The aim of the present study was to establish the behavior of human medial gastrocnemius (GM) muscle fascicles during stair negotiation. Ten healthy male subjects performed normal stair ascent and descent at their own comfortable speed on a standard-dimension four-step staircase with embedded force platforms in each step. Kinematic, kinetic, and electromyographic data of the lower limbs were co...

The purpose of this study was to identify the kinematic and kinetic strategies used by patients with unilateral triple arthrodesis or subtalar fusion during level walking, stair ascent, stair descent and to determine the influence of these different conditions on kinematics and kinetics. Nine subjects with unilateral triple or subtalar fusion and five normal control subjects were recruited for ...

Based on estimates from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), there were about 25,000 baby walker-related injuries treated annually in U.S. hospital emergency departments during the early 1990s. This amounted to about 8 injuries for every 1000 baby walkers in use. Most injuries resulted from falls down stairs. After CPSC initiated a regulatory proceeding in 1994, the CPSC staff wo...

Stair running, both ascending and descending, is a challenging aerobic exercise that many athletes, recreational runners, and soldiers perform during training. Studying biomechanics of stair running over multiple steps has been limited by the practical challenges presented while using optical-based motion tracking systems. We propose using foot-mounted inertial measurement units (IMUs) as a sol...

OBJECTIVES To study the training effects of eight weeks of stair climbing on Vo2max, blood lipids, and homocysteine in sedentary, but otherwise healthy young women. METHODS Fifteen women (mean (SD) age 18.8 (0.7) years) were randomly assigned to control (n = 7) or stair climbing (n = 8) groups. Stair climbing was progressively increased from one ascent a day in week 1 to five ascents a day in...

The incidence of stairway falls and related injuries remains persistently high; however, the risk of stair injuries could be reduced through improved stairway design. The current study investigated dynamic balance control during stair descent and the effects of varying the step geometry. Data were collected from 20 healthy young and 20 older adults as they descended three staircases (riser heig...

A stair Laguerre pseudospectral method is proposed for numerical solutions of differential equations on the half line. Some approximation results are established. A stair Laguerre pseudospcetral scheme is constructed for a model problem. The convergence is proved. The numerical results show that this new method provides much more accurate numerical results than the standard Laguerre spectral me...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to compare gaze behaviour during stair and ramp walking between patients with chronic peripheral vestibular hypofunction and healthy human subjects. METHODS Twenty four (24) patients with chronic peripheral vestibular hypofunction (14 unilateral and 10 bilateral) and 24 healthy subjects performed stair and ramp up and down walks at self-selected speed. The ...

Composite adaptive grid (CAG) methods for solving hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDE's) are discussed in this paper. Composite grids are used at the coarsest level to deal with domains with complicated geometries. Stair step grids developed for composite grids are also used in the ner levels to cover reened regions. New data structures for stair step grids are proposed and implement...