"Pillar pain" is a relatively frequent complication after surgical release of the median nerve at the wrist. Its etiology still remains unknown although several studies highlight a neurogenic inflammation as a possible cause. Pillar pain treatment usually includes rest, bracing and physiotherapy, although a significant number of patients still complain of painful symptoms two or even three year...

Accurate estimation of fracture behavior of commercial LiMn₂O₄ particles is of great importance to predict the performance and lifetime of a battery. The present study compares two different microscale techniques to quantify the fracture toughness of LiMn₂O₄ particles embedded in an epoxy matrix. The first technique uses focused ion beam (FIB) milled micro pillars that are subsequently tested u...

Various chromatography systems are today widely applied for both analysis and preparation of chemical compounds from complex mixtures. Current trends aim at the miniaturization of such systems, for instance on microchips. One approach is to arrange arrays of small pillars in a micro channel. The pillar surfaces are functionalized such as to adsorb specific substances from a bulk fluid which flo...

This paper presents a new approach for image segmentation by applying Pillar-Kmeans algorithm. This segmentation process includes a new mechanism for clustering the elements of high-resolution images in order to improve precision and reduce computation time. The system applies K-means clustering to the image segmentation after optimized by Pillar Algorithm. The Pillar algorithm considers the pi...

............................................................................................................ iii FOREWORD ...........................................................................................................iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .........................................................................................vi ACRONYMS ..................................................

Although boron nitride nanotubes (BNNT) and hexagonal-BN (hBN) are superb one-dimensional (1D) and 2D thermal conductors respectively, bringing this quality into 3D remains elusive. Here, we focus on pillared boron nitride (PBN) as a class of 3D BN allotropes and demonstrate how the junctions, pillar length and pillar distance control phonon scattering in PBN and impart tailorable thermal condu...

We propose a layered facial simulation model for skin aging with wrinkles, which includes muscle, connective tissue and skin layer. Our aim is to simulate relevant facial animation and aging with the guidance of general facial tissue anatomy, so that the model can be extended to medical and cosmetic applications. B-spline muscle patches are automatically adapted to each individual face by mappi...