The study of jaw movement in humans is a primary source of information about the relationship between voluntary movement and more primitive motor functions. This study focused on the geometric form of the velocity function, as measured by linear voltage displacement transducer. Movement amplitudes, maximum velocities and durations were greater in mastication than in speech. Nevertheless, there ...

[1] Measurements of streamer velocity reflect the detailed internal microphysics of sprite development that is connected to the effects streamers create in the mesosphere. We report intensified high speed video observations of streamer development acquired at 5,000 to 10,000 frames per second that include the entire altitude range of sprites ( 40–90 km). Downward streamers accelerate to a maxim...

Rapid acceleration and deceleration are vital for survival in many predator and prey animals and are important attributes of animal and human athletes. Adaptations for acceleration and deceleration are therefore likely to experience strong selective pressures--both natural and artificial. Here, we explore the mechanical and physiological constraints to acceleration. We examined two elite athlet...

Preparatory heart rate deceleration occurs in tasks with an external focus of attention and is often assumed to facilitate balance performance. However, its effects upon sport-related complex balance movements have not been studied. Heart rate patterns during the preparation period of an acrobatic element (flic-flac) on the balance beam were studied in 14 female gymnasts (M age 13.2 years). A s...

Our aim was to establish parameters describing systolic and diastolic function in mice after myocardial infarction (MI) that distinguish MI with pulmonary congestion from MI without congestion. Echocardiography, left ventricular (LV) catheterization, and infarct size measurements were performed on days 3, 5, 7, and 14 after ligation of the left coronary artery in C57BL/6 mice. Sham-operated mic...

The variable threshold(VT), which detects the speech rate deceleration, is proposed. The VT varies dynamically depending upon the duration of previous mora in the utterance. The VT should not change rapidly because listener cannot perceive small variations of mora duration. Thus, a set of functions with time constants which decide response speed of the VT is introduced. We apply the VT to six s...

BACKGROUND The mechanism of the alterations in the pattern of left ventricular (LV) filling during the development of congestive heart failure (CHF) is not fully understood. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied six conscious dogs instrumented to measure LV and left atrial (LA) pressures and LV volume as CHF was induced by rapid pacing. Diastolic filling dynamics were serially measured over 4 weeks ...

Locomotion is an integral aspect of the prey capture strategy of almost every predatory animal. For fishes that employ suction to draw prey into their mouths, locomotor movements are vital for the correct positioning of the mouth relative to the prey item. Despite this, little is known regarding the relationships between locomotor movements and prey capture. To gain insights into how fishes mov...

We present the results of numerical simulations of shock wave-driven jets in the solar atmosphere. The dependence of observable quantities like maximum velocity and deceleration on parameters such as the period and amplitude of initial disturbances and the inclination of the magnetic field is investigated. Our simulations show excellent agreement with observations, and shed new light on the cor...