, here, a full spectrum of topics belonging to the field of crystal plasticity is represented, including both numerical simulations and experimental works. By taking into account the investigated materials, the papers can be assigned to the following thematic groups: Steels and iron-based alloys; Non-ferrous alloys with fcc- (Ni- and Cu-based), or hcp crystal structure (Mg- and Ti-based). Other examples include Zirconium, Bi-Sn alloy, or polycarbonate resins; Multicomponent and high-entropy alloys; General theoretical studies on crystal plasticity. Specifically, the reprint should be interesting for students of material science and engineering, Ph.D. candidates, and researchers dealing with various theoretical and practical aspects of plastic deformation in crystalline materials.

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Today, thin films are near-ubiquitous and are utilised in a very wide range of industrially and scientifically important areas. These include familiar everyday instances such as anti-reflective coatings on ophthalmic lenses, smartphone optics, photovoltaics, decorative, and tool coatings. A range of somewhat more exotic applications also exists, such as astronomical instrumentation (e.g., ultra-low loss dielectric mirrors and beam splitters in gravitational wave detectors, such as laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory (LIGO)), gas sensing, medical devices and implants, and accelerator coatings (e.g., coatings for the large hadron collider (LHC), and compact linear collider (CLIC) experiments at European organization for nuclear research (CERN)). This Special Issue will provide a platform for researchers working in any area within this highly diverse field to share and exchange their latest research findings. The Special Issue contains novel studies encompassing material characterisation techniques, a range of thin-film coating deposition processes and applications of such technology.

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The need for energy is increasing and at the same time production from the conventional reservoirs is declining quickly. This requires an economically and technically feasible source of energy for the coming years. Among some alternative future energy solutions the most approachable source is from unconventional reservoirs. As the name “unconventional” implies it requires different and challenging approach to characterize and to develop such a resource. This special issue covers some of the technical challenges for developing unconventional energy sources from shale gas/oil, tight gas sand, and coalbed methane.

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The papers published in the Special Issue "Eco-Friendly Materials for Civil Construction: Utilization and Advantages" are now collected as a reprint supporting sustainability for changing our planet lifestyle of increasing consumerist and predatory actions. Indeed, this reprint serves as a warning that the traditional linear economy entails the generation of huge amounts of wastes and, consequently, a negative impact on the environment. Therefore, emphasis on sustainable action is mandatory for the required transition from a linear to a circular economy.The collection of papers comprising this reprint are intended to contribute to advance and understanding on the role of eco-friendly construction materials. They could not only promote saving in energy but also reduce pollution by incorporating urban, agricultural, and industrial wastes.

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