A novel Starch/Poly (vinyl alcohol)/nano-Titanium dioxide (ST/PVA/nano-TiO2) biodegradable nanocomposite film was prepared by homogeneously dispersed TiO2 nanoparticles in different ratios of starch/PVA-based materials, via a solution casting method. Glycerol was used as plasticizer. The mechanical and thermal properties of films were studied using tensile and perforation strength tests and the...

In this paper, dynamic equations of motion of a 5 DoF robot manipulator including mechanical arms with revolute joints and their electrical actuators are considered. The application of integrator backstepping technique for trajectory tracking in presence of parameters of uncertainty and disturbance is studied. The advantage of this control technique is that it imposes the desired properties of ...

Assembly and stability of mitotic spindle is governed by the interplay of various intra-cellular forces, e.g. the forces generated by motor proteins by sliding overlapping anti-parallel microtubules (MTs) polymerized from the opposite centrosomes, the interaction of kinetochores with MTs, and the interaction of MTs with the chromosomes arms. We study the mechanical behavior and stability of spi...

The properties and stability of confined Langmuir]Blodgett multilayers made of arachidic acid were investigated using the surface forces apparatus. Two different types of confined films were studied: one formed by bringing two separate LB films into molecular contact, the other formed by bringing one LB film into direct contact with mica. The measured thickness of confined ̊ Ž . material depends...

Using a modified atomic force microscope (AFM), individual double-stranded (ds) DNA molecules attached to an AFM tip and a gold surface were overstretched, and the mechanical stability of the DNA double helix was investigated. In lambda-phage DNA the previously reported B-S transition at 65 piconewtons (pN) is followed by a second conformational transition, during which the DNA double helix mel...

Nowadays one can observe the explosion in recovery of new polysaccharidic materials with specific controllable properties, including mechanical characteristic, morphology, biological activity and biodegradability. Specifically, formation and application of hydrogel microcapsules by biomedical and pharmaceutical industry seem to be very promising (Wang, et al., 2006). Despite many successful app...

The mechanical behavior of a prototype touch panel display, which consists of two layers of CVD graphene embedded into PET films, is investigated in tension and under contact-stress dynamic loading. In both cases, laser Raman spectroscopy was employed to assess the stress transfer efficiency of the embedded graphene layers. The tensile behavior was found to be governed by the "island-like" micr...

The glassy wormlike chain model is a highly successful phenomenological model recently introduced to describe anomalously slow subdiffusive dynamics in biopolymer networks and living cells. Here we extend this model by proposing a generic scheme how to include nonlinear plastic effects by introducing the possibility of force-dependent opening and closing of internal bonds. Further, we discuss p...

Recent advances in single molecule mechanics have made it possible to investigate the mechanical anisotropy of protein stability in great detail. A quantitative prediction of protein unfolding forces at experimental time scales has so far been difficult. Here, we present an elastically bonded network model to describe the mechanical unfolding forces of green fluorescent protein in eight differe...