Spaceflight Affects Postnatal Development of the Aortic Wall in Rats

Figure 4

Examples of stress-relaxation of the longitudinal strips excised from the proximal thoracic aorta in the FLT, AGC, and VIV group rats. The strips were stretched by 50% from the initial length. Relaxation strength was defined as a percent ratio of /(), where was peak stress immediately after the stretching and stress at 5 min after the stretching.