30 years ago, polymer processing was considered to be a set of operations aiming at imparting a desired shape to the material, while its final properties were defined exclu- sively by the molecular structure and architecture resulted from the respective synthetic approaches. These two fields of knowledge - polymer processing and polymer structure - grew closer as several scientific and technological works disclosed the microstructure and other morphological features developed by polymeric systems upon different process- ing conditions. Even before the real understanding of the polymer...