This book highlights the latest findings on fundamental aspects of composting, the interaction of various microorganisms, and the underlying mechanisms. In addition to addressing modern tools and techniques used for composting research, it provides an overview of potential composting applications in both agriculture and environmental reclamation. Composting is the process of organic waste decomposition, mediated by microorganisms. The end-product is called 'compost' and can be used as a supplement to improve soil fertility. As the municipal waste generated in most developing countries contains a substantial amount of organic matter suitable for composting, this technology offers a win-win opportunity for stakeholders in terms of disposing of organic waste and providing organic fertilizers for agriculture. In addition, using compost reduces the dependency on harmful chemical fertilizers, and represents a sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative.

This technology, though used for many years, has shown great vitality recently and is still in a state of flux. Provides an account of developments up to the present and also an orderly evaluation of literature already published on the subject. Considerable space is devoted to bubble column reactor performance predictions based on mathematical models and the importance of each is explained with practical examples.

Octacalcium Phosphate Biomaterials: Past, Present and Future is a comprehensive study of octacalcium phosphate (OCP), a next generation biomaterial for bone regeneration. By focusing both on fundamental research and the use of OCP as a scaffold material, this book explores its potential to deliver improved clinical results. Early chapters in the book discuss OCP's effects on bone cell activity, cellular interactions and their role in bone formation, repair and replacement. Later chapters cover topics such as drug delivery, synthesis methodologies and future analysis techniques. This will be an invaluable and unique resource for researchers, clinicians, students and industrialists in the area of orthopedics and dentistry. OCP is known to be a pre-cursor to hydroxyapatite in the human biomineralization process that forms bone and tooth enamel. Research studies that have emerged in recent years suggest OCP's tremendous potential as a bioactive material.

This highly informative and carefully presented book offers a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals of incompressible fluid flow. The textbook focuses on foundational topics to more complex subjects such as the derivation of Navier-Stokes equations, perturbation solutions, inviscid outer and inner solutions, turbulent flows, etc. The author has included end-of-chapter problems and worked examples to augment learning and self-testing. This book will be a useful reference for students in the area of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

This book examines the potential applications of nanoscience and nanotechnology to promote eco-friendly processes and techniques for energy and environment sustainability. Covering various aspects of both the synthesis and applications of nanoparticles and nanofluids for energy and environmental engineering, its goal is to promote eco-friendly processes and techniques. Accordingly, the book elaborates on the development of reliable, economical, eco-friendly processes through advanced nanoscience and technological research and innovations. Gathering contributions by researchers actively engaged in various domains of nanoscience and technology, it addresses topics such as nanoparticle synthesis (both top-down and bottom-up approaches); applications of nanomaterials, nanosensors and plasma discharge in pollution control; environmental monitoring; agriculture; energy recovery; production enhancement; energy conservation and storage; surface modification of materials for energy storage; fuel cells; pollution mitigation; and CO2 capture and sequestration. Given its scope, the book will be of interest to academics and researchers whose work involves nanotechnology or nanomaterials, especially as applied to energy and/or environmental sustainability engineering. Graduate students in the same areas will also find it a valuable resource.

< p=""> This monograph is based on pollution control technologies available to deal with water and air pollution. It includes removal of variety of pollutants including arsenic, chromium, uranium, pesticides and arsenic from water using adsorption technique. In addition, this book deals with the sampling and removal of microplastics using various techniques. The contents also focus on the role of membrane technology in water and wastewater treatment, and particulate matter air pollution and its control techniques. This volume will be a useful guide for researchers, academics and scientists. ^

My professional interest in antimicrobial agents and contamination control goes back 50 years to my tour as a microbiologist in a field hospital in Europe during World War II. With no experience and relying solely on a military handbook, I prepared thermometer trays with jars of blue bichloride of mercury and pink isopropyl alcohol. A preliminary typhoid diagnosis of one of our cooks resulted in the need for lab testing. His stool specimen and its subsequent disposal was my problem. My handbook said bum it. So burn it T did, in a five-gallon can with gasoline. Flames shot up almost six feet, and my next mistake was to extinguish them with carbon tetrachloride. This resulted in the production of lethal phosgene gas. The hospital had a near disaster. I could say that at that moment I vowed to write a how-to book so that such stupidities could be avoided. Nevertheless, when I was offered the opportunity to edit this book I thought back on the need for a real, practical treatment of my subject. This book, then, is a practical handbook for technical service personnel and scientists who are not necessarily specialists in microbiology. It provides information on suitable antimicrobial agents appropriate to their particular problem-solving needs and information on the microbial groups contributing to the specific problem, their ecologies, and strategies for controlling their access to the area or material of interest.

Drug Delivery Systems examines the current state of the field within pharmaceutical science and concisely explains the history of drug delivery systems, including key developments. The book translates the physicochemical properties of drugs into drug delivery systems administered via various routes, such as oral, parenteral, transdermal and inhalational. Regulatory and product development topics are also explored. Written by experts in the field, this volume in the Advances in Pharmaceutical Product Development and Research series deepens our understanding of drug delivery systems within the pharmaceutical sciences industry and research, as well as in chemical engineering. Each chapter delves into a particular aspect of this fundamental field to cover the principles, methodologies and technologies employed by pharmaceutical scientists. This book provides a comprehensive examination that is suitable for researchers and advanced students working in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, biotechnologies, and related industries.

Computational biology drives discovery through its use of high-throughput informatics approaches. This book provides a road map of the current drug development process and how computational biology approaches play a critical role across the entire drug discovery pipeline. Through the use of previously unpublished, real-life case studies the impact of a range of computational approaches are discussed at various phases of the pipeline. Additionally, a focus section provides innovative visualisation approaches, from both the drug discovery process as well as from other fields that utilise large datasets, recognising the increasing use of such technology. Serving the needs of early career and more experienced scientists, this up-to-date reference provides an essential introduction to the process and background of drug discovery, highlighting how computational researchers can contribute to that pipeline.

Biomechanics of Coronary Atherosclerotic Plaque: From Model to Patient, First Edition, is the first comprehensive text to focus on important biomechanical studies conducted in the last decade that have increased our understanding of coronary atherosclerotic plaque initiation, growth, and rupture, as well as improving the design of medical devices and clinical interventions, including surgical procedures. The book provides students, researchers, engineers, clinicians, and interventional cardiologists with an overview of the main topics related to the biomechanics of atherosclerosis, in a single volume written by several experts in the field. This volume is part of the Biomechanics of Living Organs book series. The biomechanics of human soft tissues and organs has been an emerging research field since the publication of Y.C. Fung's original book series in the 1990s. The publication of such books entirely dedicated to a specific biomechanical subject is necessary to advance scientific research in the field of biomechanics and to transfer important knowledge to future generations. Therefore, this series of volumes on the biomechanics of living organs has been created. This series began in July 2017 with the publication of a first volume on the fundamentals of Hyperelastic Constitutive Laws for Finite Element Modeling of Living Organs. The current volume on the Biomechanics of Coronary Atherosclerotic Plaque, is the latest in this new series.

This book explores recent advances in the microbial production of xylitol and its applications in food and medical sector. Xylitol is an important biomolecule from lignocellulose biorefinery which is produced from the xylose by chemical reactions or microbial fermentation methods. Currently, the demand of xylitol at commercial scale is being met through chemical methods. However, recent breakthroughs made in plant cell wall destruction, genetic engineering to develop the designer microorganisms, fermentation methods and media formulations and downstream processing have led the ways for sustainable production of xylitol at commercial scale in lignocellulose biorefineries. Microbial production of xylitol is preferred over the chemical processes as it is environmentally friendly, higher process efficiency with the desired product yield, and product recovery with minimum impurities. This book is a unique compilation of 11 book chapters written by experts in their respective fields. These chapters present critical insights and discuss the current progress and future progress in this area into fermentative xylitol production. Chapter 9 is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For further details see license information in the chapter.

NMR has become the most diverse spectroscopic tool available to date in biomedical research. It is now routinely used to study biomolecular structure and dynamics particularly as a result of recent developments of a cascade of highly sophisticated multidimensional NMR pulse sequences, and of advances in genetic engineering to produce biomolecules, uniformly or selectively enriched with 13C, 15N and 2H.

Features of this book:

- Provides an up-to-date treatment of NMR techniques and their application to problems of biomedical interest

- Most refined multidimensional pulse sequences including the basic aspects are covered by leading NMR spectroscopists.

The book will be useful to NMR spectroscopists, biochemists, and to molecular biologists interested in the use of NMR techniques for solving biological problems.

This book will serve as a primer for readers to understand recent advances, applications, and current challenges in the field of Engineered Living Materials. The chapters cover core science and engineering research areas, including (1) advances in synthetic biology and genetic programmability for Engineered Living Materials, (2) functional Engineered Living Material for application in energy, electronics, and construction, and (3) novel manufacturing approaches for Engineered Living Materials at multiple scales. The emerging field of Engineered Living Materials represents a significant paradigm shift in materials design and synthesis, in which living cells are used to impart biologically active functionalities to manmade materials. The result is a genetically programmable augmentation of non-living matter to exhibit unprecedented life-like (i.e., living) capabilities. At the intersection of synthetic biology and materials science, the field of Engineered Living Materials exhibits unprecedented promise and potential to alter the way we synthesize new materials and design medical devices, fabrics, robotics, commodity polymers, and construction materials. Materials with attributes of living systems can be engineered with an ability to respond to their environment and designed to self-repair in response to physical or other stresses or detect the presence of specific stimuli, such as light, heat, pressure, or hazardous chemical compounds. Although nascent, scientists and researchers in the field of Engineered Living Materials have made marked advances in demonstrating a potential to revolutionize a multitude of science and engineering disciplines. This volume will define the current state of the art of Engineered Living Materials, and highlight grand opportunities and challenges that abound at the nexus of synthetic biology and materials science and engineering.

Biointegration of Medical Implant Materials, Second Edition, provides a unique and comprehensive review of recent techniques and research into material and tissue interaction and integration. New sections discuss soft tissue integration, with chapters on the biocompatibility of engineered stem cells, corneal tissue engineering, and vascular grafts. Other sections review tissue regeneration, inorganic nanoparticles for targeted drug delivery, alginate based drug delivery devices, and design considerations, with coverage of the biocompatibility of materials and their relevance to drug delivery and tissue engineering. With its distinguished editor and team of international contributors, this book is ideal for medical materials scientists and engineers in industry and academia.

Microfluidics is a young and rapidly expanding scientific discipline, which deals with fluids and solutions in miniaturized systems, the so-called lab-on-a-chip systems. It has applications in chemical engineering, pharmaceutics, biotechnology and medicine. As the lab-on-a-chip systems grow in complexity, a proper theoretical understanding becomes increasingly important.
The basic idea of the book is to provide a self-contained formulation of the theoretical framework of microfluidics, and at the same time give physical motivation and example from lab-on-a-chip technology. After three chapters introducing microfluidics, the governing questions for mass, momentum and energy, and some basic flow solutions, the following 14 chapters treat hydraulic resistance/compliance, diffusion/dispersion, time-dependent flow, capillarity, electro-and magneto-hydydrodynamics, thermal transport, two-phase flow, complex flow patterns and acousto-fluidics, as well as the new fields of opto-and nano-fluidics. Throughout the book simple models with analytical solutions are presented to provide the student with a thorough physical understanding of order of magnitudes and various selected micorfluidic phenomena and devices.
The book grew out of a set of well-tested lecture notes. It is with its many pedagogical exercises designed as a textbook for an advanced undergraduate or first-year graduate course. IT is also well suited for self-study.

Real-Time Data Analytics for Large-Scale Sensor Data covers the theory and applications of hardware platforms and architectures, the development of software methods, techniques and tools, applications, governance and adoption strategies for the use of massive sensor data in real-time data analytics. It presents the leading-edge research in the field and identifies future challenges in this fledging research area. The book captures the essence of real-time IoT based solutions that require a multidisciplinary approach for catering to on-the-fly processing, including methods for high performance stream processing, adaptively streaming adjustment, uncertainty handling, latency handling, and more.

This handbook is an edited and updated version of the final report of the IEA Bioenergy sponsored Pyrolysis Activity - PYRA - that officially finished in 1998 and accomplished many valuable contributions to the science and technology of fast pyrolysis. It is intended that this handbook will provide a useful guide both to newcomers to the subject area as well as those already involved in research, development and implementation. The IEA Bioenergy Pyrolysis Task is continuing this work as a collaborative project with the European Commission network on fast pyrolysis of biomass which is now known as PyNe. The European Network was first formed in 1995 as an EC sponsored project in the AIR Programme (AIR3-CT94-1857). At the end of the three-year lives of the Networks in 1997, both sponsoring organisations recognised the benefits from their integration. This led to the present PyNe Network, which is co-sponsored by the European Commission FAIR Programme (FAIR-CT97-3409) and IEA Bioenergy, and which itself is sponsoring the publication of this book as a contribution to the technology.

This book offers valuable insights into the principles, mechanisms of action and applications of traditional and novel enzymes involved in the degradation of wastes. Enzymes are biological catalysts that play an important role in various biochemical reactions. The generation of value-added products by means of these biological processes is also discussed. This book covers the use of in silico and computational methods in understanding the biodegradation processes, and reveals the importance of enzymes in various biochemical reactions and kinetics. The book's target audience includes undergraduate and graduate students, faculty members at colleges and universities, research students, scientists and industry professionals.

The only book that covers in detail a broad range of cutting-edge topics within motor rehabilitation technology

Neural engineering is a discipline that uses engineering techniques to understand, repair, replace, enhance, or treat diseases of neural systems. This book describes state-of-the-art methods within this field, from brain-computer interfaces to spinal and cortical plasticity. Touching on electrode design, signal processing, the neurophysiology of movement, robotics, and much more, this innovative book presents the latest information for readers working in biomedical engineering.

Each section of "Introduction to Neural Engineering for Motor Rehabilitation "begins with an overview of techniques before moving on to provide information on the most recent findings. Topics include: INJURIES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM--including diseases and injuries of the central nervous system leading to sensory-motor impairment; peripheral and spinal plasticity after nerve injuries; and motor control modules of human movement in health and diseaseSIGNAL DETECTION AND CONDITIONING--including progress in peripheral neural interfaces; multi-modal, multi-site neuronal recordings for brain research; methods for non-invasive electroencephalograph detection; wavelet denoising and conditioning of neural recordingsFUNCTION REPLACEMENT (Prostheses and Orthosis)--including an introduction to upper limb prosthetics; controlling prostheses using peripheral nerve stimulation invasive interfaces for amputees; and exoskeletal robotics for functional substitutionFUNCTION RESTORATION--including methods for movement restoration; advanced user interfaces for upper limb functional electrical stimulation; and selectivity of peripheral neural interfacesREHABILITATION THROUGH NEUROMODULATION--including brain-computer interface applied to motor recovery after brain injury; functional electrical therapy of upper extremities; and robotic assisted neurorehabilitation

"Introduction to Neural Engineering for Motor Rehabilitation" is an important textbook and reference for graduate students and researchers in the fields of biomedical and neural engineering.

Mycology has an integral role to play in the development of the biotechnology and biomedical sectors. It has become a subject of increasing importance as new fungi and their associated biomolecules are identified. As this discipline comes to the forefront of research in these sectors, the requirement for a consolidation of available research approaches is required. The First Edition of this book has a few basic and applied protocols. With the Second Edition, this book provides consolidated information on recent developments and the most widely used mycological methods available in the fields of biochemistry, biotechnology and microbiology. The methods outlined offer clear and concise directions to the reader and covers both standard protocols and more applied mycological methods. This book provides useful information for undergraduates, post-graduates, and specialists and researchers studying fungal biology.

High-Density Integrated Electrocortical Neural Interfaces provides a basic understanding, design strategies and implementation applications for electrocortical neural interfaces with a focus on integrated circuit design technologies. A wide variety of topics associated with the design and application of electrocortical neural implants are covered in this book. Written by leading experts in the field- Dr. Sohmyung Ha, Dr. Chul Kim, Dr. Patrick P. Mercier and Dr. Gert Cauwenberghs -the book discusses basic principles and practical design strategies of electrocorticography, electrode interfaces, signal acquisition, power delivery, data communication, and stimulation. In addition, an overview and critical review of the state-of-the-art research is included. These methodologies present a path towards the development of minimally invasive brain-computer interfaces capable of resolving microscale neural activity with wide-ranging coverage across the cortical surface.

Single-cell Omics, Volume 2: Advances in Applications provides the latest single-cell omics applications in the field of biomedicine. The advent of omics technologies have enabled us to identify the differences between cell types and subpopulations at the level of the genome, proteome, transcriptome, epigenome, and in several other fields of omics. The book is divided into two sections: the first is dedicated to biomedical applications, such as cell diagnostics, non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), circulating tumor cells, breast cancer, gliomas, nervous systems and autoimmune disorders, and more. The second focuses on cell omics in plants, discussing micro algal and single cell omics, and more. This book is a valuable source for bioinformaticians, molecular diagnostic researchers, clinicians and several members of biomedical field interested in understanding more about single-cell omics and its potential for research and diagnosis.

Fungi range from being microscopic, single-celled yeasts to multicellular and heterotrophic in nature. Fungal communities have been found in vast ranges of environmental conditions. They can be associated with plants epiphytically, endophytically, or rhizospherically. Extreme environments represent unique ecosystems that harbor novel biodiversity of fungal communities. Interest in the exploration of fungal diversity has been spurred by the fact that fungi perform numerous functions integral in sustaining the biosphere, ranging from nutrient cycling to environmental detoxification, which involves processes like augmentation, supplementation, and recycling of plant nutrients - a particularly important process in sustainable agriculture. Fungal communities from natural and extreme habitats help promote plant growth, enhance crop yield, and enhance soil fertility via direct or indirect plant growth promoting (PGP) mechanisms of solubilization of phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, production of ammonia, hydrogen cyanides, phytohormones, Fe-chelating compounds, extracellular hydrolytic enzymes, and bioactive secondary metabolites. These PGP fungi could be used as biofertilizers, bioinoculants, and biocontrol agents in place of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in eco-friendly manners for sustainable agriculture and environments. Along with agricultural applications, medically important fungi play a significant role for human health. Fungal communities are useful for sustainable environments as they are used for bioremediation which is the use of microorganisms' metabolism to degrade waste contaminants (sewage, domestic, and industrial effluents) into non-toxic or less toxic materials by natural biological processes. Fungi could be used as mycoremediation for the future of environmental sustainability. Fungi and fungal products have the biochemical and ecological capability to degrade environmental organic chemicals and to decrease the risk associated with metals, semi-metals, and noble metals either by chemical modification or by manipulating chemical bioavailability. The two volumes of Recent Trends in Mycological Research aim to provide an understanding of fungal communities from diverse environmental habitats and their potential applications in agriculture, medical, environments and industry. The books are useful to scientists, researchers, and students involved in microbiology, biotechnology, agriculture, molecular biology, environmental biology and related subjects.

This book focuses on carbon dioxide and its global role in our everyday life. Starting with society's dependency on energy, it demonstrates the various sources of carbon dioxide and discusses the putative effects of its accumulation in the atmosphere and its impact on the climate. It then provides an overview of how we can reduce carbon dioxide production and reviews innovative technologies and alternative energy resources. The book closes with a perspective on how carbon dioxide can be utilized reasonably and how mimicking nature can provide us with a solution. Using simple language, this book discusses one of today's biggest challenges for the future of our planet in a way that is understandable for the general public. The authors also provide deep insights into specific issues, making the book a useful resource for researchers and students.