BACKGROUND The Fahn's pull (or retropulsion) test is an item in the motor section of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale, which is used almost exclusively to classify postural instability in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the test is hard to standardize and is often performed incorrectly, making it hard to interpret. Moreover, it may not be safe to administer in patients who experi...

We analyze transient finite electroelastodynamic deformations of a perfect electrically conducting undamped clamped–clamped beam, a clamped–clamped parabolic arch and a clamped–clamped bell-shaped arch suspended over a flat rigid semi-infinite perfect conductor. The pull-in instability in a beam and the pull-in and the snap-through instabilities in the two arches due to time-dependent potential...

This paper investigates the fault detection of a micro parallel plate capacitor subjected to nonlinear electrostatic force. For this end Thau observer, which has good ability in fault detection of nonlinear system has been presented and governing nonlinear dynamic equation of the capacitor has been presented. Upper and lower threshold for fault detection have been obtained. The robustness of th...

This paper examines the pull-in behavior of a bio-mass sensor with a cantilevered CNT actuated electrostatically by considering rippling deformation. Although this phenomenon can remarkably change the behavior of CNT, its effect on the performance of a CNT-based mass sensor has not been investigated thus far. This investigation is based on modified Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and rippling effec...

The influence of surface stress and small scale on the dynamic pull-in behavior of nano-bridges is investigated in this paper. For this purpose, the governing equation of motion is derived based on the modified couple stress theory and Homotopy Perturbation Method with an auxiliary term is employed to produce the approximate solution of nano-beam vibrations. The effects of actuation voltage, in...

Background: No single pharmacologic treatment has proven effective for the symptomatic management of progressive supranuclear palsy. Methods: We report a case of postural instability and falls secondary to PSP of the Parkinson's subtype and initial monotherapy with donepezil 10 mg daily for 3 months followed by a novel investigation of selegiline in combination for 6 additional months. Fall fre...

This paper presents the design, fabrication and measurement of the first pull-in free tunable evanescent-mode microwave resonator based on arrays of electrostatically actuated fringing-field RF-MEMS tuners. Electrostatic fringing-field actuation (EFFA) is the key on achieving a wide tunable frequency range that is not limited by the conventional pull-in instability. Furthermore, total lack of d...