According to the FDA Quality System Regulations, manufacturers must ensure that "device packaging and shipping containers are designed and constructed to protect the device from alteration or damage during the customary conditions of processing, storage, handling, and distribution." As specific as this statement is, the FDA does not provide instructions on how to achieve their standards. Validating Medical Packaging demystifies the validation procedure for medical device packaging by providing specific examples and templates for creating and maintaining a validation file.

About the author:

Ronald Pilchik has over 30 years of experience in the healthcare manufacturing industry. As principal of the Techmark Group, he provided consulting services to diverse multinational manufacturers on selecting, developing, and validating medical packaging compatible with their sterilization requirements. He has been chairman of the healthcare packaging section of TAPPI, the packaging committee of HIMA, and a member of AAMI's ISO198 working group on packaging. Mr. Pilchik is program chairman of the HealthPack Conference Series on medical device packaging.

The development of near-field optics marked a major advance in microscopy and our ability to develop nanoscale technologies. However, the tapered optical fiber widely in use as the optical near-field probe has serious limitations in its fabrication, its optical transmission efficiency, and its use in arrays.

Fabrication of Silicon Microprobes for Optical Near-Field Applications reports on several technological approaches to using silicon micromachining techniques for fabricating microprobes without the drawbacks of conventional optical fiber probes. The authors have developed a simple, effective method for batch-process production of silicon cantilevered probes with apertures as small as 20 nanometers. They have investigated in detail the probes' optical performance characteristics and show how the silicon probes overcome the limitations of the optical fiber probes in terms of production throughput, optical throughput, reproducibility, simplicity of instrumentation, and mechanical performance.

Das von A. Leonhard im Jahre 1940 vorgeschlagene Stabilitatskriterium, bekannt als Zweiortskurvenverfahren, ist im Buch durch Einsatz eines gespiegelten negativ inversen Reglers zu einem neuen Verfahren (DBV) uberarbeitet und in einem Bode-Diagramm mit drei getrennten Amplituden- und Phasengangen angewendet. Das DBV hat mehrere Vorteile gegenuber bekannten Nyquist- oder Michailow-Stabilitatskriterien und lasst die Stabilitat von Regelkreisen direkt anhand Bode-Plots der Regelstrecke prufen. Die UEbungsaufgaben sind mit Loesungen begleitet, die zum besseren Verstandnis mit MATLAB (R) simuliert sind.

With the advent of microprocessors and digital-processing technologies as catalyst, classical sensors capable of simple signal conditioning operations have evolved rapidly to take on higher and more specialized functions including validation, compensation, and classification. This new category of sensor expands the scope of incorporating intelligence into instrumentation systems, yet with such rapid changes, there has developed no universal standard for design, definition, or requirement with which to unify intelligent instrumentation. Explaining the underlying design methodologies of intelligent instrumentation, Intelligent Instrumentation: Principles and Applications provides a comprehensive and authoritative resource on the scientific foundations from which to coordinate and advance the field. Employing a textbook-like language, this book translates methodologies to more than 80 numerical examples, and provides applications in 14 case studies for a complete and working understanding of the material. Beginning with a brief introduction to the basic concepts of process, process parameters, sensors and transducers, and classification of transducers, the book describes the performance characteristics of instrumentation and measurement systems and discusses static and dynamic characteristics, various types of sensor signals, and the concepts of signal representations, various transforms, and their operations in both static and dynamic conditions. It describes smart sensors, cogent sensors, soft sensors, self-validating sensors, VLSI sensors, temperature-compensating sensors, microcontrollers and ANN-based sensors, and indirect measurement sensors. The author examines intelligent sensor signal conditioning such as calibration, linearization, and compensation, along with a wide variety of calibration and linearization techniques using circuits, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), microcontrollers, ANNs, and software. The final chapters highlight ANN techniques for pattern classification, recognition, prognostic diagnosis, fault detection, linearization, and calibration as well as important interfacing protocols in the wireless networking platform.

This reference work compiles and summarizes the available information on epoxy blends. It covers all essential areas - the synthesis, processing, characterization and applications of epoxy blends - in a comprehensive manner. The handbook is highly application-oriented and thus serves as a valuable, authoritative reference guide for researchers, engineers, and technologists working on epoxy blends, but also for graduate and postgraduate students, polymer chemists, and faculties at universities and colleges.The handbook is divided into three parts and organized by the types of blends and components: Part I covers epoxy rubber blends, Part II focuses on epoxy thermoplastic blends, and Part III examines epoxy block-copolymer blends. Each part starts with an introduction, and the individual chapters provide readers with comprehensive information on the synthesis and processing, analysis and characterization, properties and applications of the different epoxy blends. All parts conclude with a critical evaluation of the applications, weighing their advantages and drawbacks. Leading international experts from corporate and academic research institutions and universities discuss the correlations of different epoxy blend properties with their macro-, micro- and nanostructures. This handbook thus offers a rich resource for newcomers to the field, and a major reference work for experienced researchers, the first of its kind available on the market. As epoxies find extremely broad applications, e.g. in oil & gas, in the chemical industry, building and construction industry, automotive, aviation and aerospace, boat building and marine applications, in adhesives and coatings, and many more, this handbook addresses researchers and practitioners from all these fields.

This volume focuses on the state-of-the-art micro/nanofabrication technologies for creating miniature structures with high precision. These multidisciplinary technologies include mechanical, electrical, optical, physical, and chemical methods, as well as hybrid processes, covering subtractive and additive material manufacturing, as well as net-shape manufacturing. The materials the volume deals with include metals, alloys, semiconductors, polymers, crystals, glass, ceramics, composites, and nanomaterials. The volume is composed of 30 chapters, which are grouped into five parts. Engaging with the latest research in the field, these chapters provide important perspectives on key topics, from process developments at the shop level to scientific investigations at the academic level, offering both experimental work and theoretical analysis. Moreover, the content of this volume is highly interdisciplinary in nature, with insights from not only manufacturing technology but also mechanical/material science, optics, physics, chemistry, and more.

This volume describes the design of relay-based circuit systems from device fabrication to circuit micro-architectures. This book is ideal for both device engineers as well as circuit system designers, and highlights the importance of co-design across design hierarchies when trying to optimize system performance (in this case, energy-efficiency). The book will also appeal to researchers and engineers focused on semiconductor, integrated circuits, and energy efficient electronics.

Sensors and Microsystems contains a selection of papers presented at the 15th Italian Conference on Sensors and Microsystems. It provides a unique perspective on the research and development of sensors, microsystems and related technologies in Italy. The scientific values of the papers also offers an invaluable source to analysts intending to survey the Italian situation about sensors and microsystems. In an interdisciplinary approach many aspects of the disciplines are covered, ranging from materials science, chemistry, applied physics, electronic engineering and biotechnologies.

This edited volume presents most techniques and methods that have been developed by material scientists, chemists, chemical engineers and physicists for the commercial production of particulate materials, ranging from the millimeter to the nanometer scale. The scope includes the physical and chemical background, experimental optimization of equipment and procedures, as well as an outlook on future methods. The books addresses issues of industrial importance such as specifications, control parameter(s), control strategy, process models, energy consumption and discusses the various techniques in relation to potential applications. In addition to the production processes, all major unit operations and characterization methods are described in this book. It differs from other books which are devoted to a single technique or a single material. Contributors to this book are acknowledged experts in their field. The aim of the book is to facilitate comparison of the different unit operations leading to optimum equipment choices for the production, handling and storage of particulate materials. An advantage of this approach is that unit operations that are common in one field of application are made accessible to other fields. The overall focus is on industrial application and the book includes some concrete examples. The book is an essential resource for students or researchers who work in collaboration with manufacturing industries or who are planning to make the switch from academia to industry.

This book describes the use of modern micro- and nanofabrication technologies to develop improved tools for stimulating and recording electrical activity in neuronal networks. It provides an overview of the different ways in which the "nano-world" can be beneficial for neuroscientists, including improvement of mechanical adhesion of cells on electrodes, tight-sealed extracellular recordings or intracellular approaches with strongly reduced invasiveness and tools for localized electrical or optical stimulation in optogenetics experiments. Specific discussion of fabrication strategies is included, to provide a comprehensive guide to develop micro and nanostructured tools for biological applications. A perspective on integrating these devices with state-of-the-art technologies for large-scale in vitro and in vivo experiments completes the picture of neuronal interfacing with micro- and nanostructures.