This monograph presents the latest developments and applications of computational tools related to the biosciences and medical engineering. Computational tools such as the finite element methods, computer-aided design and optimization as well as visualization techniques such as computed axial tomography open completely new research fields with a closer joining of the engineering and bio/medical area. Nevertheless, there are still hurdles since both directions are based on quite different ways of education. Often even the "language" is sometimes different from discipline to discipline. This monograph reports the results of different multi-disciplinary research projects, for example, from the areas of scaffolds and synthetic bones, implants and medical devices and medical materials. It is also shown that the application of computational methods often necessitates mathematical and experimental methods.

This book describes principles, industry practices and evolutionary methodologies for advanced safety studies, which are helpful in effectively managing volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments within the framework of quantitative risk assessment and management and associated with the safety and resilience of structures and infrastructures with tolerance against various types of extreme conditions and accidents such as fires, explosions, collisions and grounding. It presents advanced computational models for characterizing structural actions and their effects in extreme and accidental conditions, which are highly nonlinear and non-Gaussian in association with multiple physical processes, multiple scales, and multiple criteria. Probabilistic scenario selection practices and applications are presented. Engineering practices for structural crashworthiness analysis in extreme conditions and accidents are described. Multidisciplinary approaches involving advanced computational models and large-scale physical model testing are emphasized. The book will be useful to students at a post-graduate level as well as researchers and practicing engineers.

This book offers a clear, yet comprehensive guide to how to structure a design project, focusing in particular on the key questions designers, architects, policy makers and health professionals should consider when working towards inclusion through design. The book is based on a series of lessons held by the author and his colleague Avril Accolla, whose aim was to train technicians at all levels to be capable of catering for the needs of the elderly. It clearly draws the outline of their "Ask the Right Question" approach, whose purpose is to help convey the notions in question appropriately to people with such widely different backgrounds, curricula, interests and cultures. Using a minimalist approach, based mainly on the discussion of eye-catching real-life examples placed in logical order and a crystal clear, engaging style, this book is a must-have for designers, technicians, customers and health practitioners, as well as social scientists and policy makers who deal with inclusive design at different levels and anyone interested in topics related to technological evolution and social integration.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is penetrating in all sciences as a multidisciplinary approach. However, adopting the theory of AI including computer vision and computer audition to urban intellectual space, is always difficult for architecture and urban planners. This book overcomes this challenge through a conceptual framework by merging computer vision and audition to urban studies based on a series of workshops called Remorph, conducted by Tehran Urban Innovation Center (TUIC).

To satisfy the higher requirements of digitally converged embedded systems, this book describes heterogeneous multicore technology that uses various kinds of low-power embedded processor cores on a single chip. With this technology, heterogeneous parallelism can be implemented on an SoC, and greater flexibility and superior performance per watt can then be achieved. This book defines the heterogeneous multicore architecture and explains in detail several embedded processor cores including CPU cores and special-purpose processor cores that achieve highly arithmetic-level parallelism. The authors developed three multicore chips (called RP-1, RP-2, and RP-X) according to the defined architecture with the introduced processor cores. The chip implementations, software environments, and applications running on the chips are also explained in the book. Provides readers an overview and practical discussion of heterogeneous multicore technologies from both a hardware and software point of view; Discusses a new, high-performance and energy efficient approach to designing SoCs for digitally converged, embedded systems; Covers hardware issues such as architecture and chip implementation, as well as software issues such as compilers, operating systems, and application programs; Describes three chips developed according to the defined heterogeneous multicore architecture, including chip implementations, software environments, and working applications.

Volume 2 of the updated and extended 3rd edition of this work focuses on the chemistry and technology of rigid polyurethanes. Recent developments in obtaining polyols from renewable resources and the field of rigid polyurethanes have been included. This book is of interest to chemists and engineers in industry and academia as well as anyone working with polyols for the manufacture of PUs.

During the past two decades, there has been a dramatic increase in interest in the study of ageing-related changes in cognitive abilities. In this volume researchers from a variety of theoretical perspectives discuss adult age differences in a wide range of cognitive skills. Of special interest is the extent to which ageing effects on performance are related to variations in the representation, organization and utilization of knowledge, broadly defined. Recent research and theory in the field of ageing has emphasized the need to examine such processes more closely in order to provide a more complete understanding of ageing effects on cognitive behaviour.

With the increasing complexity and dynamism in today's machine design and development, more precise, robust and practical approaches and systems are needed to support machine design. Existing design methods treat the targeted machine as stationery. Analysis and simulation are mostly performed at the component level. Although there are some computer-aided engineering tools capable of motion analysis and vibration simulation etc., the machine itself is in the dry-run state. For effective machine design, understanding its thermal behaviours is crucial in achieving the desired performance in real situation. Dynamic Thermal Analysis of Machines in Running State presents a set of innovative solutions to dynamic thermal analysis of machines when they are put under actual working conditions. The objective is to better understand the thermal behaviours of a machine in real situation while at the design stage. The book has two major sections, with the first section presenting a broad-based review of the key areas of research in dynamic thermal analysis and simulation, and the second section presents an in-depth treatment of relevant methodology and algorithms, leading to better understanding of a machine in real situation. The book is a collection of novel ideas, taking into account the need for presenting intellectual challenges while appealing to a broad readership, including academic researchers, practicing engineers and managers, and graduate students. Given the essential role of modern machines in factory automation and quality assurance, a book dedicated to the topic of dynamic thermal analysis, and its practical applications to machine design would be beneficial to readers of all design and manufacturing sectors, from machine design to automotive engineering, in better understanding the present challenges and solutions, as well as future research directions in this important area.

This book contains selected papers of the 11th OpenFOAM (R) Workshop that was held in Guimaraes, Portugal, June 26 - 30, 2016. The 11th OpenFOAM (R) Workshop had more than 140 technical/scientific presentations and 30 courses, and was attended by circa 300 individuals, representing 180 institutions and 30 countries, from all continents. The OpenFOAM (R) Workshop provided a forum for researchers, industrial users, software developers, consultants and academics working with OpenFOAM (R) technology. The central part of the Workshop was the two-day conference, where presentations and posters on industrial applications and academic research were shown. OpenFOAM (R) (Open Source Field Operation and Manipulation) is a free, open source computational toolbox that has a larger user base across most areas of engineering and science, from both commercial and academic organizations. As a technology, OpenFOAM (R) provides an extensive range of features to solve anything from complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions, turbulence and heat transfer, to solid dynamics and electromagnetics, among several others. Additionally, the OpenFOAM technology offers complete freedom to customize and extend its functionalities.

The concept generation process seems like an intuitional thought: difficult to capture and perform, although everyone is capable of it. It is not an analytical process but a synthetic process which has yet to be clarified. Furthermore, new research methods for investigating the concept generation process-a very difficult task since the concept generation process is driven by inner feelings deeply etched in the mind-are necessary to establish its theory and methodology.

Concept Generation for Design Creativity - A Systematized Theory and Methodology presents the concept generation process both theoretically and methodologically. Theoretically, the concept generation process is discussed by comparing metaphor, abduction, and General Design Theory from the notions of similarities and dissimilarities. Analogy, blending, and integration by thematic relation have been explained methodologically. So far, these theories and methods have been discussed independently, and the relations among them have not been clarified. Two newly developed research methods to investigate the concept generation process are clearly explained: the explanation-based protocol analysis and constructive simulation.

By reading Concept Generation for Design Creativity - A Systematized Theory and Methodology, students, researchers and lecturers in design disciplines (including engineering design, industrial design, software design, CHI, design education, and cognitive science ) can obtain a clear picture of the advanced research findings and the outline of the theories and methods for concept generation. Furthermore, readers are expected to achieve the competence to generate new concepts.

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The Information and communication technology (ICT) industry is said to account for 2% of the worldwide carbon emissions - a fraction that continues to grow with the relentless push for more and more sophisticated computing equipment, c- munications infrastructure, and mobile devices. While computers evolved in the directionofhigherandhigherperformanceformostofthelatterhalfofthe20thc- tury, the late 1990's and early 2000'ssaw a new emergingfundamentalconcern that has begun to shape our day-to-day thinking in system design - power dissipation. As we elaborate in Chapter 1, a variety of factors colluded to raise power-ef?ciency as a ?rst class design concern in the designer's mind, with profound consequences all over the ?eld: semiconductor process design, circuit design, design automation tools, system and application software, all the way to large data centers. Power-ef?cient System Design originated from a desire to capture and highlight the exciting developments in the rapidly evolving ?eld of power and energy op- mization in electronic and computer based systems. Tremendous progress has been made in the last two decades, and the topic continues to be a fascinating research area. To develop a clearer focus, we have concentrated on the relatively higher level of design abstraction that is loosely called the system level. In addition to the ext- sive coverage of traditional power reduction targets such as CPU and memory, the book is distinguished by detailed coverage of relatively modern power optimization ideas focussing on components such as compilers, operating systems, servers, data centers, and graphics processors.

More and more information, audio and video but also a range of other information type, is generated, processed and used by machines today, even though the end user may be a human. The result over the past 15 years has been a substantial increase in the type of information and change in the way humans generate, classify, store, search, access and consume information. Conversion of information to digital form is a prerequisite for this enhanced machine role, but must be done having in mind requirements such as compactness, fidelity, interpretability etc. This book presents new ways of dealing with digital information and new types of digital information underpinning the evolution of society and business.

This book is based on the 55th International Conference of Machine Design Departments 2014 (ICMD 2014) which was hosted by the Czech Technical University in September 2014. It features scientific articles which solve progressive themes from the field of machine design. The book addresses a broad range of themes including tribology, hydraulics, materials science, product innovation and experimental methods. It presents the latest interdisciplinary high-tech work. People with an interest in the latest research results in the field of machine design and manufacturing engineering will value this book with contributions of leading academic scientists and experts from all around the world.

Computer-Aided Innovation (CAI) is emerging as a strategic domain of research and application to support enterprises throughout the overall innovation process. The 5.4 Working Group of IFIP aims at defining the scientific foundation of Computer Aided Innovation systems and at identifying state of the art and trends of CAI tools and methods. These Proceedings derive from the second Topical Session on Computer- Aided Innovation organized within the 20th World Computer Congress of IFIP. The goal of the Topical Session is to provide a survey of existing technologies and research activities in the field and to identify opportunities of integration of CAI with other PLM systems. According to the heterogeneous needs of innovation-related activities, the papers published in this volume are characterized by multidisciplinary contents and complementary perspectives and scopes. Such a richness of topics and disciplines will certainly contribute to the promotion of fruitful new collaborations and synergies within the IFIP community. Gaetano Cascini th Florence, April 30 20 08 CAI Topical Session Organization The IFIP Topical Session on Computer-Aided Innovation (CAI) is a co-located conference organized under the auspices of the IFIP World Computer Congress (WCC) 2008 in Milano, Italy Gaetano Cascini CAI Program Committee Chair [email protected]

After two succesful conferences held in Innsbruck (Prof. Manfred Husty) in 2006 and Cassino in 2008 (Prof Marco Ceccarelli) with the participation of the most important well-known scientists from the European Mechanism Science Community, a further conference was held in Cluj Napoca, Romania, in 2010 (Prof. Doina Pisla) to discuss new developments in the field.

This book presents the most recent research advances in Mechanism Science with different applications. Amongst the topics treated are papers on Theoretical kinematics, Computational kinematics, Mechanism design, Mechanical transmissions, Linkages and manipulators, Mechanisms for biomechanics, Micro-mechanisms, Experimental mechanics, Mechanics of robots, Dynamics of multi-body systems, Dynamics of machinery, Control issues of mechanical systems, Novel designs, History of mechanism science etc.

South Asian Buddhism presents a comprehensive historical survey of the full range of Buddhist traditions throughout South Asia from the beginnings of the religion up to the present. Starting with narratives on the Buddha's life and foundational teachings from ancient India, the book proceeds to discuss the rise of Buddhist monastic organizations and texts among the early Mainstream Buddhist schools. It considers the origins and development of Mahayana Buddhism in South Asia, surveys the development of Buddhist Tantra in South Asia and outlines developments in Buddhism as found in Sri Lanka and Nepal following the decline of the religion in India. Berkwitz also importantly considers the effects of colonialism and modernity on the revivals of Buddhism across South Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. South Asian Buddhism offers a broad, yet detailed perspective on the history, culture, and thought of the various Buddhist traditions that developed in South Asia. Incorporating findings from the latest research on Buddhist texts and culture, this work provides a critical, historically based survey of South Asian Buddhism that will be useful for students, scholars, and general readers.

"The mathematical investigations referred to bring the whole apparatus of a great science to the examination of the properties of a given mechanism, and have accumulated in this direction rich material, of enduring and increasing value. What is left unexamined is however the other, immensely deeper part of the problem, the question: How did the mechanism, or the elements of which it is composed, originate? What laws govern its building up? Is it indeed formed according to any laws whatever? Or have we simply to accept as data what invention gives us, the analysis of what is thus obtained being the only scientific problem left - as in the case of natural history?" Reuleaux, F., Theoretische Kinematik, Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1875 Reuleaux, F., The Kinematics of Machinery, London: Macmillan, 1876 and New York: Dover, 1963 (translated by A.B.W. Kennedy) This book represents the second part of a larger work dedicated to the structural synthesis of parallel robots. Part 1 already published in 2008 (Gogu 2008a) has presented the methodology proposed for structural synthesis. This book focuses on various topologies of translational parallel robots systematically generated by using the structural synthesis approach proposed in Part 1. The originality of this work resides in the fact that it combines the new formulae for mobility connectivity, redundancy and overconstraints, and the evolutionary morphology in a unified approach of structural synthesis giving interesting innovative solutions for parallel mechanisms.

Over the last decade, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has become a - ture technology for the development of new products in aeronautical industry. Aerodynamic design engineers have progressively taken advantage of the pos- bilities o?ered by the numericalsolutionof the Reynolds averagedNavier-Stokes (RANS) equations. Signi?cant improvements in physical modeling and solution algorithms as well as the enormous increase of computer power enable hi- ?delity numerical simulations in all stages of aircraft development. In Germany, the national CFD project MEGAFLOW furthered the dev- opment and availability of RANS solvers for the prediction of complex ?ow problemssigni?cantly. MEGAFLOWwasinitiated by the?rstaviationresearch programoftheFederalGovernmentin1995undertheleadershipoftheDLR(see Kroll, N. , Fassbender, J. K. (Eds). : MEGAFLOW - Numerical Flow Simulation for Aircraft Design; Notes on Numerical Fluid Mechanics and Multidisciplinary Design, Volume 89, Springer, 2005). A network from aircraft industry, DLR and several universities was created with the goal to focus and direct development activities for numerical ?ow simulation towards a common aerodynamic si- lation system providing both a block-structured (FLOWer-Code) and a hybrid (TAU-Code) parallel ? ow prediction capability. Today, both codes have reached a high level of maturity and reliability. They are routinely used at DLR and German aeronautic industry for a wide range of aerodynamic applications. For many universities the MEGAFLOW software represents a platform for the - provementofphysicalmodelsandfortheinvestigationofcomplex?owproblems. The network was established as an e?cient group of very closely co-operating partners with supplementing expertises and experience.

The 60th birthday of Prof. Luczak is the reason for this book. He will be honoured for his research work during the "GfA-confernece" in March 2009. This book is the correspondig "Festschrift" for him.

The book provides readers with a snapshot of recent research and technological trends in the field of condition monitoring of machinery working under a broad range of operating conditions. Each chapter, accepted after a rigorous peer-review process, reports on an original piece of work presented and discussed at the 4th International Conference on Condition Monitoring of Machinery in Non-stationary Operations, CMMNO 2014, held on December 15-16, 2014, in Lyon, France. The contributions have been grouped into three different sections according to the main subfield (signal processing, data mining or condition monitoring techniques) they are related to. The book includes both theoretical developments as well as a number of industrial case studies, in different areas including, but not limited to: noise and vibration; vibro-acoustic diagnosis; signal processing techniques; diagnostic data analysis; instantaneous speed identification; monitoring and diagnostic systems; and dynamic and fault modeling. This book not only provides a valuable resource for both academics and professionals in the field of condition monitoring, it also aims at facilitating communication and collaboration between the two groups.

This volume combines computer research with current issues in linguistics and second language teaching. The fundamental connection between language education and information processing has emerged in recent years, as numerous prominent linguists have turned their attention to the computer and information analysts have turned to linguistics and language education for models, techniques, and explanations required in language programming. Thus, this volume addresses the pressing theoretical and practical problems encountered in both fields.

These proceedings summarize the best papers in each research area represented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the German Gesellschaft fur Arbeitswissenschaft, held at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) from February 26-28. The meeting featured more than 160 presentations and 30 posters reflecting the diversity of subject matter in the field of human and industrial engineering.

The authors have consolidated their research work in this volume titled Soft Computing for Data Mining Applications. The monograph gives an insight into the research in the ?elds of Data Mining in combination with Soft Computing methodologies. In these days, the data continues to grow - ponentially. Much of the data is implicitly or explicitly imprecise. Database discovery seeks to discover noteworthy, unrecognized associations between the data items in the existing database. The potential of discovery comes from the realization that alternate contexts may reveal additional valuable information. The rate at which the data is storedis growing at a phenomenal rate. Asaresult, traditionaladhocmixturesofstatisticaltechniquesanddata managementtools are no longer adequate for analyzing this vast collection of data. Severaldomainswherelargevolumesofdataarestoredincentralizedor distributeddatabasesincludesapplicationslikeinelectroniccommerce, bio- formatics, computer security, Web intelligence, intelligent learning database systems, ?nance, marketing, healthcare, telecommunications, andother?elds. E?cient tools and algorithms for knowledge discovery in large data sets have been devised during the recent years. These methods exploit the ca- bility of computers to search huge amounts of data in a fast and e?ective manner. However, the data to be analyzed is imprecise and a?icted with - certainty. In the case of heterogeneous data sources such as text and video, the data might moreover be ambiguous and partly con?icting. Besides, p- terns and relationships of interest are usually approximate. Thus, in order to make the information mining process more robust it requires tolerance toward imprecision, uncertainty and exc