In mammals, environmental sounds stimulate the auditory receptor, the cochlea, via vibrations of the stapes, the innermost of the middle ear ossicles. These vibrations produce displacement waves that travel on the elongated and spirally wound basilar membrane (BM). As they travel, waves grow in amplitude, reaching a maximum and then dying out. The location of maximum BM motion is a function of ...

Mechanical disuse will bias bone marrow stromal cells towards adipogenesis, ultimately compromising the regenerative capacity of the stem cell pool and impeding the rapid and full recovery of bone morphology. Here, it was tested whether brief daily exposure to high-frequency, low-magnitude vibrations can preserve the marrow environment during disuse and enhance the initiation of tissue recovery...

Conventional strategies to measure mechanical vibrations from remote distance are based on Laser-Doppler-vibrometry (LDV). This technique is only rarely used in practical structural health monitoring (SHM) applications, due to the high costs of these devices. Radar technology represents a promising new approach towards in-situ SHM-scenarios with permanently installed sensors, because of the low...

This study tested the hypotheses that when the excitation frequency of mechanical stimuli to the foot was close to the natural frequency of the soft tissues of the lower extremity, the muscle activity increases 1) the natural frequency and 2) the damping to minimize resonance. Soft tissue vibrations were measured with triaxial accelerometers, and muscle activity was measured by using surface el...

This paper reports a microfabricated piezoelectric MEMS inertial energy harvester that can scavenge high-frequency mechanical vibrations in all three dimensions with an active inner volume of only 55 mm. The device can generate 0.1 to 10.5 μW from out-of-plane vibrations (365-465 Hz), and 0.1 to 3.2 μW from in-plane vibrations (680-930 Hz) at 0.5 g acceleration input. The reported harvester is ...