Different models for animal cell cytokinesis posit that the stiffness of the equatorial cortex is either increased or decreased relative to the stiffness of the polar cortex. A recent work has suggested that the critical cytokinesis signaling complex centralspindlin may reduce the stiffness of the equatorial cortex by inactivating the small GTPase Rac. To determine if such a reduction occurs an...

This paper addresses the role of lumbar spinal motion segment stiffness in spinal stability. The stability of the lumbar spine was modelled with loadings of 30 Nm or 60 Nm efforts about each of the three principal axes, together with the partial body weight above the lumbar spine. Two assumptions about motion segment stiffness were made: first the stiffness was represented by an 'equivalent bea...

an aircraft wing needs to display different mechanical behavior in different directions. 1- stiffness in the spanwise (transverse to the corrugation) direction which enables the aerodynamic and inertial loads to be carried. 2- compliance in the chordwise (corrugation) direction which would allow shape changes and increases in surface area; whereas a corrugated sheet due to their special geometr...

Background—In ventricular dilatation or hypertrophy, an elevated end-diastolic pressure is often assumed to be secondary to increased myocardial stiffness, but stiffness is rarely measured in vivo because of difficulty. We measured in vitro passive stiffness of volume-or pressure-overloaded myocardium mainly from congenital heart disease. Methods and Results—Endocardial ventricular biopsies wer...

BACKGROUND Hypertension is strongly associated with cardiovascular disease. It has been reported that arterial stiffness is related to cardiovascular mortality and morbidity in hypertensive patients and that the physiological evaluation of arterial stiffness may assist clinicians in the early detection of atherosclerosis. SUMMARY It has been demonstrated that increased arterial stiffness is a...

a new base isolation method for reducing the destructive effect of earthquake is proposed in this method mushroom shaped basements are used under structures as base isolation. these basements have spherical surface and are located on foundations. basements have pinned arms that are connected. when the length of the arm is less then the radius of spherical surface, the action of them is similar ...

in this study, stability of geosynthetic reinforced soil retaining walls investigated using plaxis code that is based on finite element method. the effects of axial stiffness, length and vertical space between geosynthetic layers, internal friction angle of soil wall and cohesion of foundation on deformations of wall and maximum axial force of geosynthetic have been investigated. results of ana...

BACKGROUND Adipocyte fatty acid binding protein (A-FABP) is a novel fat-derived circulating protein, which is independently and positively associated with atherosclerosis. The present study evaluated the relationship between fasting serum A-FABP and central arterial stiffness in geriatric adults. METHODS Fasting blood samples were obtained from 87 geriatric patients and the serum A-FABP level...

Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) is an MRI-based technique to noninvasively measure tissue stiffness. Currently well established for clinical use in the liver, MRE is increasingly being investigated to measure brain stiffness as a novel biomarker of a variety of neurological diseases. The purpose of this work was to apply a recently developed MRE pipeline to measure regional brain stiffnes...

Human arm viscoelasticity is important in stabilizing posture, movement, and in interacting with objects. Viscoelastic spatial characteristics are usually indexed by the size, shape, and orientation of a hand stiffness ellipse. It is well known that arm posture is a dominant factor in determining the properties of the stiffness ellipse. However, it is still unclear how much joint stiffness can ...