Monthly Newsletter
June 2009
National Center for Human Performance
During this past month Dr. Adam Thrasher and his team of students have made significant progress in our HRSA sponsored project to develop an upper extremity joint motion database. The project uses the University of Houston Center
for Neuromotor and Biomechanics Research‘s motion capture system to track how the joints in the upper extremity
work together during various activities of daily living and how they work together to define the useable work space for
both “normal” subjects and persons with upper extremity limb loss. The data will be useful to designers of upper extremity prosthetics and orthotic systems as well as other people interested in upper extremity function.
In another motion capture project, the University of Houston Center for
Neuromotor and Biomechanics Research has hosted Chris Connaboy, a
lecturer in Sports Science at Edinburgh Napier University in Edinburgh
Scotland. Chris is studying the efficiency of jogging verses fast walking
in soldiers carrying a backpack weighing about 25% of their body
weight. This work will lead to recommendations for training soldiers
and improving their performance. Chris can be reached at c.connaboy@napier.ac.uk for more information about this work.
Dr. Richard Simpson, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Human Performance at the University of Houston is participating in the jogging study.
Plans are well underway for our 2009 Annual Meeting to be held November 5th and 6th in the NCHP at the John P.
McGovern Campus. Further details are available on the TMC webpage - www.tmc.edu - under the National Center for
Human Performance heading. We look forward to seeing you at the meeting.
Version 2.0 of Walk N’ Play is now available as a free iPhone application
through the Appstore. This is an activity / energy expenditure monitoring
game that provides the user with a summary of how many calories they
have burned during the course of their daily activities and allows the user to
compete with the computer or against a friend. NCHP has helped the team
led by Dr. Ioannis Pavlidis and Dr. Pradeep Buddharaju, recruit subjects
for their study and by reviewing the work being done by Ph.D. student Yuichi Fujiki.
Yuichi Fujiki (left) and members of
the Computational Physiology Lab
at the University of Houston.
NCHP is also pleased to have two student summer research assistants working in the Center this year. Brandon Smith
from the University of Oklahoma is back for his second year and Faisal Al Alam from Rice University is spending his
first summer working with us. These two students are planning careers in medicine and are involved in several of the
Center projects this summer.
Knowledge and Effort can enhance the ability of humans to perform in Arts, Sports, Space, and Military endeavors.