On curves, non-amputees' maximum running speed is slower on smaller radii and thought to be limited by the inside leg's mechanics. Similar speed decreases would be expected for non-amputees in both counterclockwise and clockwise directions because they have symmetric legs. However, sprinters with unilateral leg amputation have asymmetric legs, which may differentially affect curve-running perfo...

Terrestrial locomotion on legs is energetically expensive. Compared with cycling, or with locomotion in swimming or flying animals, walking and running are highly uneconomical. Legged gaits that minimise mechanical work have previously been identified and broadly match walking and running at appropriate speeds. Furthermore, the 'cost of muscle force' approaches are effective in relating locomot...

Selective breeding for high wheel-running activity has generated four lines of laboratory house mice (S lines) that run about 170% more than their control counterparts (C lines) on a daily basis, mostly because they run faster. We tested whether maximum aerobic metabolic rates (V(O2max)) have evolved in concert with wheel-running, using 48 females from generation 35. Voluntary activity and meta...

Pacing strategy has been investigated in elite 100 km and elite 161 km (100 mile) ultra-marathoners, but not in age group ultra-marathoners. This study investigated changes in running speed over segments in male elite and age group 100 km ultra-marathoners with the assumption that running speed would decrease over segments with increasing age of the athlete. Running speed during segments in mal...

the aim of the present research was to study the effects of regular training and exhaustive exercise on t-pa/pai-1 complex in the blood of forty eight rats. they were divided randomly into control and experimental groups and the subgroups included the primary acute, secondary acute and 8-wk regularly trained (each group 8 rats). endurance training programs (five days a week, speed 15-22 m/min f...

Backward running has long been used in sports conditioning programs and has recently been incorporated into rehabilitative settings as a method of increasing quadriceps strength while decreasing the joint compressive forces about the knee. Although backward locomotion has been studied kinetically, the metabolic cost of backward walking and/or running has not to our knowledge been previously cha...

Background: The current study aimed to evaluate the effects of barefoot and shod running with two different styles on ground reaction force-frequency content in recreational runners with low arched feet. Methods: The statistical sample of this research was 13 males with PF (mean±SD age: 26.2±2.8 y; height: 176.1±8.4 cm; weight: 78.3±14.3 kg). A force plate (Bertec, USA) with a sample rate of 1...

The purpose of this study was to examine the gross motor and fine motor abilities of children with mental retardation using the Bruininks Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency. We compared the motor skills of 24 mentally retarded children, 12 with Down syndrome and 12 without Down syndrome. The children ranged in chronological age from 7.6 years to 11 years and were of comparable mental age. With...

For intelligent surveillance, one of the major tasks to achieve is to recognize activities present in the scene of interest. Human subjects are the most important elements in a surveillance system and it is crucial to classify human actions. In this paper, we tackle the problem of classifying human actions as running or walking in videos. We propose using local temporal features extracted from ...

Humans are known to have energetically optimal walking and running speeds at which the cost to travel a given distance is minimized. We hypothesized that "optimal" walking and running speeds would also exist at the level of individual locomotor muscles. Additionally, because humans are 60-70% more economical when they walk than when they run, we predicted that the different muscles would exhibi...