Seawater desalination is a coastal-based industry. The growing number of desalination plants worldwide and the increasing size of single facilities emphasises the need for greener desalination technologies and more sustainable desalination projects. Two complementing approaches are the development and implementation of best available technology (BA

This book explores various applications of deep learning-oriented diagnosis leading to decision support, while also outlining the future face of medical decision support systems. Artificial intelligence has now become a ubiquitous aspect of modern life, and especially machine learning enjoysgreat popularity, since it offers techniques that are capable of learning from samples to solve newly encountered cases. Today, a recent form of machine learning, deep learning, is being widely used with large, complex quantities of data, because today’s problems require detailed analyses of more data. This is critical, especially in fields such as medicine. Accordingly, the objective of this book is to provide the essentials of and highlight recent applications of deep learning architectures for medical decision support systems. The target audience includes scientists, experts, MSc and PhD students, postdocs, and any readers interested in the subjectsdiscussed. The book canbe used as a reference work to support courses on artificial intelligence, machine/deep learning, medical and biomedicaleducation.

Reverse osmosis is the dominant technology in water desalination. However, some critical issues remain open: improvement of water quality, enhancement of the recovery factor, reduction of the unit water cost, minimizing the brine disposal impact. This book aims to solve these problems with an innovative approach based on the integration of different membrane operations in pre-treatment and post-treatment stages. Membrane-Based Desalination: An Integrated Approach (acronym MEDINA) has been a three year project funded by the European Commission within the 6th Framework Program. The project team has developed a work programme aiming to improve the current design and operation practices of membrane systems used for water desalination, trying to solve or, at least, to decrease the critical issues of sea and brackish water desalination systems. In the book, the main results achieved in the nine Work Packages constituting the project will be described, and dismissed by the leaders of the various WPs. The following areas are explored in the book: the development of advanced analytical methods for feed water characterization, appropriate fouling indicators and prediction tools, procedures and protocols at full-scale desalination facilities; the identification of optimal seawater pre-treatment strategies by designing advanced hybrid membrane processes (submerged hollow fibre filtration/reaction, adsorption/ion exchange/ozonation) and comparison with conventional methods; the optimisation of RO membrane module configuration, cleaning strategies, reduction of scaling potential by NF; the development of strategies aiming to approach the concept of Zero Liquid Discharge (increasing the water recovery factor up to 95% by using Membrane Distillation - MD; bringing concentrates to solids by Membrane Crystallization or Wind Intensified Enhanced Evaporation) and to reduce the brine disposal environmental impact and cost; increase the sustainability of desalination process by reducing energy consumption (evaluation of MD, demonstration of a new energy recovery device for SWRO installations) and use of renewable energy (wind and solar). Colour figures (PDF, 6MB) Visit the IWA WaterWiki to read and share material related to this title: http://www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Articles/WaterdesalinationandEuropeanresearch

Seawater desalination is increasing globally, and in light of this, it is necessary to look at the environmental and ecological impacts of desalination plants on the marine environment. Marine Impacts of Seawater Desalination: Science, Management, and Policy combines existing studies and new research into a unified work describing the interplay of seawater desalination and the marine environment. In particular, the book identifies knowledge gaps in the current data and recommends future research paths. The book also covers the established and emerging desalination processes and the policies and regulations applied to seawater desalination. Marine Impacts of Seawater Desalination is an ideal reference for engineers and developers working on environmental-related issues of seawater desalination, scientists and researchers studying these issues, as well as regulators and decision makers who can use this book as a useful guide for planning and operating desalination plants. - A multidisciplinary approach to understanding the environmental impact of seawater desalination on the marine environment. - Real-world data demonstrating the environmental effects of seawater desalination. - Impact of seawater quality and marine organisms on desalination operations. - Discussion of foreseeable future effects and significant areas for further research on seawater desalination.

This encyclopedia provides an authoritative guide intended for students of all levels of studies, offering multidisciplinary insight and analysis of over 500 headwords covering the main concepts of Security and Non-traditional Security, and their relation to other scholarly fields and aspects of real-world issues in the contemporary geopolitical world.

This two volume set of books constitutes the proceedings of the 2014 7th IEEE International Conference Intelligent Systems (IS), or IEEE IS’2014 for short, held on September 24‐26, 2014 in Warsaw, Poland. Moreover, it contains some selected papers from the collocated IWIFSGN'2014-Thirteenth International Workshop on Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets and Generalized Nets.The conference was organized by the Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Department IV of Engineering Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, and Industrial Institute of Automation and Measurements - PIAP.The papers included in the two proceedings volumes have been subject to a thorough review process by three highly qualified peer reviewers.Comments and suggestions from them have considerable helped improve the quality of the papers but also the division of the volumes into parts, and assignment of the papers to the best suited parts.

The book looks at water availability and water demand in various sectors till 2050, presenting a methodology to prioritize options both on the demand and on the supply side, with a special focus on renewable energy desalination.