Browse All Digital Items

Analysis of the balance and sway of the elderly remains a field continuously studied for additional means of assessing the risks of falls. Almost 50% of falls among the elderly lead to serious injuries, and falls are the leading cause of death for the elderly. Thus, the development of a convenient method to assess the risks of falling would be beneficial in helping to diminish these risks. We recorded the sway data by using the widely acceptable force plate and simultaneously compared it to the angular orientation measured by a cell phone’s accelerometer attached to the subject.

Changes in mechanical stimuli and the physiological environment are sensed by the cell. Thesechanges influence the cell’s motility patterns. The cell’s directional migration is dependent on the substrate stiffness. To describe such behavior of a cell, a tensegrity model was used. Cells with an extended lamellipodium were modeled. The internal elastic strain energy of a cell attached to the substrates with different stiffnesses was evaluated. The obtained results show that on the stiffer substrate, the elastic strain energy of the cell adherent to this substrate decreases.

A tensegrity model can be used to describe the mechanical behavior of living cells. A finite element model (FEM) was used to assess the mechanical contribution of subcellular organelles. Continuum parts like the cytoplasm and membrane were modeled as continuous elements, while the tensegrity was chosen to model the cytoskeleton and nucleoskeleton. An atomic force microscope load was implemented to simulate the external load. The cell components were loaded separately to evaluate their mechanical contributions.