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This book presents high-quality research papers presented at the 5th International Conference on Sustainable and Innovative Solutions for Current Challenges in Engineering and Technology (ICSISCET 2023) held at Madhav Institute of Technology & Science (MITS), Gwalior, India, during October 21–22, 2023. The book extensively covers recent research in artificial intelligence (AI) that knit together nature-inspired algorithms, evolutionary computing, fuzzy systems, computational intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, etc., which is very useful while dealing with real problems due to their model-free structure, learning ability, and flexible approach. These techniques mimic human thinking and decision-making abilities to produce systems that are intelligent, efficient, cost-effective, and fast. The book provides a friendly and informative treatment of the topics which makes this book an ideal reference for both beginners and experienced researchers.

The book is the first systematic and comprehensive treatise of stochastic models and computational tools that have emerged in rock-physics in the last 20 years. The field of statistical rock-physics is a part of rock-physics (Petrophysics). Its concepts, methods and techniques are borrowed from stochastic geometry and statistical physics. This discipline describes the interior geometry of rocks; derives their effective physical properties based on their random composition and the random arrangement of their constituents; and builds models to simulate the past geological processes that had formed the rock. The aim of the book is to help the readers to understand the claims, techniques and published results of this new field and—most importantly—to teach them in order to creatively apply stochastic geometry and statistical physics in their own research tasks. For this purpose, the underlying mathematics will be discussed in all sections of the book; numerical solutions will be highlighted; a full set of references will be provided; and theory will go hand-in-hand with practical applications to hydraulic permeability, electric conduction, rock failure, NMR, mechanics of random grain packings, as well as the compaction of shale.

This book comprises select peer-reviewed proceedings of the 9th International and 49th National Conference on Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Power (FMFP 2022). This book brings together scientific ideas and engineering solutions put forth by researchers and practitioners from academia and industry in the important and ubiquitous field of fluid mechanics. The contents of this book focus on fundamental issues and perspective in fluid mechanics, measurement techniques in fluid mechanics, computational fluid and gas dynamics, instability, transition and turbulence, fluid-structure interaction, multiphase flows, microfluidics, bio-inspired fluid mechanics, aerodynamics, turbomachinery, propulsion and power and other miscellaneous topics in the broad domain of fluid mechanics. This book is a useful reference to researchers and professionals working in the broad field of mechanics.

This book presents the select proceedings of 21st ISME conference on Advances in Mechanical Engineering. It covers the latest research and technological advancements in the area of machine design. Various topics covered in this volume are product design and development, CAD/CAE/FEM/modelling and simulation, fatigue, fracture and failure analysis, vibrations/ condition monitoring, rotor dynamics, multi-body dynamics, tribology, robotics and mechatronics, computational mechanics, sensors and actuators materials failure analysis, engineering optimization, machines and mechanisms, mechanics of composites, biomechanics and fracture mechanics. This book is useful for researchers and professionals working in the area of machine design and allied fields.

This book is focused on the attractive emerging field of micro-/nanorobot swarms (microswarms). It introduces fundamental understandings of various microswarms, including pattern generation, transformation, locomotion, and imaging. This book also demonstrates applications of micro-/nanorobot swarms in different fields, such as biomedical, environmental, and electrical applications. The detailed theoretical analysis and experimental demonstrations in this book provide readers ranging from students to researchers with a realistic picture of progress achieved in the field of micro-/nanorobot swarms. ​

Soil and crop sensing is a fundamental component and the first important step in precision agriculture. Unless the level of soil and crop variability is known, appropriate management decisions cannot be made and implemented. In the last few decades, various ground-based sensors have been developed to measure spatial variability in soil properties and nutrients, crop growth and yield, and pest conditions. Remote sensing as an important data collection tool has been increasingly used to map soil and crop growth variability as spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions of image data have improved significantly in recent years. While identifying spatial variability of soil and crop growth within fields is an important first step towards precision management, using that variability to formulate variable rate application plans of farming inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides is another essential step in precision agriculture.The purpose of this book is to present the historical, current and future developments of soil and crop sensing technologies with fundamentals and practical examples. The first chapter gives an overview of soil and crop sensing technologies for precision crop production. The next six chapters provide details on theories, methods, practical applications, as well as challenges and future research needs for all aspects of soil and crop sensing. The last two chapters show how soil and crop sensing technologies can be used for plant phenotyping and precision fertilization. The chapters are written by some of the world's leading experts who have contributed significantly to the developments of precision agriculture technologies, especially in the area of soil and crop sensing. They use their knowledge, experiences, and successful stories to present informative and up-to-date information on relevant topics. Therefore, this book is an invaluable addition to the literature and can be used as a reference by scientists, engineers, practitioners, and college students for the dissemination and advancement of precision agriculture technologies for practical applications.

This book analyses the use of a pulsed gas flow to structure bubbling gas-solid fluidised beds and to induce a special fluidisation state, called'dynamically structured flow', as a promising approach to process intensification. It explores the properties of bubbles rising in staggered periodic arrays without direct interaction, assessing their size, separation, and velocity, and explains how a highly uniform, scalable flow offers tight control over the system hydrodynamics. These features are desirable, as they not only bypass engineering challenges occurring in traditional operations, such as maldistribution and non-uniform contact, but also allow to decouple conflicting design objectives, such as mixing and gas-solid contact. The thesis also presents computational simulations which reveal the periodic transitions of the particulate phase between fluid-like and solid-like behaviour. This book will be of interest to researchers, engineers, and graduate students alike, particularly those working in industrial drying, combustion, and chemical production.

Several textbooks and edited volumes are currently available on general soil fertility but‚ to date‚ none have been dedicated to the study of “Sustainable Carbon and Nitrogen Cycling in Soil.” Yet this aspect is extremely important, considering the fact that the soil, as the ‘epidermis of the Earth'(geodermis)‚ is a major component of the terrestrial biosphere. This book addresses virtually every aspect of C and N cycling, including: general concepts on the diversity of microorganisms and management practices for soil, the function of soil's structure-function-ecosystem, the evolving role of C and N, cutting-edge methods used in soil microbial ecological studies, rhizosphere microflora, the role of organic matter (OM) in agricultural productivity, C and N transformation in soil, biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) and its genetics, plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPRs), PGPRs and their role in sustainable agriculture, organic agriculture, etc. The book's main objectivesare: (1) to explain in detail the role of C and N cycling in sustaining agricultural productivity and its importance to sustainable soil management; (2) to show readers how to restore soil health with C and N; and (3) to help them understand the matching of C and N cycling rules from a climatic perspective.Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for educators, researchers, and policymakers, as well as undergraduate and graduate students of soil science, soil microbiology, agronomy, ecology, and the environmental sciences. Gathering cutting-edge contributions from internationally respected researchers, it offers authoritative content on a broad range of topics, which is supplemented by a wealth of data, tables, figures, and photographs. Moreover, it provides a roadmap for sustainable approaches to food and nutritional security, and to soil sustainability in agricultural systems, based on C and N cycling in soil systems.

This book systematically introduces readers to computational granular mechanics and its relative engineering applications. Part I describes the fundamentals, such as the generation of irregular particle shapes, contact models, macro-micro theory, DEM-FEM coupling, and solid-fluid coupling of granular materials. It also discusses the theory behind various numerical methods developed in recent years. Further, it provides the GPU-based parallel algorithm to guide the programming of DEM and examines commercial and open-source codes and software for the analysis of granular materials. Part II focuses on engineering applications, including the latest advances in sea-ice engineering, railway ballast dynamics, and lunar landers. It also presents a rational method of parameter calibration and thorough analyses of DEM simulations, which illustrate the capabilities of DEM. The computational mechanics method for granular materials can be applied widely in various engineering fields, such as rock and soil mechanics, ocean engineering and chemical process engineering.

Plants provide a source of survival for all life on this planet. They are able to capture solar energy and convert it into food, feed, wood and medicines. Though sessile in nature, over many millions of years, plants have diversified and evolved from lower to higher life forms, spreading from sea level to mountains, and adapting to different ecozones. They have learnt to cope with challenging environmental conditions and various abiotic and biotic factors. Plants have also developed systems for monitoring the changing environment and efficiently utilizing resources for growth, flowering and reproduction, as well as mechanisms to counter the impact of pests and diseases and to communicate with other biological systems, like microbes and insects. This book discusses the “awareness” of plants and their ability to gather information through the perception of environmental cues, such as light, gravity, water, nutrients, touch and sound, and stresses. It also explores plants'biochemical and molecular “computing” of the information to adjust their physiology and development to the advantage of the species. Further, it examines how plants communicate between their different organs and with other organisms, as well as the concepts of plant cognition, experience and memory, from both scientific and philosophical perspectives. Lastly, it addresses the phenomenon of death in plants.The epilogue presents an artist's view of the beauty of the natural world, especially plant “architecture”. The book provides historical perspectives, comparisons with animal systems where needed, and general biochemical and molecular concepts and themes. Each chapter is selfcontained, but also includes cross talk with other chapters to offer an integrated view of plant life and allow readers to appreciate and admire the functioning of plant life from within and without. The book is a tribute by the Editor to his students, colleagues and co-workers and to thosein whose labs he has worked.

This book discusses the core principles and practical applications of a brand new machine category: liquid-metal soft machines and motors. After a brief introduction on the conventional soft robot and its allied materials, it presents the new conceptual liquid-metal machine, which revolutionizes existing rigid robots, both large and small. It outlines the typical features of the soft liquid-metal materials and describes the various transformation capabilities, mergence of separate metal droplets, self-rotation and planar locomotion of liquid-metal objects under external or internal mechanism. Further, it introduces a series of unusual phenomena discovered while developing the shape changeable smart soft machine and interprets the related mechanisms regarding the effects of the shape, size, voltage, orientation and geometries of the external fields to control the liquid-metal transformers. Moreover, the book illustrates typical strategies to construct a group of different advanced functional liquid-metal soft machines, since such machines or robots are hard to fabricate using rigid-metal or conventional materials. With highly significant fundamental and practical findings, this book is intended for researchers interested in establishing a general method for making future smart soft machine and accompanying robots.

This book gathers the Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Robot Intelligence Technology and Applications (RITA 2018). Reflecting the conference's main theme, “Robotics and Machine Intelligence: Building Blocks for Industry 4.0,” it features relevant and current research investigations into various aspects of these building blocks. The areas covered include: Instrumentation and Control, Automation, Autonomous Systems, Biomechatronics and Rehabilitation Engineering, Intelligent Systems, Machine Learning, Robotics, Sensors and Actuators, and Machine Vision, as well as Signal and Image Processing. A valuable asset, the book offers researchers and practitioners a timely overview of the latest advances in robot intelligence technology and its applications.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, RAAD 2017, held at the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy, from June 21-23, 2017. The conference brought together academic and industrial researchers in robotics from 30 countries, the majority of them affiliated to the Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, and their worldwide partners. RAAD 2017 covered all major areas of R&D and innovation in robotics, including the latest research trends. The book provides an overview on the advances in service and industrial robotics. The topics are presented in a sequence starting from the classical robotic subjects, such as kinematics, dynamics, structures, control, and ending with the newest topics, like human-robot interaction and biomedical applications. Researchers involved in the robotic field will find this an extraordinary and up-to-date perspective on the state of the art in this area.

The book highlights intricate predisposing factors for pathogenesis of nutritional anemia. It delivers valuable information related to this public health hazard influencing the nutritional health of preschool children. The book is valuable for readers in diverse fields to gain insight of the concept of nutritional anemia in preschool children. Additionally, book furnishes clinical and laboratory methods in a comparative way to assess nutritional anemia. Impact of the disorder on health of preschool children has been covered in a simple language. The book mentions need for interventional strategies for the management of nutritional anemia. Infants, preschool children and women during pregnancy and lactation are highly susceptible to dietary deficiency of iron, folic acid and cyanocobalamin leading to comparatively, higher predisposition to development of nutritional anemia. The condition has myriad of ill effects on nutritional health of preschool children.

This book surveys attachment structures and adhesive secretions occurring in this class of animals and discusses the relationships between structure, properties, and function in the context of evolutionary trends, and biomimetic potential. Topics comprise mechanical attachment devices, such as clamps, claws, hooks, spines and wraps, as well as hairy and smooth adhesive pads, nano-fibrils, suction cups, and viscid and solidifying adhesives. Attachment is one of the major types of interactions between an organism and its environment. There are numerous studies that deal with this phenomenon in lizards, frogs, insects, barnacles, mussels and echinoderms, but the second largest class of animals, the Arachnida, was highly neglected so far. The authors demonstrated that most arachnid adhesive structures are highly analogous to those of insects and vertebrates, but there are also numerous unique developments with some intriguing working principles. Because arachnid attachment organs have a very strong potential of technological ideas for the development of new materials and systems, inspirations from biology could also be interesting for a broad range of topics in materials and surface engineering.

JIMD Reports publishes case and short research reports in the area of inherited metabolic disorders. Case reports highlight some unusual or previously unrecorded feature relevant to the disorder, or serve as an important reminder of clinical or biochemical features of a Mendelian disorder.

This book reflects and expands on the current trend in the building industry to understand, simulate and ultimately design buildings by taking into consideration the interlinked elements and forces that act on them. This approach overcomes the traditional, exclusive focus on building tasks, while posing new challenges in all areas of the industry from material and structural to the urban scale. Contributions from invited experts, papers and case studies provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of the field, as well as perspectives from related disciplines, such as computer science.The chapter authors were invited speakers at the 5th Symposium'Modelling Behaviour', which took place at the CITA in Copenhagen in September 2015.

This book, combining and updating two previous editions, is a unique source of information on the diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of metabolic diseases. The clinical and laboratory data characteristic of rare metabolic conditions can be bewildering for both clinicians and laboratory personnel. Reference laboratory data are scattered, and clinical descriptions may be obscure. The Physician's Guide documents the features of more than five hundred conditions, grouped according to type of disorder, organ system affected (e.g. liver, kidney, etc) or phenotype (e.g. neurological, hepatic, etc). Relevant clinical findings are provided and pathological values for diagnostic metabolites highlighted. Guidance on appropriate biochemical genetic testing is provided. Established experimental therapeutic protocols are described, with recommendations on follow-up and monitoring. The authors are acknowledged experts, and the book will be a valuable desk reference for all who deal with inherited metabolic diseases.

Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Information Technology and Software Engineering presents selected articles from this major event, which was held in Beijing, December 8-10, 2012. This book presents the latest research trends, methods and experimental results in the fields of information technology and software engineering, covering various state-of-the-art research theories and approaches. The subjects range from intelligent computing to information processing, software engineering, Web, unified modeling language (UML), multimedia, communication technologies, system identification, graphics and visualizing, etc. The proceedings provide a major interdisciplinary forum for researchers and engineers to present the most innovative studies and advances, which can serve as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working on information technology and software engineering. Prof. Wei Lu, Dr. Guoqiang Cai, Prof. Weibin Liu and Dr. Weiwei Xing all work at Beijing Jiaotong University.

With over 43,000 species, spiders are the largest predacious arthropod group. They have developed key characteristics such as multi-purpose silk types, venoms consisting of hundreds of components, locomotion driven by muscles and hydraulic pressure, a highly evolved key-lock mechanism between the complex genital structures, and many more unique features. After 300 million years of evolutionary refinement, spiders are present in all land habitats and represent one of the most successful groups of terrestrial organisms.Ecophysiology combines functional and evolutionary aspects of morphology, physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology with ecology. Cutting-edge science in spiders focuses on the circulatory and respiratory system, locomotion and dispersal abilities, the immune system, endosymbionts and pathogens, chemical communication, gland secretions, venom components, silk structure, structure and perception of colours as well as nutritional requirements. Spiders are valuable indicator species in agroecosystems and for conservation biology. Modern transfer and application technologies research spiders and their products with respect to their value for biomimetics, material sciences, and the agrochemical and pharmaceutical industries.

The discovery of vitamins in the early 1900s, their later chemical characterization and the clarification of pivotal metabolic functions are sequential aspects of a brilliant chapter in the history of modern nutritional sciences and medicine. The name, derived from “vital-amines”, indicates their elementary metabolic key functions in human metabolism. Vitamins are truly families of compounds, which include precursors and various free and bound forms, all with individual roles in metabolism and function. A more recent approach therefore searches for the components, the understanding of their roles in physiology and pathology as well as looking for novel pharmacological applications. When used properly, vitamins are, indeed, “magical” substances. Due to their efficacy, they should therefore be regarded as drugs with effects and side effects to be weighted against each other. Today, it is not the previously fatal deficiency-associated diseases that are in the focus of interest, but rather the relation of suboptimal vitamin bioavailability to chronic disease. This is complicated by genetic susceptibility, lifestyle, and the presence or absence of health-compromising habits, such as smoking. In turn, the development and application of new and more sensitive and specific assays further enable us to look more closely into the many functions of vitamins. Water soluble vitamins are complex molecular structures and even today, many areas in vitamin biochemistry are not yet fully understood. Novel effects and functions of vitamins remain and continue to be discovered. This book presents most recent research results and fascinating new knowledge on the role and effects of the water soluble vitamins in man. Some of the most distinguished chemists, biochemists, biologists and clinicians have contributed valuable chapters sharing unexpected novel insights into the biochemistry, (epi)genetics, metabolism, and function of water soluble vitamins, withtheir potential for clinical applications. Thus, physicians, clinicians, scientists, researchers, epidemiologists. nutritional specialists and health professionals alike will find stimulating and fascinating new insight in the many roles that water soluble vitamins play in human health and disease.

This volume developed from a Workshop on Natural Locomotion in Fluids and on Surfaces: Swimming, Flying, and Sliding which was held at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) at the University of Minnesota, from June 1-5, 2010. The subject matter ranged widely from observational data to theoretical mechanics, and reflected the broad scope of the workshop. In both the prepared presentations and in the informal discussions, the workshop engaged exchanges across disciplines and invited a lively interaction between modelers and observers. The articles in this volume were invited and fully refereed. They provide a representative if necessarily incomplete account of the field of natural locomotion during a period of rapid growth and expansion. The papers presented at the workshop, and the contributions to the present volume, can be roughly divided into those pertaining to swimming on the scale of marine organisms, swimming of microorganisms at low Reynolds numbers, animal flight, and sliding and other related examples of locomotion.

Folate pathways are essential in metabolism and macromolecule synthesis. Antifolate drugs that are largely transported via a high capacity folate transporter (i.e. the reduced-folate carrier) and inhibit folate-dependent enzymes include the dihydrofolate reductase inhibitor, methotrexate, and the thymidylate synthase inhibitors, raltitrexed and pemetrexed. Major advances in folate research made within the last decade include (i) the approval of pemetrexed for the treatment of lung cancer and mesothelioma, and (ii) the demonstration that cell membrane-anchored folate receptors (FR) are exploitable for cancer and inflammatory disease management. FRs are not widely distributed in normal tissues, except on some luminal surfaces; however, they are accessible to systemically administered agents when expressed on many cancers as well as on activated macrophages involved in various inflammatory diseases. High affinity folate-radioisotope conjugates have been developed for imaging pathogenic FR-positive diseases, including cancer. Since the FR transports folates via a low capacity but high affinity endocytic pathway, a variety of FR-targeted antifolate drugs and folate conjugates bearing a wide range of payloads (including cytotoxic drugs) are currently being developed which exploit this property. The FR is also being utilized in immunotherapy approaches for the treatment of overexpressing cancers.