in 2007, research was carried out to determine the type and amount of asbestos fibers in a croatian factory with a long history of making asbestos-containing products.since the 1970s, asbestos fibres have been considered carcinogenic in humans i.e as a known cancer-causing agent. in the environment, asbestos fibres are inactive and naturally resist biodegradation. in time, fibres can only be gr...

The paper presents detailed micromechanical finite element simulations of composite materials with soft materials undergoing large macroscopic bending deformation. The simulations allow the study of fibre microbuckling under bending, including the kinematics of the fibres, as well as the strains in the matrix. These simulations lead to a simple analytical model that allows a quite accurate esti...

PURPOSE To assess the effect of each step of medial soft-tissue releases on the joint gap angle during posterior-stabilised total knee arthroplasty (TKA). METHODS 82 women and 9 men (mean age, 72 years) with medial osteoarthritic knees underwent 100 posterior-stabilised TKAs, in which release of superficial fibres of the medial collateral ligament (MCL) were required using the gap control tec...

Soft tissue stretching has been proposed as one of the control factors in craniofacial morphogenesis. However, its mechanism remains unclear. The present study investigated electromyographic (EMG) activity and muscle fibre composition of cervical muscles following prolonged head extension in growing rats. Thirty-six male Wistar rats were divided into two experimental (E1, E2) and one control (C...

The soft tissue response to carbon fibre was studied histologically one and a half years after being used to reconstruct the lateral collateral ligament of the human knee. A remarkably consistent pattern was seen in the induced ligament. The basic pattern was a "composite unit", consisting of a core of carbon fibre enveloped in a concentric manner by coherent layers of fibroblasts and collagen ...

Soft tissue injuries represent a substantial and growing social and economic burden. Medical fibres are commonly used to repair these injuries during surgery. Patient's outcomes are, however, not promising with around 40% of surgical repairs failing within the first few months after surgery due to poor tissue regeneration. The application of nanofibrous filaments and yarns as medical fibres and...

This review examines how the concepts and ideas of crystallization can be extended further and applied to the field of mesoscopic soft materials. It concerns the structural characteristics vs. the macroscopic performance, and the formation mechanism of crystal networks. Although this subject can be discussed in a broad sense across the area of mesoscopic soft materials, our main focus is on sup...

Soft tissues exhibit a nonlinear, essentially incompressible (visco-) elastic response; a key issue is the active nature of muscle fibres, in other words their ability to contract and relax in response to biochemical signals. Here we present a continuum model able to describe an active elastic medium.

Skeletal muscle fibres can change their myosin heavy-chain (MyHC) isoform and cross-sectional area, which determine their contraction velocity and maximum force generation, respectively, to adapt to varying functional loads. In general, reduced muscle activity induces transition towards faster fibres and a decrease in fibre cross-sectional area. In order to investigate the effect of a reduction...