A promising long-term evolution of surgery relies on intracorporeal microrobotics. This book reviews the physical and methodological principles, and the scientific challenges to be tackled to design and control such robots. Three orders of magnitude will be considered, justified by the class of problems encountered and solutions implemented to manipulate objects and reach targets within the body: millimetric, sub-millimetric in the 10- 100 micrometer range, then in the 1-10 micrometer range. The most prominent devices and prototypes of the state of the art will be described to illustrate the benefit that can be expected for surgeons and patients. Future developments nanorobotics will also be discussed.
This book presents a comprehensive survey of perceptual expertise in visual object recognition, and introduces a novel collaborative model, codified as the "Perceptual Expertise Network" (PEN). This unique group effort is focused on delineating the domain-general principles of high-level visual learning that can account for how different object categories are processed and come to be associated with spatially localized activity in the primate brain. PEN's approach brings together different traditions and techniques to address questions such as how expertise develops, whether there are different kinds of experts, whether some disorders such as autism or prosopagnosia can be understood as a lack or loss of expertise, and how conceptual and perceptual information interact when experts recognize and categorize objects. The research and results that have been generated by these questions are presented here, along with a variety of other questions, background information, and extant issues that have emerged from recent studies, making this book a complete overview on the topic.
Charting the intersection of aesthetic representation and the material conditions of urban space, The City Since 9/11 posits that the contemporary metropolis provides a significant context for reassessing theoretical concerns related to narrative, identity, home, and personal precarity. In the years since the September 11 attacks, writers and filmmakers have explored urban spaces as contested sites—shaped by the prevailing discourses of neoliberalism, homeland security, and the war on terror, but also haunted by an absence in the landscape that registers loss and prefigures future menace. In works of literature, film, and television, the city emerges as a paradoxical space of permanence and vulnerability and a convergence point for anxieties about globalization, structural inequality, and apocalyptic violence. Building on previous scholarship addressing trauma and the spectacle of terror, the contributors also draw upon works of philosophy, urban studies, and postmodern geography to theorize how literary and visual representations expose the persistent conflicts that arise as cities rebuild in the shadow of past ruins. Their essays advance new lines of argument that clarify art’s role in contemporary debates about spatial practices, gentrification, cosmopolitanism, memory and history, nostalgia, the uncanny and the abject, postmodern virtuality, the politics of realism, and the economic and social life of cities. The book offers fresh readings of familiar post-9/11 novels, such as Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, but it also considers works by Teju Cole, Joseph O’Neill, Silver Krieger, Colum McCann, Ronald Sukenick, Jonathan Lethem, Thomas Pynchon, Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, William Gibson, Amitav Ghosh, and Katherine Boo. In addition, The City Since 9/11 includes essays on the films Children of Men, Hugo, and the adaptation of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, chapters on the television series The Bridge, The Killing, and The Wire, and an analysis of Michael Arad’s Reflecting Absence and the 9/11 Memorial.
Ground water is the Nation's principal reserve of fresh water and represents much of its potential future water supply. Ground water on National Forest System (NFS) lands is a major contributor to flow in many streams and rivers and has a strong influence on the health and diversity of plant and animal species in forests, grasslands, riparian areas, lakes, wetlands, and cave systems. It also provides drinking water to hundreds of communities. Demands for safe drinking water and requirements to maintain healthy ecosystems are increasing, and complex social and scientific questions have arisen about how to assess and manage the water resources on NFS lands. This technical guide was developed to help address these issues. Today, many of the concerns about ground water resources on or adjacent to public land involve questions about depletion of ground water storage, reductions in streamflow, potential loss of ground water-dependent ecosystems, land subsidence, saltwater intrusion, and changes in ground water quality. The effects of many human activities on ground water resources and on the broader environment need to be clearly understood in order to properly manage these systems. Throughout this technical guide, we emphasize that development, disruption, or contamination of ground water resources has consequences for hydrological systems and related environmental systems. Ground water and surface water are interconnected and interdependent in almost all ecosystems. Ground water plays significant roles in sustaining the flow, chemistry, and temperature of streams, lakes, springs, wetlands, and cave systems in many settings, while surface waters provide recharge to ground water in other settings. Ground water has a major influence on rock weathering, streambank erosion, and the headward progression of stream channels. Pumping of ground water can reduce river flows, lower lake levels, and reduce or eliminate discharges to wetlands and springs. It also can influence the sustainability of drinking-water supplies and maintenance of critical ground water-dependent habitats. Increasingly, attention is being placed on how to manage ground water (and surface-water) resources on public lands in a sustainable manner. The potential for ground water resources to become contaminated from anthropogenic as well as natural sources is being scientifically assessed. Each ground water system and development situation is unique and requires a specific analysis to draw appropriate conclusions. This technical guide begins by reviewing the legislative and policy framework, and the issues related to ground water inventory, monitoring, contamination, and development. Individual sections then focus on key concepts, principles and methods for managing ground water resources. Relevant special topics, case studies, and field examples are highlighted throughout the text. Additional information on some topics can be found in the appendixes. This technical guide provides guidance for implementing the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service national ground water policy. It describes hydrological, geological, and ecological concepts, as well as the managerial responsibilities that must be considered to ensure the wise and sustainable use of ground water resources on NFS lands. This document is one part of a four-part information system on ground water management on the national forests and grasslands. The other three parts are (1) Forest Service policy on ground water (Forest Service Manuals [FSM] 2543 and 2880); (2) a Forest Service sourcebook on State ground water laws, regulations, and case law for all 43 States with NFS land; and (3) a ground water inventory and monitoring technical guide. When complete, the four parts will provide line officers and technical specialists at all field levels with the science, policy, and legal framework for Forest Service ground water-resource management.
This authoritative book presents the theoretical development of gravitational physics as it applies to the dynamics of celestial bodies and the analysis of precise astronomical observations. In so doing, it fills the need for a textbook that teaches modern dynamical astronomy with a strong emphasis on the relativistic aspects of the subject produced by the curved geometry of four-dimensional spacetime. The first three chapters review the fundamental principles of celestial mechanics and of special and general relativity. This background material forms the basis for understanding relativistic reference frames, the celestial mechanics of N-body systems, and high-precision astrometry, navigation, and geodesy, which are then treated in the following five chapters. The final chapter provides an overview of the new field of applied relativity, based on recent recommendations from the International Astronomical Union. The book is suitable for teaching advanced undergraduate honors programs and graduate courses, while equally serving as a reference for professional research scientists working in relativity and dynamical astronomy. The authors bring their extensive theoretical and practical experience to the subject. Sergei Kopeikin is a professor at the University of Missouri, while Michael Efroimsky and George Kaplan work at the United States Naval Observatory, one of the world?s premier institutions for expertise in astrometry, celestial mechanics, and timekeeping.
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