Muscle contractions that load in-series springs with slow speed over a long duration do maximal work and store the most elastic energy. However, time constraints, such as those experienced during escape and predation behaviours, may prevent animals from achieving maximal force capacity from their muscles during spring-loading. Here, we ask whether animals that have limited time for elastic ener...

A nonlinear parameter estimation method has been developed to extract the separation-dependent surface force and cantilever spring constant from atomic force microscope data taken at different speeds for the interaction between a silica colloidal probe and plate in aqueous solution. The distinguishing feature of this approach is that it exploits information from the velocity dependence of the f...

We study the Casimir force in piston-like geometries semiclassically. The force on the piston is finite and physical, but to leading semiclassical approximation depends strongly on the shape of the surrounding cavity. Whereas this force is attractive for pistons in a parallelepiped with flat cylinder head, for which the semiclassical approximation by periodic orbits is exact, this approximation...