Publisher's Synopsis
When investigating the intricate interactions of the human body, how can one represent bodily function and activity on paper? Most biomedical research progresses through simplifying complex systems by reducing them to smaller subsystems. Network thermodynamics generalizes techniques used in various branches of engineering, making it possible to resynthesize complex wholes from the subsystems studied.
In this book, Donald C. Mikulecky makes accessible some of the most sophisticated techniques of the computer age and applies them to the most complicated of systems, the living organism. The book begins with a review of classical thermodynamic reasoning and shows what it can do and where it falls short. It then shows how network analysis revolutionized electronics by using a relatively simple methodology combining graph theory and the definitions of resistance, capacitance, and inductance. The book shows how the most complex of dynamics systems can be solved by this method, even in the areas of biofluid kinetics, pharmacokinetics, and other dynamics systems of living organisms.
To date, no book such as this, combining theory and application, has been available. This book is essential for students and researchers in biomedical engineering and advanced graduate students and researchers in physiology.
