The papers presented in this special issue, ""Glass Science and its Applications"", cover the physics and chemistry of conventional glasses, sol gel glasses and glass ceramic materials as used in technological and biomedical applications; for example, the first paper describes the optimization of ormosil glasses for luminescence-based dissolved-oxygen sensor applications. Here, the main aim was to prepare and evaluate various sol gel film compositions in order to identify those most promising for oxygen sensing. The physical, thermal, structural and spectral properties of rare-earth ion-doped |