Background: Deficits in upper body movement have received little attention during GAIT in cerebral palsy (CP) children with crouch GAIT PATTERN (CGP). Objective: Purpose of this research is to describe the correlation of trunk movement with the excessive knee flexion and ankle kinematic in CP children with CGP. Material and Methods: GAIT analysis data from 57 limbs of diplegic CP children with CGP and 26 limbs of normal children was gathered. Kinematic parameters of trunk in relation to the pelvis were extracted in the sagittal, transverse and coronal planes. CP limbs were clustered using K-means cluster analysis according to the knee flexion angle at initial contact and the mean position of ankle joint during the stance phase of GAIT cycle, to three clusters. Pearson correlation coefficient between knee, ankle and trunk kinematic variables was assessed. Differences between clusters were analyzed with Kruskal– Wallis and post hoc tests. Results: The results revealed: 1) crouch clusters had more trunk obliquity and rotation mean position than normal; 2) the range of motions of the trunk obliquity and rotation exhibited significant differences between crouch and normal clusters; 3) the level of excessive knee flexion had positive correlation with the trunk mean position in all planes; 4) the ankle kinematic at stance phase was associated with the trunk mean position in all planes. Conclusion: The results revealed the trunk mean position is correlated with the excessive knee flexion severity and ankle joint kinematic in CP children with CGP.

This paper presents a novel GAIT PATTERN Generator developed for the “ Alice” social humanoid robot which up to now lacked an appropriate walking PATTERN. Due to the limitations of this robot, the proposed gate PATTERN generator was formulated based on a nine-mass model to decrease the modeling errors; and the inverse kinematics of the whole lower-body was solved in such a way that the robot remains statically stable during the movements. The main challenge of this work was to solve the inverse kinematics of a 7-link chain with 12 degrees-of-freedom. For this purpose, a new graphical-numerical technique has been provided using the definition of the kinematic equations of the robot joints’ Cartesian coordinates. This method resulted in a significant increase in the calculations’ solution rate. Finally, a novel algorithm was developed for step-by-step displacement of the robot towards a desired destination in a two-dimensional space. Performance of the proposed gate PATTERN generator was evaluated both with a model of the robot in a MATLAB Simulink environment and in real experiments with the Alice humanoid robot.

Background & Objective: In many developed and modern countries, every year obesity has imposed costs and expense to the countries health system and inconvenience and difficulties for people; in modern societies, these concerns are not limited to specific age, social level or races. According to statistics by the World Health Organization (WHO), about 10% of 5 17-year-old school children are overweight, and 3% of them are obese. In the US, this number is roughly 33% (10% obese) and, in Europe, it is 20% (4% obese). Nowadays, obesity in children is considered one of the most critical health problems that European countries are dealing with, mostly in Italy, Greece, and Spain. Based on literature obesity in childhood has caused the most damage to southern European countries. Moreover based on a report from Asian and Middle East countries, the issue of being overweight and obese turned out to be a global problem so that, in the past years, a massive increase in the number of overweight children population has been reported. Iran, as a fast developing country confronting the increasing phenomenon of urban living and industrialization, the prevalence of obesity among children has increasingly been raised more than the expected percentage in recent years. The percentage has increased by population growing old. As such, prevailing rate of 17% epidemic of overweight and obesity at the beginning of primary school has made Iran correspondent with the big cities in Europe. Among the reasons of rapid overweight growth is the nutrient transition that Iran experienced from the 1990s onward and then it confronted an increased amount of received energy and decreased physical activity, leading to overweight during recent years. In a study in one of the Iran’ s city by Tilaki et al., in 2011, the amount of overweight and obesity epidemic among 7 12 year old children was reported, respectively, as 12. 3% and 5. 8% and, in another survey done at female primary school in Tehran, this amounts were reported, respectively, as 13. 2% and 7. 7%. Obesity and overweight have many effects on children movement PATTERNs, so the purpose of this study was the effect of obesity on the GAIT PATTERNs kinematics factors in children. Methods: The purpose of this article was to study the effect of obesity on the GAIT PATTERNs kinematics factors in children. For this reason, 20 students’ boys’ age 7-9 chose based on weight – age percentile diagram from between 90 voluntaries and were classified in two normal and overweight groups. All the children were healthy and had no physical abnormality. The children’ s GAIT was normal. The SEKA instrument was used for evaluation weight and height and 3D motion analysis was used for measuring GAIT parameters such as walking speed, stride length, stride width, single support phase duration, double support and swing phase duration. A t-test was used run for data analysis. SPSS 19 was used for statistical analysis and significance was defined as p<0. 05. Results: Based on the findings of this study, with continued overloud on children’ s movement system, there is no significant difference between parameters of GAIT such as stride length (0. 075), stride width (0. 325), and walking speed (0. 978), while there was a significant difference in swing phase (0. 004), double support (0. 036) and single support (0. 003) phases duration, between normal and overweight children groups. Conclusion: The result of the present study showed that overweight and obesity affects some of the spatiotemporal parameters in children’ s GAIT which can cause changes in obese children GAIT PATTERN. On other hands, attention to children walking PATTERN, specifically the obese children, can produce more information and awareness about GAIT characteristics in obese children and also, it can help to solve movement problem to prevent of probability injury and next malformation. For this reason, we recommend spending more attention to obesity and overweight in children; this attention can avoid expenditure society and help to have a healthy community in the future.

Introduction: Academic faculty members need to emphasize ethical principles in order to improve higher education, with the understanding of this importance, the current research was conducted with the aim of designing the ethical model of academic faculty members in Iran's higher education. Material & Methods: This research is a type of qualitative study that uses foundational data theory. The participants, including experts and faculty members of the country's public universities, who were responsible for the promotion of academic members, were selected as key informants through a targeted sampling method of 45 people. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The reliability and validity of the data were obtained from the two methods of reviewing the participants and recoding by experts. Data were analyzed by open, central and selective coding. Results: The results showed that the moral model of faculty members in Iran's higher education is explained in 10 main categories and 27 subcategories. Major and core categories in the form of 6 dimensions of causal conditions including (individual factors, organizational factors), core (cultural-educational, educational ethics, research ethics, scientific-executive), background conditions (higher education policies, moral activism), intervening conditions (environmental factors), strategies (micro level-university, macro level-higher education) and consequences (individual and organizational) were elevated to a higher abstract level and finally the research paradigm model was presented. Conclusion: The regulations for the promotion of academic staff members in Iran require a detailed revision of the content with an ethical and qualitative approach in order to make the indicators of the promotion regulations efficient and effective.

Lameness is one the most important problems in dairy herds and a major cause of financial loss and pain and discomfort to animals. Different surveys have revealed that most lameness causing lesions in cattle originate in the claw and in order to better understand the claw disorders, one has to have good understanding of the anatomic structure, horn characteristics, and biomechanics of the claw. The claw is a direct product of the underlying living tissue and different factors affect the rate of horn growth and wear. Here, we aim to review the different factors effecting the horn growth and wear, weight bearing, and biomechanics of the claw.

Humans walk and run, as well as changing their GAIT speed, through the control of their complicated and redundant musculoskeletal system. These GAITs exhibit different locomotor behaviors, such as a double-stance phase in walking and a fight phase in running. The complex and redundant nature of the musculoskeletal system and the wide variation in locomotion characteristics lead us to imagine that the motor control strategies for these GAITs, which remain unclear, are extremely complex and different from one another. A large number of muscles contribute to the generation of human movement, and they show complex activation PATTERNs. However, an analysis of Electromyographic (EMG) data shows that the linear combination of a small number of basic waveforms reproduces a large portion of the EMG PATTERNs. This suggests that motor control in the Central Nervous System (CNS) utilizes this low-dimensional structure to solve the motor redundancy problem and that Central PATTERN Generators (CPGs) in the spinal cord are responsible for controlling this low-dimensional structure.

Rotational deformities are common lower extremity abnormalities in children. Rotational problems include in-toeing and out-toeing. In-toeing is caused by one of the three types of deformity: metatarsus adductus, internal tibial torsion, and increased femoral anteversion. Out-toeing is less common than intoeing, and its causes are similar but opposite to those of intoeing. These include femoral retroversion and external tibial torsion. An accurate diagnosis can be made with careful history and physical examination, which includes torsional profile (a four- component composite of measurements of the lower extremities). Charts of normal values and values with two standard deviations for each component of the torsional profile are available. In most cases, the abnormality improves with time. A careful physical examination, explanation of the natural history, and serial measurements are usually reassuring to the parents. Treatment is usually conservative. Special shoes, cast, or braces are rarely beneficial and have no proven efficacy. Surgery is reserved for older children with deformity from three to four standard deviations from the normal.

The purpose of this study is to examine and analyze the kinematics effects of carrying ‎the school backpack with four different weights on the parameters of GAIT cycle and ‎posture of youngsters aged between 12 and 14‎‏.‏ The subjects (n=120) in this research were 12 volunteer boys with the average age of ‎‎13.26±0.32 years and the average weight of 54.96±7.7 kg. The subjects carried ‎backpacks with four different levels to their body weight (BW): 0% (control group), ‎‎7.25% (the average weight of backpacks used by subjects), 10% (5.5 kg) and 15% ‎‎(8.3 kg) during a 200m course with natural pace, all in random order. The subjects' ‎GAITs were cinematographed in both static and dynamic manners, with the speed of 60 ‎frames per second. The "Win Analyzer" software was used to analyze the films on the ‎basis of kinematics. The following results were obtained: 1) comparing to 0% load ‎condition, increase in weight of backpacks of youngsters by 10% or more induced a ‎significant decrease in left and right stride length, an increase in stride frequency, ‎increase in forward lean of trunk and head in static and dynamic body posture. 2) No ‎significant difference was found in the measures between 7.25 and 0% body weight. ‎Based on the results, we advise that backpack weight of school youngsters aged ‎between 12 and 14 should not be heavier than 7.25 to 10% of their body weight‏.‏

Purpose: In recent years, some studies have examined the GAIT PATTERNs of neurodegenerative diseases utilizing signal processing techniques and machine learning algorithms. The aim of this study was to provide an automated system for distinguishing Huntington's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Parkinson's disease from healthy control group using dynamic analysis of GAIT PATTERN (more precisely, stride time). In addition, we examined the effect of fusion of features obtained from the left and right feet. Methods: First, polar-based measures were extracted from lagged Poincaré maps. The optimal latency of the map was estimated using the mutual information algorithm. Then, five featurelevel fusion strategies were presented. The classification was performed using the feed-forward neural network; while the effect of changing the network parameter was also investigated. The proposed system was evaluated using the data available in the Physionet database, which includes 16 records of the control group (14 females and 2 males; 20-74 years), 20 records of Huntington's disease (14 females and 6 males; 29-71 years), 13 records of ALS (3 women and 10 men; 36-70 years) and 15 records of Parkinson's disease (5 women and 10 men; 44-80 years). Results: Using the fourth fusion strategy, the maximum accuracy of 93. 47% was obtained in separating the control and Huntington groups. Applying the second fusion algorithm, the control/Huntington and control/Parkinson groups were separated with the accuracy rate of 92. 92% and 91. 93%, respectively. The highest accuracy of the first fusion algorithm was 91. 72% in classifying the control group and ALS. The third fusion algorithm was able to provide a 91. 13% classification accuracy in separating the control and Huntington groups. The performance of the algorithm in separating patient groups was weaker. Conclusion: The proposed system performed well compared to previously published algorithms. Further studies on intelligent classification algorithms and the development of the suggested method could pave the way for preclinical diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases.

Background and Aims: The nervous system uses muscles and joints in order to perform activities in a coordinated manner, such as walking. Environmental changes are also added while executing the movement, which cause more complexities in movement control and misunderstanding of a comprehensive model. Hence, muscle synergy attempts to explain movements such as walking in such a way that it can generalize its findings as a PATTERN to all the same conditions. The purpose of the present study was to review the research on walking PATTERNs from the point of view of muscle synergy using the evaluation, diagnosis, and rehabilitation approach. Materials and Methods: From among 136 articles, 13 were selected from databases, incuding Science Direct, Pubmed, Springer, Elsevier, SID, and Google Scholar, based on research criteria. Results: The results showed that CNS facilitates its implementation by simplifying the movement. To this end, CNS needs 5 modules to walking. The PATTERN is so stable that even there is no difference between the young and the elderly or at different speeds. Only there is a slight shift in the time PATTERN due to changes in biomechanical needs, but in pathology conditions, there are some changes both in the number of modules and their time PATTERN. Conclusion: According to the findings of the present research, it seems that the basic PATTERN of synergy is stable in walking under different conditions so that it can be used to assess the motor PATTERN in healthy individuals and patients in both rehabilitation and diagnosis.