This is my first column as Chair of the Statistical Computing Section, but alas, it is not my first tour of duty. Imagine if you will, a time when a well-groomed statistician could be sighted wearing bell-bottom trousers and a zipper-front shirt, perched atop 3 inch platform shoes. These fashion statements are so old that they are now back – so it goes with my tenure as Chair. And as before, I ...

We analysed the static footprints of 1846 skeletally mature individuals to establish the influence of the age at which shoe-wearing began on the prevalence of flat foot. The incidence was 3.24% among those who started to wear shoes before the age of six years, 3.27% in those who began between the ages of 6 and 15 and 1.75% in those who first wore shoes at the age of 16 (p < 0.001). Flat foot wa...

In uncertain situations such as descending challenging slopes, social signals from caregivers can provide infants with important information for guiding action. Previous work showed that 18-month-old walking infants use social information selectively, only when risk of falling is uncertain. Experiment 1 was designed to alter infants' region of uncertainty for walking down slopes. Slippery Teflo...

One of the most prevalent aspects is women with complaints of discomfort in the lumbar region for the use of high heeled shoe. Authors described that there may be a relation between attitude and the present discomfort, often associated with muscular fatigue and increase the forces of reaction soil during the use of such footwear. The purpose of this study was to evaluate possible changes postur...

What man is so mad as wil say the swan is black: or that the raven is in couloure white, when the matter is otherwise to be judged by commonsense? {Cardanus ca. 1576 Abstract. What sorts of observations could connrm the universal hypothesis that all ravens are black? Carl Hempel proposed a number of simple and plausible principles which had the odd (\paradoxical") result that not only do observ...

INTRODUCTION Adding mass to the feet or shoes increases energetic demand: ~1% for each 100grams added per foot [1,2]. However, several studies indicate that running with lightweight shoes has an equivalent energetic cost as running barefoot (Figure 1). Frederick et al. [3] hypothesized that this could be explained if running barefoot involves a greater “cost of cushioning” which counteracts the...

Shoes are selected for protection, correction, and fashion. Parents are often confused by conflicting advice for appropriate footwear for children. The common practice of using footwear for correction of foot or leg “deformities” in otherwise healthy children has limited evidence of effectiveness. In this article the evidence supporting the use of corrective shoes for otherwise healthy children...