This paper presents the design of a legged robot with gecko-mimicking mechanism and mushroom-shaped adhesive microstructure (MSAMS) that can climb surfaces under reduced gravity. The design principle, adhesion performance and roles of different toes of footpad are explored and discussed in this paper. The effect of the preload velocity, peeling velocity and thickness of backing layering on the ...

The increasing programmability of modern graphics hardware enables acceleration of rendering methods other than traditional rasterization. In this paper, we discuss the implementation of a ray casting-based volume renderer on graphics hardware using vertex and fragment programs. We also show how ray casting on hardware enables easy implementation of volume rendering extensions that make use of ...

Enzymatic peeling of ‘Fuyu’ and ‘Tone-wase’ persimmon fruit was conducted for production of fresh-cut slices, and the microbiological and physicochemical quality of enzyme-peeled fresh-cut slices was compared with that of slices manually peeled with a knife. The enzymatic peeling process involved a porous treatment of the peel, heating at 100 8C for 45 s, infusion with 3% protopectinase at 37 8...

Using a high-speed camera, we follow the propagation of the detachment front during the peeling of an adhesive tape from a flat surface. In a given range of peeling velocity, this front displays a multiscale unstable dynamics, entangling two well-separated spatiotemporal scales, which correspond to microscopic and macroscopic dynamical stick-slip instabilities. While the periodic release of the...

The coexistence of neurofibromatosis with partial unilateral lentigines raises the possibility that partial unilateral lentigines could be a variant or forme fruste of segmental neurofibromatosis. Our patient had no cutaneous lesions of neurofibromatosis but had bilateral Lisch nodules in the eyes. Since Lisch nodules are characteristic of neurofibromatosis, we conclude that the partial unilate...