Accumulating evidence implicates the significance of the physical properties of the niche in influencing the behavior, growth and differentiation of stem cells. Among the physical properties, extracellular stiffness has been shown to have direct effects on fate determination in several cell types in vitro. However, little evidence exists concerning whether shifts in stiffness occur in vivo duri...

Because wrist rotation dynamics are dominated by stiffness (Charles SK, Hogan N. J Biomech 44: 614-621, 2011), understanding how humans plan and execute coordinated wrist rotations requires knowledge of the stiffness characteristics of the wrist joint. In the past, the passive stiffness of the wrist joint has been measured in 1 degree of freedom (DOF). Although these 1-DOF measurements inform u...

OBJECTIVES To explore patients' concepts of stiffness in polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR), and how they think stiffness should be measured. METHODS Eight focus groups were held at three centres involving 50 patients with current/previous PMR. Each group had at least one facilitator and one rapporteur making field notes. An interview schedule was used to stimulate discussion. Interviews were recor...

Currently, it is unknown whether changing prosthetic limb stiffness affects the total limb stiffness and influences the shock absorption of an individual with transtibial amputation. The hypotheses tested within this study are that a decrease in longitudinal prosthetic stiffness will produce (1) a reduced total limb stiffness, and (2) reduced magnitude of peak impact forces and increased time d...

The fundamental objective in developing variable stiffness actuators is to enable the actuator to deliberately tune its stiffness. This is done through controlling the energy flow extracted from internal power units, i.e., the motors of a variable stiffness actuator (VSA). However, the stiffness may also be unintentionally affected by the external environment, over which, there is no control. T...

In this work we study in detail the conditions under which the stiffness matrix of a spatial system can be transformed into block-diagonal and diagonal form. That is the existence of a coordinate frame in which the stiffness matrix takes on these simple forms. The consequences of a block-diagonal or diagonal stiffness matrix for the invariants of the system, principal screws, von Mises’ invaria...