Wing bone stresses in free flying bats and the evolution of skeletal design for flight.

The primary mechanical functions of limb bones are to resist deformation, and hence provide stiff levers against which muscles can act, and to be sufficiently strong to prevent breaking under static or dynamic loads which arise from normal and accidental activities. If bones perform these functions with a minimum amount of material, the energetic costs associated with building, maintaining and transporting the skeleton will be minimized. Appropriate skeletal architecture for minimizing mass while maximizing strength depends on forces imposed on structural elements. In the evolutionary acquisition of flight in the bat lineage, the forelimb skeleton must have come to experience locomotor-forces that differed from those engendered by the terrestrial locomotion of non-flying bat relatives. Here we successfully measure in vivo strain on the wing bones of flying mammals. Our data demonstrate that torsion and shear are unique and crucial features of skeletal biomechanics during flight, and suggest that the evolution of skeletal design in bats and other flying vertebrates may be driven by the need to resist these loads.     

Mechanical performance of scallop adductor muscle during swimming.

Mechanical performance of skeletal muscle has long been the subject of intense interest, but the details of in vivo performance of individual skeletal muscles during normal locomotion remain largely unknown. Performance in vitro has been described with considerable precision under simplified loading conditions. The force production and shortening velocity of most muscles, however, probably change continuously during natural movements. Therefore, modelling in vivo performance on the basis of in vitro contractile properties is subject to large degrees of uncertainty. Designing in vitro experiments that effectively examine the limits of mechanical performance requires increasing knowledge of precisely how muscles are used during normal movements. We report here measurements of the mechanical performance of the adductor muscle in scallops during jet-propulsion swimming. Swimming in scallops is powered solely by the striated portion of the single adductor muscle. Exploiting this simple locomotor morphology with simultaneous high-resolution measurements of pressure and flow rate, we have recorded nearly instantaneous measurements of the performance of a single skeletal muscle during normal locomotion.     

Revealing the mechanism of high loading capacity of the horse in leg structure

To reveal the mechanism of high loading capacity, the characteristics of the mammalian leg skeletal structure are analyzed, and the horse is chosen as a typical example. The supporting situations of horse standing are presented, including the symmetrical case and the unsym-metrical one. According to the results of animal anatomy, the skeletal structures of the forelimb and the hind limb are appropriately simplified to plane open-chain five-link mechanisms. The force analyses of the five-link mechanisms are presented to explore the variations of joint moments in two aspects： changing the direction of the ground reaction force and changing the posture of the leg. It is concluded that the dead-point supporting effect of the leg skeletal structure help improve the high loading capacity. It means that horses bear loads mainly by bones rather than muscles. Hence horses could carry high loads with little energy consumption of leg muscles.     

A juvenile early hominin skeleton from Dikika, Ethiopia

Understanding changes in ontogenetic development is central to the study of human evolution. With the exception of Neanderthals, the growth patterns of fossil hominins have not been studied comprehensively because the fossil record currently lacks specimens that document both cranial and postcranial development at young ontogenetic stages. Here we describe a well-preserved 3.3-million-year-old juvenile partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis discovered in the Dikika research area of Ethiopia. The skull of the approximately three-year-old presumed female shows that most features diagnostic of the species are evident even at this early stage of development. The find includes many previously unknown skeletal elements from the Pliocene hominin record, including a hyoid bone that has a typical African ape morphology. The foot and other evidence from the lower limb provide clear evidence for bipedal locomotion, but the gorilla-like scapula and long and curved manual phalanges raise new questions about the importance of arboreal behaviour in the A. afarensis locomotor repertoire.     

灵长类仿生机器人飞跃轨迹规划及控制策略

运动模式耦合和欠驱动动力学特性是实现灵长类仿生机器人悬臂飞跃的难点.针对运动模式耦合问题,本文通过建立灵长类仿生机器人分段运动模型,在运动学分析的基础上,结合目标约束条件和切换条件,提出了灵活完整的、适应不同飞跃距离的飞跃轨迹规划方法,以此获得系统飞跃的起始和终止姿态.针对欠驱动问题,采用基于虚约束的轨迹规划和跟踪控制方法来保证系统可以准确达到飞跃起始姿态.最后,搭建了悬臂飞跃仿真模型,仿真结果验证了轨迹规划和控制策略的有效性.     

The evolutionary context of the first hominins

The relationships among the living apes and modern humans have effectively been resolved, but it is much more difficult to locate fossil apes on the tree of life because shared skeletal morphology does not always mean shared recent evolutionary history. Sorting fossil taxa into those that belong on the branch of the tree of life that leads to modern humans from those that belong on other closely related branches is a considerable challenge.     

西宁地区青少儿骨龄评价

本文采用ＣＨＮ法对出生地为西宁地区的３０９５名７—１８岁汉族健康有少儿骨发育等级进行了评价，表明高原地区青少儿较同方法评定的平原青少儿骨发育成熟度明显延缓，这与测量身高、体重所得的结论一致并更加精确。本文建立的青海标准既是对全国标准的修正和补充、又是评价高原青少儿骨龄和发育水平等的重要依据。     

Convergent evolution in mechanical design of lamnid sharks and tunas

The evolution of 'thunniform' body shapes in several different groups of vertebrates, including whales, ichthyosaurs and several species of large pelagic fishes supports the view that physical and hydromechanical demands provided important selection pressures to optimize body design for locomotion during vertebrate evolution. Recognition of morphological similarities between lamnid sharks (the most well known being the great white and the mako) and tunas has led to a general expectation that they also have converged in their functional design; however, no quantitative data exist on the mechanical performance of the locomotor system in lamnid sharks. Here we examine the swimming kinematics, in vivo muscle dynamics and functional morphology of the force-transmission system in a lamnid shark, and show that the evolutionary convergence in body shape and mechanical design between the distantly related lamnids and tunas is much more than skin deep; it extends to the depths of the myotendinous architecture and the mechanical basis for propulsive movements. We demonstrate that not only have lamnids and tunas converged to a much greater extent than previously known, but they have also developed morphological and functional adaptations in their locomotor systems that are unlike virtually all other fishes.     

Development of an invasive brain machine interface with a monkey model

Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) translate neural activities of the brain into specific instructions that can be carried out by external devices. BMIs have the potential to restore or augment motor functions of paralyzed patients suffering from spinal cord damage. The neural activities have been used to predict the 2D or 3D movement trajectory of monkey’s arm or hand in many studies. However, there are few studies on decoding the wrist movement from neural activities in center-out paradigm. The present study developed an invasive BMI system with a monkey model using a 10×10-microelectrode array in the primary motor cortex. The monkey was trained to perform a two-dimensional forelimb wrist movement paradigm where neural activities and movement signals were simultaneous recorded. Results showed that neuronal firing rates highly correlated with forelimb wrist movement; > 70% (105/149) neurons exhibited specific firing changes during movement and > 36% (54/149) neurons were used to discriminate directional pairs. The neuronal firing rates were also used to predict the wrist moving directions and continuous trajectories of the forelimb wrist. The four directions could be classified with 96% accuracy using a support vector machine, and the correlation coefficients of trajectory prediction using a general regression neural network were above 0.8 for both horizontal and vertical directions. Results showed that this BMI system could predict monkey wrist movements in high accuracy through the use of neuronal firing information.     

骨应力与生长关系的细观机制

介绍了骨和骨骼的质量与形态发生的背景以及骨骼的结构和功能与其所处力学环境的关系，指出骨的生长与重建是通过各类骨细胞完成的，认为体外培养骨细胞加栽的研究为应力、应变诱导骨生长提供了微观理论框架。着重阐述了栽荷诱导骨生长的3个环节：宏观向微观力信号的转化，微观力向生化信号的转化，传感细胞对成骨细胞的作用，并对今后的研究方向作了讨论。     

Three-dimensional limb joint mobility in the early tetrapod Ichthyostega

The origin of tetrapods and the transition from swimming to walking was a pivotal step in the evolution and diversification of terrestrial vertebrates. During this time, modifications of the limbs—particularly the specialization of joints and the structures that guide their motions—fundamentally changed the ways in which early tetrapods could move. Nonetheless, little is known about the functional consequences of limb anatomy in early tetrapods and how that anatomy influenced locomotion capabilities at this very critical stage in vertebrate evolution. Here we present a three-dimensional reconstruction of the iconic Devonian tetrapod Ichthyostega and a quantitative and comparative analysis of limb mobility in this early tetrapod. We show that Ichthyostega could not have employed typical tetrapod locomotory behaviours, such as lateral sequence walking. In particular, it lacked the necessary rotary motions in its limbs to push the body off the ground and move the limbs in an alternating sequence. Given that long-axis rotation was present in the fins of tetrapodomorph fishes, it seems that either early tetrapods evolved through an initial stage of restricted shoulder and hip joint mobility or that Ichthyostega was unique in this respect. We conclude that early tetrapods with the skeletal morphology and limb mobility of Ichthyostega were unlikely to have made some of the recently described Middle Devonian trackways.     

In vitro osteoclast generation from different bone marrow fractions, including a highly enriched haematopoietic stem cell population

It is well established that the osteoclast is formed by fusion of post-mitotic, mononuclear precursors derived from circulating progenitor cells. However, the precise haematopoietic origin of the osteoclast is unknown. We have investigated this here by fractionating mouse bone marrow and isolating haematopoietic stem cells using a three-step method combining equilibrium density centrifugation and two fluorescence-activated cell sortings (FACS), and have tested the ability of each bone marrow fraction, including highly purified haematopoietic stem cells, to generate osteoclasts during co-culture with preosteoclast-free embryonic long bones. The osteoclast-forming capacity was found to increase with increasing stem cell purity. On the other hand, the culture time needed for osteoclast formation also increased with purification, suggesting the presence of progressively more immature progenitor cells. The pluripotent haematopoietic stem cell fractions with the highest purity needed preincubation with a stem cell-activating factor (interleukin-3) to activate the predominantly quiescent stem cells in vitro.     

Cortical growth marks reveal extended juvenile development in New Zealand moa

Cyclical growth marks in cortical bone, deposited before attainment of adult body size, reflect osteogenetic changes caused by annual rhythms and are a general phenomenon in non-avian ectothermic and endothermic tetrapods. However, the growth periods of ornithurines (the theropod group including all modern birds) are usually apomorphically shortened to less than a year, so annual growth marks are almost unknown in this group. Here we show that cortical growth marks are frequent in long bones of New Zealand's moa (Aves: Dinornithiformes), a recently extinct ratite order. Moa showed the exaggerated K-selected life-history strategy formerly common in the New Zealand avifauna, and in some instances took almost a decade to attain skeletal maturity. This indicates that reproductive maturity in moa was extremely delayed relative to all extant birds. The two presently recognized moa families (Dinornithidae and Emeidae) also showed different postnatal growth rates, which were associated with their relative differences in body size. Both species of giant Dinornis moa attained their massive stature (up to 240 kg live mass) by accelerating their juvenile growth rate compared to the smaller emeid moa species, rather than by extending the skeletal growth period.     

Biomechanics: a pneumo-hydrostatic skeleton in land crabs

Like their aquatic counterparts, terrestrial crabs repeatedly shed their rigid exoskeleton during moulting. But in the case of land crabs, little water is available to provide a temporary hydrostatic skeleton before the new skeleton hardens, and air does not provide the buoyancy necessary to support the animal. Here we show that whenever its exoskeleton is shed, the blackback land crab Gecarcinus lateralis relies on an unconventional type of hydrostatic skeleton that uses both gas and liquid (a 'pneumo-hydrostat'). To our knowledge, this is the first experimental evidence for a locomotor skeleton that depends on a gas. It establishes a new category of hydrostatic skeletal support and possibly a critical adaptation to life on land for the Crustacea.     

网球运动对老年男性骨质代谢及平衡能力的影响

对坚持网球锻炼3年以上老年男性与不经常运动老年男性的骨矿含量、骨代谢生化指标及平衡能力进行测试比较,探讨网球运动对老年男性骨质代谢及平衡能力的影响.结果显示:长期坚持网球运动的老年男性的BMC、BMD值、血液Ca、T、E2水平及左右腿的闭眼单足站立时间均显着高于对照组(P＜0.05;P＜0.01).提示:长期坚持网球运动,可以预防或减缓骨丢失,改善机体平衡能力,对老年男性预防骨质疏松症和防跌倒具有重要意义.     

往复荷载下高强砖组合墙体承载力与变形研究

对一种新型高强度烧结砖组合墙体的承载能力与变形能力进行了研究.针对传统组合墙体砌块材料强度较低且墙体高宽比较小的情况,采用新型高强度的烧结页岩粉煤灰砖做材料,设计了高宽比分别为1.4和2.3的2组试件,研究了高宽比、竖向压应力以及纵向和水平配筋率等因素对墙体抗侧力和延性的影响.7片墙体的低周反复荷载试验结果表明在其他参数相同的条件下,高宽比较大的墙体,其抗侧承载力明显低于高宽比较小的墙体,但是其延性明显要好.对2种墙体在低周反复荷载和单向静力荷载作用下的承载能力与延性进行对比,结果表明在低周反复荷载作用下,配筋率越低的墙体延性越好;相反,在单向静力荷载作用下,提高墙体约束柱的配筋率,在一定范围内可以增加墙体的延性;这种墙体具有较高的抗侧能力和良好的变形能力,具有较高的实用价值.     

Modulation of ATP-sensitive K+ channels in skeletal muscle by intracellular protons

Since their discovery in cardiac muscle, ATP-sensitive K+(KATP) channels have been identified in pancreatic beta-cells, skeletal muscle, smooth muscle and central neurons. The activity of KATP channels is inhibited by the presence of cytosolic ATP. Their wide distribution indicates that they could have important physiological roles that may vary between tissues. In muscle cells the role of K+ channels is to control membrane excitability and the duration of the action potential. In anoxic cardiac ventricular muscle KATP channels are believed to be responsible for shortening the action potential, and it has been proposed that a fall in ATP concentration during metabolic exhaustion increases the activity of KATP channels in skeletal muscle, which may reduce excitability. But the intracellular concentration of ATP in muscle is buffered by creatine phosphate to 5-10 mM, and changes little, even during sustained activity. This concentration is much higher than the intracellular ATP concentration required to half block the KATP-channel current in either cardiac muscle (0.1 mM) or skeletal muscle (0.14 mM), indicating that the open-state probability of KATP channels is normally very low in intact muscle. So it is likely that some additional means of regulating the activity of KATP channels exists, such as the binding of nucleotides other than ATP. Here I present evidence that a decrease in intracellular pH (pHi) markedly reduces the inhibitory effect of ATP on these channels in excised patches from frog skeletal muscle. Because sustained muscular activity can decrease pHi by almost 1 unit in the range at which KATP channels are most sensitive to pHi, it is likely that the activity of these channels in skeletal muscle is regulated by intracellular protons under physiological conditions.     

沟鲹骨骼系统的研究——兼与鲹科某些种类比较

对沟鲹骨骼系统的特征进行了观察,并比较其与蓝圆鲹、美长吻鲹、游鳍叶鲹及镰鳍裸胸鲹等4种鲹科鱼类的差别,结果表明,它们脑颅上的上筛骨、侧筛骨、犁骨、额骨、眶下骨、蝶耳骨、翼耳骨和上耳骨等,咽颅上的前上颌骨、腭骨、舌颌骨、尾舌骨、鳃盖骨和上枕骨等;肩带上的主后颞骨、后颞骨、上匙骨、后匙骨等均有明显的差异,其中某些特征可能是...