Bücher veröffentlicht von IntechOpen

The book Alkaloids - Alternatives in Synthesis, Modification, and Application collects several chapters written by distinguished scientists and recognized experts in their respective fields of research. The purpose of this book is to focus the attention of a broad range of students, researchers, and specialists on some innovative and highly perspective areas in alkaloid research. The book covers several topics, guiding the readers from the development of nonconventional biotechnologies for alternative production of valuable alkaloids, through the application of modern chemical methods of asymmetric synthesis for production of synthetic and semisynthetic alkaloid derivatives, medicinal application of alkaloids as anesthetics and pain-relief drugs, analytical techniques for alkaloid profiling and their application in chemotaxonomy, quality control and standardization of raw plant material, to the importance of the control and reduction of alkaloid contents during production of animal feedstuffs.

This book has included the following major sections: "Introduction", "History of Biochar," "Preparation of Biochar," and "Applications of Biochar." The editor and authors hope that the development of biochar can cross its application field from agriculture into engineering.

Increasing population and environmental pollution are the main stress on freshwater sources. On the other hand, freshwater needs of human being increase dramatically every day. From agriculture to industry and from household to recreation, we need freshwater. In the near future, saltwater and brackish water bodies may be the main source of freshwater for our planet. Desalination phenomena are now being implemented with increasing interest. The book on desalination provides a valuable scientific contribution on freshwater production from saltwater sources. In this book, necessary theoretical knowledge and experimental results of different desalination processes are presented.

There continues to be a worldwide interest in the size-dependent properties of nanostructured materials and their applications in many diverse fields such as catalysis, sensors, energy conversion processes, and biomedicine to name a few. The eleven chapters of this book written by different researchers include four chapters on the different methods of fabrication of specific materials followed by characterization of their properties, and the remaining seven chapters focusing on the fabrications and applications including three chapters on biomedical applications, two chapters on sensors, one chapter on solar cells, and one chapter on the use of nanoparticles in herbicides. These chapters provide up-to-date reviews useful for current and future researchers in these specific areas.

Exploring the contractile activity of smooth muscle segments isolated from various organs of healthy animals and animals with experimentally induced diabetes, she obtained original data about angiotensin II-induced force and time parameters. For the first time, she established the effect of ghrelin on angiotensin II-provoked contraction of the urinary bladder. Original data on the role of both types of angiotensin receptors for the contractile activity of the various segments of the gastrointestinal tract and bladder were obtained. By applying specific software for force and time parameter analysis, the contribution of different types of angiotensin receptors on muscle contractility has been shown. The new methodology was used to analyze the data obtained during the registration of smooth muscle relaxation activity, which allows the determination of not only the magnitude of the mechanical response but also the parameters related to the time and speed of the contractions. Plasma renin activity models have been developed using mathematical approaches to predict the effect of different drug doses on the behavior of the system.

The aim of this book is to provide an overview of the importance of exosomes in the biomedical field, which involves in novel implications of exosomes in diagnosis and treatment of cancer and infectious diseases. The book would definitely be an ideal source of scientific information of exosomes to researchers and scientists involved in biomedicine, biology, and other areas involving cancer and infectious diseases.

In the era of Internet of Things (IoT) and with the explosive worldwide growth of electronic data volume, and associated need of processing, analysis, and storage of such humongous volume of data, several new challenges are faced in protecting privacy of sensitive data and securing systems by designing novel schemes for secure authentication, integrity protection, encryption, and non-repudiation. Lightweight symmetric key cryptography and adaptive network security algorithms are in demand for mitigating these challenges. This book presents some of the state-of-the-art research work in the field of cryptography and security in computing and communications. It is a valuable source of knowledge for researchers, engineers, practitioners, graduates, and doctoral students who are working in the field of cryptography, network security, and security and privacy issues in the Internet of Things (IoT). It will also be useful for faculty members of graduate schools and universities.

Transfusion Medicine and Scientific Developments focuses on unknown aspects of blood cells and transfusion practice. Blood transfusion medicine has become a sophisticated and specialized field of medicine. Some aspects will be discussed in this book. The book has been divided into three sections. The first section includes chapters describing the immunological and coagulation-assisting functions of red blood cells and methods to measure their life span. The second section discusses the role of platelets in inflammatory processes. The third section reviews functional dose of RBC transfusions and transfusion practice in various clinical settings.

This book gives an interdisciplinary perspective on how the language use is shaped by and evolves with human society and how in turn social activities are constructed by the way how language is organized and communicated. With a contribution from multiple neighboring scientific disciplines, this book characterizes fundamental mechanisms, represents wide applications, and introduces state-of-the-art approaches in the modern sociolinguistic research. Three unique questions are asked and addressed by eight independent chapters: (1) the diversity and dynamics of the language use in multilingualism, human development, and organizational change; (2) the application of linguistic analysis to society, policy planning, and health education; and (3) the new approaches to sociolinguistics with an emphasis on communicative and cognitive aspects of language use.

This book deals with recent developments in evolutionary models for convergent margins. Reflecting transient modes for oceanic plate convergence, such boundaries are sites of varied tectonic processes, which provoke vigorous material recycling and frequent natural disasters such as massive earthquakes and catastrophic volcanism. Therefore, the origin of their diversity has long been one of the most significant themes in Earth science. The important scientific results obtained by prominent researchers who contributed chapters to this book pave the way for further in-depth studies on mobile belt frontiers, where harsh conditions hinder efforts to understand the Earth's spatiotemporal changes.

In this book there are chapters written by great specialists, both doctors and dentists, addressing a very important subject for clinical practice and research: osteonecrosis. In addition to a general review of the subject matter in the introduction, you will find in it some subjects little discussed in other textbooks, such as osteonecrosis of the mandible and osteonecrosis of the spinal vertebrae.

Uncertainty quantification may appear daunting for practitioners due to its inherent complexity but can be intriguing and rewarding for anyone with mathematical ambitions and genuine concern for modeling quality. Uncertainty quantification is what remains to be done when too much credibility has been invested in deterministic analyses and unwarranted assumptions. Model calibration describes the inverse operation targeting optimal prediction and refers to inference of best uncertain model estimates from experimental calibration data. The limited applicability of most state-of-the-art approaches to many of the large and complex calculations made today makes uncertainty quantification and model calibration major topics open for debate, with rapidly growing interest from both science and technology, addressing subtle questions such as credible predictions of climate heating.

In the era of Internet of Things and with the explosive worldwide growth of electronic data volume, and associated need of processing, analysis, and storage of such humongous volume of data, it has now become mandatory to exploit the power of massively parallel architecture for fast computation. Cloud computing provides a cheap source of such computing framework for large volume of data for real-time applications. It is, therefore, not surprising to see that cloud computing has become a buzzword in the computing fraternity over the last decade. This book presents some critical applications in cloud frameworks along with some innovation design of algorithms and architecture for deployment in cloud environment. It is a valuable source of knowledge for researchers, engineers, practitioners, and graduate and doctoral students working in the field of cloud computing. It will also be useful for faculty members of graduate schools and universities.

The main purpose of control engineering is to steer the regulated plant in such a way that it operates in a required manner. The desirable performance of the plant should be obtained despite the unpredictable influence of the environment on the control system and no matter if the plant parameters are precisely known. Even though the parameters may change with time and load, still the system should preserve its nominal properties and ensure the required behavior of the plant. In other words, the principal objective of control engineering is to design systems that are robust with respect to external disturbances and modeling uncertainty. This objective may be very well achieved using the sliding mode technique, which is the subject of this book.

Pediatric cancer develops in 1 to 500 children. Typically, the type of cancers that develop in children is different than those that develop in adults, in that they are often the result of a DNA mutation rather than environmental or lifestyle risk factors. Leukemia, brain and central nervous system tumors, and neuroblastomas are the most common cancer types in child populations. Children tend to respond better to anticancer treatments, including chemotherapy and radiation. However, long-term side effects are common in children, often requiring follow-up care and lifestyle intervention for the rest of their lives. The percentage of 5-year survivors was over 50% for the most common cancers. This suggests that a majority of cancers in this population are highly survivable. As such, research should focus on aspects of survivorship for these individuals. This book will explore issues related to pediatric cancer and their associated treatments.

This book develops some methods and structures to improve the power inverters for different applications in a single-phase or three-phase output in recent years. The reduction of the switching devices and multilevel inverters as changing structure for the power inverters and PDM and PWM methods as changing control methods for the power inverter are studied in this book. Moreover, power inverters are developed to supply open-ended loads. Furthermore, the basic and advanced aspects of the electric drives that are control based are taught for induction motor (IM) based on power inverters suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The main objective of this book is to provide the necessary background to improve and implement the high-performance inverters. Once the material in this book has been mastered, the reader will be able to apply these improvements in the power inverters to his or her problems for high-performance power inverters.

The present book Applications of Voltammetry is a collection of six chapters, organized in two sections. The first book section is dedicated to the application of mathematical methods, such as multivariate calibration coupled with voltammetric data and numeric simulation to solve quantitative electroanalytical problems. The second book section is devoted to the electron transfer kinetic studies and electroanalytical applications of the voltammetry, such as interfacial electron transfer of the haem group in human haemoglobin molecules, physisorbed on glass-/tin-doped indium oxide substrates, analysis of dyes and metal ions in trace concentrations and characterization of the antioxidant properties of wine and wine products, using a variety of voltammetric techniques and electrodes. The most recent trends and advances in voltammetry are professionally commented.

Mass production companies have become obliged to reduce their production costs and sell more products with lower profit margins in order to survive in competitive market conditions. The complexity and automation level of machinery are continuously growing. This development calls for some of the most critical issues that are reliability and dependability of automatic systems. In the future, machines will be monitored remotely, and computer-aided techniques will be employed to detect faults in the future, and also there will be unmanned factories where machines and systems communicate to each other, detect their own faults, and can remotely intercept their faults. The pioneer studies of such systems are fault diagnosis studies. Thus, we hope that this book will contribute to the literature in this regard.

The first chapter provides an overview of the development of a novel agent-based simulation model of socio-environmental innovation diffusion. The second chapter shows the study about rendering of colours with three rendering engines. The third and fourth chapters are devoted to modelling clothes at different levels. The fifth chapter describes the modelling of computer simulation in the optimization of bioprocess technology. Chapters 6 and 7 formulate a physical model of deformation of steel and idea of constructing a scientific workshop focused on high-temperature processes. Chapter 8 formulates surrogate models. Chapter 9 shows computer simulation of high-frequency electromagnetic fields. Chapter 10 proposes the modelling of the task allocation problem by the use of Petri Nets. Chapter 11 presents various scenarios whose ranking is done according to defined criteria and weight coefficients.

Gamma radiation has been discovered since more than a century and contributed in many achievements in human life. Continuous developments make it necessary to have more understandings and more discussions about well-established concepts as well as newly implemented hypothesis and applications of gamma rays. This book presents new visions of gamma ray spectrometry and applications. I hope this book can present part of the useful applications of gamma rays.

Neonatal and Pediatric Surgery is a broad field with many challenges. The aim of this short book is to provide the reader with several informative chapters in the field of neonatal and pediatric surgery. Each chapter provides details on a specific area of this changing field. The scope of this book focuses on a few areas that are rare and challenging. For example, it covers preoperative and postoperative care of neonates. Important anesthesia considerations, including anesthesia for neonates and regional anesthesia, are discussed. A unique chapter on neonatal tumors is presented. The book provides an overview of the recent recommendations for care of infants and children that undergo cardiac surgery. The challenging aspects of caustic ingestion are explained. Each chapter stands alone as a detailed source of information for the reader. This book brings updated information with structured headings that will allow the reader to remain focused as the material is reviewed.

This book can serve as a reference resource for those very same design and control engineers who help connect their everyday experience in design with the control field of mechatronics. This book also consists of basic and main mechatronic system's laboratory applications for use in research and development departments in academia, government, and industry, and it can be used as a reference source in university libraries. It can also be used as a resource for scholars interested in understanding and explaining the engineering design and control process and for engineering students studying within the traditional structure of most engineering departments and colleges. It is evident that there is an expansion of mechatronics laboratories and classes in the university environment worldwide.

Physical therapy services may be provided alongside or in conjunction with other medical services. They are performed by physical therapists (known as physiotherapists in many countries) with the help of other medical professionals. This book consists of 11 chapters written by several professionals from different parts of the world. It includes different kinds of chapters for clinical physical therapy with precious points for physical therapy, physical therapy for cancer, chronic venous disease, mental health, and other topics. We hope that the information provided in this book will instruct global physical therapists and related professionals.

The basic researches and clinical studies on gallbladder diseases continue to advance at a rapid pace. The chapters in this book were written by recognized medical experts and researchers from North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa and aim to provide the state-of-the-art reviews on the current knowledge and advances in research and management of gallbladder diseases. This book includes the most recent advances in that field, particularly, the immunogenetic basis of cholecystitis, noncoding RNAs in gallbladder cancer, the diagnostic pitfalls and timing of management of acute cholecystitis, the incidental gallbladder cancer, the surgical management of gallbladder cancer, laparoscopic cholecystectomy in special conditions, and robot-assisted cholecystectomy.

This book presents contributions from renowned experts addressing research and development related to the two important areas of heat exchangers, which are advanced features and applications. This book is intended to be a useful source of information for researchers, postgraduate students, academics, and engineers working in the field of heat exchangers research and development.

There is a long list of diseases and traumatic events that affect hip joint, but none as persistent, as elusive and with profound consequences as developmental dysplasia. For many centuries, we have been struggling with its consequences while trying to understand the reasons how and why such a stable joint eventually becomes dysfunctional and how to prevent it. Some of the greatest achievements in operative orthopaedics have been introduced in the effort to treat developmental dysplasia of the hip. This book offers a contemporary approach to developmental dysplasia of the hip, covering various clinically relevant aspects - historical and epidemiological considerations, biomechanical analysis, conservative methods and operative treatment procedures.

The purpose of optimization is to maximize the quality of lives, productivity in time, as well as interests. Therefore, optimization is an ongoing challenge for selecting the best possible among many other inferior designs. For a hundred years in the past, as optimization has been essential to human life, several techniques have been developed and utilized. Such a development has been one of the long-lasting challenges in engineering and science, and it is now clear that the optimization goals in many of real-life problems are unlikely to be achieved without resource for computational techniques. The history of such a development in the optimization techniques starts from the early 1950s and is still in progress. Since then, the efforts behind this development dedicated by many distinguished scientists, mathematicians, and engineers have brought us today a level of quality of lives. This book concerns with the computational optimization in engineering and techniques to resolve the underlying problems in real life. The current book contains studies from scientists and researchers around the world from North America to Europe and from Asia to Australia.

Carbohydrates are the most abound macromolecules on earth, and they serve different functions within the cell. The purpose of the book is to provide a glimpse into various aspects of carbohydrates by presenting the research of some of the scientists who are engaged in the development of new tools and ideas used to reveal carbohydrate metabolism in health and diseases and as material to mimic the carbohydrate surfaces that take part in molecular recognition, often from very different perspectives. This book covers broad topics in carbohydrate including quality carbohydrates on the prevention and therapy of noncommunicable diseases, lactate, and glycolysis, as biomass in biofuel production, targets for cancer treatment and as biomaterial.

Lipoproteins have key roles in human growth and development, along with promoting, preventing, and/or participating in the pathogenesis or in the treatment of various diseases. This book presents a systematic and comprehensive review about the structure and metabolism of lipoproteins, particularly highlighting the crucial role of those molecules in the body and considering the interest of some lipids in healthy and diseased conditions. This book aims to provide integrative approach to understand the lipoprotein metabolism. Distinguished international experts contributed six chapters about the genetic variations, plasma lipoprotein components, and molecular relationship of lipoproteins with cognition and obesity.

Depressive disorders can be seen as a disturbance to the balance of mind and body. Because it is a mental disorder and psychiatry is a branch of medicine, the question how mind and body interact in depression should be treated as a medical rather than metaphysical mind-body problem. The relation between mind and body as it pertains to this illness should be construed in teleological rather than causal terms. Mental states like beliefs and emotions serve an adaptive purpose by constraining the physiologic systems involved in the body's stress response, thus preserving homeostasis and protecting us from various disorders. Depression results when the mind fails its constraining role.