A New Method for Designing Sportswear by Using Three Dimensional Computer Graphic Based Anisotropic Hyperelastic Models and Musculoskeletal Simulations

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to develop a new method for designing compression sportswear from the viewpoint of force by simulation. Applied simulation techniques are 1) skin strain simulation, 2) fabric strain simulation using the anisotropic hyperelastic model, and 3) musculoskeletal simulation. For skin strain simulations, a three dimensional computer graphic (3D-CG) polygon strain was calculated as a skin strain using a 3D-CG model that simulates the human body (CG-Human-Model). The initial strain and the strain caused by physical exercise were given to the polygon model representing the shape of the sportswear (CG-Sportswear-Model). For compression sportswear, the strain of the fabric is approximately the same as skin strain, thus the strain of the CG-Human-Model was given to the CG-Sportswear-Model. In-plane and out-of-plane forces resulting from the CG-Sportswear-Model are calculated using anisotropic hyperelastic models. These forces were given to the musculoskeletal simulation as the external forces, and muscle activity required for any given physical exercise (e.g. swimming motion) was calculated. Information of forces and muscle activity are very useful in designing compression sportswear. It is believed that this new method for designing compression sportswear based on simulation is a sophisticated technique because this method takes into account not only forces resulting from sportswear but also the effect of these forces on physical exercise

Fingering behavior of flame spread over solid combustibles

In this study, the fingering pattern formation and the following flamelet spreading over three different kinds of thick combustibles, i.e., Poly methacrylate (PMMA), Poly ethylene (PE) and Poly carbonate (PC) were observed and the effective Lewis number correlation was validated. Experiments were performed with a narrow channel apparatus. In addition to the kinds of solid fuel materials, the channel height and the oxidizer velocity were varied as experimental parameters. An image analysis method was developed to quantify the number, diameter and spread rate of the flamelets. Replacing the fuel thickness into the thermal thickness, the effective Lewis number which is proposed for the smoldering combustion of thin fuel is remedied to include heat transfer perpendicular to the fuel surface. The result validates that the appearance condition of the fingering instability for thick combustibles is determined by the effective Lewis number. Hence, it is concluded that the observed phenomenon is inherently similar to that of smoldering. Further, it is shown that the non-dimensional flame diameter becomes nearly constant when the fingering instability occurs. It is believed that the correlation is useful when one wants to reproduce this phenomenon in a larger scale experiment

Surgical Management of Malignant Tumors of the Trachea: Report of Two Cases and Review of Literature

Malignant neoplasms occurring from the trachea are extremely rare. Therefore, their clinical characteristics and surgical results have not been thoroughly discussed. These tumors are often misdiagnosed and treated as bronchial asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It is critically important to probe the cause-effect relationship between the medical presentations and the clinical diagnosis. In this report, two cases of tracheal malignancy suffering from dyspnea due to obstruction of the proximal trachea are described, and a review of the literature is presented

Sheet Dependence on Superconducting Gap in Oxygen-Deficient Iron-based Oxypnictide Superconductors NdFeAs0.85

Photoemission spectroscopy with low-energy tunable photons on oxygen-deficient iron-based oxypnictide superconductors NdFeAsO0.85 (Tc=52K) reveals a distinct photon-energy dependence of the electronic structure near the Fermi level (EF). A clear shift of the leading-edge can be observed in the superconducting states with 9.5 eV photons, while a clear Fermi cutoff with little leading-edge shift can be observed with 6.0 eV photons. The results are indicative of the superconducting gap opening not on the hole-like ones around Gamma (0,0) point but on the electron-like sheets around M(pi,pi) point.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

ヘムオキシゲナーゼ1によるクルクミン誘導末梢血単球炎症性サイトカイン産生の制御

クルクミン(diferuloyl methane)は香辛料ターメリックの活性成分であり、試験管内あるいは生体内において強い抗酸化あるいは抗炎症作用などを示すとされているが、このような生物活性の機序としてheme oxygenase-1 (HO-1)の誘導を介することが知られている。本研究では、末梢血単球の炎症性サイトカイン産生におけるクルクミンの関与を明らかにすることを目的として行った。その結果、クルクミンは lipopolysaccharide により末梢血単核球に誘導されたTNF-alpha や IL-6の産生を抑制した一方で、IL-10やHO-1活性を有意に増強した。また、本研究で用いたクルクミンの濃度範囲において、アポトーシスや細胞死はほとんど認めなかったことから、クルクミンによる炎症性サイトカインの抑制効果はクルクミンの細胞毒性に起因したものではないといえた。さらに、HO活性抑制物質SnPP添加により単核球の培養後期においてクルクミンの抑制効果は部分的に解除された、このことから、クルクミンはHO-1産生を介した炎症性サイトカインの抑制を部分的に誘導することが示唆された一方で、他機序を介した単球への関与についても示唆された。クルクミンのような非細胞毒性を示す薬剤を利用することによる単球機能の調節は、さまざまな炎 症性疾患の新しい抗炎症治療への可能性が期待される。Curcumin (diferuloyl methane) is the active component of the spice turmeric and it exerts potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory functions both in vitro and in vivo. The mechanism through which curcumin exhibits its biological functions is through induction of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1). In the present study, we aimed to elucidate the direct effect of curcumin on inflammatory cytokine production by irculating monocytes. Curcumin inhibited lipopolysaccharide induced production of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) by peripheral blood mononuclear cells, whereas it induced significant levels of interleukin-10 (IL-10) and HO-1. The inhibitory effect of curcumin was not via cytotoxicity of the reagent because there was no significant apoptosis or cell death induced over the range of concentrations used for the assay. The inhibitory effect of curcumin was partially abrogated by adding HO inhibitor SnPP at the late phase of the culture, indicating that the curcumin induced suppression of inflammatory cytokine is partly through production of HO-1. In addition, curcumin may act on monocytes through multiple mechanisms to regulate its inflammatory cytokine production. Modulation of monocyte functions by non-cytotoxic reagent such as curcumin may offer a novel anti-inflammatory therapeutics for the treatment of various inflammatory disorders