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This open access book offers a timely and comprehensive review of the field of neurotronics. Gathering cutting-edge contributions from neuroscientists, biologists, psychologists, as well as physicists, microelectronics engineers and information scientists, it gives extensive information on fundamental information pathways in selected nervous systems. It also highlights their relevance as building blocks for novel computing architectures, such as bio-inspired electronic devices, neuromorphic architectures, memristive devices, adaptive sensors and emergent, pulsed-coupled oscillatory networks. All in all, this book offers a unique bridge between fundamental research in neuroscience, neural information processing, nonlinear dynamics, and self-organization, and advanced practical applications concerning the fabrication of hardware-oriented computing.

This open access book provides a unique and state-of-the-art view on DNA nanotechnology with an eye toward future developments. Intended as a tribute to Nadrian C. Seeman, who founded the field of DNA nanotechnology, the content is an exciting mixture of technical and non-technical material, reviews, tutorials, perspectives, new findings, and open questions. The book aims to inspire current researchers to sit back and think about the big picture, while also enticing new researchers to enter the field. Most of all, the book captures voices from a unique moment in time: 40 years after the publication of the first paper that envisioned DNA nanotechnology. From this vantage point, what are the untold stories, the unspoken concerns, the underlying fundamental issues, the overlooked opportunities, and the unifying grand challenges? What will help us see more clearly, see more creatively, or see farther? What is transpiring right now that could pave the way for the future? To address these questions, leading researchers have contributed 22 chapters, grouped into five sections: perspectives, chemistry and physics, structures, biochemical circuits, and spatial systems. This book will be an important reference point in the field of DNA nanotechnology, both for established researchers looking to take stock of the field and its future, and for newcomers such as graduate students and researchers in other fields who are beginning to appreciate the power and applicability of its methods.

Dieses Open-Access-Buch dokumentiert die Entwicklung des personenzentrierten Bedarfserfassungsinstrumentes „IBUT-CMA“ auf Grundlage der ICF. Ziel war es, die Bedarfe praxisnah zu erfassen, eine direkte, leistungsgerechte, monetäre Abbildung der Hilfen zu erreichen, die Mitwirkungsmöglichkeit und Teilhabe der Betroffenen am Erfassungsprozess zu verbessern und eine klare Kommunikationsstruktur zwischen Kostenträger und Leistungserbringer zu schaffen. Weitere neben dem Instrument vorgestellte Ergebnisse sind: die Definition des Begriffes „Teilhabe“ als dynamisches Modell, die Darstellung der Kausalkette der Bedarfserfassung sowie die Formulierung von Merkmalen arbeitsähnlicher Tätigkeiten. Mit dem Modell der Beeinträchtigung und Förderung der Teilhabe für CMA (MBFT) wird u.a. verdeutlicht, wie tagesstrukturierende Maßnahmen und die Rahmenbedingungen besonderer Wohnformen die personenzentrierte Teilhabe unterstützen können.

This open access book presents outstanding doctoral dissertations in Information Technology from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Information Technology has always been highly interdisciplinary, as many aspects have to be considered in IT systems. The doctoral studies program in IT at Politecnico di Milano emphasizes this interdisciplinary nature, which is becoming more and more important in recent technological advances, in collaborative projects, and in the education of young researchers. Accordingly, the focus of advanced research is on pursuing a rigorous approach to specific research topics starting from a broad background in various areas of Information Technology, especially Computer Science and Engineering, Electronics, Systems and Control, and Telecommunications. Each year, more than 50 PhDs graduate from the program. This book gathers the outcomes of the best theses defended in 2021-22 and selected for the IT PhD Award. Each of the authors provides a chapter summarizing his/her findings, including an introduction, description of methods, main achievements and future work on the topic. Hence, the book provides a cutting-edge overview of the latest research trends in Information Technology at Politecnico di Milano, presented in an easy-to-read format that will also appeal to non-specialists.

This open access volume compiles student reports from the 2021 Simula Summer School in Computational Physiology. Interested readers will find herein a number of modern approaches to modeling excitable tissue. This should provide a framework for tools available to model subcellular and tissue-level physiology across scales and scientific questions. In June through August of 2021, Simula held the seventh annual Summer School in Computational Physiology in collaboration with the University of Oslo (UiO) and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The course focuses on modeling excitable tissues, with a special interest in cardiac physiology and neuroscience. The majority of the school consists of group research projects conducted by Masters and PhD students from around the world, and advised by scientists at Simula, UiO and UCSD. Each group then produced a report that addreses a specific problem of importance in physiology and presents a succinct summary of the findings. Reports may not necessarily represent new scientific results; rather, they can reproduce or supplement earlier computational studies or experimental findings. Reports from eight of the summer projects are included as separate chapters. The fields represented include cardiac geometry definition (Chapter 1), electrophysiology and pharmacology (Chapters 2–5), fluid mechanics in blood vessels (Chapter 6), cardiac calcium handling and mechanics (Chapter 7), and machine learning in cardiac electrophysiology (Chapter 8).

This open access book presents thirteen outstanding doctoral dissertations in Information Technology from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Information Technology has always been highly interdisciplinary, as many aspects have to be considered in IT systems. The doctoral studies program in IT at Politecnico di Milano emphasizes this interdisciplinary nature, which is becoming more and more important in recent technological advances, in collaborative projects, and in the education of young researchers. Accordingly, the focus of advanced research is on pursuing a rigorous approach to specific research topics starting from a broad background in various areas of Information Technology, especially Computer Science and Engineering, Electronics, Systems and Control, and Telecommunications. Each year, more than 50 PhDs graduate from the program. This book gathers the outcomes of the thirteen best theses defended in 2020-21 and selected for the IT PhD Award. Each of the authors provides a chapter summarizing his/her findings, including an introduction, description of methods, main achievements and future work on the topic. Hence, the book provides a cutting-edge overview of the latest research trends in Information Technology at Politecnico di Milano, presented in an easy-to-read format that will also appeal to non-specialists.

This open access book establishes a dialog among the medical and intelligent system domains for igniting transition toward a sustainable and cost-effective healthcare. The Person-Centered Care (PCC) positions a person in the center of a healthcare system, instead of defining a patient as a set of diagnoses and treatment episodes. The PCC-based conceptual background triggers enhanced application of Artificial Intelligence, as it dissolves the limits of processing traditional medical data records, clinical tests and surveys. Enhanced knowledge for diagnosing, treatment and rehabilitation is captured and utilized by inclusion of data sources characterizing personal lifestyle, and health literacy, and it involves insights derived from smart ambience and wearables data, community networks, and the caregivers’ feedback. The book discusses intelligent systems and their applications for healthcare data analysis, decision making and process design tasks. The measurement systems and efficiency evaluation models analyze ability of intelligent healthcare system to monitor person health and improving quality of life.

In dem vorliegenden Open-Access-Buch identifizieren Studierende und Lehrende interprofessionell Entwicklungen und Problemfelder der Assistiven Technologien. Diese halten zunehmend Einzug ins Leben versorgungsbedürftiger, häufig älterer Menschen. Nach einigen Jahren der Entwicklung kann konstatiert werden, dass der Transfer von Entwicklung zur Anwendung im Alltag infolge unterschiedlicher Perspektiven und Zielsetzungen nur unzureichend stattfindet. Die Beitragsautoren bieten kreative Lösungsansätze, die zu einer nachhaltigen Umsetzung führen sollen.​​ Dies ist ein Open-Access-Buch.

Synthetic biology is a field of biotechnology that is rapidly growing in various applications, such as in medicine, environmental sustainability, and energy production. However these technologies also have unforeseen risks and applications to humans and the environment. This open access book presents discussions on risks and mitigation strategies for these technologies including biosecurity, or the potential of synthetic biology technologies and processes to be deliberately misused for nefarious purposes. The book presents strategies to prevent, mitigate, and recover from ‘dual-use concern’ biosecurity challenges that may be raised by individuals, rogue states, or non-state actors. Several key topics are explored including opportunities to develop more coherent and scalable approaches to govern biosecurity from a laboratory perspective up to the international scale and strategies to prevent potential health and environmental hazards posed by deliberate misuse of synthetic biology without stifling innovation. The book brings together the expertise of top scholars in synthetic biology and biotechnology risk assessment, management, and communication to discuss potential biosecurity governing strategies and offer perspectives for collaboration in oversight and future regulatory guidance.

This open access book gathers authoritative contributions concerning multiscale problems in biomechanics, geomechanics, materials science and tribology. It is written in memory of Sergey Grigorievich Psakhie to feature various aspects of his multifaceted research interests, ranging from theoretical physics, computer modeling of materials and material characterization at the atomic scale, to applications in space industry, medicine and geotectonics, and including organizational, psychological and philosophical aspects of scientific research and teaching as well. This book covers new advances relating to orthopedic implants, concerning the physiological, tribological and materials aspects of their behavior; medical and geological applications of permeable fluid-saturated materials; earthquake dynamics together with aspects relating to their managed and gentle release; lubrication, wear and material transfer in natural and artificial joints; material research in manufacturing processes; hard-soft matter interaction, including adhesive and capillary effects; using nanostructures for influencing living cells and for cancer treatment; manufacturing of surfaces with desired properties; self-organization of hierarchical structures during plastic deformation and thermal treatment; mechanics of composites and coatings; and many more. Covering established knowledge as well as new models and methods, this book provides readers with a comprehensive overview of the field, yet also with extensive details on each single topic.

​This open access book describes modern applications of computational human modeling in an effort to advance neurology, cancer treatment, and radio-frequency studies including regulatory, safety, and wireless communication fields. Readers working on any application that may expose human subjects to electromagnetic radiation will benefit from this book’s coverage of the latest models and techniques available to assess a given technology’s safety and efficacy in a timely and efficient manner. Describes computational human body phantom construction and application; Explains new practices in computational human body modeling for electromagnetic safety and exposure evaluations; Includes a survey of modern applications for which computational human phantoms are critical.

The growth of personalised medicine and patient partnerships in biomedical research are reshaping both the emotional and material intersections between human patients and animal research. Through tracing the creative work of patients, publics, scientists, clinicians, artists, film-makers, and campaigning groups this chapter explores how ‘patient voices’ are being rearticulated and represented around animal research. The figure of ‘the patient’ has been a powerful actor in arguments around animal research, mostly ‘spoken for’ by formal organisations, especially in publicity material making ethical justifications for the need and funding of medical research. Here, patient voices make corporeal needs legible, gather expectations and resources, and provide the horizon for embodying future hopes. However, the accessibility of digital media, alongside local institutional experiments in openness, is creating alternative spaces for voicing patient interfaces with animal research. On research establishment websites, and elsewhere, patients’ perspectives are emerging in short films, taking up positions as narrators, tour guides, and commentators, inviting the public to follow them into these previously inaccessible spaces. The embodied experience of patients, sometimes severely affected by the current absences in biomedical research, are used to authorise their presence in these places, and allow them to ask questions of animal researchers. The films are powerful and emotional vehicles for voicing patient experiences and opening up animal research. They also refigure the affective responsibilities around animal research, resituating a public debate around ethics within the body of the patient. The future expectations personified in the abstract figure of the patient, are rendered turbulent in the ambiguous corporeal encounter between human and animals undergoing similar experiences of suffering.

This book presents cutting-edge papers and perspectives on the transport of oxygen to tissues by scientists in a multitude of disciplines such as biochemistry, engineering, mathematics, medicine, physics, physiology, veterinary and complementary medicine. The book is composed of the following 6 parts: Brain Oxygenation and Function, Tumor Oxygenation and Metabolism, Muscle Oxygenation and Sports Medicine, Cell Metabolism and Tissue Oxygenation, Methodology of O2 Measurements, and Special Topics. The articles in this book have been presented at the 46th annual meeting of the International Society on Oxygen Transport to Tissue (ISOTT 2018) held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, from July 1 to July 5, 2018. Academics, clinical and industry researchers, engineers, as well as graduate students who are interested in oxygen transport to tissue will find this book a great reference and a useful learning resource. The chapters "Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Measured Cerebral Blood Flow from Spontaneous Oxygenation Changes in Neonatal Brain Injury", "Developing a Model to Simulate the Effect of Hypothermia on Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism" and "Broadband NIRS Cerebral Evaluation of the Hemodynamic and Oxidative State of Cytochrome-c-Oxidase Responses to +Gz Acceleration in Healthy Volunteers" are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com