Experimentally Validated Finite Element Analysis of Thoracic Spine Compression Fractures in a Porcine Model.

Vertebral compression fractures (VCFs) occur in 1 to 1.5 million patients in the US each year and are associated with pain, disability, altered pulmonary function, secondary vertebral fracture, and increased mortality risk. A better understanding of VCFs and their management requires preclinical models that are both biomechanically analogous and accessible.

Can a Musculoskeletal Model Adapted to Knee Implant Geometry Improve Prediction of 3D Contact Forces and Moments?

Tibiofemoral contact loads are crucial parameters in the onset and progression of osteoarthrosis. While contact loads are frequently estimated from musculoskeletal models, their customization is often limited to scaling musculoskeletal geometry or adapting muscle lines. Moreover, studies have usually focused on superior-inferior contact force without investigating three-dimensional contact loads.

Kinetics influence of multibody kinematics optimisation for soft tissue artefact compensation.

Soft tissue artefact (STA) remains a major source of error in human movement analysis. The multibody kinematics optimisation (MKO) approach is widely stated as a solution to reduce the effects of STA. This study aimed at assessing the influence of the MKO STA-compensation on the errors of estimation of the knee intersegment moments.

Dynamic estimation of soft tissue stiffness for use in modeling socket, orthosis or exoskeleton interfaces with lower limb segments.

Modeling the interface between the lower limb segments and a socket, orthosis or exoskeleton is crucial to the design, control, and assessment of such devices. The present study aimed to estimate translational and rotational soft tissue stiffness at the thigh and shank during daily living activities performed by six subjects. Smooth orthogonal decomposition (SOD) was used on skin marker trajectories and fluoroscopy-based knee joint kinematics to compute stiffness coefficients during squatting, sitting and rising from a chair, level walking, and stair descending.

Fluctuations and All-In-All-Out Ordering in Dipole-Octupole Nd(2)Zr(2)O(7).

By means of neutron scattering and magnetization measurements down to 90 mK, we determine the magnetic ground state of the spin-ice candidate Nd(2)Zr(2)O(7). We show that, despite ferromagnetic interactions, Nd(2)Zr(2)O(7) undergoes a transition around 285 mK towards an all-in-all-out antiferromagnetic state, with a strongly reduced ordered magnetic moment. We establish the (H,T) phase diagram in the three directions of the applied field and reveal a metamagnetic transition around 0.