Engineering

How kirigami can help us study the muscular activity of athletes

The upcoming Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2020 represent a big opportunity for governments to promote a healthy lifestyle and sports, and the turn of the decade is a great opportunity to showcase how recent technological ...

Robotics

Soft skin-like robots you can put in your pocket

Stretchable skin-like robots that can be rolled up and put in your pocket have been developed by a University of Bristol team using a new way of embedding artificial muscles and electrical adhesion into soft materials.

Engineering

Researchers recreate living 3-D displays

It is safe to say that 3-D displays do not necessarily occur in nature—unless one considers the cephalopod, which includes the squid and octopus, as a living 3-D display which can morph its structure and create complex ...

Engineering

Artificial 'muscles' achieve powerful pulling force

As a cucumber plant grows, it sprouts tightly coiled tendrils that seek out supports in order to pull the plant upward. This ensures the plant receives as much sunlight exposure as possible. Now, researchers at MIT have found ...

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Muscle

Muscle (from Latin musculus, diminutive of mus "mouse") is the contractile tissue of the body and is derived from the mesodermal layer of embryonic germ cells. Muscle cells contain contractile filaments that move past each other and change the size of the cell. They are classified as skeletal, cardiac, or smooth muscles. Their function is to produce force and cause motion. Muscles can cause either locomotion of the organism itself or movement of internal organs. Cardiac and smooth muscle contraction occurs without conscious thought and is necessary for survival. Examples are the contraction of the heart and peristalsis which pushes food through the digestive system. Voluntary contraction of the skeletal muscles is used to move the body and can be finely controlled. Examples are movements of the eye, or gross movements like the quadriceps muscle of the thigh. There are two broad types of voluntary muscle fibers: slow twitch and fast twitch. Slow twitch fibers contract for long periods of time but with little force while fast twitch fibers contract quickly and powerfully but fatigue very rapidly.

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