The behaviour of mammalian cells in a tissue is governed by the three-dimensional (3D) microenvironment and involves a dynamic interplay between biochemical and mechanical signals provided by the extracellular matrix (ECM), cell-cell interactions and soluble factors. The complexity of the microenvironment and the context-dependent cell responses that arise from these interactions have posed a m...

Kernels for non-local elasticity are frequently obtained from phonon dispersion relations. The dispersion relations are generally available in the form of one-dimensional (1D) curves in reciprocal space for different high-symmetry directions of the Brillouin zone, however, 3D kernels for three-dimensional (3D) solids are needed. To the best of knowledge of the authors, there is no systematic pr...

Physical features of microenvironments such as matrix elasticity E can clearly influence cell morphology and cell phenotype, but many differences between model matrices raise questions as to whether a standard biological scale for E exists, especially in 3D as well as in 2D. An E-series of two distinct types of hydrogels are ligand-functionalized here with non-fibrous collagen and used to eluci...

Physical features of microenvironments such as matrix elasticity E can clearly influence cell morphology and cell phenotype, but many differences between model matrices raise questions as to whether a standard biological scale for E exists, especially in 3D as well as in 2D. An E-series of two distinct types of hydrogels are ligand-functionalized here with non-fibrous collagen and used to eluci...

We present an image-guided intervention system based on tracked 3D elasticity imaging (EI) to provide a novel interventional modality for registration with pre-operative CT. The system can be integrated in both laparoscopic and robotic partial nephrectomies scenarios, where this new use of EI makes exact intra-operative execution of pre-operative planning possible. Quick acquisition and registr...

Based on the small parameter asymptotic homogenization theory, this article adopts the technology of digitized cell-based finite element method (DCB-FEM) to establish the digital cell-based mechanics analysis model of three-dimensional 4-directional braided composite material, analyzes and calculates the equivalent elasticity performance of 3D braided composite material using homogenization met...

A new active set algorithm for minimizing quadratic functions with separable convex constraints is proposed by combining the conjugate gradient method with the projected gradient. It generalizes recently developed algorithms of quadratic programming constrained by simple bounds. A linear convergence rate in terms of the Hessian spectral condition number is proven. Numerical experiments, includi...

SU-8 pillar-assisted epitaxial assembly of toric focal conic domains (TFCDs) arrays of smectic-A liquid crystals is studied. The 3D nature of the pillar array is crucial to confine and direct the formation of TFCDs on the top of each pillar and between neighboring pillars, leading to highly ordered square and hexagonal array TFCDs. Excellent agreement between the experimentally obtained critica...

We present a new method for the deformation of curve based upon a decomposition of the elasticity problem into basic physical laws. We encode the basic laws using computational algebraic topology. Each basic law uses exact global values and makes approximations only when they are needed. The deformations computed with our approach have a physical interpretation. Furthermore, our algorithm perfo...

We present a silk biomaterial platform with highly tunable mechanical and degradation properties for engineering and regeneration of soft tissues such as, skin, adipose, and neural tissue, with elasticity properties in the kilopascal range. Lyophilized silk sponges were prepared under different process conditions and the effect of silk molecular weight, concentration and crystallinity on 3D sca...