Equal accessibility to public places and services is now required by law in many countries. In the case of the vision-impaired, it is often the use of specialised technology which can provide them with a fuller enjoyment of all the facilities of society from large scale meetings and public entertainments to the more personal level of reading a book or making music. In this volume the engineering and design principles and techniques used in assistive technology for blind and vision-impaired people are explained.

Features:

a [ instruction in the physiology of the human visual system and methods of measuring visual ability;

a [ explanation of many devices designed for every-day living in terms of generic electrical engineering principles;

a [ sections of practical projects and investigations which will give the reader ideas for student work and for self teaching;

a [ contributions by authors of international repute from divers fields which co-operate under the banner of assistive technology, among them: artificial vision systems; psychology, haptics, electrical engineering, design and visual physiology.

Assistive Technology for Vision-impaired and Blind People is an an effective means of maintaining the currency of knowledge for engineers and health workers working to provide devices and/or services for people with sight loss and an excellent source of reference for students working in assistive technology and rehabilitation.

Process Control Performance Assessment is a practical guide to the application of control benchmarking to real, complex, industrial processes. It presents commercial solutions as well as current and future techniques still under development and contains real full-scale-implementation industrial case studies from the oil and gas, power and chemical industries providing a hierarchical perspective on benchmarks. The effect of benchmarking and control tuning on process performance and revenue optimisation is demonstrated.

The most frequently occurring practical issues associated with implementing benchmarking algorithms in industrial processes are discussed in detailed and concise terms and guidelines given for avoiding common problems. The impact of problems like valve stiction and plant-wide disturbances on process performance is reviewed and methods for diagnosing causative fault conditions suggested.

The benefit of non-intrusive and intrusive benchmarking techniques for optimising control systems using performance assessment and diagnostic tools is the potential to enhance company operational economics through increased throughput and better product quality. The book is appropriate for industrial and academic control and process engineers who wish to learn about methods of benchmarking through directed study or self study.

The effectiveness of proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers for a large class of process systems has ensured their continued and widespread use in industry. Similarly there has been a continued interest from academia in devising new ways of approaching the PID tuning problem.

To the industrial engineer and many control academics this work has previously appeared fragmented but a key determinant of this literature is the type of process model information used in the PID tuning methods. PID Control presents a set of coordinated contributions illustrating methods, old and new, that cover the range of process model assumptions systematically. After a review of PID technology, these contributions begin with model-free methods, progress through non-parametric model methods (relay experiment and phase-locked-loop procedures), visit fuzzy-logic- and genetic-algorithm-based methods; introduce a novel subspace identification method before closing with an interesting set of parametric model techniques including a chapter on predictive PID controllers.

Highlights of PID Control include:

• an introduction to PID control technology features and typical industrial implementations;
• chapter contributions ordered by the increasing quality of the model information used;
• novel PID control concepts for multivariable processes.

PID Control will be useful to industry-based engineers wanting a better understanding of what is involved in the steps to a new generation of PID controller techniques. Academics wishing to have a broader perspective of PID control research and development will find useful pedagogical material and research ideas in this text.

Do you remember trying to solve the Rubik's cube whilst dressed in your He-Man picture pyjamas? Did you try to make 'cool' sound effects with your mouth like Jones from Police Academy? Or maybe you swooned over Scott and Charlene's (aka Jason and Kylie's) wedding of the year? If that sounds like you, there's no mistaking you were a child of the eighties. Rev up your DeLorean, switch on the Flux Capacitor and take a cruise back through the decade that made you the person you are today. This amusing and entertaining collection of reminiscences will jog the memories of all who grew up in the same decade where greed was good, mullets were cool and white dog poo littered the streets.

Do you remember getting up on a Saturday morning to watch Going Live? A time when scrunchies and curtains were the height of cool? Playing Sonic the Hedgehog on your Sega Mega Drive? Then the chances are you were a child in the nineties. This trip down memory lane will jog the memory of even the coolest 30-year-old, and make you long for the days when Gladiators was on the telly and the Spice Girls spiced up your life.

An exhaustive volume of leading scholarship in the field of Black Canadian history, Unsettling the Great White North highlights the diverse experiences of persons of African descent within the chronicles of Canada's past. The book considers histories and theoretical framings within the disciplines of history, sociology, law, and cultural and gender studies to chart the mechanisms of exclusion and marginalization in "multicultural" Canada and to situate Black Canadians as speakers and agents of their own lives. Working to interrupt the myth of benign whiteness that has been deeply implanted into the country's imagination, Unsettling the Great White North uncovers new narratives of Black life in Canada.

Equal accessibility to public places and services is now required by law in many countries. For the vision-impaired, specialised technology often can provide a fuller enjoyment of the facilities of society, from large scale meetings and public entertainments to reading a book or making music. This volume explores the engineering and design principles and techniques used in assistive technology for blind and vision-impaired people. This book maintains the currency of knowledge for engineers and health workers who develop devices and services for people with sight loss, and is an excellent source of reference for students of assistive technology and rehabilitation.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology impacts all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies..., new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. The environmental aspects of all of our society's activities are extremely important if the countryside; the sea and wildernesses are to be fully enjoyed by future generations. Urban waste in all its manifestations presents a particularly difficult disposal problem, which must be tackled conscientiously to prevent long lasting damage to the environment. Technological solutions should be seen as part of the available options. In this monograph, the authors M. R. Katebi, M. A. Johnson and J. Wilkie seek to introduce a comprehensive technological framework to the particular measurement and control problems of wastewater processing plants. Of course the disposal of urban sewage is a long-standing process but past solutions have used options (disposal at sea) which are no longer acceptable. Thus to meet new effluent regulations it is necessary to develop a new technological paradigm based on process control methods, and this is what the authors attempt to provide.

Many large-scale processes like refineries or power generation plant are constructed using the multi-vendor system and a main co-ordinating engineering contractor. With such a methodology. the key process units are installed complete with local proprietary control systems in place. Re-assessing the so called lower level control loop design or structure is becoming less feasible or desirable. Consequently, future comp~titive gains in large-scale industrial systems will arise from the closer and optimised global integration of the process sub-units. This is one of the inherent commercial themes which motivated the research reported in this monograph. To access the efficiency and feasibility of different large-scale system designs, the traditional tool has been the global steady-state analysis and energy balance. The process industries have many such tools encapsu lated as proprietary design software. However, to obtain a vital and critical insight into global process operation a dynamic model and simulation is necessary. Over the last decade, the whole state of the art in system simulation has irrevocably changed. The Graphical User Interface (G UI) and icon based simulation approach is now standard with hardware platforms becoming more and more powerful. This immediately opens the way to some new and advanced large-scale dynamic simulation developments. For example, click-together blocks from standard or specialised libraries of process units are perfectly feasible now.

This book is a practical guide to the application of control benchmarking to real, complex, industrial processes. The variety of industrial case studies gives the benchmarking ideas presented a robust real-world attitude. The book deals with control engineering principles and economic and management aspects of benchmarking. It shows the reader how to avoid common problems in benchmarking and details the benefits of effective benchmarking.

The industrial evidence is that for many control problems, particularly those of the process industries, theProportional, Integral andDerivative(PID) controller is themaincontrol tool beingused. Forthese industrial problems, the PID control module is a building block which provides the regulation and disturbance rejection for single loop, cascade, multi-loop and multi-input multi-output control schemes. Over the decades, PID control technology has undergone many changes and today the controller may be a standard utility routine within the supervisory system software, a dedicated ha- ware process controller unit or an input-output module within a programmable electronic system which can be used for control system construction. With such a well-developed industrial technology available it is not surprising that an academic colleague on learning that we planned a book on PID control exclaimed, "Surely not Is there anything left to be said?." Of course, the short answer is that technology does not stand still: new solution capab- ities are always emerging and PID control will evolve too. Indeed, the Ziegler-Nichols rules have been famous for over sixty years and the Astrom and Hagglund relay experiment has been around for twenty years, so it would be disappointing if some new approaches to PID control had not emerged in the me- time."

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology impacts all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies..., new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. The environmental aspects of all of our society's activities are extremely important if the countryside; the sea and wildernesses are to be fully enjoyed by future generations. Urban waste in all its manifestations presents a particularly difficult disposal problem, which must be tackled conscientiously to prevent long lasting damage to the environment. Technological solutions should be seen as part of the available options. In this monograph, the authors M. R. Katebi, M. A. Johnson and J. Wilkie seek to introduce a comprehensive technological framework to the particular measurement and control problems of wastewater processing plants. Of course the disposal of urban sewage is a long-standing process but past solutions have used options (disposal at sea) which are no longer acceptable. Thus to meet new effluent regulations it is necessary to develop a new technological paradigm based on process control methods, and this is what the authors attempt to provide.

Affirmative legislative action in many countries now requires that public spaces and services be made accessible to disabled people. Although this is often interpreted as access for people with mobility impairments, such legislation also covers those who are hearing or vision impaired. In these cases, it is often the provision of advanced technological devices and aids which enables people with sensory impairments to enjoy the theatre, cinema or a public meeting to the full. Assistive Technology for the Hearin-impaired, Deaf and Deafblind shows the student of rehabilitation technology how this growing technical provision can be used to support those with varying reductions in auditory ability and the deafblind in modern society. Features: instruction in the physiology of the ear together with methods of measurement of hearing levels and loss; the principles of electrical engineering used in assistive technology for the hearing impaired; description and demonstration of electrical engineering used in hearing aids and other communications enhancement technologies; explanation of many devices designed for every-day living in terms of generic electrical engineering; sections of practical projects and investigations which will give the reader ideas for student work and for self teaching. The contributors are internationally recognised experts from the fields of audiology, electrical engineering, signal processing, telephony and assistive technology. Their combined expertise makes Assistive Technology for the Hearing-impaired, Deaf and Deafblind an excellent text for advanced students in assistive and rehabilitation technology and to professional engineers and medics working in assistive technology who wish to maintain an up-to-date knowledge of current engineering advances.