To obtain insight into the etiology of deep pressure sores, understanding of the relationship between prolonged transverse loading and local muscle damage is required. To date, the amount and location of muscle damage have been determined by histological examination. In the present study, we determined whether T2-weighted high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can also be applied to e...

Optimality conditions are derived for the robust optimal design of beams subject to a combination of uncertain and deterministic transverse and boundary loads using a variational min-max approach. The potential energy of the beam is maximized to compute the worst case loading and minimized to determine the optimal cross-sectional shape which results in coupled nonlinear differential equations f...

BACKGROUND A biomechanical study of three sternotomy closure techniques (figure-of-eight stainless-steel wires, Pectofix Dynamic Sternal Fixation [DSF] stainless-steel plates, and figure-of-eight stainless-steel cables) was conducted to compare strength and stiffness variables in three clinically relevant loading modes (anterior-posterior shear, longitudinal shear, and lateral distraction). M...

Mechanical stability of the lumbar spine is known to have implications for injury and chronic low back pain. Even though this topic is fairly covered by scientific literature, the role of abdominal muscles, in particular the deep once, is often neglected. Especially transverse abdominal (TA) muscle might play privileged role: with mainly transverse muscular fibers, both activated TA muscles com...

Compression in the through-thickness direction (as in fastening) resulted in reversible and irreversible changes in the microstructure of continuous carbon fiber epoxy-matrix composites, as shown by electrical resistance measurement during dynamic compression. The extent of fiber-fiber contact across the interlaminar interface was increased, with partial irreversibility even at a low stress amp...

INTRODUCTION Compliant gripping mechanisms are particularly suited for precision manipulation of microand nanoscale objects by virtue of having zero backlash, no parasitic columbic friction effects, and often only requiring one actuator to close two gripping faces symmetrically about a centerline of action. Many previous compliant gripping mechanisms use a parallelogram structure (Fig. 1a) to c...

The elastic modulus of cellulose Ib in the axial and transverse directions was obtained from atomistic simulations using both the standard uniform deformation approach and a complementary approach based on nanoscale indentation. This allowed comparisons between the methods and closer connectivity to experimental measurement techniques. A reactive force field was used that explicitly describes h...

Rationale: Increased activity of Ca /calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) is thought to promote heart failure (HF) progression. However, the importance of CaMKII phosphorylation of ryanodine receptors (RyR2) in HF development and associated diastolic sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca leak is unclear. Objective: Determine the role of CaMKII phosphorylation of RyR2 in patients and mice with no...

RATIONALE Increased activity of Ca(2+)/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) is thought to promote heart failure (HF) progression. However, the importance of CaMKII phosphorylation of ryanodine receptors (RyR2) in HF development and associated diastolic sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca(2+) leak is unclear. OBJECTIVE Determine the role of CaMKII phosphorylation of RyR2 in patients and mice ...

PURPOSE To investigate the association between medial tibial stress syndrome (MTSS) and morphology and flexibility of the foot arches. METHODS 131 feet from 74 healthy subjects and 31 feet from 27 patients with MTSS were classified as normal feet (n=78 in 40 subjects), flat feet (n=53 in 34 subjects), or MTSS feet (n=31 in 27 patients). The medial longitudinal arch (MLA) ratio and the transve...