APSIC: Training and fitting amputees during situations of daily living

Today, the prevalence of major amputation in France can be estimated between 90,000 and 100,000 and the incidence is about 8300 new amputations per year (according to French National Authority for Health estimation). This prevalence is expected to increase in the next decade due to the ageing of the population. Even if prosthetic fitting allows amputee people recovering the walking ability, their autonomy remains limited when crossing obstacles such as slopes, stairs or cross-slopes frequently encountered during outdoors displacements. The aim of the project APSIC was to complete scientific knowledge about adaptation strategies to situations of daily living compared to level walking through an extensive motion analysis study of transtibial and transfemoral amputee compared to non-amputee people. APSIC succeeded in identifying physiologic joint functions and current prosthetic joint limitations in the studied situations, which notably resulted in the design of a prototype of ankle-knee prosthesis adapted to multimodal locomotion of transfemoral amputee. Perspectives of the clinical use of motion analysis within the rehabilitation process were explored and proved to be relevant for personalized approach of motor learning

The nucleon facility NA at PSI

The Nucleon Area (NA) at the Paul-Scherrer-Institut (PSI) was built as a multi-purpose facility for experiments with polarized or unpolarized protons or neutrons. For both kinds of nucleons the available energy ranges from about 100 MeV up to a maximum of 590 MeV. This article presents technical details of the layout of the nucleon beams and areas, the experimental arrangements, and the equipment employed. An experimental program on neutron-proton scattering is presently carried out using the NA facility at PSI. We put special emphasis on the polarized neutron beam and its use to measure the neutron-proton elastic scattering

Spin observables in neutron-proton elastic scattering

We describe here two experiments presently running at PSI using the NA2 polarized neutron beam. They are devoted to the measurement of 2- and 3-spin observables in np elastic scattering for kinetic energies from 230 to 590 MeV with a center of mass angular range from 60 to 180 degrees. The goal is to determine the five NN scattering amplitudes for isospin 0 in a model independent way. Preliminary results for KOSKO and KOSSO spin-transfers are presented