Passive mechanical properties of strips of rabbit detrusor smooth muscle were examined and found by cyclic loading in a calcium-free solution to display viscoelastic softening and strain-induced stress softening (strain softening). Strain softening, or the Mullins effect, is a loss of stiffness attributed to the breakage of cross-links, and appeared irreversible in detrusor even after the retur...

Strain-iocalimtion instabilities due to strain-softening which result from distributed damage such (IS cracking in heterogeneous brittle materials are analyzed. Attention is restricted to the stability problem of equilibrium states. This problem is not equivalent to bifurcation of the equilibrium path. which may occur before stability of Lquilibrium is lost. The continuum is local but is enhunc...

AIMS Previous studies using isolated strips of human detrusor muscle identified adjustable preload tension, a novel mechanism that acutely regulates detrusor wall tension. The purpose of this investigation was to develop a method to identify a correlate measure of adjustable preload tension during urodynamics. METHODS Patients reporting urgency most or all of the time based on ICIq-OAB survey...

Spin wave excitations were measured in the ferromagnetic phase of Nd1/2Sr1/2MnO3 by neutron scattering. This compound is located in proximity to the A-type antiferromagnetic state, and it shows a clear anisotropy and anomalous softening of the spin wave excitations. The softening in the ferromagnetic phase is induced by the orbital ordering.

Few studies have been conducted in annual and perennial forage legumes to investigate the development of hardseededness and the subsequent pattern of seed softening in temperate and subtropical regions of South America. Experiments were conducted during 2007 and 2008 in central Uruguay to follow the pattern of seed softening in 35 annual and perennial forage legumes, including three native spec...