Highly ordered organisation of striated muscle is the prerequisite for the fast and unidirectional development of force and motion during heart and skeletal muscle contraction. A group of proteins, summarised as the sarcomeric cytoskeleton, is essential for the ordered assembly of actin and myosin filaments into sarcomeres, by combining architectural, mechanical and signalling functions. This r...

The design of a machine which is composed of homogeneous mechanical units is described. We show the design of both hardware and control software of the unit. Each unit can connect with other units and change the connection by itself. In spite of its simple mechanism, a set of these units realizes various mechanical functions. We developed control software of the unit which realizes “self-assemb...

This paper presents the mechanical design for a new five fingered, twenty degree-of-freedom dexterous hand patterned after human anatomy and actuated by Shape Memory Alloy artificial muscles. Two experimental prototypes of a finger, one fabricated by traditional means and another fabricated by rapid prototyping techniques, are described and used to evaluate the design. An important aspect of th...

The ability to manipulate and observe single biological molecules has led to both fundamental scientific discoveries and new methods in nanoscale engineering. A common challenge in many single-molecule experiments is reliably linking molecules to surfaces, and identifying their interactions. We have met this challenge by nanoengineering a novel DNA-based linker that behaves as a force-activated...

In this paper we present a new framework for worst-case toleranced assembly planning of planar mechanical systems. Unlike most assembly planners, which produce plans for nominal parts, our framework incorporates the inherent imprecision of the manufacturing process, which introduces uncertainties in the shape and size of the assembly parts. It accounts for the uncertainty of the relative part p...

This report discussed the effect of workstation design, assembly design, jig design and working posture on the assembly of plugs. Two different designs of jig (vertical and rectangular) and two sets of assembly line design (one and two operators) and two set of workstations design (sitting and standing) were studied to observe their effects to productivity. Design of Experiments 2 with two leve...

We describe computer simulations of pore formation and membrane rupture of phospholipid bilayers under mechanical and electrical stress. On the nanosecond simulation time scale, pores are induced by a lateral pressure exceeding -200 bar or by an applied electric field of 0.5 V/nm.

Mechanical circulatory support (MCS) devices are blood pumps that support or replace the function of the native heart. It is important to minimize the material stresses in the flexing blood sac or diaphragm in order to increase the duration of support these devices can provide. An axisymmetric finite element model of a pusherplate blood pump was constructed to evaluate the effect of various des...

Very high level languages for describing mechanical assembly require a representation of the geometric and physical properties of 3 0 objects including parts, tools, and the assembler itself. This paper describes a geometric modeling system that generates a data base in which objects and assemblies are represented by nodes in a graph structure. The edges of the graph represent relationships amo...