BACKGROUND We recently showed that women with four clinical phenotypes of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) do not demonstrate anatomical evidence of elevated prenatal androgen exposure as judged by a lower ratio of the index (2D) to ring (4D) finger. However, those findings conflicted with a previous study where women with PCOS had lower right hand 2D:4D compared to healthy female controls. Bot...

In the first part of this study, the authors presented the results of cochlear microphonics measurements in guinea pigs subjected to long-term whole-body vibration. In animals undergoing vibration over 30, 90, and 180 days, a statistically significant lowering of voltage over the range up to 2 kHz was seen. In accordance with cochlear-frequency position, this pointed to possible formation of se...

An ultrasonic vibration has been superposed on the normal electrode movement to increase the flushing effect during a micro electro-discharge machining (EDM) process. A systematic study on the effects of ultrasonic vibration on the EDM performance for fabricating microholes in Nitinol has been completed. The introduction of ultrasonic vibration to the microEDM process has more than 60 times inc...

We present spatially resolved vibronic spectroscopy of individual pentacene molecules in a double-barrier tunneling junction. It is observed that even for this effective single-level system the energy dissipation associated with electron attachment varies spatially by more than a factor of 2. This is in contrast to the usual treatment of electron-vibron coupling in the Franck-Condon picture. Ou...

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) constitute a large family of receptor proteins that sense molecular signals on the exterior of a cell and activate signal transduction pathways within the cell. Modeling how an agonist activates such a receptor is fundamental for an understanding of a wide variety of physiological processes and it is of tremendous value for pharmacology and drug design. Inela...

This study proposes a new method to augment the realism of avatar by using tactile vibration and facial expression. Currently, interactive game still lack of interactivity and immersiveness. In this paper, we create an avatar with some intelligence and emotional features in order to support the realism of avatar. Our approach based on mapping the 2D valence emotion diagram to particular magnitu...

Real-time supply chain management, theft prevention, and environmental monitoring motivate the need for RFID systems. Battery-assisted RFID tags increase read range and reliability; however, batteries offer only a finite lifetime solution. Hence, an experiment in powering a battery-assisted passive RFID tag using ambient vibration energy was conducted. A piezoelectric power generator was design...

This study investigates the free vibration of the Two-Dimensional Functionally Graded Annular Plates (2D-FGAP). The theoretical formulations are based on the three-dimensional elasticity theory with small strain assumption. The Two-Dimensional Generalized Differential Quadrature Method (2D-GDQM) as an efficient and accurate semi-analytical approach is used to discretize the equations of motion ...