Applications and support technologies: bettering our living environments [Editor's Note]

After the torch was passed to me in late January this year, I started to think about how to improve our magazine to attract more of your attention. As a reader for over 10 years, I really missed some of the survey articles, which can help readers to learn about new fields. Unfortunately, these kinds of articles have slowly disappeared from most magazines. After consulting with our senior advisors and editors, and talking to some readers like you, I think it is a good idea to get such articles back. So we will slowly experiment with publishing some long invited survey articles from top researchers.