Comparison of in vivo knee kinematics before and after bicruciate-stabilized total knee arthroplasty during squatting

Background No studies have directly evaluated kinematic changes during squatting before and after bicruciate-stabilized total knee arthroplasty (BCS-TKA) with the dual cam-post mechanism and asymmetric surfaces. This study investigated the effect of BCS-TKA on changes to pre- and postoperative skeletal knee kinematics, to identify factors associated with postoperative skeletal kinematic parameters. Methods Seventeen knees in 17 patients were prospectively recruited before primary TKA for advanced medial knee osteoarthritis. Subjects underwent BCS-TKA and were evaluated more than 1 year postoperatively. In vivo dynamic skeletal knee kinematics were evaluated using periodic radiographic images collected during squatting to quantify the tibiofemoral functional extension/flexion angle, anteroposterior (AP) translation, and axial rotation angle using image-matching techniques. Rotational alignments of femoral and tibial components were measured postoperatively using computed tomography images. Results The pre- and postoperative tibiofemoral functional extension/flexion angles during squatting were 12.2° ± 6.7°/100.1° ± 16.8° and 9.6° ± 8.6°/109.4° ± 16.8°, respectively, with a significant difference in flexion angle (p < .05). Total AP translation was significantly larger postoperatively than preoperatively (10.8 mm ± 3.7 mm vs. 14.4 mm ± 4.2 mm, respectively; p < .05). The pre- and postoperative total rotation angles were 6.6° ± 3.0° and 6.4° ± 3.7°, respectively, indicating no significant difference. The pre- and postoperative tibiofemoral functional flexion angles were significantly associated with each other (p = .0434, r = .49). The postoperative total rotation angle was significantly smaller when the total component rotational mismatch angle between the femoral and tibial components was above 5° vs. below 5° (4.6° ± 2.7° vs. 8.3° ± 3.9°, respectively; p < .05). Conclusions BCS-TKA significantly increased the tibiofemoral functional flexion angles, with larger AP translation postoperatively. Both preoperative skeletal kinematics and surgical techniques affected the skeletal kinematics of the replaced knee. A total component rotational mismatch angle greater than 5° significantly decreased postoperative total knee rotation during squatting.

Raman Spectroscopy of Twisted Bilayer Graphene

When two periodic two-dimensional structures are superposed, any mismatch rotation angle between the layers generates a Moiré pattern superlattice, whose size depends on the twisting angle θ. If the layers are composed by different materials, this effect is also dependent on the lattice parameters of each layer. Moiré superlattices are commonly observed in bilayer graphene, where the mismatch angle between layers can be produced by growing twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) samples by CVD or folding the monolayer back upon itself. In TBG, it was shown that the coupling between the Dirac cones of the two layers gives rise to van Hove singularities (vHs) in the density of electronic states, whose energies vary with θ. The understanding of the behavior of electrons and their interactions with phonons in atomically thin heterostructures is crucial for the engineering of novel 2D devices. Raman spectroscopy has been often used to characterize twisted bilayer graphene and graphene heterostructures. Here, we review the main important effects in the Raman spectra of TBG discussing firstly the appearance of new peaks in the spectra associated with phonons with wavevectors within the interior of the Brillouin zone of graphene corresponding to the reciprocal unit vectors of the Moiré superlattice, and that are folded to the center of the reduced Brillouin Zone (BZ) becoming Raman active. Another important effect is the giant enhancement of G band intensity of TBG that occurs only in a narrow range of laser excitation energies and for a given twisting angle. Results show that the vHs in the density of states is not only related to the folding of the commensurate BZ, but mainly associated with the Moiré pattern that does not necessarily have a translational symmetry. Finally, we show that there are two different resonance mechanisms that activate the appearance of the extra peaks: the intralayer and interlayer electron–phonon processes, involving electrons of the same layer or from different layers, respectively. Both effects are observed for twisted bilayer graphene, but Raman spectroscopy can also be used to probe the intralayer process in any kind of graphene-based heterostructure, like in the graphene/h-BN junctions.

Bloch-Messiah decomposition and Magnus expansion for parametric down-conversion with monochromatic pump: role of the gain

We consider the effect of different orders of Magnus expansion for the field transformation in type-I parametric down-conversion with a monochromatic pump. The exact solution, existing in this case, allows us to analyze the convergence of the Magnus expansion for the spectrum of squeezing and the angle of squeezing. We demonstrate how the convergence of the Magnus series depends on the parametric gain for various values of the phase mismatch. For each phase-mismatch angle we find the gain, which is the exact upper bound for the convergence of the Magnus series.

Electron Mobility across Grain Boundaries in Graphene Synthesized using Chemical Vapor Deposition Process

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is currently the only method for large-scale synthesis of graphene. However, the CVD process introduces grain boundaries (GBs) when individual grains coalesce with various mismatch angles. These GBs contain atomic dislocations and defects, which are believed to alter graphene's mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties. Specifically, the GBs can act as “potential barriers” when charges move from one grain to neighboring grains. This barrier effect will not only change the electrical conductivity but also the thermal conductivity of graphene. Besides high-resolution, 3-dimensional topography images, Atomic force microscopy (AFM) can also obtain the electrical properties at the nanoscale. In this report, the potential barrier effect of graphene GBs is studied with AFM. During the experiment, the probe is brought into contact with the graphene while positively (or negatively) biased. This process injects net charges into the graphene. The electrostatic potential across the GBs can be measured by AFM as an indication of the potential barrier effect. GBs with lower potential difference correspond to lower potential barrier, and vice versa. The dependency of the barrier effect on the mismatch angles was also measured. Considering the 6 folds’ symmetry of graphene atomic lattice, the mismatch angle is in the range of 0° ∼ 30°, with 30° the maximum mismatch angle. Our results can be well fitted with a sinusoidal function with π/3 period, which supports our hypothesis that higher mismatch angle contains higher density of dislocations and defects that increase the potential barrier of GBs.

A Kinetic Study of the Emerging of Grains and Block of Grains from the Inner Volume to the Free Surface of a Cd-Zn Alloy Superplastically Deformed

A local measurement technique for the study of the kinetic processes of emerging of grains or blocks of grains from the inner volume to the free surface of superplastic materials during deformation is presented and used for the case of the Cd-Zn eutectic alloy deformed at room temperature. This technique could be used to evaluate the approximate time of fracture due to fissure or cavitation growth in samples under superplastic deformation. In principle, this technique will be useful for the development of physical procedures, which allows retarding the process of formation of low mismatch angle, , between neighboring grains, process which gives place to blocks of grains which dynamically behave as units under the shear stress action. For materials with nanocrystalline structures, such processes are expected to be higher than those of the case of microcrystalline materials.