conclusions: exercise has significant effect on improving symptoms of multiple sclerosis, and cessation of exercise may cause recurrence of symptoms in the intervention group with a slope similar to that of the control group. therefore, continuous rather than short period exercises have valuable symptomatic and supportive relief effects in patients. results: the results indicated significant ch...

This paper reports how and to what extent the mass distribution of a passive dynamic walker can be tuned to maximize walking speed and stability. An exploration of the complete parameter space of a bipedal walker is performed by numerical optimization, and optimal manifolds are found in terms of speed, the form of which can be explained by a physical analysis of step periods. Stability, quantif...

In this study, patterns of activity in the soleus (Sol) and tibialis anterior (TA) muscles and hindlimb kinematics were evaluated during slope walking in rats after transection and surgical repair either of the entire sciatic nerve (Sci group) or of its two branches separately, the tibial and common fibular nerves (T/CF group). With the latter method, axons from the tibial and common fibular ne...

The aim of this study was to investigate the eVects of self-reinnervation of the medial (MG) and lateral gastrocnemius (LG) muscles on joint kinematics of the whole hindlimb during overground walking on surfaces of varying slope in the cat. Hindlimb kinematics were assessed (1) with little or no activity in MG and LG (short-term eVects of self-reinnervation), and (2) after motor function of the...

BACKGROUND The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) provided Columbia MO with an Active Living by Design (ALbD) grant in 2003 to promote active living in the community. A separate project was funded in 2006 through RWJF's Active Living Research program. PURPOSE To evaluate whether participation in a Walking School Bus (WSB) program increased or decreased active living in elementary school ch...

Since the pioneering work of McGeer in the late 1980s, the concept of passive dynamic walking (hereafter PDW) has been attracting lots of attention in the field of legged robots 1) A significant feature of PDW robots is that they have no control system; they merely exploit their intrinsic mechanical dynamics carefully designed, and show surprisingly natural and human-like walking on a gentle sl...