Airway epithelial cells in culture respond to extracellular adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP) by increasing their intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i). The effective concentration of ATP that elicited a Ca2+ response equal to 50% of the maximal response (EC50) was 0.5 microM. Release of ATP from a pipette to form a local gradient of ATP increased [Ca2+]i of individual cells in a sequential ...

Floating breakwaters are widely used due to their various advantages over stationary breakwaters. Lots of researches have been done on hydrodynamics and the type of bracing of these kinds of structures in recent years. In this study, numerical modeling of stresses caused by collision waves has been investigated. For this purpose, samples of floating breakwaters have been modeled in ANSYS softwa...

Extracorporeally generated shock waves were first used for kidney stone fragmentation in 1980 and have since become the method of choice for most kidney and ureteral stones. More than 10 years later, shock waves were successfully utilized for the treatment of several musculoskeletal diseases. Shock waves are mechanical waves passing through the surface of a body without causing injury and may a...

We here describe intercellular calcium waves as a novel form of cellular communication among thymic epithelial cells. We first characterized the mechanical induction of intercellular calcium waves in different thymic epithelial cell preparations: cortical 1-4C18 and medullary 3-10 thymic epithelial cell lines and primary cultures of thymic "nurse" cells. All thymic epithelial preparations respo...

A physical model describing the propagation of low-frequency surface waves in relation to the viscoelastic behavior of porcine skin is presented, along with a series of empirical studies testing the performance of the model. The model assumes that the skin behaves as a semi-infinite, locally isotropic, viscoelastic half-space. While the assumption of a semi-infinite body is violated, this viola...

A salient characteristic of most auditory systems is their capacity to analyse the frequency of sound. Little is known about how such analysis is performed across the diversity of auditory systems found in animals, and especially in insects. In locusts, frequency analysis is primarily mechanical, based on vibrational waves travelling across the tympanal membrane. Different acoustic frequencies ...

The mechanical properties of any substance are essential facts to understand its behaviour and make the maximum use of the particular substance. Rocks are indeed an important substance, as they are of significant use in the energy industry, specifically for fossil fuels and geothermal energy. Attenuation of seismic waves is a non-destructive technique to investigate mechanical properties of res...

Intercellular Ca(2+) waves are believed to propagate through networks of glial cells in culture in one of two ways: by diffusion of IP(3) between cells through gap junctions or by release of ATP, which functions as an extracellular messenger. Experiments were conducted to determine the mechanism of Ca(2+) wave propagation between glial cells in an intact CNS tissue. Calcium waves were imaged in...

Achieving the mechanical properties of steels after various manufacturing and heat treatment processes is significant and essential. In production lines, after producing the specific and standard samples, mechanical properties have been measured by destructive processes which cause waste of cost and time. In addition, destructive techniques cannot detect the miniscule changes made in mechanical...

Highly nonlinear solitary waves (HNSWs) are stress waves that can form and travel in highly nonlinear systems. They are characterized by a constant spatial wavelength and by a tunable propagation speed, dependent on the wave amplitude. Conventionally, HNSW's are generated in one-dimensional chains of spherical particles by means of a mechanical impact. In this paper, we demonstrate that short-d...