Knowledge society is a dream and challenge of the advanced world even today. This is all somehow about the survival of our industrial world keeping in mind thousands of aspects, but this book often emphasises that Sustainable Growth should be the main goal and drive. This book discusses the recent economic and political trends and movements in their historical context and social environment and is able to produce and demonstrate engineering analysis to understand the natural behaviour of these trends and also to describe an approach to adjust them to move toward a sustainable future. Also discussed herein is the suggestion of political and legal agreements and socio-economical changeovers, further to technological innovation.

Mini-invasive surgery deserves increasing attention to lower post-operative stays in hospitals and to lessen fall-off complications. This new book is devoted to surgical robotics, with a focus on technology and design issues of the remote-mode operation assistants. The investigation leads to define the technical characteristics of a CRHA, co-robotic handling appliance, to be purposely developed, to support the duty-split approach surgical planner.

The current division between industrialised and developing countries/societies is based on relatively recent paradigms of mankind's growth which have occurred within the so-called industrial revolution. Actually, the "INDUSTRY" paradigms, at least, in their original formulation, lead to rather unstable growth, being based on the transformation effectiveness, through which the natural capital is used, to be reshaped in value to consumables, and quickly disposed in waste and pollution. The book explores alternatives, in which the "KNOWLEDGE" paradigms might support further wealth build-up, based on the value chains in intangibles, and, possibly, on the "COGNITIVE" revolution, where the transformation efficiency, this time, applies not only on material inanimate resources, rather as well as on artificial life deployments. The analyses move reconsidering the "INDUSTRY" patterns in their contingencies, typically, related with the western world cultural background and organisation style. The experienced context, perhaps explains why industrialism appeared in mankind's history with narrow timing and localisation outcomes. It might be used, nonetheless, to explore alternative outlooks on how restructuring the world to come, with collaborative altruism, in lieu of competitive challenge, to make further growth possible.

This book by Professor Michelini offers a vision of the future from today's point of view and a strategy for dealing constructively with the critical technical and social issues associated with over-consumption. The first basic interest and merit of the book relies on returning up to a primary analysis of economy standards. In fact, four kinds of assets are at our disposal. Two are tangible and offer a limited resource: the natural capital i.e. in rough the materials extracted from the Earth; the human capital summarised as a force of work. Two are intangible and offer unlimited exploitation: the financial capital, resulting in an increasing of richness and allowing pertinent investments; at last, the technological capital, permitting an efficient using of the three others, savings, services of any kind and, partially, recovering of other used resources. And the question deepened by R Michelini deals with a balanced and efficient organisation and exploitation of the four assets, resulting, on the one hand, in the conservation and even an improvement of the natural capital, and, on the other hand, in a safety in matter of well-being growth i.e. in matter of sustainable growth.