The goal of this study is to describe accurately how the directional information given by support inclinations affects the ant Lasius niger motion in terms of a behavioral decision. To this end, we have tracked the spontaneous motion of 345 ants walking on a 0.5×0.5 m plane canvas, which was tilted with 5 various inclinations by [Formula: see text] rad ([Formula: see text] data points). At the ...

Passive dynamic walking, a phenomenon originally described for bipeds having straight legs, also works with knees. Thus given only a downhill elope aa a source of energy, a humanlike pair of legs will settle into a natural gait generated by passive interaction of gravity and inertia. No muscular input is required. The physice is much the same as in straightlegged walking, but the knee-jointed f...

Carrying heavy loads in the Himalayan region is a real challenge. Porters face extreme ranges in terrain condition, path steepness, altitude hypoxia and climate for 6-8h a day, many months a year, since they were boys. It has been previously shown that, when carrying loads on level terrain, porters' metabolic economy is higher than in Caucasians but the reasons are still unknown. We monitored N...

The aim of the present study was to examine how the recovery of physiological functioning of the leg muscles after high-intensity eccentric exercise such as downhill running could be promoted by aqua exercise for a period until the damaged muscle had recovered almost completely. Ten male long-distance runners were divided equally into an aqua exercise group and a control group. From the first d...

Here, we studied muscle-specific and muscle-related miRNAs in plasma of exercising humans. Our aim was to determine whether they are affected by eccentric and/or concentric exercise modes and could be biomarkers of muscle injuries or possible signaling molecules. On two separate days, nine healthy subjects randomly performed two 30-min walking exercises, one downhill (high eccentric component) ...

The goal of the proposed bachelor thesis is to investigate algorithms to analyse how a human runs, based on the acceleration of their legs or feet measured with accelerometer chips. Different styles of running need to be detected reliably and distinguished from walking. It should be detected if a human runs uphill, downhill or on a flat path. In addition the stress to the body (e.g. on articula...

Introduction Wales has some of the best landscapes in Europe, including three national parks which host activities that include hill walking, canoeing, mountain biking, kayaking and climbing. Wales is also becoming more and more popular for 'extreme' sports, including surfing, hang gliding and downhill cycling. In addition, cultural, historical and industrial heritage sites in Wales attract sig...