Stroke is an acute impairment of circulation of blood in the brain and it impairs function of all brain or its separate parts. Furthermore, after stroke shows up paralysis of one body side and especially impairs arm function. That’s why the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of early physiotherapy for arm function of patients after stroke. The goals of the research was: to evaluate motions of shoulder girdle, hand and complicated motions of arm before physiotherapy; to evaluate motions of shoulder girdle, hand and complicated motions of arm after physiotherapy; to estimate whether additional physiotherapy improved retraining of arm function. The research was performed in neurological department of Siauliai hospital. Sixty patients after cerebrovascular stroke took part in this study. They where grouped in two groups: thirty patients for control group and thirty patients for investigative group. For control group’s patients was applied a traditional physical therapy for retraining arm function. For investigative group besides the traditional physical therapy were applied additional physical therapy procedures accordingly to Carr and Shepherd (1990) for retraining arm function. Study used these research methods: evaluation of motions of shoulder girdle, evaluation of motions of hand, evaluation of complicated motions of arm and mathematical statistics. Arm function was evaluated by motion assessment scale. Several conclusions were made in summary of results of... [to full text]

Sketching is an important part of creativity process and is used in the design disciplines, concerned with making physical form: mechanical and civil engineering, graphic design, and architecture and physical planning. Almost all designers still begin the design process by sketching their ideas before transferring them to the computer. This helps designers to express nascent ideas fast and naturally and to speed up visual problem solving. Moreover, the importance of sketching in design has been recognized emphasizing that initial drawing allows creative freedom. The sketches represent a rough semblance and functionality of the system and can be essential to understanding the reasoning behind a design. Furthermore, sketching activity makes designers to interact with their sketches, examine all alternative possibilities and explore design solutions in their minds during drawing. This important part of design, which supports ambiguity, imprecision and incremental formalization of ideas as well as rapid exploration of alternatives, is still performed by engineers with the help of paper and pencil. Despite praxis and fondness of natural interface provided by paper, sketching on paper has its own limitations. The main disadvantage of sketching on paper is that you can easily draw the sketch, but editing and improving of design is more problematic. If designer wants to make changes in the sketch, usually he has to take another sheet of paper and basically redraw the sketch... [to full text]