A flexible and sensitive textile-based pressure sensor is developed using highly conductive fibers coated with dielectric rubber materials. The pressure sensor exhibits superior sensitivity, very fast response time, and high stability, compared with previous textile-based pressure sensors. By using a weaving method, the pressure sensor can be applied to make smart gloves and clothes that can control machines wirelessly as human-machine interfaces.

A contact problem is considered in which an elastic half-plane is pressed against a rigid fractally rough surface, whose pro le is de ned by a Weierstrass series. It is shown that no applied mean pressure is su¯ciently large to ensure full contact and indeed there are not even any contact areas of nite dimension|the contact area consists of a set of fractal character for all values of the geometric and loading parameters.A solution for the partial contact of a sinusoidal surface is used to develop a relation between the contact pressure distribution at scale n 1 and that at scale n. Recursive numerical integration of this relation yields the contact area as a function of scale. An analytical solution to the same problem appropriate at large n is constructed following a technique due to Archard. This is found to give a very good approximation to the numerical results even at small n, except for cases where the dimensionless applied load is large.The contact area is found to decrease continuously with n, tending to a power-law behaviour at large n which corresponds to a limiting fractal dimension of (2 D), where D is the fractal dimension of the surface pro le. However, it is not a`simple' fractal, in the sense that it deviates from the power-law form at low n, at which there is also a dependence on the applied load. Contact segment lengths become smaller at small scales, but an appropriately normalized size distribution tends to a limiting function at large n.

Although several neural pathways have been implicated in feeding behaviors in mammals [1-7], it remains unclear how the brain coordinates feeding motivations to maintain a constant body weight (BW). Here, we identified a neuropeptide pathway important for the satiety and BW control in Drosophila. Silencing of myoinhibitory peptide (MIP) neurons significantly increased BW through augmented food intake and fat storage. Likewise, the loss-of-function mutation of mip also increased feeding and BW. Suppressing the MIP pathway induced satiated flies to behave like starved ones, with elevated sensitivity toward food. Conversely, activating MIP neurons greatly decreased food intake and BW and markedly blunted the sensitivity of starved flies toward food. Upon terminating the activation protocol of MIP neurons, the decreased BW reverts rapidly to the normal level through a strong feeding rebound, indicating the switch-like role of MIP pathway in feeding. Surprisingly, the MIP-mediated BW decrease occurred independently of sex peptide receptor (SPR), the only known receptor for MIP, suggesting the presence of a yet-unknown MIP receptor. Together, our results reveal a novel anorexigenic pathway that controls satiety in Drosophila and provide a new avenue to study how the brain actively maintains a constant BW.

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Investigation of the skin effect in the bulk of electrical conductors with spin-polarized neutron radiographyThe flow of electrical current through a microscopic actual contact spot between two conductors is influenced by the flow through adjacent contact spots. A smoothed version of this interaction effect is developed and used to predict the contact resistance when the statistical size and spatial distribution of contact spots is known. To illustrate the use of the method, an idealized fractal rough surface is defined using the random midpoint displacement algorithm, and the size distribution of contact spots is assumed to be given by the intersection of this surface with a constant height plane. With these assumptions, it is shown that including finer scale detail in the fractal surface, equivalent to reducing the sampling length in the measurement of the surface, causes the predicted resistance to approach the perfect contact limit.

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