At high altitudes, the air pressure is much lower than it is at sea level and contains fewer oxygen molecules and less oxygen is taken in at each breath. This requires deeper and rapid breathing to get the same amount of oxygen into the blood stream compared to breathing in air at sea level. Exercises increase the oxygen demand and make breathing more difficult at high altitude. In this study, ...

A bifurcating arterial system with Poiseuille flow can function at minimum cost and with uniform wall shear stress if the branching exponent (z) = 3 [where z is defined by (D(1))(z) = (D(2))(z) + (D(3))(z); D(1) is the parent vessel diameter and D(2) and D(3) are the two daughter vessel diameters at a bifurcation]. Because wall shear stress is a physiologically transducible force, shear stress-...

Atherosclerotic plaques preferentially localize at arterial regions exposed to turbulent low-shear flow. Urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) plays a role in vascular remodeling by facilitating smooth muscle cell migration and proliferation in addition to the proteolysis of extracellular matrix, and the expression of uPA is elevated in atherosclerotic lesions. In this study, we analyzed t...

The bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is a major risk factor for secondary aortopathy such as aortic dilation. The heterogeneous BAV morphotypes [left-right-coronary cusp fusion (LR), right-non-coronary cusp fusion (RN), and left-non-coronary cusp fusion (LN)] are associated with different dilation patterns, suggesting a role for hemodynamics in BAV aortopathogenesis. However, assessment of this theo...

We sought to determine whether intermittent short-duration exposure to low wall shear stress could induce intimal thickening in arteries chronically exposed to high shear stress. An arteriovenous fistula (AVF) was created between the left common carotid artery and the corresponding external jugular vein in 20 Japanese white male rabbits. After 4 weeks, blood flow was increased 10-fold to 182 +/...

The fluctuating wall shear stress, wall pressure, and streamwise velocity were measured simultaneously in a cylindrical boundary layer at a momentum thickness Reynolds number of Reu52160 and a boundary layer thickness to cylinder radius ratio of d/a55 using a hot wire wall shear stress probe mounted just upstream of a hearing aid microphone and a hot wire velocity probe. Variable Interval Time ...

in this research, a new mathematical modeling on strength changes due to reservoir elastic stresses across the preexisting fault plane is introduced. the method has been applied to the dalpari fault, which is one of the potential seismic sources in the vicinity of the karkheh reservoir. in this method the distribution of total stress across the fault cannot be determined because the initial str...

Current knowledge of the mechanics of alluvial channels depends very largely on calculations of turbulent shear stresses; typical examples are the beginning of motion of sediment particles and sediment transport in alluvial channels. If shear stress can be well defined in clear-water flows, comparatively little is known about shear stresses in sediment-laden flows. Einstein and Chien (1955) pro...

Shear stress modulates gene expression in endothelial cells (ECs) partly through nitric oxide (NO), acting via enhanced cGMP formation by guanylyl cyclase (GC). We addressed non-cGMP-mediated transcriptional responses to shear stress in human umbilical ECs subjected to high-laminar shear stress (25 dyn/cm2; 150 minutes). RNA was isolated, reverse-transcribed, Cy3/5-labeled, and hybridized to 19...

Vascular endothelial cells are potent modulators of vascular tone in response to shear stress. Levels of vasoactive peptides such as adrenomedullin (AM), endothelin-1 (ET-1), C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP), and nitric oxide (NO) are affected by fluid shear stress. AM, a potent vasodilator and suppressor of smooth muscle cell proliferation, contains the shear stress responsive element (SSRE) "...