Cell function on biomaterials may depend on surface chemistry and concentration (as well as conformation) of protein molecules. To understand the interplay between these two effects, fibronectin (Fn) was physisorbed on a smooth, activated poly(dimethylsiloxane), films spun cast on silicon wafers. Contact angle goniometry, ellipsometry, Atomic force microscopy and Rutherford backscattering spect...

Impact mechanics theory suggests that peak loads should decrease with increase in system energy absorption. In light of the reduced hip fracture risk for persons with high body mass index (BMI) and for falls on soft surfaces, the purpose of this study was to characterize the effects of participant BMI, gender, and flooring surface on system energy absorption during lateral falls on the hip with...

Typically, metal particles are difficult to manipulate with conventional optical vortex (OV) tweezers, because of their strong absorption and scattering. However, it has been shown that the vortex field of surface plasmonic polaritons, called plasmonic vortex (PV), is capable of stable trapping and dynamic rotation of metal particles, especially those of mesoscopic and Mie size. To uncover the ...

We investigate the role of size quantization in the vacuum force between metallic films of nanometric thickness. The force is calculated by the Lifshitz formula with the film dielectric tensor derived from the one-electron energies and wavefunctions under the assumption of a constant potential inside the film and a uniform distribution of the positive ion charge. The results show that quantizat...

A biomechanical study has been carried out on 20 cadaveric knees to investigate their load-absorbing mechanism. The impact load was applied using a weight falling onto the transected proximal femur and the force transmitted through the knee was measured at the transected distal tibia using a load transducer. The peak force transmitted increased as, sequentially, meniscus, articular cartilage an...

The objective of this study was to compare the impact energy absorption of three mouthguard materials in three environments. Thirty specimens with 12.7 cm x 12.7 cm x 4 mm dimensions were prepared for each material: ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA, T&S Dental and Plastics), Pro-form (Dental Resources Inc), and PolyShok (Sportsguard Laboratories). Ten specimens of each material were conditioned for ...

We study the problem of cooling a mechanical oscillator using the photothermal (bolometric) force. Contrary to previous attempts to model this system, we take into account the noise effects due to the granular nature of photon absorption. We achieve this by developing a Langevin formalism for the motion of the cantilever, valid in the bad-cavity limit, which includes both photon absorption shot...

Measurements of the quality factor Q approximately 8x10(9) are reported for the whispering-gallery modes (WGM's) of quartz microspheres for the wavelengths 670, 780, and 850 nm; these results correspond to finesse f approximately 2.2x10(6) . The observed independence of Q from wavelength indicates that losses for the WGM's are dominated by a mechanism other than bulk absorption in fused silica ...