Understanding joint kinetics during activities of daily living furthers our understanding of the factors involved in joint pathology and the effects of treatment. In this study, we examined hip and knee joint kinetics during stair climbing in 35 young healthy subjects using a subject-specific knee model to estimate bone-on-bone tibiofemoral and patello-femoral joint contact forces. The net knee...

Stairway climbing provides a ubiquitous and inconspicuous method of burning calories. While typically two strategies are employed for climbing stairs, climbing one stair step per stride or two steps per stride, research to date has not clarified if there are any differences in energy expenditure between them. Fourteen participants took part in two stair climbing trials whereby measures of heart...

OBJECTIVES Stair climbing (SC) as daily activity is assessed with different SC-tests, but none directly measures ground reaction force over several steps. The Leonardo Mechanograph Stair A has five steps and four force sensors. This study aimed at investigating the reliability of the Stair A test for force, power and time to SC. METHODS 55 healthy participants (age: 48±14 years) were five tim...

This study proposes an obstacle detection method based on depth information to aid the visually impaired people in avoiding obstacles as they move in an unfamiliar environment. Firstly, we have applied dilation of morphology and erosion of morphology to remove the crushing noise of the depth image and have used the Least Squares Method (LSM) in a quadratic polynomial to approximate floor curves...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Improved walking is a common goal after stroke. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the torque generated by the muscles of both lower extremities and 2 locomotor tasks: gait on level surfaces and stair climbing in people who had strokes. SUBJECTS Twenty community-dwelling individuals (mean age=61.2 years, SD=8.4, range=52-82) who had stroke...

[Purpose] This study aimed to determine which clinical measures of walking performance and lower limb muscle strength would predict energy cost during stair ascent and descent in community-dwelling individuals with stroke. [Subjects and Methods] Regression analysis of cross-sectional data from 55 individuals between one and five years post-stroke was used to investigate the measures of walking ...

BACKGROUND Physical activity levels seem to play a role in patellofemoral pain (PFP); however, few studies have been conducted to confirm this hypothesis. OBJECTIVES To determine the reported pain levels of women with and without PFP who maintain different levels of physical activity; to determine the capability of these levels to predict pain; and to test the capability of two stair-negotiat...

It was hypothesized that metabolic programming of processes underlying puberty can be shifted temporally through the use of a stair-step compensatory growth model such that puberty is optimally timed to occur at 11 to 12 mo of age. Forty crossbred beef heifers were weaned at approximately 3.5 mo of age and, after a 2-wk acclimation period, were assigned randomly to 1 of 4 nutritional groups: 1)...

BACKGROUND Alterations in knee kinematics after partial meniscectomy have been linked to the increased risk of osteoarthritis in this population. Understanding differences in kinematics during static versus dynamic activities of increased demand can provide important information regarding the possible underlying mechanisms of these alterations. HYPOTHESIS Differences in the following 2 kinema...