The aim of this thesis is to help understand the impact of street network configuration on travel behavior by modeling pedestrian travel to/from rapid transit rail stations. The primary goal is to determine whether and to what extent street connectivity is related to transit walk-mode shares and walking distances after controlling for population density, land-use mix, household income, and car ownership. The data are drawn from all the stations of Atlanta's rapid transit network (MARTA). The research shows that land-use mix and street connectivity around stations are significantly related to the decision to walk for transit. Importantly, the analysis reveals that station environments with higher street densities and more direct connections within 1, 0.5, and 0.25 mile radii are associated with higher proportion of walking shares among station patrons. Furthermore, the results of analyses for walk trip distances suggest that street networks with denser intersections and more linear alignments of road segments support greater walking distance thresholds. Overall, the findings confirm the hypotheses that well structured and differentiated street networks affect not only transit access/egress walk-mode shares but also the distance people are willing to walk to/from a station. Thus, this study provides some encouragement that effective policies designed to encourage new designs with the option to walk will actually support more sustainable cities in which transit systems can become integrated within urban culture.

I jakten på gatukonst har vi i detta kandidatarbete undersökt hur gatukonst kan utvecklas genom nya tekniker och hur plats och gatukonst samspelar och påverkar varandra i ett berättande. För att ta del av hur gatukonst ser ut och används i olika kulturer och miljöer valde vi att resa genom Europas städer och dokumentera gatukonst för att få ett bredare perspektiv. Genom att flyga och tågluffa har vandring och etnografi varit vår metod då vi har rest och vandrat för att kunna skapa denna undersökning. I våran gestaltning vill vi utmana gatukonst och dess gränser och har valt att göra det med augmented reality som verktyg för att skapa platsbaserad gatukonst som kan upplevas ur ett digitalt format i verkligheten. Genom augmented reality kan städer och områden ha gatukonst placerade på byggnaderna trots att det inte finns fysiskt. Det möjliggör ett alternativt sätt att utforska gatukonst genom en digital värld. / In the search for street art we’ve in this project explored how street art can be developed through new techniques and how space and street art interact and influence each other in a narrative way. To find out what street art looks like and how it’s used in different cultures and environments we chose to travel through Europe's cities to document the street art from a broad perspective. By flying, traveling and hiking we have been using walking and ethnography as our methods to create this study. In our design process we want to challenge street art and it’s boundaries and have chosen to do so with augmented reality as a tool for creating site-based street art that can be experienced from a digital format in reality. Through augmented reality, cities and areas can have street art placed on the buildings even though it does not exist physically. It enables alternative ways to explore street art through a digital world.

L’Artériopathie Oblitérante des Membres Inférieurs (AOMI) est une maladie chronique grave, associée au processus d’athérosclérose, et qui se traduit chez la plupart des patients par une ischémie (apports sanguins insuffisants) à l’exercice.L’ischémie d’exercice peut causer l’apparition de douleurs au niveau des membres inférieurs lors de la marche, limitant de fait la capacité de marche des patients. L’évaluation de la capacité de marche occupe une place importante dans la prise en charge des patients. Grâce au développement de moniteurs d’activité tels que le géo-positionnement par satellites (GPS), cette évaluation peut être conduite en situation écologique de marche via des mesures réalisées en extérieur. Ces mesures GPS ont notamment permis de mettre en évidence une variabilité de la capacité de marche avec une influence probable de la durée de récupération entre deux marches symptômes-limitées. Ceci reste cependant à démontrer expérimentalement. Par ailleurs, méthodologiquement, il est nécessaire de pouvoir standardiser et exprimer de façon plusadéquate les données GPS obtenues afin de juger de la capacité de marche des patients. L’objet du présent travail de thèse était par conséquent double : i) valider une méthodologie pour estimer la dépense énergétique (DE) associée à la marche en extérieur chez le sujet sain et qui serait à terme applicable chez les patients avec AOMI pour pouvoir comparer les résultats de capacité de marche obtenus par mesure GPS ; ii) déterminer dans quelle mesure la durée de récupération suite à une marche symptômes-limitée influence la capacité de marche des patients lors de la marche subséquente. Les résultats des travaux de recherche qui ont été menés dans le cadre de cette thèse montrent que le GPS permet une estimation relativement précise de la DE en extérieur chez le sujet sain en conditions de vitesse et de pente variées. De plus, nos résultats mettent en évidence que la durée de récupération faisant suite à une marche symptômes-limitée influence clairement la capacité de marche des patients. La nature logarithmique de la relation permet d’envisager àmoyen terme l’identification d’une durée minimale de récupération à partir de laquelle les patients pourraient maximiser leur capacité de marche. Des perspectives intéressantes pourraient alors être envisagées dans le réentraînement à l’effort des patients et/ou pour les aider à mieux gérer leurs douleurs au quotidien. / Lower-extremity peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a non-communicable disease that is associated with atherosclerosis and that leads, in most patients, to ischemia (mismatch between blood demand and blood supply) during exercise. Exercise-induced ischemia may lead to the occurrence of pain in the lower extremities during walking, thus limitingwalking capacity. Assessing walking capacity is an important step in the management of PAD patients. Thanks to the development of activity monitors such as global positioning system (GPS), it is possible to assess walking capacity under real-life conditions with measurements performed in outdoor settings. These GPS measurements have highlighted thefact that walking capacity seems variable and is likely to be influenced by the recovery duration between two symptoms-limited walks. However, this remains to be demonstrated in standardized conditions. Moreover, methodological advances are needed to standardize and express more adequately GPS data in order to better interpret walking capacity measurements. Therefore, the aim of the present thesis was two-fold: i) to validate a method for estimating walking energy expenditure (EE) in healthy subjects in outdoor setting, and that could be used in the future in PAD patients in order to compare walking capacity results obtained in outdoor setting; ii) to determine to which extent the duration of the recovery period that follows a first symptom-limited walk influences walking capacity measured during the subsequent walk in PADpatients. Our results show that GPS allows accurate estimations of walking EE in healthy subjects in outdoor setting and with various conditions of speed and grade. Moreover, our results clearly show that recovery duration influences walking capacity in PAD patients. The logarithmic shape of the relationship supports further analyses to determine a minimum recovery duration that could maximize patients walking capacity. This could have interesting implications for the development of new exercise walking programs in PAD and/or to help patients to better manage their pain during daily life.

Title: Effect of physical activity Nordic Walking on body composition and cardiorespiratory parameters in individuals after kidney transplantation and dialysis individual. Objective: The aim of the study was to determine the effect of physical activity Nordic Walking on body composition and cardiorespiratory parameters in individuals after kidney transplantation and dialysis individual. Method: This thesis has been prepared in the form of a qualitative case study. The study involved 9 probands at the beginning, but only 5 probands completed the study. It was done the input examination before the intervention. The intervention was made from 20 lessons of Nordic Walking which should take 60 minutes each of them. Then were probands tested again like the output examination. During these both examination were measured specific values of body composition, anthropometric values (height, weight, age, circuit level), as well as the distribution of muscle and fat mass in the body, the value of physical fitness, respectively. cardiorespiratory parameters of the individual, for which was used the spiroergometric test within a modified Balke's walking test. For to detect the quality of life was used before and after intervention standardized questionnaire assessing quality of life WHOQOL-BREF. Last but not...

Objective: The primary objective of this real-world study was to describe the response to fampridine and changes of gait parameters in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients’ walking disability (Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS): 4–7) after treatment with fampridine for 2 weeks as recommended by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and compare it with the overall physician’s judgement. Methods: A total of 211 adult MS patients were analyzed using a multimodal gait assessment including the timed 25-foot walk test (T25FW), 2-minute walking test (2-MWT), 12-item Multiple Sclerosis Walking Scale (MSWS-12), the GAITRite electronic walkway system, and the patients’ clinical global impression (CGI). Multimodal gait assessment was compared with the clinician’s impression of overall improvement after 2 weeks. Results: In total, 189 subjects were included, of which 133 (70.37%) were responders to fampridine (RF), according to physician’s judgement. Looking at independent multimodal gait assessment, RFs showed improvement of 12.60% in the T25FW, 19.25% in the 2-MWT, 21.12% in the MSWS-12, and 6.54% in their Functional Ambulation Profile (FAP) score. The combination of the T25FW and the MSWS-12 would offer the best sensitivity and specificity for determining response to fampridine according to both neurologists’ and patients’ classification. Conclusion: This study provides new information on the use of fampridine in a real-world setting with a large patient sample on the potential benefit of using more definitive responder criteria to fampridine for the clinical setting.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Stroke is a sudden and devastating medical condition. People who experience a stroke tend to have long-term physical limitations including impaired walking as part of the ongoing consequences of stroke. While a variety of rehabilitation interventions have demonstrated efficacy for improving walking after stroke, none of the interventions have emerged as superior, and prior to this study, therapeutic-yoga had not been tested as an intervention to improve walking recovery after stroke. METHODS: This study was a secondary data analysis of group therapeutic-yoga on walking recovery measures including walking speed, walking distance, and spatiotemporal step parameter symmetry. The walking recovery measures were collected as secondary outcomes in a sub-sample (n=12) in a pilot randomized controlled study (n=47) designed to test the efficacy of 8-weeks of group therapeutic-yoga on balance and fear of falling. Participants in the current study completed 12-weeks of group therapeutic yoga with outcome assessments at baseline, 8-weeks, and 12-weeks. The main analysis was repeated measures ANOVA to assess the main effect of time with additional analyses including effect sizes, percent of participants achieving change greater than or equal to minimal detectable change (MDC), and mean change score comparisons between baseline and 8-weeks, 8-weeks and 12-weeks, and baseline and 12-weeks. RESULTS: Twelve people with chronic stroke enrolled in the study with 9 completing the intervention and all 3 assessments. No significant main effect of time was found on any of the variables of interest. Walking distance demonstrated a trend toward significant change (p=0.064) and step length symmetry demonstrated significant change (p=0.05) between baseline and 12-weeks. Several spatiotemporal step parameter symmetry ratios demonstrated small to medium effect sizes with the majority (91%) being a negative effect. CONCLUSION: Twelve weeks of group therapeutic-yoga appears to be feasible in a population of people with chronic stroke. Walking distance and step parameter symmetry should be tested in a larger sample. An improved understanding of the impact, progression, and remediation of walking asymmetry is needed.

No description available.

No description available.

There is emerging evidence for the potential of occupational back-support exoskeletons (BSEs) to reduce physical demands, and thereby help control/prevent the risk of overexertion injuries associated with manual material handling. However, it is important to understand whether BSEs also introduce any unintended safety challenges. One potential risk associated with BSE use is increased risk of falls, since their extra weight, rigid structure, and external hip extension torque may increase demands on the postural control system. However, there is currently limited evidence on whether, and to what extent, BSE use alters postural stability and/or fall risk. The primary goal of this work was to understand the effects of exoskeleton use, and quantify the effects of exoskeleton design parameters, on balance and postural stability, with a focus on passive BSEs used for repetitive lifting work. A comprehensive evaluation of BSE use was performed under controlled laboratory conditions, focusing on three classes of human activity that form the basis of maintaining postural balance in diverse real-life scenarios: maintenance of a specified posture, voluntary movement, and reaction to an external perturbation. The first study demonstrated that during quiet bipedal stance, BSE use increased median frequency and velocity of the center of pressure in the anterior-posterior direction. In the second study on level walking, BSE use caused an increase in gait step width and gait variability, and decrease in the margin of stability. BSE use with high supportive torque led to adapted gait patterns in early-stance phase. Hip range of motion and peak hip flexion velocity also decreased, and participants exhibited different strategies to increase mechanical energy for propelling the leg in late-stance phase: these effects increased with increasing torque applied by the exoskeleton. In the final study, BSE use did not alter the maximal lean angle from which individuals could successfully execute single step balance recovery, following a forward loss of balance. However, several recovery responses were negatively affected by BSE use, including increased reaction time, impeded hip flexion, and reduced margin of stability in the high-torque condition. This is the first systematical investigation to quantify the effects of passive BSEs with multiple supportive torque levels on balance and postural stability. While exoskeleton effects on static balance were minimal, more substantial changes in gait spatiotemporal parameters, hip joint kinematics, and dynamic margins of stability were observed in the later studies. Our results indicate that postural stability deteriorated with exoskeleton use in dynamic conditions, and provide mechanistic insight into how stability is altered by different exoskeleton design factors such as added mass, restricted range of motion, and external hip extension torque. While our results are suggestive of increased fall risk, especially in the high-torque condition, fall risk in real life is moderated by a complex combination of individual and environmental conditions. Future work should consider more complex, realistic tasks and also include a more diverse sample that is studied under longer exposure durations, to further elucidate these findings. Our characterizations of a wide variety of postural responses as a function of exoskeleton torque settings are expected to contribute to improving both design and practice guidelines to facilitate the safe adoption of BSEs in the workplace. / Doctor of Philosophy / Occupational back-support exoskeletons (BSEs) – wearable mechanical systems designed to support, augment, and/or assist back extension – are expected to serve as an alternative workplace intervention to control and prevent overexertion injuries related to manual material handling tasks. While recent studies have shown the beneficial effects of BSE use in terms of physical load reduction on the low back, some concerns have also been raised on unexpected or unintended effects of exoskeletons. One potential risk associated with exoskeleton use is increased risk of falls, since a BSE's extra weight, rigid structure, and external hip extension torque are expected to place increased demands on the postural control system. Increase in fall risk is a critical safety concern, as occupational falls are a serious problem in terms of injuries, medical/industrial cost, and lost work time. However, there exists limited evidence on whether the use of a BSE alters postural stability and/or increases fall risk. Hence, the goal of our study was to quantify the effects of BSE use on postural stability in various conditions related to real-life scenarios, such as standing balance, walking stability and how one would respond to a loss of balance following an external perturbation. Our results showed that during quiet standing, BSE use slightly increased postural sway. In level walking tasks, BSE use had adverse effects on step length, step width, and dynamic stability. Furthermore, wearing a BSE with high supportive torque led to adapted gait patterns in early-stance phase, whereas participants showed different strategies to increase mechanical energy for propelling the leg in late-stance phase. In the final study investigating single step balance recovery following a forward loss of balance, we found that BSE use negatively affects balance recovery, mainly by impeding hip flexion. Thus, our work suggests that exoskeleton use can deteriorate balance and/or postural stability in situations of static standing, voluntary walking, and reacting to an external perturbation, thereby potentially leading to an increase in fall risk. These effects may be more pronounced among specific population sub-groups such as older workers, and may also affect individuals more severely under conditions of stress or fatigue. Hence, future studies must include more rigorous testing of BSE use using a variety of challenging and realistic scenarios, and also include more diverse population samples. The findings from this work are expected to contribute to improving design and practice guidelines to facilitate the safe adoption of BSEs in the workplace.

With the purpose of enriching my walking bass lines I have studied the work of Israel Crosby, who is most famously associated with the Ahmad Jamal Trio. His walking bass line- construction hints to his background as a musician from the swing-era, with a foundation in tuba-playing. The 2017 paper “Israel Crosby (1919-1962): An Analysis of His Bass Line Construct” by Gibral Anees Kahn worked as an aid in my attempt to dissect the idiosyncrasies of Crosby in addition to my transcription work, which was focused on memorizing and internalizing, rather than reading the transcriptions as sheet music. By studying three recordings I made several conclusions about Crosby’s habits and methods which I could implement in my own playing. By habitually playing the transcriptions and listening extensively to the music of Ahmad Jamal over the course of 6 months, I engrained parts of Crosby’s playing which was demonstrated in the devoted recital concert, that featured a diverse repertoire. The project resulted in me developing my playing in both conscious and unconscious ways. / <p>Repertoar:</p><p>This Can't Be Love - Richard Rodgers</p><p>Out of the Past - Benny Golson</p><p>Prelude to a Kiss - Duke Ellington</p><p>Bitty Ditty - Thad Jones</p><p>I Get a Kick Out of You - Cole Porter</p><p>Third Movement - Jeb Patton</p><p></p><p>Medverkande:</p><p>Jacob Sandberg - Bas</p><p>Elias Larrsson - Piano</p><p>Albin Eklund - Trummor</p>