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

The book presents an integrative review of paleoneurology, the study of endocranial morphology in fossil species. The main focus is on showing how computed methods can be used to support advances in evolutionary neuroanatomy, paleoanthropology and archaeology and how they have contributed to creating a completely new perspective in cognitive neuroscience. Moreover, thanks to its multidisciplinary approach, the book addresses students and researchers approaching human paleoneurology from different angles and for different purposes, such as biologists, physicians, anthropologists, archaeologists and computer scientists. The individual chapters, written by international experts, represent authoritative reviews of the most important topics in the field. All the concepts are presented in an easy-to-understand style, making them accessible to university students, newcomers and also to anyone interested in understanding how methods like biomedical imaging, digital anatomy and computed and multivariate morphometrics can be used for analyzing ontogenetic and phylogenetic changes according to the principles of functional morphology, morphological integration and modularity.

This book highlights time reversal acoustics, techniques based on the symmetry properties of acoustic fields. It has the unique feature that the first eleven chapters of the book are on the indepth studies of the theories of time reversal acoustics. The remaining chapters are on the four major applications of time reversal acoustics, together with their experimental setups and case studies: underwater communication, seismic exploration,nondestructive evaluation, and medical ultrasound imaging.. The gauge invariance approach to acoustic fields, proposed by the author in 2007, is confirmed by the successful fabrication of acoustical metamaterials and the applications of time reversal acoustics to superresolution. The book also presents groundbreaking applications of time reversal acoustics to underwater communication technology and the application of metamaterials to time reversal acoustics.

This book presents current innovative, alternative and creative approaches that challenge traditional mechanisms in and across disciplines and industries targeting societal impact. A common thread throughout the book is human-centered, uni and multi-modal strategies across the range of human technologies, including sensing and stimuli; virtual and augmented worlds; games for serious applications; accessibility; digital-ethics and more. Focusing on engaging, meaningful, and motivating activities that at the same time offer systemic information on human condition, performance and progress, the book is of interest to anyone seeking to gain insights into the field, be they students, teachers, practicing professionals, consultants, or family representatives. By offering a wider perspective, it addresses the need for a core text that evokes and provokes, engages and demands and stimulates and satisfies.

This book presents the latest advances in marine structures and related biomaterials for applications in both soft- and hard-tissue engineering, as well as controlled drug delivery. It explores marine structures consisting of materials with a wide variety of characteristics that warrant their use as biomaterials. It also underlines the importance of exploiting natural marine resources for the sustainable development of novel biomaterials and discusses the resulting environmental and economic benefits. The book is divided into three major sections: the first covers the clinical application of marine biomaterials for drug delivery in tissue engineering, while the other two examine the clinical significance of marine structures in soft- and hard-tissue engineering, respectively. Focusing on clinically oriented applications, it is a valuable resource for dentists, oral and maxillofacial surgeons, orthopedic surgeons, and students and researchers in the field of tissue engineering.

This book presents the complete formulation of a new advanced discretization meshless technique: the Natural Neighbour Radial Point Interpolation Method (NNRPIM). In addition, two of the most popular meshless methods, the EFGM and the RPIM, are fully presented. Being a truly meshless method, the major advantages of the NNRPIM over the FEM and other meshless methods, are the remeshing flexibility and the higher accuracy of the obtained variable field. Using the natural neighbour concept, the NNRPIM permits to determine organically the influence-domain, resembling the cellulae natural behaviour. This innovation permits the analysis of convex boundaries and extremely irregular meshes, which is an advantage in the biomechanical analysis, with no extra computational effort associated.

This volume shows how to extend the NNRPIM to the bone tissue remodelling analysis, expecting to contribute with new numerical tools and strategies in order to permit a more efficient numerical biomechanical analysis.

The second edition of this successful book provides further and in-depth insight into theoretical models dealing with Internet addiction, as well as includes new therapeutical approaches. The editors also broach the emerging topic of smartphone addiction. This book combines a scholarly introduction with state-of-the-art research in the characterization of Internet addiction. It is intended for a broad audience including scientists, students and practitioners. The first part of the book contains an introduction to Internet addiction and their pathogenesis. The second part of the book is dedicated to an in-depth review of neuroscientific findings which cover studies using a variety of biological techniques including brain imaging and molecular genetics. The third part of the book focuses on therapeutic interventions for Internet addiction. The fourth part of the present book is an extension to the first edition and deals with a new emerging potential disorder related to Internet addiction - smartphone addiction. Moreover, in this second edition of the book new content has been added. Among others, the reader will find an overview of theoretical models dealing with Internet addiction, results from twin studies in the context of Internet addiction and additional insights into therapeutic approaches to Internet addiction.

This book outlines comprehensively the main medical uses of aptamers, from diagnosis to therapeutics in fourteen chapters. Pioneering topics covered include aptamer pharmaceuticals, aptamers for malign tumors, aptamers for personalized therapeutics and aptamers for point-of-care testing. The book offers an essential guide for medical scientists interested in developing aptamer-based schemes for better theranostics. It is therefore of interest for not only academic researchers, but also practitioners and medical researchers in various fields of medical science, medical research and bio-analytical chemistry.

This book is about the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and the unique and special environment of active implants that electrically interface with the brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and organs. At the heart of the book is the matter of repairing and rehabilitating patients suffering from severe neurologic impairments, from paralysis to movement disorders and epilepsy, that often requires an invasive solution based on an implanted device. Past achievements, current work, and future perspectives of BCI and other interactions between medical devices and the human nervous system are described in detail from a pragmatic point of view. Reviews the Active Implantable Medical Devices (AIMDs) industry and how it is moving from cardiac to neuro applications Clear, easy to read, presentation of the field of neuro-technologies for human benefit Provides easy to understand explanations about the technical limitations, the physics of implants in the human body, and realistic long terms perspectives

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.

This book provides the latest information about hairy root culture and its several applications, with special emphasis on potential of hairy roots for the production of bioactive compounds. Due to high growth rate as well as biochemical and genetic stability, it is possible to study the metabolic pathways related to production of bioactive compounds using hairy root culture. Chapters discuss the feasibility of hairy roots for plant derived natural compounds. Advantages and difficulties of hairy roots for up-scaling studies in bioreactors are included as well as successful examples of hairy root culture of plant species producing bioactive compounds used in food, flavors and pharmaceutical industry. This book is a valuable resource for researchers and students working on the area of plant natural products, phytochemistry, plant tissue culture, medicines, and drug discovery.

This book is aimed not only at haptics and human interface researchers, but also at developers and designers from manufacturing corporations and the entertainment industry who are working to change our lives. This publication comprises the proceedings of the first International AsiaHaptics conference, held in Tsukuba, Japan, in 2014. The book describes the state of the art of the diverse haptics- (touch-) related research, including scientific research into haptics perception and illusion, development of haptics devices, and applications for a wide variety of fields such as education, medicine, telecommunication, navigation, and entertainment.

This book provides comprehensive mechanobiological insights into bone, including the microstructure of cancellous bone and its realistic loading in the human body. This approach considers different types of loads, i.e. static and dynamic, and the response under uniaxial and multiaxial loading conditions. The book also reviews additional factors influencing biomechanical properties, e.g. fluid transport. In closing, the mechanobiological approach is discussed in the context of the finite element method.

This book introduces the state-of-the-art technologies in mechatronics, robotics, and MEMS devices in order to improve their methodologies. It provides a follow-up to "Advanced Mechatronics and MEMS Devices" (2013) with an exploration of the most up-to-date technologies and their applications, shown through examples that give readers insights and lessons learned from actual projects. Researchers on mechatronics, robotics, and MEMS as well as graduate students in mechanical engineering will find chapters on: Fundamental design and working principles on MEMS accelerometers Innovative mobile technologies Force/tactile sensors development Control schemes for reconfigurable robotic systems Inertial microfluidics Piezoelectric force sensors and dynamic calibration techniques ...And more. Authors explore applications in the areas of agriculture, biomedicine, advanced manufacturing, and space. Micro-assembly for current and future industries is also considered, as well as the design and development of micro and intelligent manufacturing.

This book provides a concise overview of VR systems and their cybersickness effects, giving a description of possible reasons and existing solutions to reduce or avoid them. Moreover, the book explores the impact that understanding how efficiently our brains are producing a coherent and rich representation of the perceived outside world would have on helping VR technics to be more efficient and friendly to use. Getting Rid of Cybersickness will help readers to understand the underlying technics and social stakes involved, from engineering design to autonomous vehicle motion sickness to video games, with the hope of providing an insight of VR sickness induced by the emerging immersive technologies. This book will therefore be of interest to academics, researchers and designers within the field of VR, as well as industrial users of VR and driving simulators.

This book discusses the development of various reliable scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) imaging techniques for studying the distribution of biomarkers and nanomaterials in thin and thick animal samples, plant antioxidant (AO) defense systems, as well as human melanoma. The authors demonstrate that SECM could improve the diagnosis and understanding of different melanoma stages on the basis of highly resolved maps of the tyrosinase distribution. Tyrosinase is the key enzyme involved in fruit maturation and is a biomarker for melanoma. As such the book presents various tyrosinase SECM detection strategies developed for the analysis of the spatial distribution of tyrosinase in melanoma and in banana samples. It describes the first imaging of the redox active proteins within the entire mouse heart with an SECM system using a spider probe composed of eight independent microelectrodes. Further, it investigates distributions of injected graphene nanoribbons (GONRs) for drug delivery by Soft-Probe-SECM. Lastly, the book outlines a non-invasive electrochemical strategy for mapping the AO activity of apple peel using Soft-Probe-SECM.

This book presents the latest cutting edge research, theoretical methods, and novel applications in the field of computational intelligence and computational biological approaches that are aiming to combat COVID-19. The book gives the technological key drivers behind using AI to find drugs that target the virus, shedding light on the structure of COVID-19, detecting the outbreak and spread of new diseases, spotting signs of a COVID-19 infection in medical images, monitoring how the virus and lockdown is affecting mental health, and forecasting how COVID-19 cases and deaths will spread across cities and why. Further, the book helps readers understand computational intelligence techniques combating COVID-19 in a simple and systematic way.

Medical images are at the base of many routine clinical decisions and their influence continues to increase in many fields of medicine. Since the last decade, computers have become an invaluable tool for supporting medical image acquisition, processing, organization and analysis. Biomedical Image Analysis and Machine Learning Technologies: Applications and Techniques provides a panorama of the current boundary between biomedical complexity coming from the medical image context and the multiple techniques which have been used for solving many of these problems. This innovative publication serves as a leading industry reference as well as a source of creative ideas for applications of medical issues.

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.

Describing the role of engineering in medicine today, this comprehensive volume covers a wide range of the most important topics in this burgeoning field. Supported with over 145 illustrations, the book discusses bioelectrical systems, mechanical analysis of biological tissues and organs, biomaterial selection, compartmental modeling, and biomedical instrumentation. Moreover, students and professionals find a thorough treatment of the concept of using living cells in various therapeutics and diagnostics. Structured as a complete text for courses on the subject, the book also makes a nice reference for professionals new to the bioengineering field.

This book summarizes the recent advances in applications of starch in state-of-the-art drug carriers (hydrogel, micro- and nano-particulate carriers) with stimulus-responsive and target-specific properties. It also highlights the role of starch and its derivatives in transmucosal administration to improve the bioavailability of drugs. Further, it outlines the principles of effective, advanced, starch-based drug delivery systems and illustrates how these principles are key to the development of future drug delivery strategies. This interesting reference resource is useful for students, researchers and engineers in the fields of carbohydrate chemistry, polymer sciences and drug delivery.

This volume presents the current state of laser-assisted bioprinting, a cutting edge tissue engineering technology. Nineteen chapters discuss the most recent developments in using this technology for engineering different types of tissue. Beginning with an overview, the discussion covers bioprinting in cell viability and pattern viability, tissue microfabrication to study cell proliferation, microenvironment for controlling stem cell fate, cell differentiation, zigzag cellular tubes, cartilage tissue engineering, osteogenesis, vessel substitutes, skin tissue and much more. Because bioprinting is on its way to becoming a dominant technology in tissue-engineering, Bioprinting in Regenerative Medicine is essential reading for those researching or working in regenerative medicine, tissue engineering or translational research. Those studying or working with stem cells who are interested in the development of the field will also find the information invaluable.

This book covers the latest advances, applications, and challenges in orthopedic biomaterials. Topics covered include materials for orthopedic applications, including nanomaterials, biomimetic materials, calcium phosphates, polymers, biodegradable metals, bone grafts/implants, and biomaterial-mediated drug delivery. Absorbable orthopedic biomaterials and challenges related to orthopedic biomaterials are covered in detail. This is an ideal book for graduate and undergraduate students, researchers, and professionals working with orthopedic biomaterials and tissue engineering. This book also: Describes biodegradable metals for orthopedic applications, such as Zn-based medical implants Thoroughly covers various materials for orthopedic applications, including absorbable orthopedic biomaterials with a focus on polymers Details the state-of-the-art research on orthopedic nanomaterials and nanotechnology

This book highlights the growing applications of THz technology and various modules used for their successful realization. The enormous advantages of THz devices like higher resolution, spatial directivity, high-speed communication, greater bandwidth, non-ionizing signal nature and compactness make them useful in various applications like communication, sensing, security, safety, spectroscopy, manufacturing, bio-medical, agriculture, imaging, etc. Since the THz radiation covers frequencies from 0.1THz to around 10THz and highly attenuated by atmospheric gases, they are used in short-distance applications only. The book focuses on recent advances and different research issues in terahertz technology and presents theoretical, methodological, well-established and validated empirical works dealing with the different topics.

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.