The hypothesis that conodonts are vertebrates rests solely on evidence of soft tissue anatomy. This has been corroborated by microstructural, topological and developmental evidence of homology between conodont and vertebrate hard tissues. However, these conclusions have been reached on the basis of evidence from highly derived euconodont taxa and the degree to which they are representative of p...

Considerable evidence suggests that left hemispheric lateralization for language comprehension in humans is associated with cortical microstructural asymmetries. However, despite the fact that left hemispheric dominance for the analysis of species-specific social vocalizations has been reported in several other species, little is known concerning microstructural asymmetries in auditory cortex o...

White structure flaking (WSF) has been found to be one of the failure modes in bearing steels under rolling contacts through the formation of cracks associated with a microstructural change called white etching area (WEA). In the present research, the effects of the high-pressure torsion (HPT) process on the microstructure and mechanical properties of an AISI 52100 alloy are studied. An anneale...

In designing microstructural materials systems, one of the key research questions is how to represent the microstructural design space quantitatively using a descriptor set that is sufficient yet small enough to be tractable. Existing approaches describe complex microstructures either using a small set of descriptors that lack sufficient level of details, or using generic high order microstruct...

OBJECTIVE To examine whether type 2 diabetes is associated with microstructural abnormalities in specific cerebral white matter tracts and to relate these microstructural abnormalities to cognitive functioning. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Thirty-five nondemented older individuals with type 2 diabetes (mean age 71 ± 5 years) and 35 age-, sex-, and education-matched control subjects underwent a...

PURPOSE To investigate the sensitivity of diffusion-MR signal to microstructural change in muscle tissue associated with pathology, and recommend optimal acquisition parameters. METHODS We employ Monte-Carlo simulation of diffusing spins in hierarchical tissue to generate synthetic diffusion-weighted signal curves over a wide range of scan parameters. Curves are analyzed using entropy-a measu...

Cerebral small vessel disease, including white matter hyperintensities (WMH) and lacunes of presumed vascular origin, is common in elderly people and is related to cognitive impairment and dementia. One possible mechanism could be the disruption of white matter tracts (both within WMH and normal-appearing white matter) that connect distributed brain regions involved in cognitive functions. Here...

Indentation is a remarkably flexible mechanical test due to its relative experimental simplicity. Coupled with advances in instrument development, ease of implementation has made indentation a ubiquitous research tool for a number of different systems across size scales (nano to macro) and scientific/engineering disciplines. However, the exploration of different materials systems and the potent...

Failure diagnosis invariably involves consideration of both associated material condition and the results of a mechanical analysis of prior operating history. This Review focuses on these aspects with particular reference to creep-fatigue failure diagnosis. Creep-fatigue cracking can be due to a spectrum of loading conditions ranging from pure cyclic to mainly steady loading with infrequent off...

Diffusion tensor MRI (DT-MRI) is the only non-invasive method for characterising the microstructural organization of tissue in vivo. Generating parametric maps that help to visualise different aspects of the tissue microstructure (mean diffusivity, tissue anisotropy and dominant fibre orientation) involves a number of steps from deciding on the optimal acquisition parameters on the scanner, col...