In the past, the human earcanal has primarily been thought of as a passive conduit for sound. Several studies, reported here, explored evidence of how active the earcanal is. The "active earcanal" is conceptualized and aspects of it are viewed through three timeframes: jaw-induced canal change in seconds/minutes, cerumen production in weeks/months, and aging in years. The influence of each of t...

Exploiting natural dynamics for bipedal locomotion, or passive walking, is gaining interest because of its energy efficiency. However, the natural trajectories of a passive walker are fixed during the design, thus limiting its mobility. A possible solution to this problem is creating a “semi-passive walker” equipped with actuators with adaptable compliance, which allows the natural dynamics to ...

OBJECTIVE Although extensive work has been done on cigarette smoking and its effects on pulmonary function, there are limited number of studies on water-pipe smoking. The effects of water-pipe smoking on health are not widely investigated. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of water-pipe smoking on pulmonary permeability. METHODS Technetium-99m DTPA inhalation scintigraphy was...

The mechanism for passive cochlear tuning remains unsettled. Early models considered the organ of Corti complex (OCC) as a succession of spring-mass resonators. Later, traveling wave models showed that passive tuning could arise through the interaction of cochlear fluid mass and OCC stiffness without local resonators. However, including enough OCC mass to produce local resonance enhanced the tu...

The separation of transmitter and receiver in bistatic and multistatic radar sensors offers the system designer new and additional degrees of freedom to tailor solutions to specific applications. The receivers may be passive and hence largely immune to jamming. Passive systems that also use ‘illuminators of opportunity’ do not have to provide a potentially expensive transmitter. Multiple transm...

background maternal passive smoking or exposure to environmental tobacco smoke may be a risk factor for maternal and newborn morbidity. objectives the current study aimed to assess the relationship between preterm delivery and tobacco smoke exposure in pregnant woman referring to the shabih-khani maternity hospital in kashan, iran. patients and methods an analytical retrospective cohort study w...

asthma environmental triggers play important roles in severity of disease. passive smoking could exacerbate asthma symptoms and enhance the decrease in lung function. cotinine levels could be a reflection of passive exposure to the cigarette both in adults and pediatrics. the aim of this study was to determine degree of association of asthma severity and cotinine level as a marker of passive sm...

leishmaniasis is a common parasitic disease in tropical and subtropical areas of the world. police personnel deployed in the suburbs and rural areas are the most often exposed to the potential risk of cutaneous leishmaniasis. furthermore, since the same police personnel are sent on duty to other places, their migrations can also play a considerable role in the transmission of this disease to th...