The spatial organization of the anatomical structures along the trigeminal afferent pathway of the rat conserves the topographical order of the receptor sheath: The brainstem barrelettes, thalamic barreloids, and cortical barrels all reflect the arrangement of whiskers across the mystacial pad. Although both the amount of innervation in the mystacial pad and the size of cortical barrels were sh...

The mystacial vibrissae or whiskers in rodents are sensitive tactile hairs emerging from both sides of the face. Rats and mice actively move these whiskers during exploration. The neuronal mechanisms controlling whisker movements and the sensory representation of whisker tactile information are widely studied as a model for sensorimotor processing in mammals. Studies of the natural whisker move...

All mammals, apart from humans and primates, have facial ‘whiskers’. Rodents are "whisker specialists" and have more than 30 whiskers on each side of their face, which they use to gather tactile sensory data on their near surroundings. Many rodents (including rats, discussed here) actively move their whiskers back and forth in a behaviour known as ‘whisking’. In attempting to understand this se...

The elimination of lead in electronic equipment due to governmental regulations (European Union End of Life Vehicle Directive and European Union Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive) has increased the risk of electrical shorting due to the formation of tin whiskers in electronic products. Tin whiskers are hair-like tin structures that grow sporadically on surfaces coated with tin. Whis...

Rats explore their surroundings through rhythmic movement of their mystacial vibrissae. At any given moment, multiple whiskers are simultaneously moved and may contact the surface of an object. The aim of this work is to understand how simultaneous multiple-whisker deflections are processed in the somatosensory cortex. Arrays of 25 electrodes were inserted into the vibrissal representation of b...

The problem of tin (Sn) whiskers has been a significant reliability issue in electronics for the past several decades. Despite the large amount of research conducted on this issue, a solution for mitigating the growth of whiskers remains a challenge for the research community. Whiskers have unpredictable growth and morphology, and a study of a whisker’s internal structure may provide further in...

New nanocomposites composed of cellulose nanofibers or "whiskers" and an epoxy resin were prepared. Cellulose whiskers with aspect ratios of approximately 10 and approximately 84 were isolated from cotton and sea animals called tunicates, respectively. Suspensions of these whiskers in dimethylformamide were combined with an oligomeric difunctional diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A with an epoxide...

Natural actomyosin at micro = 0.6 appears in various forms, including the regular arrowhead structures originally reported by Huxley (1), when it has been stained negatively with 1% uranyl acetate. In addition to the arrowheads, thin whiskers, 700-1200 A in length and 20 A in width, attached to the arm of the arrowheads have been demonstrated. The dimensions of the whiskers and arms of the arro...

We have demonstrated a method of producing nanoplatelets or complex well-ordered nanostructures from silicon carbide (SiC) whiskers. Preferential etching of SiC whiskers in a mixture of hydrofluoric and nitric acids (3:1 ratio) at 100 degrees C results in the selective removal of cubic SiC and the formation of complex structures resembling a pagoda architecture. Possible mechanisms governing se...

The effects of p-Sic whisker addition on the microstructural evolution and fracture toughness (K,c) of hot-pressed SIC were investigated. Most of the whiskers added disappeared during the densification process by transformation into the a-phase. The remaining whiskers acted as nuclei for grain growth, resulting in the formation of large tabular grains around the whiskers. The tabular grains aro...