Gait deviations in children with cerebral palsy : a modeling approach

Lankhorst, G.J. [Promotor]Harlaar, J. [Copromotor]Doorenbosch, C.A.M. [Copromotor

'Typical of the New Zealand Occupational Distribution'?: A Reconsideration of Catholic Interwar Employment Patterns

During the 1920s and 1930s, New Zealand Catholics often characterised themselves as a relatively poor community, and mostly engaged in low paid, unskilled employment. In the 1970s, reflecting on the Church fifty years earlier, historian Ernest Simmons claimed that Catholics tried to explain their relative lack of social and career advancement by blaming the Masons and other opponents and by creating 'a myth that Catholics had always been poor'. In his seminal 1990 work on the Irish in New Zealand, Donald Akenson attempted to debunk this myth, declaring that 'the dead centre normality of Irish Catholics is striking' and that they were 'typical of the New Zealand occupational distribution'

Customizing learning programs to the organization and its emplyees:How HRD practitioners create tailored learning programs

This study investigates how HRD practitioners customise learning programs, that is, tailor them to take into account the demands set by organisation and participants. A theoretical account of the relations between learning programmes and organisational/individual characteristics is provided. Results from an action-research project involving 13 learning programmes conducted in healthcare institutions are presented. The main conclusion of the study is that the seven HRD practitioners in our sample used few strategies to customise learning programmes

Recovery of arm-hand function after stroke: developing neuromechanical biomarkers to optimize rehabilitation strategies.

The aim of this thesis was to explore the neuromechanics of recovery of arm-hand function after stroke. A literature review revealed six articles that measured biomechanical and electromyographical outcome measures simultaneously, while applying active and passive tasks and multiple movement velocities to separate neural and non-neural contributors to movement disorders after stroke. Therefore, a neuromechanic assessment protocol was developed. Parameters were responsive to clinical status and had good to excellent test-retest reliability. Selective muscle activation was assessed with high measurement reliability and was significantly lower in chronic stroke patients compared to healthy participants. Longitudinally, neuromechanical parameters were combined with data on arm-hand function at six months after stroke. Paresis and diminished modulation of reflexes were associated with poor functional outcome. Changes in tissue properties were represented by a shift in wrist rest angle towards flexion and decline in passive range of motion. Increase in active range of motion and steady rest angle contributed most to prediction of functional outcome. The precision diagnostics provided by a neuromechanical assessment protocol could support clinical decision making and should be used in prediction models and as biomarkers in recovery of arm-hand function after stroke, for example by improving the selection of time-window and patients.ZON/MW grant 89000001LUMC / Geneeskund