This book offers a comprehensive analysis of philosophical, social, ethical, and legal challenges arising as a consequences of current advances in neurosciences and neurotechnology. It starts by offering an overview of fundamental concepts such as mental privacy, personal autonomy, mental integrity, and responsibility, among others. In turn, it discusses the influence of possible misuses or uncontrolled uses of neurotechnology on those concepts, and, more in general, on human rights and equality. Then, it makes some original proposals to deal with the main ethical, legal, and social problems associated to the use of neurotechnology, both in medicine and in everyday life, suggesting possible policies to protect privacy, neural data, and intimacy. Crossing the borders between humanities, natural sciences, bio-medicine, and engineering, and taking into account geographical and cultural differences, this book offers a conceptual debate around policy and decision making concerning some of the key neuroethical challenges of our times. It offers a comprehensive guide to the most important issues of neurojustice and neuroprotection, together with a set of new paradigms to face some of the most urgent neuroethical problems of our times.

Chitosan Based Biomaterials: Fundamentals, Volume 1, provides the latest information on chitosan, a natural polymer derived from the marine material chitin. Chitosan displays unique properties, most notably biocompatibility and biodegradability. It can also be easily tuned to modify its structure or properties, making chitosan an excellent candidate as a biomaterial. Consequently, chitosan is being developed for many biomedical functions, ranging from tissue engineering and implant coatings to drug and gene delivery. This book looks at the fundamentals of chitosan-based biomaterials.

This book is part of a two-part volume book that highlights the latest advances in innovative bioceramics applied in the highly interdisciplinary area referred to as "translational medicine". This volume covers the basic principles and techniques used in the manufacture of bioceramics and biocomposites for various biomedical applications including drug delivery, implantable bionics and the development of the cardiac pacemaker, and bone tissue engineering. Furthermore, self-healing materials have been attracting increasing interest in both engineering and medical applications during the past two decades. Self-healing hydrogels are particularly interesting because of their ability to repair structural damages and recover their original functions, specifically in tissue engineering.

This book provides a thorough overview of cutting-edge research on electronics applications relevant to industry, the environment, and society at large. It covers a broad spectrum of application domains, from automotive to space and from health to security, while devoting special attention to the use of embedded devices and sensors for imaging, communication and control. The book is based on the 2016 ApplePies Conference, held in Rome, Italy in September 2016, which brought together researchers and stakeholders to consider the most significant current trends in the field of applied electronics and to debate visions for the future. Areas addressed by the conference included information communication technology; biotechnology and biomedical imaging; space; secure, clean and efficient energy; the environment; and smart, green and integrated transport. As electronics technology continues to develop apace, constantly meeting previously unthinkable targets, further attention needs to be directed toward the electronics applications and the development of systems that facilitate human activities. This book, written by industrial and academic professionals, represents a valuable contribution in this endeavor.

This book presents a world-class collection of Brain-Computer Music Interfacing (BCMI) tools. The text focuses on how these tools enable the extraction of meaningful control information from brain signals, and discusses how to design effective generative music techniques that respond to this information. Features: reviews important techniques for hands-free interaction with computers, including event-related potentials with P300 waves; explores questions of semiotic brain-computer interfacing (BCI), and the use of machine learning to dig into relationships among music and emotions; offers tutorials on signal extraction, brain electric fields, passive BCI, and applications for genetic algorithms, along with historical surveys; describes how BCMI research advocates the importance of better scientific understanding of the brain for its potential impact on musical creativity; presents broad coverage of this emerging, interdisciplinary area, from hard-core EEG analysis to practical musical applications.

Medical Biosensors for Point of Care (POC) Applications discusses advances in this important and emerging field which has the potential to transform patient diagnosis and care. Part 1 covers the fundamentals of medical biosensors for point-of-care applications. Chapters in part 2 go on to look at materials and fabrication of medical biosensors while the next part looks at different technologies and operational techniques. The final set of chapters provide an overview of the current applications of this technology. Traditionally medical diagnostics have been dependent on sophisticated technologies which only trained professionals were able to operate. Recent research has focused on creating point-of-care diagnostic tools. These biosensors are miniaturised, portable, and are designed to be used at the point-of-care by untrained individuals, providing real-time and remote health monitoring.

This book covers all various research areas using nano systems in the field of bio nanotechnology to fight against cancer for diagnosis and therapy including drug delivery from fundamentals to advanced levels. Book has designed such a way that, anyone who is interested to understand, learn or start his/her research career in the field of bio nanotechnology in cancer, can use as a gateway to enter in to the field as well as a serious advanced researcher can use as the reference text book. Due to multidisciplinary nature of the subject, the book has written so that advanced undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate and researchers from different fields can follow and understand the subject very easily. Plenty of figures and art works are used to convey the idea visibly and effortlessly

Macroscopic cellular structures and functions are generally investigated using biological and biochemical approaches. But these methods are no longer adequate when one needs to penetrate deep into the small-scale structures and understand their functions. The cell is found to hold various physical structures, molecular machines, and processes that require physical and mathematical approaches to understand and indeed manipulate them. Disorders in general cellular compartments, perturbations in single molecular structures, drug distribution therein, and target specific drug-binding, etc. are mostly physical phenomena. This book will show how biophysics has revolutionized our way of addressing the science and technology of nanoscale structures of cells, and also describes the potential for manipulating the events that occur in them.

This unique book introduces a variety of techniques designed to represent, enhance and empower multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional machine learning research in healthcare informatics. Providing a unique compendium of current and emerging machine learning paradigms for healthcare informatics, it reflects the diversity, complexity, and the depth and breadth of this multi-disciplinary area. Further, it describes techniques for applying machine learning within organizations and explains how to evaluate the efficacy, suitability, and efficiency of such applications. Featuring illustrative case studies, including how chronic disease is being redefined through patient-led data learning, the book offers a guided tour of machine learning algorithms, architecture design, and applications of learning in healthcare challenges.

Overview of the development of gene therapy Provides the most up to date information on the development of gene therapy, from the technology involved to gene correction and genome editing Presents CRISPR gene therapy recent trends and applications Discusses siRNA, mRNA, and DNA plasmids

Stem cells hold great promise for cell therapy, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and pharmaceutical and biotechnological applications. This book highlights the potency of stem cells, their property of self-renewal and their ability to differentiate into different cell lineages. It further describes the different markers to identify stem cells, sources, methods of isolation, culture including 2D, 3D and beyond and their cryopreservation. This is among the first books to discuss glycosylation and sialylation in stem cells. Chapters describe application of stem cells in regenerative medicine and therapy, and highlight their application in cancer therapy and spinal cord injury. The book talks about the important patents on stem cells. The book also highlights the plant stem cells, discussing their pluoripotent nature, role in organ regeneration after injury, specific stem cell niches, that signals to block differentiation studied in plants shoot, root, and vascular meristems, differentiation of plant stem cell, transcriptional regulation and epigenetic modification of plant stem cells. This book is exciting and cutting edge. It will be of great interest to doctors, students and researchers in the field of regenerative medicine, cancer , biotechnology and plant sciences.

Explores text mining and IoT applications for monitoring and controlling smart industrial systems Describes the key principles and techniques for Big-data analytics, security, and optimization for industrial applications. Provides context-aware insights, human-centric industry, smart computing for next-generation industry

This book covers the medical condition of diabetic patients, their early symptoms and methods conventionally used for diagnosing and monitoring diabetes. It describes various techniques and technologies used for diabetes detection. The content is built upon moving from regressive technology (invasive) and adapting new-age pain-free technologies (non-invasive), machine learning and artificial intelligence for diabetes monitoring and management. This book details all the popular technologies used in the health care and medical fields for diabetic patients. An entire chapter is dedicated to how the future of this field will be shaping up and the challenges remaining to be conquered. Finally, it shows artificial intelligence and predictions, which can be beneficial for the early detection, dose monitoring and surveillance for patients suffering from diabetes

This book compiles the latest applications of the cutting-edge gene editing tool CRISPR/Cas in the area of crop improvement. It begins with an introduction to the technique and its application in crop plants. Next, it gives an updated overview of available delivery methods, design tools and resources in CRISPR/Cas. The book subsequently reviews the applications of CRISPR/Cas in connection with e.g. insect stress, disease stress, abiotic stress, nutritional and yield improvement in crop plants, etc. It also discusses the various regulatory, ethical and social aspects of the technique that must be kept in mind when designing experiments. In closing, the book summarizes the status quo and outlines future prospects for the tool in crop improvement and food security. Given its scope, the book will especially benefit students and researchers in food science, biotechnology, agriculture and the plant sciences.

This book presents a mechanistic approach-mathematical modeling-for carrying out dental materials research. This approach allows researchers to go beyond the null hypothesis and obtain a solution that is more general and therefore predictive for conditions other than those considered in a study. Hence it can be used either on its own or to complement the commonly used statistical approach. Through a series of practical problems with wide-ranging application, the reader will be guided on: How to construct a mathematical model for the behavior of dental materials by making informed assumptions of the physical, chemical, or mechanical situation How to simplify the model by making suitable simplifications How to calibrate the model by calculating the values of key parameters using experimental results How to refine the model when there are discrepancies between predictions and experiments Only elementary calculus is required to follow the examples and all the problems can be solved by using MS Excel (c) spreadsheets. This is an ideal book for dental materials researchers without a strong mathematical background who are interested in applying a more mechanistic approach to their research to give deeper insight into the problem at hand. Advance praise for Mathematical Models for Dental Materials Research: "This is a nice addition for research students on how to conduct their work and how to manage data analysis. It brings together a number of important aspects of dental materials investigations which has been missing in the literature. The practical examples make it much easier to understand." - Michael F. Burrow, Clinical Professor in Prosthodontics, The University of Hong Kong "The great strengths of this volume are the real world examples of dental materials research in the successive chapters. In turn, this is an outcome of the outstanding expertise of both authors. I warmly recommend this book to the dental biomaterials community worldwide." - David C. Watts, Professor of Biomaterials Science, University of Manchester, UK

Nanotechnology is believed to be the next great revolution in biology, medicine, and agriculture. This new volume, Biogenic Nanomaterials: Structural Properties and Functional Applications, explores that trend by providing in a global way updated information on the use and applications of nanobiotechnology, starting from a careful characterization and introduction to the various uses of nanoparticles and nanomaterials, their nanomechanical properties in bacteria, and biomedical applications. The book goes on to present nanobiotechnology applications in targeted therapy for multiple pathologies, such as cancer, obstructive pulmonary diseases, chronic infectious diseases, as well as its impact on the modulation of the intestinal microbiota. A special emphasis is also given to the potential of nanobiotechnology in terms of promoting sustainability, such as the ability to improve plant systems in terms of tissue culture, its added value in the transfer of macromolecules to plants, and also in triggering the sustainable exploitation of agriculture, forestry, and food residues, ultimately promoting green nanotechnology. This book offers a unique perspective and overview of the influences of nanobiotechnology researchers and scientists. It delivers an important resource for existing applications and imminent developments of nanobiotechnology.

Covers all aspects of gold nanorods along with selected protocols Focuses on synthetic chemistry, optical property, and fictionalization approach of colloidal gold nanorods Describes standard synthetic methods and advantage of gold nanorods in biomedical applications Includes authentic and reproducible experimental procedures Discusses applications like redox catalyst, catalyst promoter, delivery carrier, solar cell material, and so forth

This book discusses the emergence of diverse functional organizations in the visual pathway which could be spontaneously and solely initiated by the random feedforward wiring of neural circuits. It demonstrates that the structure of ON and OFF retinal ganglion cell (RGC) mosaics is projected onto V1 by retino-cortical feedforward mapping to induce higher cognitive functions. This book will be beneficial for both theoretical and experimental neuroscientists, as well as for researchers using brain-inspired neural network models.

With rise of smart medical sensors, cloud computing and the health care technologies, "connected health" is getting remarkable consideration everywhere. Recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) has brought the vision of a smarter world into reality. Cloud computing fits well in this scenario as it can provide high quality of clinical experience. Thus an IoT-cloud convergence can play a vital role in healthcare by offering better insight of heterogeneous healthcare content supporting quality care. It can also support powerful processing and storage facilities of huge data to provide automated decision making. This book aims to report quality research on recent advances towards IoT-Cloud convergence for smart healthcare, more specifically to the state-of-the-art approaches, design, development and innovative use of those convergence methods for providing insights into healthcare service demands. Students, researchers, and medical experts in the field of information technology, medicine, cloud computing, soft computing technologies, IoT and the related fields can benefit from this handbook in handling real-time challenges in healthcare. Current books are limited to focus either on soft computing algorithms or smart healthcare. Integration of smart and cloud computing models in healthcare resulting in connected health is explored in detail in this book.

Machine Learning (ML) is a sub field of artificial intelligence that uses soft computing and algorithms to enable computers to learn on their own and identify patterns in observed data, build models that explain the world, and predict things without having explicit pre-programmed rules and models. This book discusses various applications of ML in engineering fields and the use of ML algorithms in solving challenging engineering problems ranging from biomedical, transport, supply chain and logistics, to manufacturing and industrial. Through numerous case studies, it will assist researchers and practitioners in selecting the correct options and strategies for managing organizational tasks.

This book presents the design, development and field trials of radio frequency based wireless monitoring system for sleep apnoea patients. It contains 4 major areas including general background of wireless monitoring technology and MIMO in wireless body area network (WBAN), microwave hardware designs, virtual MIMO in WBAN and hardware system level implementation and field trials. At components level, this book presents the design theory, process and examples of bandpass filters, lowpass filters, low profile patch antennas, power amplifiers and oscillators which are the key elements in transducer designs in the body area network and cooperative communication wireless sensor network system. At system level, this book features the hardware integration, field trial and network coding techniques. This book also gives a presentation of virtual MIMO applications, e.g. MIMO implementation using FPGA, correlation coefficient measurement. The book will create impact in the fields of wireless monitoring technology in biomedical engineering, which have been growing exponentially.

This book describes a set of novel statistical algorithms designed to infer functional connectivity of large-scale neural assemblies. The algorithms are developed with the aim of maximizing computational accuracy and efficiency, while faithfully reconstructing both the inhibitory and excitatory functional links. The book reports on statistical methods to compute the most significant functional connectivity graph, and shows how to use graph theory to extract the topological features of the computed network. A particular feature is that the methods used and extended at the purpose of this work are reported in a fairly completed, yet concise manner, together with the necessary mathematical fundamentals and explanations to understand their application. Furthermore, all these methods have been embedded in the user-friendly open source software named SpiCoDyn, which is also introduced here. All in all, this book provides researchers and graduate students in bioengineering, neurophysiology and computer science, with a set of simplified and reduced models for studying functional connectivity in in silico biological neuronal networks, thus overcoming the complexity of brain circuits.

Hydrogels are a particular class of compounds of which the major constituent is wa- ter. In fact, water is present in the hydrogel up to 90% and is contained in a scaffold which is generally polymeric and obviously hydrophilic. As a result, hydrogels re- semble each other even though obtained from different polymers. Nevertheless, the polymeric matrix gives particular characteristics to the hydrogel leading to applica- tions in different fields. Water is the main element of the human body, thus hydrogels are excellent struc- tures to favourably shelter proteins, cells etc. , without altering their characteristics and properties. This is why hydrogels are mainly designed and synthesized for their usein thebiologicalfield;hence the name biohydrogels. Their propertiespoint totheir use as scaffolds for stem cells which has turned out to be a very promising technique for tissue and organ regeneration. For this reason their investigation falls within the Biomaterials Science. Paradoxically, the conceptual simplicity of hydrogelsupto nowhas led to a super- ficialstudy of their chemistry, chemical physics and mechanics preventing their wider application in the human body due to a lack of knowledge of biological component interactions. For example, it is not clear, yet, how to store hydrogels without alter- ing their characteristics. In fact, hydrogels re-hydrated after lyophylization or oven drying, generally show corrupted properties once swollen in water, in comparison with their native counterparts.

This book focuses on novel implementations of sensor technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision and statistics for automated, human fall recognition systems and related topics using data fusion. It includes theory and coding implementations to help readers quickly grasp the concepts and to highlight the applicability of this technology. For convenience, it is divided into two parts. The first part reviews the state of the art in human fall and activity recognition systems, while the second part describes a public dataset especially curated for multimodal fall detection. It also gathers contributions demonstrating the use of this dataset and showing examples. This book is useful for anyone who is interested in fall detection systems, as well as for those interested in solving challenging, signal recognition, vision and machine learning problems. Potential applications include health care, robotics, sports, human-machine interaction, among others.

This work was compiled to serve as a convenient source that covers a number of techniques (and details of their use) in the rather large field of nanomedicine, with special attention paid to gene delivery. As principal investigators working in the field of nanomedicine, we sought to put together the most current and relevant topics in gene delivery, imaging and evaluation systems. We expect the work to serve very well for scientists and graduate students in the nanomedicine field.