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It has been hypothesized that during a motion task the central nervous system controls the skeletal muscles partitioning them into synergetic groups, hence effectively reducing the dimensionality of the control problem. The identification of muscle groups that are co-activated remains an open problem: its solution could have important implications in the design of training or rehabilitation protocols. In this article, we combine Bayesian inverse problem techniques and data science algorithms to identify muscle synergies in human motion from the motion tracker time series of positions of fiducial markers on the body during the task. The inverse problem of estimating the muscle activation patterns from the motion tracking data is cast in the Bayesian framework, and the posterior distribution of muscle activations is explored using Myobolica, a Gibbs-sampler-based Markov chain Monte Carlo sampler. A low-rank approximation of the muscle activation patterns is then obtained via a sparsity promoting Bayesian non-negative matrix factorization of the sample mean, where the sparse coefficient vectors correspond to groups of muscles that show co-activation over the sample. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Frontiers of applied inverse problems in science and engineering’. 

A single particle representation of a self-propelled microorganism in a viscous incompressible fluid is derived based on regularised Stokeslets in three dimensions. The formulation is developed from a limiting process in which two regularised Stokeslets of equal and opposite strength but with different size regularisation parameters approach each other. A parameter that captures the size difference in regularisation provides the asymmetry needed for propulsion. We show that the resulting limit is the superposition of a regularised stresslet and a potential dipole. The model framework is then explored relative to the model parameters to provide insight into their selection. The particular case of two identical particles swimming next to each other is presented and their stability is investigated. Additional flow characteristics are incorporated into the modelling framework with in the addition of a rotlet double to characterise rotational flows present during swimming. Lastly, we show the versatility of deriving the model in the method of regularised Stokeslets framework to model wall effects of an infinite plane wall using the method of images.