Constitutive Modeling of Cardiac Muscle Taking Account of Contraction Mechanism.

Structural mechanism of muscle contraction.

X-ray crystallography shows the myosin cross-bridge to exist in two conformations, the beginning and end of the "power stroke." A long lever-arm undergoes a 60 degrees to 70 degrees rotation between the two states. This rotation is coupled with changes in the active site (OPEN to CLOSED) and phosphate release. Actin binding mediates the transition from CLOSED to OPEN. Kinetics shows that the bi...

Modeling Rocky Scenery Taking into Account Joints

Research on methods for representing natural objects and phenomena by computer graphics (CG) has been steadily broadening the scope of represented objects in recent years. Among such research, visual simulation of rocky scenery is an important issue that has a wide range of applications related to visual contents, such as in landscape simulation. In the early days of research on terrain scenery...

Remarks on Muscle Contraction Mechanism

Muscle contraction mechanism is discussed by reforming the model described in an article by Mitsui (Adv. Biophys. 1999, 36, 107-158). A simple thermodynamic relationship is presented, which indicates that there is an inconsistency in the power stroke model or the swinging lever model. To avoid this difficulty, a new model is proposed. It is assumed that a myosin head forms a polaron-like comple...

The molecular mechanism of muscle contraction.

Constitutive Modeling of Cardiac Tissue Growth

Long term responses of the heart to e.g. infarction or surgical intervention are related to response of the tissue to changes in the mechanical environment. The tissue response is likely to involve (local) change of mass. Implementation of the associated inhomogeneous change in volume for a complex geometry is cumbersome. In the present study, we propose a computational framework for finite vol...