Dear Biomch-L readers,

On Thursday this week (22 October), one of our subscribers, Arthur ("Knoek")
van Soest will defend in public his PhD Thesis "Jumping from Structure to
Control - A Simulation Study of Explosive Movements". Knoek has kindly made
available the summary of his thesis, which I have stored on the Biomch-L
fileserver. Interested readers may retrieve it by sending the following
command either interactively (EARN/BITNET only) or in the main body of an
email note to ListServ@hearn.bitnet / ListServ@nic.SURFnet.NL (Subject: line
irrelevant):

SEND VANSOEST SUMMARY BIOMCH-L

Below are the first two paragraphs of his summary. Knoek has indicated
that he has a number of copies left for interested Biomch-L readers.

Knoek, good luck in three days from now!

HJW

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JUMPING FROM STRUCTURE TO CONTROL
A Simulation Study of Explosive Movements

Ph.D. Thesis of:

Arthur J. van Soest

Faculty of Human Movement Sciences
Vrije Universiteit
van der Boechorststraat 9
NL 1081 BT Amsterdam
Netherlands
email: KNOEK@SARA.NL

22 October 1992

SUMMARY

The central question in the area of 'movement control' is how
animals and humans organize their movements in order to meet specific
environment-related goals (e.g. thread a needle; jump a fence). From a
purely scientific point of view, this question is interesting in its
own right. In addition, partial answers to this question are
applicable in fields like rehabilitation medicine, sports and
ergonomics. The actor and the environment, being the essential
elements in the central question mentioned, are mutually coupled: on
the one hand, we change the environment through our movements (which
are based on perceptual cues), and on the other hand we perceive the
(changes in the) environment.
In this thesis one of these actor-environment couplings is
studied. We focus largely on the 'output' side of the actor, i.e. the
high energy coupling between actor and environment. Furthermore, we
restrict ourselves to a purely mechanical perspective. Specifically,
this study is aimed at improving our understanding of the relation
between muscle stimulation pattern and structure of the musculo-
skeletal system on the one hand, and achievement on the other hand.
Many specific questions in this respect cannot be answered in an
experimental setting because the independent variables do not lend
themselves to experimental manipulation. Therefore, mathematical
modelling and simulation have a prominent place in this study.