Books published by Mdpi AG

Recent special issues in various journals have focused on “urban ecosystem services”. There is also an increasing amount of studies on “urban ecology”, “urban tree management”, “arboriculture”, “urban biodiversity”, and “ecosystem services” from wildland forests. This Special Issue aims to fill a void and focus on the socio-ecological diversity and the economic value of the ecosystem services from urban and peri-urban forests. Urban and peri-urban forests are tree dominated ecosystems in and near human settlements, while ecosystem services are the direct economic, social, and environmental benefits provided by their structural components and ecological functions.

Wearable electronics and embedded computing systems have been receiving a great deal of interest over the last two decades in research and commercial fields, with a special focus on biomedical applications. The key benefits introduced by these systems include their small size, lightweight, low-power consumption, and, of course, wearability. Major human-centered applications are related to medicine, enabling outpatient care and enhancing the quality of life for chronic disease patients, maybe preventing unnecessary hospitalization. These technological devices can indeed be cost effective and provide doctors with more accurate and reliable data.Exemplary engineering input has focused on developing innovative sensing platforms, adaptable to different environments and user needs, smart textile technology, miniaturized electronics and sensors, energy harvesting, wireless body area networks, and so on. This has provided the possibility of gathering information on several activities, such as during daily activities or sleep, during specific tasks, at home, in the lab, and in the clinic, in the form of physiological signals.This book includes cutting-edge research articles, as well as reviews describing and assessing wearable devices, or proposing novel wearable sensors, computational efficient algorithms for physiological signal processing through embedded computing, collection of environmental/behavioral/psychological data, data fusion, detection and quantification of symptoms, decision support for medical doctors, and communication between patient and doctor.

This book provides knowledge related to strength and conditioning for fitness and sport performance. It is designed for those interested in the many topics that concern strength and conditioning, in relation to advanced scientific inquiries of program design, periodization of training and anaerobic strength, and power testing.