Our first journal article based on the YouthShape.US anthropometry study has appeared! We are delighted that this outstanding work led by our post-doc Hayoung Jung has been published, presenting an exceptionally high-resolution, accurate statistical shape model of the pediatric foot. We looked at the effects of BMI on foot shape and found important effects that call into question the utility of existing shoe lasts. Bottom line, the upper quantiles of foot volume at a given length are much higher than they used to be. It's likely that many kids are walking around in shoes that are far too long for them just to have enough space vertically and horizontally. This new model will provide guidance for footwear design, but is also part of a larger program to bring large-scale virtual fit testing with avatar populations (not just a few cases!) to general product design. Check out HumanShape.app for more on this.
A second note: As you are probably aware, journal reviewing is broken -- too many people submitting far more papers than they are qualified to review (and reviewing even fewer). This article took about 14 months to get through review, in spite of edits being minor. Folks: (1) do not accept an article to review that you can't get done in two weeks, (2) actually do the review in the allotted time, and (3) remember that you are obligated to review 3 times as many papers as you submit! That's the way the system works: if each paper has three reviewers, you need to review a minimum of 3x more papers than you publish!
