To evaluate the effects of nontransmural ischemia on epicardial contractile function, we implanted sonomicrometers in 15 open-chest, anesthetized (halothane) dogs. One cylindrical crystal (radiating ultrasound 360 degrees) was used as a transmitter for three conventional flat plate crystals arrayed to measure epicardial segment shortening along three different axes that were deviated 0 degree (...

Fuel cells constitute one of the most promising sources of clean energy for the 21 century and bipolar plate is an important component of a PEM fuel cell. Polymers filled with conducting fibers have been chosen as a candidate material for bipolar plates which needs to fulfill the surface conductivity requirement. In the present paper, effect of processing parameters including melt temperature, ...

Cardiac and skeletal myosin assembled in the muscle lattice power contraction by transducing ATP free energy into the mechanical work of moving actin. Myosin catalytic/lever-arm domains comprise the transduction/mechanical coupling machinery that move actin by lever-arm rotation. In vivo, myosin is crowded and constrained by the fiber lattice as side chains are mutated and otherwise modified un...

A statistical atlas of the cardiac fiber architecture is built for the first time with a human dataset of 10 healthy ex vivo hearts acquired using DT-MRI. The atlas is constructed using an efficient semi-automated method where limited interactions are only required to segment the myocardium. All hearts are registered automatically by an efficient and robust non linear registration method. The s...

Mechanical properties of products produced with the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) process are known to be dependent on bead direction, especially when short fiber reinforcement is added to the polymer filament feedstock. As a result, the structural performance of fiber-filled FDM parts is expected to be improved by simultaneously computing preferred deposition directions while optimizing the ...

Cardiac ultrasound plays an important role in the imaging of hearts in basic cardiovascular research and clinical examinations. 3D ultrasound imaging can provide the geometry or motion information of the heart. Especially, the wrapping of cardiac fiber orientations to the ultrasound volume could supply useful information on the stress distributions and electric action spreading. However, how to...