A new breed of in-plane bi-directional MEMS actuators based on controlled electrothermal buckling and electromagnetic Lorentz force has been demonstrated under both dc and ac operations. Experimentally, bi-directional actuators made by the standard surface-micromachining process have a lateral actuation range of several microns and can exert forces over 100 μN, while those made by SOI and Metal...

The mechanical strength of single protein molecules can be investigated by using the atomic force microscope. By applying this technique to a wide range of proteins, it appears that the type of secondary structure and its orientation relative to the extension points are important determinants of mechanical strength. Unlike chemical denaturants, force acts locally and the mechanical strength of ...

Human–robot collaborative systems have the potential to dramatically change many aspects of surgery, manufacturing, hazardous-material handling, and other dextrous tasks. We are particularly interested in precise manipulation tasks, which are typically performed under an admittance-control regime, where the controlled velocity of a non-backdrivable robot is proportional to the sensed user-appli...

Drilling is a widely used machining process. With every hole drilled, a drill-bit gradually degrades until it breaks. In certain special applications replacing a drill-bit after it's breakage can be costly. In such cases degradation signals are often used to make a decision whether or not to replace the tool. However, very often the requirement of making a decision online, leads to online colle...

This paper comprehensively evaluates the Modal Pushover Analysis (MPA) procedure against the ‘‘exact’’ nonlinear response history analysis (RHA) and investigates the accuracy of seismic demands determined by pushover analysis using FEMA-356 force distributions; the MPA procedure in this paper contains several improvements over the original version presented in Chopra and Goel (2002). Seismic de...

To explore the feasibility of radar-based extreme precipitation climatologies, prototype radar areal reduction factor (ARF) curves are developed and compared to those based on traditional rain gauge networks. For both the radar and gauge data, increasing the spatial density of observations has little influence on the ARF relationship. However, independently, considerable differences between rad...

The specific and selective proteolysis of cardiac troponin I (cTnI) has been proposed to play a key role in human ischemic myocardial disease, including stunning and acute pressure overload. In this study, the functional implications of cTnI proteolysis were investigated in human cardiac tissue for the first time. The predominant human cTnI degradation product (cTnI(1-192)) and full-length cTnI...

Degradation of RNA plays a central role in RNA metabolism. In recent years, our knowledge of the mechanisms of RNA degradation has increased considerably with discovery of the participating RNases and analysis of mutants affected in the various degradative pathways. Among these processes, mRNA decay and stable RNA degradation generally have been considered distinct, and also separate from RNA m...

the present work is aimed to find a new and efficient type of antioxidants for polypropylene. hence, effects of 3,3-bis(4-hydroxy-2-methyl-5-propan-2-ylphenyl)-2-benzofuran-1-one, generally known as thymolphthalein, on thermo-oxidative stability of polypropylene in solid and melt states were evaluated and compared with those of songnox 1010, an efficient commercially used antioxidant for the po...