IJBM: someone actually measured this

Bee

Mechanical properties of the human gastrointestinal tract.  Because science.  And because science needed some reason to construct the sentence "The mechanical properties of tested bowels in axial and transversal directions were qualitatively different."

Salix Babylonika

IJBM

no.

Imipolex G

*shrug* Why not measure it?

Bee

I guess it does make for good icebreaker material.

"Hey baby.  Wanna know the transverse tensile strength of your small intestine?"

Klinotaxis

this is the sort of data I work with not irregularly

you need it

Yarrun XIX

I trust Klino

Bee

Out of curiosity, what exactly do you use it for?

Klinotaxis

when i say "this sort of data" i'm thinking of mechanical information about human bodies gathered from corpses. i have worked specifically with data from the ear, where various mechanical properties are important to understanding hearing (e.g. the stiffness of the stamens affects the transduction from aerial to liquid vibration).

that's not really applicable to the digestive system, obviously, so i have to guess more. the article abstract mentions monitoring changes in mechanical properties as a way of diagnosing bowel issues. similarly to the stuff i've done it could also be useful for computer modeling of the gut ("Regular structure and well-defined differences in mechanical properties of axial and transversal specimens of the intestinal wall could make it an ideal material for modeling the mechanical behavior of the intestinal anastomosis.") articles that cite this one include a lot of stuff about endoscopy and surgical robotics. more abstractly, detailed information on gross mechanical properties of tissue is useful for reconstructing cellular properties that are difficult or impossible to determine in living tissue, e.g. i work with skeletal muscle and from data on the speed of force generation and sensitivity to calcium signalling obtainable from living muscle i can infer that a particular protein is not functioning normally without having to take an electron micrograph of the damn thing.