• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.99-104
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• 2017

Background: Workers laboring in steel industries in tropical settings with high ambient temperatures are subjected to thermally stressful environments that can create well-known risks of heat-related illnesses and limit workers' productivity. Methods: A cross-sectional study undertaken in a steel industry in a city nicknamed "Steel City" in Southern India assessed thermal stress by wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) and level of dehydration from urine color and urine specific gravity. A structured questionnaire captured self-reported heat-related health symptoms of workers. Results: Some 90% WBGT measurements were higher than recommended threshold limit values ($27.2-41.7^{\circ}C$) for heavy and moderate workloads and radiational heat from processes were very high in blooming-mill/coke-oven ($67.6^{\circ}C$ globe temperature). Widespread heat-related health concerns were prevalent among workers, including excessive sweating, fatigue, and tiredness reported by 50% workers. Productivity loss was significantly reported high in workers with direct heat exposures compared to those with indirect heat exposures ($x^2=26.1258$, degrees of freedom = 1, p < 0.001). Change in urine color was 7.4 times higher among workers exposed to WBGTs above threshold limit values (TLVs). Conclusion: Preliminary evidence shows that high heat exposures and heavy workload adversely affect the workers' health and reduce their work capacities. Health and productivity risks in developing tropical country work settings can be further aggravated by the predicted temperature rise due to climate change, without appropriate interventions. Apart from industries enhancing welfare facilities and designing control interventions, further physiological studies with a seasonal approach and interventional studies are needed to strengthen evidence for developing comprehensive policies to protect workers employed in high heat industries.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.275-282
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• 2018

Mountain trams are an environmental-friendly transportation system that run wirelessly on an embedded track constructed on previous mountain roads, and can run despite the frozen road. On the other hand, there is some difficulty on sharp and steep tracks. In this study, after possible technical problems were defined in mountain trams running on a sharp and steep track, the design solutions for the interface structure of bogie and carbody were proposed. In addition, a prototype was made and its performance was tested to verify the solutions. Because the difference in the distance of the inner and outer rails on a sharp curve is severe enough to interrupt running, independent rotating wheels with different angular speeds were developed and applied. To prevent derailment due to the large attack angle and lateral force caused by the previous vehicle of 2bogie-and-1carbody on the sharp curve, a vehicle with 1bogie-and-1carbody was designed and applied. A prototype vehicle of 1bogie-and-1carbody with independent rotating wheels was made to improve the performance during the test running on a small track. A coupler was designed to absorb the large rotations of 3 degrees-of-freedom between the carbodies of a mountain tram running on the steep curved track. After a small scale prototype was made, the performance was verified by a function test.

• Journal of Dental Rehabilitation and Applied Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.245-256
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to analyze the mechanical stress and displacement on the jaws during the simulated bilateral clenching task on the three-dimensional finite element model of the dentated skull with unilateral molar loss. For this study, the computed tomography(G.E.8800 Quick, USA) was used to scan the total length of human skull in the frontal plane at 2.0mm intervals. The fully assembled finite element model consists of the articular disc, maxilla, mandible, teeth, periodontal ligament and cranium. The FE model was used to simulate the bilateral clenching in intercuspal position. The loading condition was the force of the masseter muscle exerted on the mandible as reported by Korioth et al. degrees of freedom of the zygomatic region where the masseter muscle is attached were fixed as restraints. In order to reflect the actual action of the muscles force, the displacement of the region was attached where the muscle is connected to the temporal bone and restraint conditions were given values identical to values at the attachment region of the masticatory muscle but with the opposite direction of the reaction from when the muscle force is acted on the mandible. Although the mandible generally has higher displacement and von Mises stress than the maxilla, its mandibular corpus on the molar-loss side has a higher stress and displacement than the molar-presence side. Because the displacement and von Mises Stress was the highest on the lateral surface of mandibular corpus with molar loss, the stress level of the condyle on the molar-loss side is greater than that of the molar-presence side, which in turn caused the symphysis of the mandible to bend. In conclusion, the unilateral posterior bite collapse with molar loss under para-functional activities such as bruxism and clenching can affect the stress concentration on the condyle and mandibular corpus. It is therefore necessary to consider the biomechanical function of dento-skeleton under masticatory force while designing the occlusal scheme of restoration on alveolar bone with the posterior collapse.

• The Korean Journal of Food & Health Convergence
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2019

Smoking has become one of the public health harzard affecting the world. In the UK, smoking is responsible for around one in five deaths. The illnesses caused by smoking extend beyond the well-reported links with cancer, heart disease and respiratory illnesses. Hence the research to determine the awareness of the predisposing factor to smoking among adults in sokoto metropolis. A cross-sectional form of descriptive survey research design was used for this study. This is because descriptive studies are used when the characteristics of a population are either unknown or partially known (Hennekens & Buring, 2007), and it was used by Ganley and Rosario (2013) in a related research this justified the use of similar design in a study of similar nature.Two hundred and seventy returned questionnaire was collected, analyzed using descriptive statistic of frequency count, normative percentage and grand mean; as well as inferential statistics of chi-square (${\chi}^2$). The level of significant was fixed at 0.05. Appropriate degrees of freedom were worked out. There was statistical significant influence or relationship with marital status on the predisposing factors of smoking chi-square of 19716.516 greater than the critical value 43.77297at df 30 p<0.05. There were statistical significance chi-square =27468.348 which is greater than the critical value 43.77297 at df= 30. These show that there is a relationship on gender awareness of predisposing factors to smoking rejecting the null hypotheses. The respondents across different lever/year higher institution shows that the awareness of predisposing factors of smoking there were a statistical significance difference chi-square =7168.429 (df=88) greater than critical value 102.342 rejecting the null hypotheses. There is consistent evidence that links exposure to depictions of smoking in movies and initiation of smoking in young people. Over the years television shows and films have effectively built up associations between smoking and glamour, sex and risk-taking. Social learning theory describes how we learn by example from others. We are strongly influenced by our parents, and other people we look up to, such as peers, actors and pop stars. This can lead us to emulate their behaviour and try smoking.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.481-487
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• 2019

Additive manufacturing is a state-of-the-art manufacturing process technology in which three-dimensional structures are fabricated by laminating two-dimensional sections of a structure using various materials such as plastic, ceramics, and metals. The additive manufacturing technology has the advantage of high design freedom, while the surface property (roughness) of the finished product varies depending on the process conditions, which necessitates performing a post-process after the products are manufactured. In this study, the surface roughness of a structure made of polyamide 12, which was manufactured by SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) and MJF (Multi Jet Fusion) process was compared. The processing condition was classified by the building orientation of structure as 0, 45, and 90 degrees, which is the angle between the analytical surface and the horizontal plane of the fabrication platform. Structures with a hole of various diameters ranging from 1mm to 10mm were manufactured and the hole characteristics (ratio of hole depth to diameter) and results of the specimens were compared. As a result of the surface characteristics analysis, the surface roughness value of the specimens manufactured with a building orientation of $45^{\circ}$ was the highest in both technologies. In the case of the through-hole structure fabrication, the shape was maintained with 5mm and 10mm diameter holes regardless of the building orientation, although the hole forming was difficult for the smaller holes.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.329-334
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• 2017

The structures, which are made up with the huge number of degrees-of-freedom and the assembly of substructures, have a great complexity. In order to increase the computational efficiency, the analysis models have to be simplified. Many substructuring techniques have been developed to simplify large-scale engineering problems. The techniques are very powerful for solving nonlinear problems which require many iterative calculations. In this paper, a modal derivatives-based model order reduction method, which is able to capture the stretching-bending coupling behavior in geometrically nonlinear systems, is adopted and investigated for its performance evaluation. The quadratic terms in nonlinear beam theory, such as Green-Lagrange strains, can be explained by the modal derivatives. They can be obtained by taking the modal directional derivatives of eigenmodes and form the second order terms of modal reduction basis. The method proposed is then applied to a co-rotational finite element formulation that is well-suited for geometrically nonlinear problems. Numerical results reveal that the end-shortening effect is very important, in which a conventional modal reduction method does not work unless the full model is used. It is demonstrated that the modal derivative approach yields the best compromised result and is very promising for substructuring large-scale geometrically nonlinear problems.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.161-168
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• 2015

In this paper, we present an inertial sensor-based gait distance measurement system using accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer. To minimize offset and gain error of inertial sensors, we performed the calibration using the self-made calibration jig with 9 degrees of freedom. For measuring accurate gait distance, we used gradient descent algorithm to remove gravity error and used analysis of gait pattern to remove drift error. Finally, we measured a gait distance by double-integration of the error-removed acceleration data. To evaluate the performance of our system, we walked 10m in a straight line indoors to observe the improvement of removing error which compared un-calibrated to calibrated data. Also, the gait distance measured by the system was compared to the measurement of the Vicon motion capture system. The evaluation resulted in the improvement of $31.4{\pm}14.38%$(mean${\pm}$S.D.), $78.64{\pm}10.84%$ and $69.71{\pm}26.25%$ for x, y and z axis, respectively when walked in a straight line, and a root mean square error of 0.10m, 0.16m, and 0.12m for x, y and z axis, respectively when compared to the Vicon motion capture system.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.189-199
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• 2004

A bridge transported servo manipulator (BTSM) system for the advanced spent fuel conditioning process (ACP) has been developed to overcome the limitation of access, which is a drawback of mechanical master-slave manipulators (MSM) for the equipment maintenance. The servo manipulator is composed of a slave manipulator attached to the telescoping tubesets equipped with the overhead bridge installed at a hot cell and a master manipulator installed at an out-of-hot cell. Each manipulator has 7 degrees-of-freedom (DOF): a body rotation, an upper-arm tilt, a lower-arm tilt, a lower-arm rotation, a wrist pan & tilt, and a grasp motion. A wire-driven mechanism for a lower-arm rotation, a wrist pan and tilt, and a grasp motion of the manipulator has been adopted to increase the handling capacity compared to the manipulator weight and decrease the friction. The main disadvantage of the wire-driven mechanism is that if one link is in motion, other links can be affected. In this paper, the transmission characteristics among the wire-driven links have been formulated to overcome this drawback. The unexpected behaviors are confirmed by analyses of transmission characteristics as well as experiments. Also, the experimental results show that the unexpected behaviors are greatly decreased by the proposed compensation equations.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Prosthodontics
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• v.61 no.4
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• pp.257-267
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• 2023

Purpose. The purpose of the study was to fabricate a prototype robotic simulator for dental education, to test whether it could simulate mandibular movements, and to assess the possibility of the stimulator responding to stimuli during dental practice. Materials and methods. A virtual simulator model was developed based on segmentation of the hard tissues using cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) data. The simulator frame was 3D printed using polylactic acid (PLA) material, and dentiforms and silicone face skin were also inserted. Servo actuators were used to control the movements of the simulator, and the simulator's response to dental stimuli was created by pressure and water level sensors. A water level test was performed to determine the specific threshold of the water level sensor. The mandibular movements and mandibular range of motion of the simulator were tested through computer simulation and the actual model. Results. The prototype robotic simulator consisted of an operational unit, an upper body with an electric device, a head with a temporomandibular joint (TMJ) and dentiforms. The TMJ of the simulator was capable of driving two degrees of freedom, implementing rotational and translational movements. In the water level test, the specific threshold of the water level sensor was 10.35 ml. The mandibular range of motion of the simulator was 50 mm in both computer simulation and the actual model. Conclusion. Although further advancements are still required to improve its efficiency and stability, the upper-body prototype simulator has the potential to be useful in dental practice education.