A patient, sent from a VA hospital, was seen at the VAPC Special Clinic for evaluation and prescription. He was not considered a good candidate for a prosthesis, since his condition was beyond what is generally accepted as a "good risk." Normally, SO deg. of flexion contracture is considered a maximum limit for fitting of below-knee amputees. This patient exceeds this maximum by almost 40 deg. ...

BACKGROUND The reproducibility of day-to-day testing of isokinetic concentric and eccentric muscular actions among adolescent basketball players aged 14 to 16 years and relationships of mean within-subject variation in two isokinetic testing sessions with chronological age, biological maturation (estimated age at peak height velocity), training experience, body size, lower-body morphology, and ...

OBJECTIVE Balance between flexor and extensor muscle activity is essential for optimal function. The purpose of this pilot study was to compare the relationship between maximum finger flexion force and maximum finger extension force in women with rheumatoid arthritis and healthy women. METHODS Twenty healthy women (median age 61 years) and 20 women with rheumatoid arthritis (median age 59.5 y...

Because wrist rotation dynamics are dominated by stiffness (Charles SK, Hogan N. J Biomech 44: 614-621, 2011), understanding how humans plan and execute coordinated wrist rotations requires knowledge of the stiffness characteristics of the wrist joint. In the past, the passive stiffness of the wrist joint has been measured in 1 degree of freedom (DOF). Although these 1-DOF measurements inform u...

STUDY DESIGN Cross-sectional case-control design. BACKGROUND Although the etiology of patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS) is not completely understood, there is some evidence to suggest that hip position during weight-bearing activities contributes to the disorder. OBJECTIVE To compare the knee and hip motions (and their coordination) during stair stepping in female athletes with and withou...

Isometric handgrip force, isokinetic knee flexion and extension torque, and anthropometric data were obtained on 67 older men and women (ranging in age from 45 to 75 years, mean 59.7 years). Hydrostatic and skinfold estimates of lean body mass were quite closely correlated with each other in this sample (r = 0.93). Handgrip force, isokinetic knee flexion and extension torque, and lean mass all ...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of lumbar rotational manipulation and lumbar central posteroanterior mobilization on lumbar bending stiffness and flexion and extension range of motion (ROM). Methods: A samesubject, repeated-measures, crossover design was used using 32 asymptomatic subjects (16 female and 16 male; mean [SD] age, 25.5 [4.5] years; weight, 65.7 ...

Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) are now well recognized as potential materials for structural control. The optimised integration of some SMA devices in a mechanical structure for passive structural damping requires a predictable modelling. At first experimental and numerical studies have been performed on a CuAlBe beam under harmonic flexion, leading to a qualitative modelling based on the material t...