The study examined whether a test of walking speed provides similar predictive information on mortality risk as does a summary measure of lower body function. Data were from the Hispanic Established Population for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly database and included Mexican Americans aged 65 years or more (1993-2000). Primary measures included a short physical performance battery, a tes...

objectives: this study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a modified floor reaction ankle foot orthosis (frafo) design on gait performance in children with cerebral palsy. methods: eight children with cerebral palsy wore a modified frafo bilaterally for six weeks. motion analysis was used to assess the immediate effectiveness of the orthosis on improving gait and also following six w...

This study investigated the accuracy and reliability of four methods using force-plate data for detecting the swing heel-off (HO) time in gait initiation. Results of these methods were compared to those obtained by means of a reference method using a footswitch. Ten young healthy adults performed 18 forward gait initiation trials at self-selected speed and at maximal speed. Results showed that ...

In many simple walking models, foot placement dictates the center of pressure location and ground reaction force components, whereas humans can modulate these aspects after foot contact. Because of the differences, it is unclear to what extent predictions made by models are valid for human walking. Yet, both model simulations and human experimental data have previously indicated that the center...

Much is known about human walking, but it is not known how walking is used during typical activities. Since improving walking ability is a key goal in many surgical, pharmacological, and physiotherapeutic interventions, understanding typical community mobility demands regarding the length of walking bouts, the number of sequential steps frequently performed, and the duration of common nonwalkin...

The issue of pedestrian-friendly urban environments has been of increasing importance lately in urban planning and design. In order to develop a better knowledge about the walkability of the built environment, it is important to understand the complexity behind walking behavior. Since different kinds of walking activities vary in their goal, effort, frequency, duration, etc., they also vary in ...

In two experiments participants were asked to walk inside the city Hradec Králové along a track, which consisted of streets with various amounts of vegetation and various degrees of traffic intensity. The walking speed was measured in eight selected sections. The environmental properties of the sections were estimated by raters, who described a level of naturalness of a place, intensity of traf...