The mechanism of spontaneous contraction of vascular smooth muscles in the elastic artery was studied in a ring-shaped preparation isolated from the rat aorta. The observation of small changes in vascular tension with a high gain AC amplification of tension signal provided a reliable detection of spontaneous contractions. The spontaneous rhythmic contraction (RC) occurred consistently in the pr...

We introduce and study a new containment relation in graphs – lift contractions. H is a lift contraction of G if H can be obtained from G by a sequence of edge lifts and edge contractions. We show that a graph contains every n-vertex graph as a lift contraction, if (1) its treewidth is large enough, or (2) its pathwidth is large enough and it is 2-connected, or (3) its order is large enough and...

A simple micromechanical method has been used to directly measure the force of contraction in single mammalian phagocytes (blood granulocytes) during engulfment of large yeast pathogens. Both the time course of cell spreading over the yeast particle and increase in cell body contractile force were quantitated at three temperatures in the range of 23-35 degrees C. The surprising feature of the p...

A novel electrostatic inchworm microactuator, which employs both a built-in mechanical transformation and a large number of contraction units to generate large force and sub-micrometer resolution step, is presented. The actuator is fabricated in a single polysilicon device layer using a trench isolation technology. The entire actuator, including the clamps and the contraction element, fits in a...

Rod-like fillers in a flow field of viscous fluid may form complex structures after passing sudden contraction. The rods start with dilute distribution random positions and orientations. Behind the contraction, large amount tumble spatially correlated way, such that orientations perpendicular to occur at regular distances along channel. tumbling results from an interplay several effects, inferr...