J.H. van Dieën Degeneration, injury and surgical interventions may alter the mechanical properties of spinal motion segments, but the quantification of these alterations is problematic. Manual or instrumented loading of single segments in the intact spine as applied intra-operatively may overestimate the mechanical properties of this segment, because the applied load is partly sustained by the ...

Code design of Unreinforced Masonry (URM) buildings is based on elastic analysis, which requires as input parameter the effective stiffness of URM walls. Current approaches estimate the effective stiffness as fixed ratio of the gross sectional stiffness but comparisons with experimental results have shown that this does not yield satisfactory predictions. In this paper, a recently developed ana...

Introduction: Although, the effect of direct intra-articular injection of bone marrow stem cells (BMSCs) on the repair of articular cartilage and the effect of Elaeagnus angustifolia extract on pain relief in patients with osteoarthritis have been investigated, no studies has been conducted to compare the effects of these two therapeutic methods on the mechanical properties of articular cartila...

During an earthquake, the better performance of segmental tunnel lining, compared to the continuous in-cast concrete lining, is generally related to the joints between segments. In order to better understand the influence of the segment joints, their effect on the internal forces induced in tunnel lining simultaneously with the effects of the other influential parameters should be considered. I...

2.02.4.1 Finite-strain Effects in Bulky or Massive Bodies 71 2.02.4.2 Nonlinear Finite-strain Effects in Columns, Plates and Shells Soft in Shear 72 2.02.4.3 Discrepancy between Engesser’s and Haringx’s Formulas: New Paradox and its Resolution 73 2.02.4.4 Shear Stiffness Associated with Second-order Strain 74 2.02.4.5 Differential Equations of Equilibrium Associated with Different Finite-strain...

Passive stiffness characteristics of isolated cardiac myocytes, papillary muscles, and aortic strips from male Holtzman rats fed a copper-deficient diet for approximately 5 wk were compared with those of rats fed a copper-adequate diet to determine whether alterations in these characteristics might accompany the well-documented cardiac hypertrophy and high incidence of ventricular rupture chara...

Reversible changes in lung microstructure accompany lung inflammation, although alterations in tissue micromechanics and their impact on inflammation remain unknown. This study investigated changes in extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling and tissue stiffness in a model of LPS-induced inflammation and examined the role of lipoxin analog 15-epi-lipoxin A4 (eLXA4) in the reduction of stiffness-de...

Vascular stiffness is an indicator of cardiovascular health, with carotid artery stiffness having established correlation to coronary heart disease and utility in cardiovascular diagnosis and screening. State of art equipment for stiffness evaluation are expensive, require expertise to operate and not amenable for field deployment. In this context, we developed ARTerial Stiffness Evaluation for...