The purpose with this essay was to study the knowledge of children today between six and eight years old about the human body and its function. A second purpose was to study how junior-level educationalist were carrying through there tuition about the human body. I wanted to investigate if the children today hade another knowledge about the human body than children that participated in previous similar investigations. I wanted to investigate this because today we live in another society than before with  more access to information. My first question was to find out what children thought that we humans looked like inside the body and how its works. My second question was how junior-level educationalist do carry out  their tuition. Ten children and tree junior-level educationalist participated in qualitative interviews, interviewed one by one. During the interviews the children were given a picture with a contour of the human body where they could fill in different organ. The most common organs that the children painted on their pictures of the human body where brain, heart, stomach, skeleton and lungs. The children also had some knowledge about the different organs like the skeletons function was to make the body hard, the hearts function was to pump the blood around in our body, the brain control the whole body and the stomach purpose was to take care of the food we eat. The educationalist replied that they used a lot of concrete material and they tried to have miscellaneous tuition. The result of this study is that the children today don’t have so much more knowledge of the human body than children that have been interview in older days. The result also showed that the way the educationalist were teaching hade a positive influents on the students learning. / Syftet med undersökningen var att se vad barn mellan sex och åtta års ålder idag hade för tankar om hur vi människor ser ut inuti vår kropp och hur det fungerar inuti oss men också att undersöka hur lågstadiepedagoger går tillväga vid undervisningen om människokroppen. Jag ville undersöka om barnen idag hade mer kunskap om människokroppen än de barn som ingått i liknande studier tidigare, eftersom vi idag lever i ett informationssamhälle. Min första frågeställning blev att ta reda på barnens tankar om människokroppens inre och hur det fungerar inuti oss. Min andra frågeställning blev hur lågstadiepedagoger gick tillväga med sin undervisning om människokroppen. Tio barn och tre lågstadiepedagoger har medverkat i kvalitativa intervjuer där de intervjuades en och en. Under intervjutillfällena fick barnen en bild med människokroppens kontur för att fylla i olika organ. De vanligaste organen som barnen ritade var hjärna, hjärta, magsäck, skelett och lungorna. Barnen berättade också bl.a. att skelettets funktion var att göra kroppen hård, hjärtat pumpade runt blod i kroppen, hjärnan styrde kroppen, magen tog hand om vår mat. Pedagogerna svarade att de använde mycket konkret material och att de försökte ha en så varierad undervisning som möjligt. Resultatet från denna studie visade att barnen idag inte har så mycket mer kunskap än de barn som ingått i liknande studier från förr. Resultatet visade också att det sätt pedagogerna undervisade på hade en positiv inverkan på elevernas lärande.

Although there have been tremendous improvements in crash safety there has been an increasing trend in side impact fatalities, rising from 30% to 37% of total fatalities from 1975 to 2004 (NHTSA, 2004). Between 1979 and 2004, 63% of AIS≥4 injuries in side impact resulted from thoracic trauma (NHTSA, 2004). Lateral impact fatalities, although decreasing in absolute numbers, now comprise a larger percentage of total fatalities. Safety features are typically more effective in frontal collisions compared to side impact due to the reduced distance between the occupant and intruding vehicle in side impact collisions. Therefore, an increased understanding of the mechanisms governing side impact injury is necessary in order to improve occupant safety in side impact auto crash. This study builds on an advanced numerical human body model with focus on a detailed thoracic model, which has been validated using available post mortem human subject (PMHS) test data for pendulum and side sled impact tests (Forbes, 2005). Crash conditions were investigated through use of a modified side sled model used to reproduce the key conditions present in full scale crash tests. The model accounts for several important factors that contribute to occupant response based on the literature. These factors are; the relative velocities between the seat and door, the occupant to door distance, the door shape and compliance. The side sled model was validated by reproducing the crash conditions present in FMVSS 214 and IIHS side impact tests and comparing the thoracic compression, velocity, and Viscous Criterion (VC) response determined by the model to the response of the ES-2 dummy used in the crash tests. Injury was predicted by evaluating VCmax, selected for its ability to predict rate-sensitive soft tissue injury during thoracic compression (Lau & Viano, 1986). The Ford Taurus FMVSS 214 and Nissan Maxima IIHS tests were selected from side impact crash test data found in the NHTSA database because they included factors not present in standard side impact test procedures. These factors were; the presence of door accelerometers used to provide input velocities to the side impact model and the use of a ES-2 (rather than the SID) to facilitate comparison of VC response to the human body model. Also, the two crash test procedures (FMVSS 214 & IIHS) were selected to ensure accurate side impact model response to different impact scenarios. The side impact model was shown to closely reproduce the timing and injury response of the full-scale FMVSS 214 side impact test of a Ford Taurus, as well as the IIHS side impact test of a Nissan Maxima. The side impact model was then used to investigate the effects of door to occupant spacing, door velocity profile, armrest height, seat foam, restraint system, and arm position. It was found that the VCmax was controlled by both the first and second peaks typically found in door velocity profiles, but the effect of each varies depending on the situation. This study found that VCmax was reduced by 73-88% when door intrusion was eliminated compared to the VC response incurred by an intruding door. Also, the presence of a deformable door based on physical geometry and material characteristics rather than a simplified rigid door reduced VCmax by 16% in this study. The study on seat foam determined that significant effects on VC response can be made by modest adjustments in foam properties. Low stiffness seat foam was found to increase VCmax by 41% when compared to the VC response when using high stiffness foam. Arm position has been proven to be a relevant factor in side impact crash. Positioning the arms parallel to the thorax, in the “down” position, caused a 42% increase in VCmax when compared to the VC response determined with the arms positioned at 45 degrees. Finally, although restraint systems have limited influence on side impact crash safety compared to front and rear impacts, this study found that the presence of a pre-tensioning restraint system reduced VCmax by 13% when compared to the VC response of an un-belted occupant. It should be noted that the current study was limited to velocity profiles obtained from a specific FMVSS 214 test and therefore results and observations are restricted to the confines of the input conditions used. However, the side impact model developed is a useful tool for evaluating factors influencing side impact and can be used to determine occupant response in any side impact crash scenario when the appropriate input conditions are provided.

Thoracic injury is the most dominant segment of automotive side impact traumas. A numerical model that can predict such injuries in crash simulation is essential to the process of designing a safer motor vehicle. The focus of this study was to develop a numerical model to predict lung response and injury in side impact car crash scenarios. A biofidelic human body model was further developed. The geometry, material properties and boundary condition of the organs and soft tissues within the thorax were improved with the intent to ensure stress transmission continuity and model accuracy. The thoracic region of the human body model was revalidated against three pendulum and two sled impact scenarios at different velocities. Other body regions such as the shoulder, abdomen, and pelvis were revalidated. The latest model demonstrated improvements in every response category relative to the previous version of the human body model. The development of the lung model involved advancements in the material properties, and boundary conditions. An analytical approach was presented to correct the lung properties to the in-situ condition. Several injury metric predictor candidates of pulmonary contusion were investigated and compared based on the validated pendulum and sled impact scenarios. The results of this study confirmed the importance of stress wave focusing, reflection, and concentration within the lungs. The bulk modulus of the lung had considerable influence on injury metric outcomes. Despite the viscous criterion yielded similar response for different loading conditions, this study demonstrated that the level of contusion volume varied with the size of the impact surface area. In conclusion, the human body model could be used for the analysis of thoracic response in automotive impact scenarios. The overall model is capable of predicting thoracic response and lung contusion. Future development on the heart and aorta can expand the model capacity to investigate all vital organ injury mechanisms.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2008. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-170). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-236). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users. Address: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3024513.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Feb. 3, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 72-78).

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of English, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Comparative Literature, August 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 390-413).

Geometric reconstruction of dynamic objects is a fundamental task of computer vision and graphics, and modeling human body of high fidelity is considered to be a core of this problem. Traditional human shape and motion capture techniques require an array of surrounding cameras or subjects wear reflective markers, resulting in a limitation of working space and portability. In this dissertation, a complete process is designed from geometric modeling detailed 3D human full body and capturing shape dynamics over time using a flexible setup to guiding clothes/person re-targeting with such data-driven models. As the mechanical movement of human body can be considered as an articulate motion, which is easy to guide the skin animation but has difficulties in the reverse process to find parameters from images without manual intervention, we present a novel parametric model, GMM-BlendSCAPE, jointly taking both linear skinning model and the prior art of BlendSCAPE (Blend Shape Completion and Animation for PEople) into consideration and develop a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) to infer both body shape and pose from incomplete observations. We show the increased accuracy of joints and skin surface estimation using our model compared to the skeleton based motion tracking. To model the detailed body, we start with capturing high-quality partial 3D scans by using a single-view commercial depth camera. Based on GMM-BlendSCAPE, we can then reconstruct multiple complete static models of large pose difference via our novel non-rigid registration algorithm. With vertex correspondences established, these models can be further converted into a personalized drivable template and used for robust pose tracking in a similar GMM framework. Moreover, we design a general purpose real-time non-rigid deformation algorithm to accelerate this registration. Last but not least, we demonstrate a novel virtual clothes try-on application based on our personalized model utilizing both image and depth cues to synthesize and re-target clothes for single-view videos of different people.