INTRODUCTION In Western Africa, women continue performing heavy physical work that includes carrying loads on their heads for domestic and commercial tasks during pregnancy. Due to important anatomical changes such as a higher trunk mass and stretching of the abdominal muscles, the loads on the spine and lower extremities may increase during lifting/lowering tasks. Pregnant women may adapt to t...

OBJECTIVES There has been growing controversy regarding long term effects of repeated low severity head impacts such as when heading a football. However, there are few scientific data substantiating these concerns in terms of the biomechanical head response to impact. The present study aimed to develop a research methodology to investigate the biomechanical response of human subjects during int...

Wearable computers place loads on the human body. Previous studies on load carriage have found that wearing backpacks and head mounted loads can result in physiological, biomechanical and comfort effects. This paper establishes a methodology for assessing these effects in a series of tests for determining the wearability of a prototype mobile augmented reality system. The outcome of the results...

Loads that miss in L1 or L2 caches, and are waiting for their data at the head of the ROB, cause significant slow down in the form of commit stalls. We identify that most of these commit stalls are caused by a small set of loads, referred to as LIMCOS (Loads Incurring Majority of COmmit Stalls). We propose simple history-based classifiers that track commit stalls suffered by loads to help us id...

In the Everest valley of Nepal, because of the rugged mountain terrain, roads are nothing more than dirt paths and all material must be conveyed on foot. The Nepalese porters routinely carry head-supported loads, which often exceed their body mass, over long distances up and down the steep mountain footpaths. In Africa, women transport their loads economically thanks to an energy-saving gait ad...

The objective of this study was to perform a dynamic biomechanical analysis of neck collars in order to determine their effect on head and neck loading. A total of 48 tests were performed comparing the Cowboy Collar, Bullock Collar, and Kerr Collar. A control and each collar were tested at two speeds (5 m/s and 7 m/s), three impact locations (front, top, and side of the helmet), and two shoulde...

The incidence of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) in the US has reached epidemic proportions with well over 2 million new cases reported each year. TBI can occur in both civilians and warfighters, with head injuries occurring in both combat and non-combat situations from a variety of threats, including ballistic penetration, acceleration, blunt impact, and blast. Most generally, TBI is a conditio...