Insect wings are deformable structures that change shape passively and dynamically owing to inertial and aerodynamic forces during flight. It is still unclear how the three-dimensional and passive change of wing kinematics owing to inherent wing [...]
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In Medieval Europe, soldiers wore steel plate armour for protection during warfare. Armour design reflected a trade-off between protection and mobility it offered the wearer. By the fifteenth century, a typical suit of field armour weighed between 30 [...] Over time, leg prostheses have improved in design, but have been incapable of actively adapting to different walking velocities in a manner comparable to a biological limb. People with a leg amputation using such commercially available [...] Understanding how moving organisms generate locomotor forces is fundamental to the analysis of aerodynamic and hydrodynamic flow patterns that are generated during body and appendage oscillation. In the past, this has been accomplished using [...] One approach to gauge the complexity of the computational problem underlying haptic perception is to determine the number of dimensions needed to describe it. In vision, the number of dimensions can be estimated to be seven. This observation raises [...] We report on recent work in modelling the process of grasping and active touch by natural and artificial hands. Starting from observations made in human hands about the correlation of degrees of freedom in patterns of more frequent use (postural [...] Svalbard rock ptarmigans were walked and run upon a treadmill and their energy expenditure measured using respirometry. The ptarmigan used three different gaits: a walking gait at slow speeds (less than or equal to 0.75 m s–1), grounded running [...] Muscles actuate movement by generating forces. The forces generated by muscles are highly dependent on their fibre lengths, yet it is difficult to measure the lengths over which muscle fibres operate during movement. We combined experimental [...] The purpose of this study was to understand how humans regulate their ‘leg stiffness’ in hopping, and to determine whether this regulation is intended to minimize energy expenditure. ‘Leg stiffness’ is the slope of the [...] During muscle contractions, the muscle fascicles may shorten at a rate different from the muscle-tendon unit, and the ratio of these velocities is its gearing. Appropriate gearing allows fascicles to reduce their shortening velocities and allows them [...] |
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