SIR—The concept of ‘frailty’ has been used to identify older adults at increased risk for disability [1, 2]. A major obstacle to developing primary prevention strategies for frailty is the lack of clinical markers of early frailty, especially among high functioning older adults. The Physical Performance Battery (PPB) has been reported to predict disability in older adults [3, 4], but its associ...

the object of this study was evaluation of a walking tractor drawn peanut harvester at different conditions of soil moisture content and forward speed and comparing it with manual harvesting. the evaluation factors for peanut harvester were two levels of soil moisture content and three levels of forward speed. the results revealed that the effect of soil moisture content was only significant on...

PURPOSE The objective of this study was to describe spatial and temporal parameters during gait in pregnant women, and to compare it with women in post-partum and with a control group. METHODS To investigate alteration in natural locomotion, we used an electronic walkway (GAITRite system). Fifty-eight pregnant women (four last months of pregnancy), nine post-partum women and twenty-three heal...

Pedestrian crossings in the UK and US require people to walk at 1.2 m/s to cross the road in time; however a large proportion of older people do not walk this fast, potentially discouraging walking or putting older people at risk of injury. We use longitudinal data to investigate changes in walking speed, and ability to cross the road in time, at older ages. 31,015 walking speed measurements we...

Visual flow is used to perceive and regulate movement speed during locomotion. We assessed the extent to which variation in flow from the ground plane, arising from static visual textures, influences locomotion speed under conditions of concurrent perceptual load. In two experiments, participants walked over a 12-m projected walkway that consisted of stripes that were oriented orthogonal to the...

The Getting Grounded Gracefully program, based on the Awareness Through Movement lessons of the Feldenkrais method, was designed to improve balance and function in older people. Fifty-five participants (mean age 75, 85% women) were randomized to an intervention (twice-weekly group classes over 8 wk) or a control group (continued with their usual activity) after being assessed at baseline and th...

Motor control can be achieved in the absence of awareness, even when performed intentionally. The aim of this study was to understand the mechanisms of the sudden awareness of our own movement. This was studied in locomotion because it is an automatic behavior which can be intentionally modulated. Subjects walked continuously with the instruction to maintain either a constant walking speed (com...

[Purpose] The aim of this study was to clarify the effects of an automated stride assistance device on gait parameters and energy cost during walking performed by healthy middle-aged and young females. [Subjects and Methods] Ten middle-aged females and 10 young females were recruited as case and control participants, respectively. The participants walked for 3 minutes continuously under two dif...