5 s after tone onset) during these behavioral episodes; (3) significant correlations between RTs and single units activities were found in the early preparation phases of the task. The results reveal that complex early preparatory activity exists several seconds before the final movements in a RT task, which may determine

executive functions leading to rapid decoding of alternate behavioral performances. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd and the Japan Neuroscience Society.”
“The surface morphology of the human astragalus (talus) is difficult to represent accurately using landmarks find more as it is essentially MDV3100 supplier globular in shape. Advances in laser scanning technology allow fast and accurate capture of bone surface morphology. However, methodologies

to utilise these new accurate 3D data have not been fully developed. The present study uses canonical sampling of whole surface morphology attained through laser scanning and for the first time applies the technique to analysis of bone morphology. We introduce a new technique for identifying allometric shape characters in whole bone surface morphology. In a sample of adult human astragalus the new technique is successful in identifying and isolating intra-specific allometric shape characters in a bone which typically lacks landmarks and has, consequently, proved difficult to analyse using traditional Z-VAD-FMK mouse 3D morphometric methods. Crown Copyright (c) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“A new constitutive model for the biomechanical behaviour of smooth muscle tissue is proposed. The active muscle contraction is

accomplished by the relative sliding between actin and myosin filaments, comprising contractile units in the smooth muscle cells. The orientation of the myosin filaments, and thereby the contractile units, are taken to exhibit a statistical dispersion around a preferred direction. The number of activated cross-bridges between the actin and myosin filaments governs the contractile force generated by the muscle and also the contraction speed. A strain-energy function is used to describe the mechanical behaviour of the smooth muscle tissue. Besides the active contractile apparatus, the mechanical model also incorporates a passive elastic part. The constitutive model was compared to histological and isometric tensile test results for smooth muscle tissue from swine carotid artery. In order to be able to predict the active stress at different muscle lengths, a filament dispersion significantly larger than the one observed experimentally was required.