
A research paper by graduate student Takafumi Fujiwara (D3) has been published in the international journal "Primates".
It was a difficult process that took more than a year from submission to peer review and acceptance. He responded carefully to the harsh comments and constructive suggestions from the reviewers. Thanks to them, the paper turned out to be a very beautiful one.
His study clarified the kinematic strategy to bipedal locomotion on the tree branch in gibbons. In non-human primates, the stable bipedal walking on the branch is realized by the kinematic changes, but in humans, it is done without any particular adjustments in modern humans because it has been realized through skeletal evolution in human ancestors. His paper supports for an evolutionary hypothesis that this primate characteristic of the arboreal bipedal locomotion strategy was one of physical foundations for our ancestors to smoothly acquire upright bipedal walking on the ground.
After going through his tough work of extracting landmarks from each and every frame of the vast footage of walking movements captured synchronously by eight cameras, he successfully published a beautiful paper. Congrats!
The final defense of his doctoral thesis is at the end of this month. Good Luck!!