Effect of thong style flip-flops on children’s barefoot walking and jogging kinematics

BACKGROUND: Thong style flip-flops are a popular form of footwear for children. Health professionals relate the wearing of thongs to foot pathology and deformity despite the lack of quantitative evidence to support or refute the benefits or disadvantages of children wearing thongs. The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of thong footwear on children’s barefoot three dimensional foot kinematics during walking and jogging. METHODS: Thirteen healthy children (age 10.3 ± 1.6 SD years) were recruited from the metropolitan area of Sydney Australia following a national press release. Kinematic data were recorded at 200 Hz using a 14 camera motion analysis system (Cortex, Motion Analysis Corporation, Santa Rosa, USA) and simultaneous ground reaction force were measured using a force platform (Model 9281B, Kistler, Winterthur, Switzerland). A three-segment foot model was used to describe three dimensional ankle, midfoot and one dimensional hallux kinematics during the stance sub-phases of contact, midstance and propulsion. RESULTS: Thongs resulted in increased ankle dorsiflexion during contact (by 10.9°, p; = 0.005 walk and by 8.1°, p; = 0.005 jog); increased midfoot plantarflexion during midstance (by 5.0°, p; = 0.037 jog) and propulsion (by 6.7°, p; = 0.044 walk and by 5.4°, p;= 0.020 jog); increased midfoot inversion during contact (by 3.8°, p;= 0.042 jog) and reduced hallux dorsiflexion during walking 10% prior to heel strike (by 6.5°, p; = 0.005) at heel strike (by 4.9°, p; = 0.031) and 10% post toe-off (by 10.7°, p; = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Ankle dorsiflexion during the contact phase of walking and jogging, combined with reduced hallux dorsiflexion during walking, suggests a mechanism to retain the thong during weight acceptance. Greater midfoot plantarflexion throughout midstance while walking and throughout midstance and propulsion while jogging may indicate a gripping action to sustain the thong during stance. While these compensations exist, the overall findings suggest that foot motion whilst wearing thongs may be more replicable of barefoot motion than originally thought

View Invariant Gait Recognition

Recognition by gait is of particular interest since it is the biometric that is available at the lowest resolution, or when other biometrics are (intentionally) obscured. Gait as a biometric has now shown increasing recognition capability. There are many approaches and these show that recognition can achieve excellent performance on large databases. The majority of these approaches are planar 2D, largely since the early large databases featured subjects walking in a plane normal to the camera view. To extend deployment capability, we need viewpoint invariant gait biometrics. We describe approaches where viewpoint invariance is achieved by 3D approaches or in 2D. In the first group the identification relies on parameters extracted from the 3D body deformation during walking. These methods use several video cameras and the 3D reconstruction is achieved after a camera calibration process. On the other hand, the 2D gait biometric approaches use a single camera, usually positioned perpendicular to the subject’s walking direction. Because in real surveillance scenarios a system that operates in an unconstrained environment is necessary, many of the recent gait analysis approaches are orientated towards viewinvariant gait recognition

Load Carriage Capacity of the Dismounted Combatant - A Commander's Guide

This bachelor thesis focuses on teaching biogeography at high schools and its enrichment by use of web maps. The thesis contains of summary of information about biogeography and web maps and analysis of their inclusion into teaching according to Czech curricular documents. Furthermore it brings an overview of web maps concerning biogeography. For better clarity, the web maps are divided into several categories. Five web maps, most suitable for inclusion in teaching of biogeography at high schools, were chosen for further research. The chosen web maps are described more closely in terms of their content and possibility of their use in biogeography teaching, their properties were evaluated in rating tables. Exemplary task was designed for each of the five web maps so that it can be an inspiration for teaching. Key words: biogeography, web maps, high schoolTato bakalářská práce se věnuje výuce biogeografie na středních školách a jejímu obohacení za využití webových map. Součástí práce je základní souhrn informací o biogeografii a webových mapách a analýza jejich začlenění do výuky podle českých kurikulárních dokumentů. Dále práce přináší přehled webových map, které se věnují biogeografii. Tyto webové mapy jsou pro větší přehlednost roztříděny do několika kategorií. Z nalezených webových map je následně vybráno pět nejvhodnějších z pohledu zařazení do výuky biogeografie na středních školách, které jsou podrobněji popsány z hlediska obsahu a možnosti využití a také zhodnoceny pomocí hodnoticí tabulky. Ke každé z těchto pěti webových map je navržena vzorová úloha do výuky, sloužící jako inspirace pro učitele. Klíčová slova: biogeografie, webové mapy, střední školaDepartment of Social Geography and Regional Develop.Katedra sociální geografie a region. rozvojePřírodovědecká fakultaFaculty of Scienc