118 research outputs found
Maths in Medicine: How to Survive a Science Fair
When talking to secondary school students, first impressions are crucial.
Accidentally say something that sounds boring and you'll lose them in seconds.
A physical demonstration can be an eye-catching way to begin an activity or
spark off a conversation about mathematics. This is especially true in the
context of an event like a science fair where there are hundreds of other
exhibitors and stands, possibly involving loud music and/or dancing robots!
In this article we describe three devices that were built to illustrate
specific physical phenomena that occur in the human body. Each device
corresponds to a simple mathematical model which contains both elements that
are accessible to pupils in the early years of secondary education and more
challenging mathematical concepts that might appeal to A-level students. Two of
the devices relate to the Windkessel effect, a physical phenomenon that
regulates blood flow, and the third demonstrates the elastic properties of
ligaments and tendons
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Re-defining upstream fish passage
In efforts to re-establish populations of migratory fish in areas previously blocked by man-made barriers, upstream migration of adults needs to be facilitated past those barriers. Passage solutions need to meet the standards of being safe, timely, efficient and effective. While traditional upstream adult passage solutions may meet these agency standards, the upfront planning and implementation costs associated with these solutions severely impacts the timing and financial viability of these programs. In an environment of increasing pressures on fish populations caused by climate change and habitat degradation, solutions that are cheaper and quicker to deploy are needed. In this talk we describe a pilot adult volitional passage system that took less than 3 months to install in 2017 at a high head dam in Washington State, USA, and the results from that system. This pilot was made possible by collaboration of private industry, tribal interests and the federal government. We will look at the technology used and additional testing that has been performed to make sure that the solution meets the acceptable standards. Biologists and engineers may be able to use this project as an example to accelerate other passage implementations with industry and government participation
Employing pre-stress to generate finite cloaks for antiplane elastic waves
It is shown that nonlinear elastic pre-stress of neo-Hookean hyperelastic
materials can be used as a mechanism to generate finite cloaks and thus render
objects near-invisible to incoming antiplane elastic waves. This approach
appears to negate the requirement for special cloaking metamaterials with
inhomogeneous and anisotropic material properties in this case. These
properties are induced naturally by virtue of the pre-stress. This appears to
provide a mechanism for broadband cloaking since dispersive effects due to
metamaterial microstructure will not arise.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Well-posed continuum equations for granular flow with compressibility and μ(I)-rheology
Continuum modelling of granular flow has been plagued with the issue of
ill-posed equations for a long time. Equations for incompressible,
two-dimensional flow based on the Coulomb friction law are ill-posed regardless
of the deformation, whereas the rate-dependent -rheology is ill-posed
when the non-dimensional strain-rate is too high or too low. Here,
incorporating ideas from Critical-State Soil Mechanics, we derive conditions
for well-posedness of PDEs that combine compressibility with -dependent
rheology. When the -dependence comes from a specific friction coefficient
, our results show that, with compressibility, the equations are
well-posed for all deformation rates provided that satisfies certain
minimal, physically natural, inequalities
The relative compliance of energy-storing tendons may be due to the helical fibril arrangement of their fascicles
T.S. acknowledges funding for this work from the EPSRC through grant no. EP/L017997/1
MyRun: balancing design for reflection, recounting and openness in a museum-based participatory platform
Cultural organisations are increasingly looking towards using digital technologies to supplement, augment and extend visitors' experiences of exhibits and museums. In this paper, we describe the design and evaluation of MyRun, a 'participatory platform' for a museum. Our goal with MyRun was to use experience-centered design principles of reflecting, recounting and openness as a basis for engaging visitors in sharing stories about experiences related to a nationally significant cultural event. We undertook a qualitative evaluation of the system based upon observations of its use, the contributions visitors made to the platform, and interviews with 10 visitors. We discuss how visitors approached MyRun, contributed and browsed stories, and the challenges associated with the expectations visitors and curators placed on cultural exhibits. We close by identifying a series of design opportunities for future participatory platforms in museum settings
The inflation of viscoelastic balloons and hollow viscera
For the first time, the problem of the inflation of a
nonlinear viscoelastic
thick-walled spherical shell is considered. Specifically, the wall has
quasilinear viscoelastic
constitutive behaviour, which is of fundamental importance in a wide range of applications, particularly in the context of biological systems such as hollow viscera, including the lungs and bladder. Experiments are performed to demonstrate the efficacy of the model in fitting relaxation tests associated with the volumetric inflation of
murine bladders
. While the associated
nonlinear elastic
problem of inflation of a balloon has been studied extensively, there is a paucity of studies considering the equivalent
nonlinear viscoelastic
case. We show that, in contrast to the elastic scenario, the peak pressure associated with the inflation of a neo-Hookean balloon is
not
independent of the shear modulus of the medium. Moreover, a novel numerical technique is described in order to solve the
nonlinear Volterra integral equation
in space and time originating from the fundamental problem of inflation and deflation of a thick-walled nonlinear viscoelastic shell under imposed pressure.
EPSRC Grant EP/R014604/
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