Now the reason for the rather extended title of this book is because the routine described herein conveys not only a common sense approach to staying physically fit. For each exercise can also be used, through employing the related mental technique, as a means to improve on the incisiveness of our initiating.

Neural engineering is a discipline that uses engineering techniques to understand, repair, replace, enhance, or treat diseases of neural systems. Currently, no book other than this one covers this broad range of topics within motor rehabilitation technology. With a focus on cutting edge technology, it describes state-of-the-art methods within this field, from brain-computer interfaces to spinal and cortical plasticity. Touching on electrode design, signal processing, the neurophysiology of movement, robotics, and much more, this innovative volume collects the latest information for a wide range of readers working in biomedical engineering.

Disability after stroke is a major burden on society, due to its high incidence and prevalence. Among the priorities of rehabilitation programs, stroke rehabilitation aims to regain independence and improve patients’ quality of life. Dynamic balance, falls prevention and upper limb recovery are essential features for the clinical management of hemiparetic patients. To optimize movement recovery after stroke, it is essential to select multilevel outcome measures for interpretation of motor recovery and clinical decision-making. In this context, the assessment of movement by means of quantitative movement analysis in hemiparetic post-stroke patients is key to planning rehabilitative intervention. Kinematic analysis facilitates interpreting the extent and mechanisms of motor restoration, and it has been increasingly applied in neurological research.

Rehabilitation enables people with sensorimotor and cognitive disabilities to regain functions and autonomy. However, over the past few years, there has been a reduction in healthcare providers to assist patients. Fortunately, this decline has been accompanied by an increase in technological applications to support health systems. This new paradigm brings promising perspectives but raises questions regarding the therapy assisted by computers. To address these issues, this book intends to clarify the multidisciplinary aspects of medical engineering. The volume covers studies on the technical challenges in and barriers to the development of efficient rehabilitation and assistive technologies. It also provides a comprehensive approach to the recent advances in tele-health as a complementary medium to support the recovery process and to enhance patients' empowerment.

More than four decades have passed since a human first set foot on the Moon. Great strides have been made in our understanding of what is required to support an enduring human presence in space, as evidenced by progressively more advanced orbiting human outposts, culminating in the current International Space Station (ISS). However, of the more than 500 humans who have so far ventured into space, most have gone only as far as near-Earth orbit, and none have traveled beyond the orbit of the Moon. Achieving humans' further progress into the solar system had proved far more difficult than imagined in the heady days of the Apollo missions, but the potential rewards remain substantial. During its more than 50-year history, NASA's success in human space exploration has depended on the agency's ability to effectively address a wide range of biomedical, engineering, physical science, and related obstacles-an achievement made possible by NASA's strong and productive commitments to life and physical sciences research for human space exploration, and by its use of human space exploration infrastructures for scientific discovery. The Committee for the Decadal Survey of Biological and Physical Sciences acknowledges the many achievements of NASA, which are all the more remarkable given budgetary challenges and changing directions within the agency. In the past decade, however, a consequence of those challenges has been a life and physical sciences research program that was dramatically reduced in both scale and scope, with the result that the agency is poorly positioned to take full advantage of the scientific opportunities offered by the now fully equipped and staffed ISS laboratory, or to effectively pursue the scientific research needed to support the development of advanced human exploration capabilities. Although its review has left it deeply concerned about the current state of NASA's life and physical sciences research, the Committee for the Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences in Space is nevertheless convinced that a focused science and engineering program can achieve successes that will bring the space community, the U.S. public, and policymakers to an understanding that we are ready for the next significant phase of human space exploration. The goal of this report is to lay out steps and develop a forward-looking portfolio of research that will provide the basis for recapturing the excitement and value of human spaceflight-thereby enabling the U.S. space program to deliver on new exploration initiatives that serve the nation, excite the public, and place the United States again at the forefront of space exploration for the global good.

Event-based systems are a class of reactive systems deployed in a wide spectrum of engineering disciplines including control, communication, signal processing, and electronic instrumentation. Activities in event-based systems are triggered in response to events usually representing a significant change of the state of controlled or monitored physical variables. Event-based systems adopt a model of calls for resources only if it is necessary, and therefore, they are characterized by efficient utilization of communication bandwidth, computation capability, and energy budget. Currently, the economical use of constrained technical resources is a critical issue in various application domains because many systems become increasingly networked, wireless, and spatially distributed. Event-Based Control and Signal Processing examines the event-based paradigm in control, communication, and signal processing, with a focus on implementation in networked sensor and control systems. Featuring 23 chapters contributed by more than 60 leading researchers from around the world, this book covers: Methods of analysis and design of event-based control and signal processing Event-driven control and optimization of hybrid systems Decentralized event-triggered control Periodic event-triggered control Model-based event-triggered control and event-triggered generalized predictive control Event-based intermittent control in man and machine Event-based PID controllers Event-based state estimation Self-triggered and team-triggered control Event-triggered and time-triggered real-time architectures for embedded systems Event-based continuous-time signal acquisition and DSP Statistical event-based signal processing in distributed detection and estimation Asynchronous spike event coding technique with address event representation Event-based processing of non-stationary signals Event-based digital (FIR and IIR) filters Event-based local bandwidth estimation and signal reconstruction Event-Based Control and Signal Processing is the first extensive study on both event-based control and event-based signal processing, presenting scientific contributions at the cutting edge of modern science and engineering.