Jack M. Winters

Molly Follette Story

Two of the most important yet often overlooked aspects of a medical device are its usability and accessibility. This is important not only for health care providers, but also for older patients and users with disabilities or activity limitations. Medical Instrumentation: Accessibility and Usability Considerations focuses on how lack of usabi

Accessibility and Usability Considerations

Medical Instrumentation

Patrick E. Crago

Most routine motor tasks are complex, involving load transmission through out the body, intricate balance, and eye-head-shoulder-hand-torso-leg coor dination. The quest toward understanding how we perform such tasks with skill and grace, often in the presence of unpredictable perturbations, has a long history. This book arose from the Ninth Engineering Foundation Con ference on Biomechanics and Neural Control of Movement, held in Deer Creek, Ohio, in June 1996. This unique conference, which has met every 2 to 4 years since the late 1960s, is well known for its informal format that promotes high-level, up-to-date discussions on the key issues in the field. The intent is to capture the high quality ofthe knowledge and discourse that is an integral part of this conference series. The book is organized into ten sections. Section I provides a brief intro duction to the terminology and conceptual foundations of the field of move ment science; it is intended primarily for students. All but two of the re maining nine sections share a common format: (l) a designated section editor; (2) an introductory didactic chapter, solicited from recognized lead ers; and (3) three to six state-of-the-art perspective chapters. Some per spective chapters are followed by commentaries by selected experts that provide balance and insight. Section VI is the largest section, and it con sists of nine perspective chapters without commentaries.

Biomechanics and Neural Control of Posture and Movement

Savio L-Y. Woo

The picture on the front cover of this book depicts a young man pulling a fishnet, a task of practical relevance for many centuries. It is a complex task, involving load transmission throughout the body, intricate balance, and eye head-hand coordination. The quest toward understanding how we perform such tasks with skill and grace, often in the presence of unpredictable pertur bations, has a long history. However, despite a history of magnificent sculptures and drawings of the human body which vividly depict muscle ac tivity and interaction, until more recent times our state of knowledge of human movement was rather primitive. During the past century this has changed; we now have developed a considerable database regarding the com position and basic properties of muscle and nerve tissue and the basic causal relations between neural function and biomechanical movement. Over the last few decades we have also seen an increased appreciation of the impor tance of musculoskeletal biomechanics: the neuromotor system must control movement within a world governed by mechanical laws. We have now col lected quantitative data for a wealth of human movements. Our capacity to understand the data we collect has been enhanced by our continually evolving modeling capabilities and by the availability of computational power. What have we learned? This book is designed to help synthesize our current knowledge regarding the role of muscles in human movement. The study of human movement is not a mature discipline.

Jack M. Winters

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