OBJECTIVE Extensive remodeling of the valve ECM in calcific aortic valve sclerosis alters its mechanical properties, but little is known about the impact of matrix mechanics on the cells within the valve interstitium. In this study, the influence of matrix stiffness in modulating calcification by valve interstitial cells (VICs), and their differentiation to pathological phenotypes was assessed....

Circulating barrier disruptive agonists bind specific cell membrane receptors and trigger signal transduction pathways leading to the activation of cell contractility and endothelial cell (EC) permeability. Although all cells in tissues including vascular EC are surrounded by compliant extracellular matrix, the impact of matrix stiffness on agonist-induced signaling, cytoskeletal remodeling and...

Current studies investigating the role of biophysical cues on cell migration focus on the use of culture platforms with static material parameters. However, migrating cells in vivo often encounter spatial variations in extracellular matrix stiffness. To better understand the effects of stiffness gradients on cell migration, we developed a 2.5D cell culture platform where cells are sandwiched be...

A constitutive model based on two–dimensional unstructured Galerkin finite volume method (GFVM) is introduced and applied for analyzing nonlinear behavior of cracked concrete structures in equilibrium condition. The developed iterative solver treats concrete as an orthotropic nonlinear material and considers the softening and hardening behavior of concrete under compression and tension by using...

BMMSCs have drawn great interest in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine attributable to their multi-lineage differentiation capacity. Increasing evidence has shown that the mechanical stiffness of extracellular matrix is a critical determinant for stem cell behaviors. However, it remains unknown how matrix stiffness influences MSCs commitment with changes in cell morphology, adhesion, ...

The objective of this study was to examine the interplay between matrix stiffness and hydrostatic pressure (HP) in regulating chondrogenesis of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and to further elucidate the mechanotransductive roles of integrins and the cytoskeleton. MSCs were seeded into 1 %, 2 % or 4 % agarose hydrogels and exposed to cyclic hydrostatic pressure. In a permissive media, the stiffe...

Matrix stiffness that is sensed by a cell or measured by a purely physical probe reflects the intrinsic elasticity of the matrix and also how thick or thin the matrix is. Here, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and their nuclei spread in response to thickness-corrected matrix microelasticity, with increases in nuclear tension and nuclear stiffness resulting from increases in myosin-II and lamin-A,C...

First, the equations for calculating the full mass, stiffness and damping matrices from modal data are derived. This deviation was first presented in [1]. However, these equations are difficult to solve because the first step of their solution requires matrix inversion of the flexibility matrix to obtain the stiffness matrix. Not only does matrix inversion amplify errors, but the number of line...

Composite materials containing particulate BaTiO3 inclusion have been fabricated with BaZrO3-ZnO as the matrix. Giant anelastic responses (abrupt increase in modulus and damping vs. temperature) have been observed after 75 ◦C aging 24 h in these composites in the temperature region far below the Curie point of BaTiO3. Anomalies disappeared after 185 ◦C aging 4 h. Such responses are attributed t...

This paper investigates the stiffness characteristics of spherical parallel manipulators. By virtue of singular value decomposition, the 6×6 dimensionally inhomogeneous Cartesian stiffness matrix is transformed into two homogeneous ones, i.e., the rotational and translational stiffness matrices. The decomposed singular values and the corresponding vectors indicate the directions of high/weak st...