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...

We have used whole cell recording in the anesthetized rat to study whisker-evoked synaptic and spiking responses of single neurons in the barrel cortex. On the basis of their intrinsic firing patterns, neurons could be classified as either regular-spiking (RS) cells, intrinsically burst-spiking (IB) cells, or fast-spiking (FS) cells. Some recordings responded to current injection with a complex...

Classically, the rat ventral posterior medial (VPM) nucleus of the thalamus has been considered as a simple passive relay for single-whisker information to the primary somatosensory cortex (SI). However, recent reports have suggested that the VPM could contain a much more coarsely coded and spatiotemporally complex representation of the rat whisker pad. To address this possibility properly, we ...

Zn particulates overlaid with wurtzite (W)-type ZnO condensates having nearly orthogonal {101̄1} and {112̄1} facets were found to self-catalyze unusual tapered W-ZnO whiskers upon isothermal atmospheric annealing, i.e., thermal oxidation, at 600 °C. Analytical electron microscopic observations indicated that such whiskers formed tapered slabs having mosaic {101̄1} and {21̄1̄1} twinned domains. The t...

In recent years, concerns about environmental waste caused by petroleum-derived chemicals as well as the consumer's demand for high quality food products, have prompted people to pay more attention to developing biodegradable food packaging materials using natural resources such as cellulose fibers and chitin derivatives. In this study, chitin whiskers have been successfully generated by hydrol...

Most mammals have whiskers; however, nearly everything we know about whiskers derives from just a handful of species, including laboratory rats Rattus norvegicus and mice Mus musculus, as well some species pinniped marsupial. We explore the extent to which knowledge whisker system applies generally. This will help us understand evolution function, in order gain more insights into mammalian beha...

Subtle structural details of siliceous zeolites are probed by using two-bond scalar (J) coupling constants to characterize covalently bonded 29Si-O-29Si site pairs and local framework order. Solid-state two-dimensional (2D) 29Si{29Si} NMR measurements and first-principles calculations of 2J(29Si-O-29Si) couplings shed insights on both the local structures of siliceous zeolites Sigma-2 and ZSM-1...