The study, the first to test the influence of arm training on post-stroke leg function, is published ahead of print in the Journal of Neurophysiology. It was chosen as an APSselect article for February.

Researchers from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, worked with a group of older adults who had had a stroke between 7 months and 17 years prior to the study. The volunteers participated in three 30-minute, moderate-intensity arm cycling training sessions each week for five weeks. The research team measured the volunteers’ physical abilities before and after arm training using several standardized scales and tests of physical function, including:

– Six Minute Walk, which measures how far a person can walk in six minutes;

– Timed 10 Meter Walk, which measures how quickly a person can walk 10 meters; and the

– Timed Up and Go, which measures the time it takes to stand up from a seated position, walk 10 feet, turn around, walk back and sit down again.

The researchers also tested electrical activity in the muscles and stretch reflexes in the lower legs and wrists during both arm cycling and walking tests.

The participants improved their performance significantly on all of the walking tests — as much as 28 percent in the Timed Up and Go test. Several volunteers had less tightness in their muscles after completing the arm cycling trial, but there was no significant change in grip strength. Nerve activity increased during arm cycling as well.

“Arm cycling training activated interlimb networks that contribute to the coordination of rhythmic walking,” the researchers wrote. In other words, nerves in the arms activated and adapted to improve function of the spinal cord in other areas of the body, such as the legs, affected by stroke.

These results could have a large impact on stroke rehabilitation, even years after injury, Science Daily reported.

“Although improvements in walking may not be as robust as those from other training modalities, they do highlight the integral role that training the arms can have on rehabilitation of human locomotion,” the research team wrote.

In a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in Tehran on Saturday, Shamkhani decried the UK sales of weapons to violators of human rights, such as the Saudi Arabian and Bahraini regimes.

While the blockade and bombing of Yemen have drawn international condemnation, those aiding and abetting such crimes are also regarded as violators of human rights by the world public opinion, the Iranian official said.

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.

Over 14,000 Yemenis, including thousands of women and children, have lost their lives in the deadly military campaign.

Shamkhani also referred to US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize the city of al-Quds (Jerusalem) as the new capital of Israel, saying the move has unified voices across the Muslim world and put the spotlight on Palestine, the Islamic world’s paramount issue.

For his part, Johnson voiced London’s opposition to the US decision to declare Quds capital of Israel, saying Britain will keep its embassy in Tel Aviv.

Unilateral measures would hamper the peace process, he added.

Heading a diplomatic delegation, Johnson arrived in Tehran on Saturday morning and held a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Iran and Britain moved to improve relations after finalization of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a nuclear agreement between Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany), which came into force in January 2016.

“We are opposed to outbreak of any arms race, as in East Asia, and favor stability and peace in the Korean Peninsula,” President Rouhani said in a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in New York on Tuesday.

Highlighting Iran’s good relations with Japan, South Korea and China, President Rouhani stressed the need for efforts to ensure calm in East Asia, saying Tehran would spare no effort to promote stability and security across the region.

“Weapons of mass destruction pose a threat to the entire world; we are opposed to the nuclear weapons and to the threats using them, and have explicitly expressed our view,” the Iranian president added.

For his part, the Japanese premier denounced North Korea’s recent move to launch a missile that flew over the Japanese territories, saying the UN Security Council and the international community should unanimously condemn Pyongyang’s actions and press it to change its behavior.

In its latest launch last week, North Korea fired a ballistic missile from the capital Pyongyang that flew over northern Japan, drawing strong reactions from its neighbors.

The September 15 launch was the longest ever test flight of a ballistic missile by North Korea.

It followed the country’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test earlier this month.

The proposal for a government-backed armed group that would protect its own communities from the Taliban and Daesh (also known as ISIL or ISIS) comes as Afghanistan’s security forces, demoralized by killings and desertions, struggle to beat back a rampant insurgency, AFP reported.

But the proposal has raised concerns that the local forces could become unruly and turn into another abusive militia terrorizing the people it is supposed to defend.

“The Afghan government’s expansion of irregular forces could have enormously dangerous consequences for civilians,” said Patricia Gossman, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The New York-based group said Western diplomats in Kabul familiar with the plan – modelled on the Indian Territorial Army that supports the country’s regular forces – said Afghan officials had expressed concerns the militia could be used by “powerful strongmen” or become “dependent on local patronage networks”.

American and Afghan officials told AFP the fighters would come under the command of the Afghan army and be better trained than the Afghan Local Police – a village-level force set up by the United States in 2010 and accused of human rights violations.

“Right now we rely on commandos and air strikes to retake the lost territories but after the commandos leave we don’t have enough forces to hold onto the territories,” said a senior defense ministry official who asked not to be named.

“The force will operate under an army corps and will be used to fill the gaps. They will be recruited from the locals and will be numbered around 20,000.”

Defense ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri confirmed to AFP that a plan for “local forces” was being discussed.

“People will be recruited from their areas because they know their regions and how to keep them,” Waziri said, but added there was no guarantee it would be implemented.

A spokesman for NATO’s Resolute Support train and assist mission also confirmed a proposal for an Afghan territorial army was on the table.

But another American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told AFP the idea was still in “the brainstorming phase.”

The Afghan government and its foreign backers have been cultivating militias to bolster the 330,000-strong Afghan National Security and Defense Forces as they battle to get the upper hand in the grinding conflict.

In Afghanistan, militias – private armies and government-backed armed groups – have a long and chequered history in the war-torn country and many Afghans are wary of them.

Civilian casualties were at record highs in the first six months of 2017, a UN report showed, with forces loyal to the Afghan government accounting for nearly 20 percent of the deaths and injuries.

Since NATO ended its combat mission in 2014 the Taliban has been gaining ground and Daesh is expanding its footprint.

As of February only about 60 percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts were reported to be under government control, according to the US watchdog agency SIGAR.

Earlier this year Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered a near doubling of the country’s elite fighting force from 17,000 as part of a four-year roadmap that also aims to strengthen Afghanistan’s air force.

While US President Donald Trump’s commitment to increase American troop numbers and leave them there indefinitely has been welcomed by Afghan authorities, they know it will take time to improve the fighting abilities of their security forces.

With parliamentary and presidential elections planned in the next two years they want a security quick fix.

But critics fear that rather than support Afghanistan’s beleaguered security forces, the militia could aggravate factionalism and push Afghanistan deeper into conflict.

“It’s a tool that the US military and successive Afghan governments have reached for and it looks like a solution to their problems but actually the real solution would be to have a functioning ANA [Afghan National Army] and ANP [Afghan National Police],” Kate Clark, a senior analyst at Afghanistan Analysts Network, told AFP.

“It’s a dangerous thing to play with, arming your civilians.”