Research efforts in the past decade have led to considerable advances in the concepts and methods of smart manufacturing. Smart Manufacturing: Applications and Case Studies includes information about the key applications of these new methods, as well as practitioners' accounts of real-life applications and case studies. Written by thought leaders in the field from around the world, Smart Manufacturing: Applications and Case Studies is essential reading for graduate students, researchers, process engineers and managers. It is complemented by a companion book titled Smart Manufacturing: Concepts and Methods, which describes smart manufacturing methods in detail.

In India, the practice of jugaad-finding workarounds or hacks to solve problems-emerged out of subaltern strategies of negotiating poverty, discrimination, and violence but is now celebrated in management literature as a disruptive innovation. In Jugaad Time Amit S. Rai explores how jugaad operates within contemporary Indian digital media cultures through the use of the mobile phone. Rai shows that despite being co-opted by capitalism to extract free creative labor from the workforce, jugaad is simultaneously a practice of everyday resistance, as workers and communities employ hacks to oppose corporate, caste, and gender power. Locating the tensions surrounding jugaad-as both premodern and postdigital, innovative and oppressive-Rai maps how jugaad can be used to undermine neoliberal capitalist media ecologies and nationalist politics.

Microfluidics for Pharmaceutical Applications: From Nano/Micro Systems Fabrication to Controlled Drug Delivery is a concept-orientated reference that features case studies on utilizing microfluidics for drug delivery applications. It is a valuable learning reference on microfluidics for drug delivery applications and assists practitioners developing novel drug delivery platforms using microfluidics. It explores advances in microfluidics for drug delivery applications from different perspectives, covering device fabrication, fluid dynamics, cutting-edge microfluidic technology in the global drug delivery industry, lab-on-chip nano/micro fabrication and drug encapsulation, cell encapsulation and delivery, and cell- drug interaction screening. These microfluidic platforms have revolutionized the drug delivery field, but also show great potential for industrial applications.

Cycles of Invention and Discovery offers an in-depth look at the real-world practice of science and engineering. It shows how the standard categories of "basic" and "applied" have become a hindrance to the organization of the U.S. science and technology enterprise. Tracing the history of these problematic categories, Venkatesh Narayanamurti and Toluwalogo Odumosu document how historical views of policy makers and scientists have led to the construction of science as a pure ideal on the one hand and of engineering as a practical (and inherently less prestigious) activity on the other. Even today, this erroneous but still widespread distinction forces these two endeavors into separate silos, misdirects billions of dollars, and thwarts progress in science and engineering research. The authors contrast this outmoded perspective with the lived experiences of researchers at major research laboratories. Using such Nobel Prize-winning examples as magnetic resonance imaging, the transistor, and the laser, they explore the daily micro-practices of research, showing how distinctions between the search for knowledge and creative problem solving break down when one pays attention to the ways in which pathbreaking research actually happens. By studying key contemporary research institutions, the authors highlight the importance of integrated research practices, contrasting these with models of research in the classic but still-influential report Science the Endless Frontier. Narayanamurti and Odumosu's new model of the research ecosystem underscores that discovery and invention are often two sides of the same coin that moves innovation forward.

The World of Nano-Biomechanics, Second Edition, focuses on the remarkable progress in the application of force spectroscopy to molecular and cellular biology that has occurred since the book's first edition in 2008. The initial excitement of seeing and touching a single molecule of protein/DNA is now culminating in the development of various ways to manipulate molecules and cells almost at our fingertips, enabling live cell operations. Topics include the development of molecular biosensors, mechanical diagnosis, cellular-level wound healing, and a look into the advances that have been made in our understanding of the significance of mechanical rigidity/flexibility of protein/DNA structure for the manifestation of biological activities. The book begins with a summary of the results of basic mechanics to help readers who are unfamiliar with engineering mechanics. Then, representative results obtained on biological macromolecules and structures, such as proteins, DNA, RNA, polysaccharides, lipid membranes, subcellular organelles, and live cells are discussed. New to this second edition are recent developments in three important applications, i.e., advanced AFM-data analysis, high-resolution mechanical biosensing, and the use of cell mechanics for medical diagnosis.

In the past 30 years, magnetic research has been dominated by the question of how surfaces and interfaces influence the magnetic and transport properties of nanostructures, thin films and multilayers. The research has been particularly important in the magnetic recording industry where the giant magnetoresistance effect led to a new generation of storage devices including hand-held memories such as those found in the ipod. More recently, transfer of spin angular momentum across interfaces has opened a new field for high frequency applications. This book gives a comprehensive view of research at the forefront of these fields. The frontier is expanding through dynamic exchange between theory and experiment. Contributions have been chosen to reflect this, giving the reader a unified overview of the topic.

Advances in Photovoltaics: Part Four provides valuable information on the challenges faced during the transformation of our energy supply system to more efficient, renewable energies. The volume discusses the topic from a global perspective, presenting the latest information on photovoltaics, a cornerstone technology. It covers all aspects of this important semiconductor technology, reflecting on the tremendous and dynamic advances that have been made on this topic since 1975, when the first book on solar cells-written by Harold J. Hovel of IBM-was published as volume 11 in the now famous series on Semiconductors and Semimetals. Readers will gain a behind the scenes look at the continuous and rapid scientific development that leads to the necessary price and cost reductions in global industrial mass-production.