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Spearing mantis shrimps are aggressive crustaceans using specialized appendages with sharp spikes to capture fishes with a fast movement. Each spike is a biological tool that have to combine high toughness, as required by the initial impact with the victim, with high stiffness and strength, to ensure sufficient penetration while avoid breaking. We performed a multimodal analysis to uncover the design strategies of this harpoon based on chitin. We found that the spike is a slightly hooked hollow beam with the outer surface decorated by serrations and grooves to enhance cutting and interlocking. The cuticle of the spike resembles a multilayer composite: an outer heavily mineralized, stiff and hard region (with average indentation modulus and hardness of 68 and 3 GPa), providing high resistance to contact stresses, is combined with a less mineralized region, which occupies a large fraction of the cuticle (up to 50%) and features parallel fibers oriented longitudinally, enhancing stiffness and strength. A central finding of our work is the presence of a tiny interphase (less than 10 μm in width) based on helical fibers and showing a spatial modulation in mechanical properties, which has the critical task to integrate the stiff but brittle outer layer with the more compliant highly anisotropic parallel fiber region. We highlighted the remarkable ability of this helicoidal region to stop nanoindentation-induced cracks. Using three-dimensional multimaterial printing to prototype spike-inspired composites, we showed how the observed construction principles can not only hamper damage propagation between highly dissimilar layers (resulting in composites with the helical interphase absorbing 50% more energy than without it) but can also enhance resistance to puncture (25% increase in the force required to penetrate the composites with a blunt tool). Such findings may provide guidelines to design lightweight harpoons relying on environmentally friendly and recyclable building blocks.

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Aims and Objectives: Inexplicable pain to the medial proximal tibia is a frequent finding leading to revision after unicondylar knee arthroplasty (UKA). This study is an effort to find out, if there are any differences between mobile (MB) and fixed bearing (FB) UKA designs in terms of resulting strain in the medial proximal tibia as measured in an in vitro cadaver setup. It was hypothesized that MB UKA would result in lower bone strain. Materials and Methods: Five pairs of fresh-frozen full leg cadaver specimens were mounted in a kinematic rig that applied a dynamic squatting motion knee flexion after prior 3D CT. The rig allowed for 6 degrees-of-freedom at the knee while forces were applied to the quadriceps and hamstrings. During testing, an infrared camera system tracked the location of reflective markers attached to the tibia and femur with bicortical bone pins. Tibial cortical bone strain was measured with stacked strain gauge rosettes attached at predefined anterior and posterior positions on the medial cortex. Sensor outputs were recorded at 2000 Hz and synchronized with kinematic data prior and after pairwise implantation of MB and FB UKA directly comparing those between left and right knees from the same donor. Results: Bone strain values consistently increased with increasing flexion angle. FB UKA significantly increased strain in the anterior region of the medial tibial bone, while MB closely replicated strain values of the native knee. Conclusion: Proximal tibial bone strain seems to be lesser following MB UKA in comparison with FB UKA. Clinical studies will have to show, if this translates into a higher rate of pain problems with FB UKA.