Influence of Different Polymer Belts on Lipid Properties in Nanodiscs Characterized by CW EPR Spectroscopy

Polymeric DMPC-nanodiscs from three polymers are viable membrane models. The polymers change water penetration and lipid rotational mobility within DMPC vilayers. SMA and SMA-SB have a stronger effect on lipid order than DIBMA.<br>

Influence of Different Polymer Belts on Lipid Properties in Nanodiscs Characterized by CW EPR Spectroscopy

Polymeric DMPC-nanodiscs from three polymers are viable membrane models. The polymers change water penetration and lipid rotational mobility within DMPC vilayers. SMA and SMA-SB have a stronger effect on lipid order than DIBMA.<br>

A practical guide to measuring ex vivo joint mobility using XROMM

X-Ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology (XROMM), though traditionally used for studies of in vivo skeletal kinematics, can also be used to precisely and accurately measure ex vivo range of motion from cadaveric manipulations. The workflow for these studies is holistically similar to the in vivo XROMM workflow, but presents several unique challenges. This paper aims to serve as a practical guide by walking through each step of the ex vivo XROMM process: how to acquire and prepare cadaveric specimens, how to manipulate specimens to collect X-ray data, and how to use these data to compute joint rotational mobility. Along the way, it offers recommendations for best practices and for avoiding common pitfalls to ensure a successful study.

A coordinate-system-independent method for comparing joint rotational mobilities

ABSTRACTThree-dimensional studies of range of motion currently plot joint poses in a ‘Euler space’ whose axes are angles measured in the joint's three rotational degrees of freedom. Researchers then compute the volume of a pose cloud to measure rotational mobility. However, pairs of poses that are equally different from one another in orientation are not always plotted equally far apart in Euler space. This distortion causes a single joint's mobility to change when measured based on different joint coordinate systems and precludes fair comparison among joints. Here, we present two alternative spaces inspired by a 16th century map projection – cosine-corrected and sine-corrected Euler spaces – that allow coordinate-system-independent comparison of joint rotational mobility. When tested with data from a bird hip joint, cosine-corrected Euler space demonstrated a 10-fold reduction in variation among mobilities measured from three joint coordinate systems. This new quantitative framework enables previously intractable, comparative studies of articular function.

Rotation of a superhydrophobic cylinder in a viscous liquid

The hydrodynamic quantification of superhydrophobic slipperiness has traditionally employed two canonical problems – namely, shear flow about a single surface and pressure-driven channel flow. We here advocate the use of a new class of canonical problems, defined by the motion of a superhydrophobic particle through an otherwise quiescent liquid. In these problems the superhydrophobic effect is naturally measured by the enhancement of the Stokes mobility relative to the corresponding mobility of a homogeneous particle. We focus upon what may be the simplest problem in that class – the rotation of an infinite circular cylinder whose boundary is periodically decorated by a finite number of infinite grooves – with the goal of calculating the rotational mobility (velocity-to-torque ratio). The associated two-dimensional flow problem is defined by two geometric parameters – namely, the number $N$ of grooves and the solid fraction $\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}$. Using matched asymptotic expansions we analyse the large-$N$ limit, seeking the mobility enhancement from the respective homogeneous-cylinder mobility value. We thus find the two-term approximation,$$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle 1+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{N}}\ln \csc {\displaystyle \frac{\unicode[STIX]{x03C0}\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}}{2}}, & & \displaystyle \nonumber\end{eqnarray}$$ for the ratio of the enhanced mobility to the homogeneous-cylinder mobility. Making use of conformal-mapping techniques and inductive arguments we prove that the preceding approximation is actually exact for $N=1,2,4,8,\ldots$. We conjecture that it is exact for all $N$.