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Muscles undergo cycles of length change and force development during locomotion, and these contribute to their work and power production to drive body motion. Muscle fibers are typically considered to be linear actuators whose stress depends on their length, velocity, and activation state, and whose properties can be scaled up to explain the function of whole muscles. However, experimental and modeling studies have shown that a muscle’s stress additionally depends on inactive and passive tissues within the muscle, the muscle’s size, and its previous contraction history. These effects have not been tested under common sets of contraction conditions, especially the cyclic contractions that are typical of locomotion. Here we evaluate the relative effects of size, history-dependent, activation and three-dimensional effects on the work and power produced during cyclic contractions of muscle models. Simulations of muscle contraction were optimized to generate high power outputs: this resulted in the muscle models being largely active during shortening, and inactive during lengthening. As such, the history-dependent effects were dominated by force depression during simulated active shortening rather than force enhancement during active stretch. Internal work must be done to deform the muscle tissue, and to accelerate the internal muscle mass, resulting in reduced power and work that can be done on an external load. The effect of the muscle mass affects the scaling of muscle properties, with the inertial costs of contraction being relatively greater at larger sizes and lower activation levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pyramids—with one quadrilateral and four triangular faces—appear as `glueing' elements in a hybrid mesh consisting of tetrahedral and hexahedral elements. High-order discrete differential forms on tetrahedral and hexahedral elements are well known, but the analogous elements on a pyramid are not. How does one construct high-order approximation spaces on pyramids that are compatible with neighbouring elements? We address this question in this paper. We present a family of high-order finite element approximation spaces on a pyramid and associated unisolvent degrees of freedom. These spaces consist of rational basis functions. We establish conforming, exactness and polynomial approximation properties of these new finite elements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sharp upper bounds for the first eigenvalue of the Laplacian on a surface of a fixed area are known only in genera zero and one. We investigate the genus two case, and conjecture that the first eigenvalue is maximized on a singular surface which is realized as a double branched covering over a sphere. The six ramification points are chosen in such a way that this surface has a complex structure of the Bolza surface. We prove that our conjecture follows from a lower bound on the first eigenvalue of a certain mixed Dirichlet-Neumann boundary value problem on a half-disk. The latter can be studied numerically, and we present conclusive evidence supporting the conjecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]