Most soft biological tissues, including ventricular myocardium, are not stress free when all external loads are removed. Residual stress has implications for mechanical performance of the heart, and may be an indicator of patterns of regional growth and remodeling. Cross-sectional rings of arrested ventricles opened up when a radial cut was made (initial mean opening angles were 64 +/- 17 degre...

Radial glial cells (RGCs) which function as neural stem cells are known to be non-excitable and their proliferation depends on the intracellular calcium (Ca2+) level. It has been well established that Inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3)-mediated Ca2+ release and Ca2+ entry through various Ca2+ channels are involved in the proliferation of RGCs. Furthermore, RGCs line the ventricular wall and are...

BACKGROUND Vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (vEDS), also known as EDS type IV, an inherited disorder of connective tissue, results from mutations in the gene encoding type III procollagen (COL3A1). Affected patients are at risk for arterial dissection or rupture, the main cause of death. To understand the pathogenesis of the vascular lesions, we used a biomechanical approach and determined stead...

Cytostructural changes during fibroblast spreading and translocation and during the transition between the two states have been studied in living cells and in the same cells after fixation and immunofluorescent staining. In time-lapse sequences we observe that birefringent arcs, sometimes circles, concentric with the cell perimeter, form near the periphery of a spreading cell, or that arcs form...

The deformation of red blood cells in microvessels was investigated numerically for various vessel diameters, hematocrits, and shear rates. We simulated blood flow in circular channels with diameters ranging from 9 to 50 μm, hematocrits from 20% to 45%, and shear rates from 20 to 150 s(-1) using a particle-based model with parallel computing. The apparent viscosity predicted by the simulation w...

Three types of shear stud arrangement, respectively featuring an orthogonal, a radial and a critical perimeter pattern, were evaluated numerically. A numerical investigation was conducted using the finite element software ABAQUS to evaluate their ability to resist punching shear in a flat plate. The finite element analysis here is an application of the nonlinear analysis of reinforced concrete ...

We carried out pointwise local velocity measurements on 40 mM cetylpyridinium chloride-sodium salicylate (CPyCl-NaSal) wormlike micellar solution using high-frequency ultrasound velocimetry in a Couette shear cell. The studied wormlike solution exhibits Newtonian, shear-thinning and shear-thickening rheological behavior in a stress-controlled environment. Previous rheology, flow visualization a...

With the development of highly-deviated well cementing techniques, rotating casing cementing technology has got more and more attention. The rotating casing technique can improve the displacement efficiency of cement paste, and then enhance the quality of well cementation. In the stuck section, the rotating casing can redress the well to make the casing run sequentially. The casing endures shea...

Presented here is a granular soil model created to investigate the soil pressures which develop behind integral bridge abutments. The problem is introduced along with a brief summary of the fundamental behaviour, the model produced, and the initial validation. The paper looks at the initial outcome of the final validation procedure where experimental behaviour of an abutment is compared to the ...