A fundamental problem in developing therapeutic interventions for uterine dysfunction is that the electrical profile of the myometrium, and how it changes in physiological, let alone pathophysiological, situations is unknown. Excitation-contraction coupling of the myometrium is a central component of healthy functioning of the uterus. Even though proper function of this smooth muscle is fundame...

The last two decades have produced significant advances in our theoretical understanding of cardiac pacing. The bidomain model, a mathematical representation of the anisotropic electrical properties of cardiac tissue, has provided insight into many long-standing mysteries of pacing, such as the mechanisms of make and break excitation, the shape of the strength-interval curve, and the induction ...

The propagation of electrical activity in cardiac tissue can be modelled by reaction diffusion equations, where a tensor of diffusion coefficients represents anisotropy due to fibre orientation, and excitation is represented by high-order, stiff differential systems. The effects of external electrical stimulation, as in artificial pacemakers, or in defibrillators, requires bidomain models, in w...

Cantilevered beams with piezoceramic (PZT) layers are the most commonly investigated type of vibration energy harvesters. A frequently used modeling approach is the single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) modeling of the harvester beam as it allows simple expressions for the electrical outputs. In the literature, since the base excitation on the harvester beam is assumed to be harmonic, the well known ...

Membranes synthesized from sphingomyelin-tocopherol mixtures and treated with the protein, "excitation-inducing material," to increase their electrical conductance were tested for applicability of the Nernst equation and changes in electrical rectifying behavior with temperature. Above pH 7, and in the temperature range 303-323 degrees K, ion-diffusion potentials created by salts of monovalent ...

Recent work established the spread of interglomerular excitation in the Drosophila antennal lobe. Two papers in this issue of Neuron, by Huang et al. and Yaksi and Wilson, show that cholinergic krasavietz local interneurons are a major substrate for this spread of excitation, predominantly via electrical coupling.