Invention: Muscle-fatigue blocker

Fatigue occurs when muscles become weaker with repeated or intense exercise, or as a result of an illness.

Researchers have long thought that fatigue is caused by a build-up of lactic acid in the muscles, but in the past decade, a number of teams have shown that this process does not cause fatigue (and may in fact prevent it).

Muscle-fibre cells contract when calcium ions are released inside them, under the control of ion channels called ryanodine receptors.

Now, a growing body of evidence suggests that fatigue is actually related to how these calcium ions are released and processed. It seems that the ryanodine receptors can behave erratically after excessive exercise or due to disease, allowing calcium ions to leak out inappropriately and leading to fatigue.

So Andrew Marks at Columbia University, New York, has developed a drug that can switch those receptors back to their stable state, making it harder for fatigue to set in.

His invention may make it possible for athletes, soldiers, or anyone else doing strenuous exercise, to stave off muscle fatigue for longer.

Read the full muscle-fatigue blocker patent application.

Aesthetics of standing

Posturogram showing the trace of the center-of-pressure (COP) while standing quiet. Length unit = mm.

Three sources of balancing information

Three sources of balancing information.
The first source is proprioceptive sensors in our muscles that tell our brains where the parts of our bodies are in relationship to each other. The second source is the tiny hairs in our inner ears called cilia, the vestibular system, that tells us how our heads are positioned. The third source, and probably the most important, is our eyes. Eyes tell us which way is up and which way is down.

Spinning chair and balancing platform.
The spinning chair is called a centrifuge. The balancing platform is known as the "balance booth" but is actually a "posturography system."

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2003/news-balance.asp

The Cyber Air Base

Kinesthesia is your sense of motion derived from the movement of your muscles and skeleton coupled with your sense of balance from your inner ear. Virtogo Inc. motion platforms are designed to enhance kinesthesia with a 6DOF capability constructed with the same mechanical architecture used in aerospace and military simulators. The pneumatic actuation of our motion platform creates a different kind of feel from electric and hydraulic platforms.

Powered Shoes

A pair of motorised roller skates that cancel out a person's steps could let users naturally explore virtual reality landscapes in confined spaces.

Passive Dress

First presented at the frank elbaz gallery in 2005, Passive Dress by Antal Lakner looks like a spacesuit. And true enough, the suit comprises ergonomic weights that increase normal earth gravity by 150 to 200%. So wearing the Passive Dress is a considerable physical effort.

Says Antal Lakner, "the movements of a person wearing the suit become slower and more meditative." You have to focus on their body position and the basic movements. The envelope or shell hampers these basic movements. But it is also an opportunity to form new links with space, and new ways of occuying it.

Choreographer's Approach to Microgavity

Artists and scientists work on what dancers call "being." We belong to the species Homo sapiens, ruled by gravity. Our "being" is thus deeply connected to gravity. "Modern dance" uses techniques inlolving kinesthetics, anatomy and improvisation, which are are adapted to a cultural, technological, political environment. It deals with an adjustment process that would enable human beings who suffer from the division of inner self to find greater harmony between body and soul.
It symbolizes lightness, freedom of movement and an active search for elevation, defying rules of gravity.
[needs complement]
Kitsou Dubois, Dance and Weightlessness: Dancers' Training and Adaptation Problems in Microgravity, Leonardo, Vol. 27, No. 1. (1994), p. 57-64.