• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.197-204
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the cumulative fatigue of trunk muscles and the period of recovery time during repetitive lifting and lowering task with two different frequencies(4 times/min and 6 times/ min). Eight healthy males with no prior history of LBD(low back disorders) volunteered for this study. Subjects had 2, 3, 4, and 5 minutes recovery time respectively while they were preforming the lifting and lowering task at 15% level of MVC. EMG signals from six trunk muscles were collected and the fatigue level was analyzed quantitatively. In results, the fatigue levels of LES(left elector spinae), RLD(right lattissimus dorsi), LLD(left lattissimus dorsi), RRA(right rectus abdominis) and LRA(left rectus abdominis) were recovered when 3 minutes recovery time was given at 4 times/min frequency. However, the fatgue level of RES(right elector spinae) was recovered when 4 minutes recovery was given. On the other hand, when 6 times/min frequency was used, the RLD, LLD, RRA and LRA were recovered at 5 minutes of recovery time. But for RES and LES, it took longer than 5 minutes to be recovered. This results can be applied to design the adequate length of recovery time to control the cumulative fatigue of trunk muscles in industry with repetitive lifting and lowering task.

• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.43-53
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to survey a perception of frequency & importance level of job performance, from 249 paramedics who were working at fire station. The job related activities of 4 duties, 18 tasks and 145 task elements were checked by 4 rating scale. The data were analyzed using a SPSS program for descriptive statistics. The results of the study were as follows ; 1. Some of the most frequent tasks were medical tx, managing people & organization, trauma care, pt assessment, general coping skill 2. Some of the most frequent task elements were preparation of written reports, operation of pt lifting supplies, transportation of patients on stretchers, administration of cervical collar and utilization of scoop stretcher. 3. Some of the highest level of importance in task were resuscitation of circulation, surgical tx, safety & infection control, environmental emergency care, trauma care. 4. Some of the highest level of importance in task elements were administration of cervical collar, adult CPR, infant CPR, child CPR, and AED. 5. The highest level of task elements in perception of frequency & importance were administration of cervical collar, infection control after pt care, utilization of long back board, disinfection of ambulance after ride a long, care of chest pain pt, care of unconscious pt, tx of asthma. 6. A difference between frequent & importance score were due to lack of supplies(41%), structural problems(30%) and medical control system(16%), lack of skills(10%), Suggestion; 1. This paper would be more reliable and confirm through wilder range of survey. 2. It would be necessary of more depth survey through dacom study from paramedic. 3. Development of field oriented protocol & curriculum that based on task elements which have high score of both frequency & importance level is required.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.3-9
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• 1982

This study demonstrates that certain personal and task factors can be modelled to predict slip potential as well as back loadings durings dynamic pushing and pulling tasks. Such tasks are com- mon to many manual material handling jobs in industry and the results of this work will hopefully be of use in improved job design. The objective of this research is to formulate and validate a dynamic biomechanical model of pushing and pulling a cart. For pushing and pulling tasks, the model can : (1) estimate foot forces for given hand forces, and (2) estimate tors muscle and vertabral column loadings. In order to formulate and validate the model, experiments involving pushing and pulling of a cart were performed. These experiments produced data of the following type : (1) dynamic forces on the feet, (2) hand forces required to move the cart, (3) body motions as functions of various cart motion and (4) back muscle actions. The model was validated using three different methods; precision was tested using correlation between predicted and measured results, accuracy using standard error between of predicted and measured results, and intuitive comparison of predicted results using sensitivity analyses.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.57-70
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• 2002

Back pain is painful for people at a lower lumber(L4/L5 or L5/S1). It is experienced as a most frequent disaster 70％ of workers have suffered from back-pain. Especially, the occurrence rate of back pain for nurses is very high. Therefore, this study investigates female nurses who worked as a part of a medical cost management team, which mainly deal with the medical insurance in a general hospital at Seoul area. These nurses had different job tasks, which used computers for 50％ of their time, so it can be treated as VDT workers. As a first step of this project, a muscle fatigue was measured for these special VDT workers. First, survey for nurses was conducted to figure out what is a real problem of them. Second, to evaluate an experimental data, a medical cost management team was chosen for subjects. Areas of measurement were 3 places that were the trapezius (TR), the medial deltoid (MD), and the erector spine muscle (ES: L4/L5). These areas are most frequently used, so they were chosen for this study. Measurements were taken before work and after work. From these measurements, it was revealed that a fatigue really comes from their main VDT task excluding natural fatigue after work, so their work environment need to be corrected.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Physical Medicine
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.117-124
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• 2009

Purpose：The purpose of this study was to investigate of the change of the forward head posture(FHP) according to computer using time. Methods：Subjects were 30 male and 30 female. The factors of FHP were measured cranial vertical angle, cranial rotation angle, and head, upper back, neck flexion/extension angle according to computer using time. Change of FHP used to Digital Inclinometry(JTech, Dualer IQTM Dual Inclinometer). The data were collected by data logger(Logger Teknologi HB, Akarp, Sweden). Results：Cranial vertical angle, cranial rotation angle, and head, upper back, neck flexion/extension were increased according to computer using time(p<.05). But cranial vertical angle and cranial rotation angle, and head, upper back, neck flexion/extension were not significant differences between male and female group(p>.05). Conclusion：The effects of cranial vertical angle, cranial rotation angl and head, neck and upper back angle depend on the computer task time. Increased of FHP may result increased tension in posture muscles of cervical spine, resulting in a risk of musculoskeletal disorders.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.210-215
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• 2009

In this study event-related optical signals were extracted from the prefrontal cortexes using functional near infrared spectroscopy while subjects were carrying out 2-back working memory tasks. Four events such as start, yes, no, and error were considered based on the onsets of the stimulus, positive true responses, positive false responses, and negative responses in the 2-back working memory task, respectively. The optical signals recorded were analyzed by peri-event histograms and power spectrum distributions. The results showed specific characteristics of the event-related optical neuronal signals and an opened possibility of an application to control a non-invasive brain-computer interface system or an object of a virtual reality.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.124-137
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• 1994

Visual features of a mushroom(Lentinus Edodes, L.) are critical in grading and sorting as most agricultural products are. Because of its complex and various visual features, grading and sorting of mushrooms have been done manually by the human expert. To realize the automatic handling and grading of mushrooms in real time, the computer vision system should be utilized and the efficient and robust processing of the camera captured visual information be provided. Since visual features of a mushroom are distributed over the front and back sides, recognizing sides and states of the stalk including the stalk orientation from the captured image is a prime process in the automatic task processing. In this paper, the efficient and robust recognition process identifying the front and back side and the state of the stalk was developed and its performance was compared with other recognition trials. First, recognition was tried based on the rule set up with some experimental heuristics using the quantitative features such as geometry and texture extracted from the segmented mushroom image. And the neural net based learning recognition was done without extracting quantitative features. For network inputs the segmented binary image obtained from the combined type automatic thresholding was tested first. And then the gray valued raw camera image was directly utilized. The state of the stalk seriously affects the measured size of the mushroom cap. When its effect is serious, the stalk should be excluded in mushroom cap sizing. In this paper, the stalk removal process followed by the boundary regeneration of the cap image was also presented. The neural net based gray valued raw image processing showed the successful results for our recognition task. The developed technology through this research may open the new way of the quality inspection and sorting especially for the agricultural products whose visual features are fuzzy and not uniquely defined.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.1845-1848
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• 2005

The automatic $CO_2$ welding is a manufacturing process to produce high quality joints for metal and it could provide a capability of full automation to enhance productivity. Despite the widespread use in the various manufacturing industries, the full automation of the robotic $CO_2$ welding has not yet been achieved partly because the mathematical model for the process parameters of a given welding task is not fully understood and quantified. Several mathematical models to control welding quality, productivity, microstructure and weld properties in arc welding processes have been studied. However, it is not an easy task to apply them to the various practical situations because the relationship between the process parameters and the bead geometry is non-linear and also they are usually dependent on the specific experimental results. Practically, it is difficult, but important to know how to establish a mathematical model that can predict the result of the actual welding process and how to select the optimum welding condition under a certain constraint. In this research, an attempt has been made to develop an intelligent algorithm to predict the weld geometry (top-bead width, top-bead height, back-bead width and back-bead height) as a function of key process parameters in the robotic $CO_2$welding. A sensitivity analysis has been conducted and compared the relative impact of three process parameters on bead geometry in order to verify the measurement errors on the values of the uncertainty in estimated parameters.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.596-599
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• 2004

The robotic $CO_2$ welding is a manufacturing process to produce high quality joints for metal and it could provide a capability of full automation to enhance productivity. Despite the widespread use in the various manufacturing industries, the full automation of the robotic $CO_2$ welding has not yet been achieved partly because the mathematical model for the process parameters of a given welding task is not fully understood and quantified. Several mathematical models to control welding quality, productivity, microstructure and weld properties in arc welding processes have been studied. However, it is not an easy task to apply them to the various practical situations because the relationship between the process parameters and the bead geometry is non-linear and also they are usually dependent on the specific experimental results. Practically, it is difficult, but important to know how to establish a mathematical model that can predict the result of the actual welding process and how to select the optimum welding condition under a certain constraint. In this research, an attempt has been made to develop an intelligent algorithm to predict the weld geometry (top-bead width, top-bead height, back-bead width and back-bead height) as a function of key process parameters in the robotic $CO_2$welding. To achieve this above objective, Taguchi method was employed using five different process parameters (tip gap, gas flow rate, welding speed, arc current, welding voltage) as a guide for optimization of process parameters.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.72-78
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• 2015

Organic solvents are known toxic effects like vertigo, behavioral obstacle, distracting, and peripheral neuropathy in neuron areas. However, there have been few studies how neurotoxic solvents-exposed workers are affected by the cognitive load of preceding working memory tasks. Therefore, we used fMRI as to measure the neural correlates of working memory impairment in occupational workers who had from chronic exposure to organic solvent. Twenty-nine solvent-exposed workers were included in this study. Each participant concluded the verbal N-back tasks (1- and 2-back) during the fMRI acquisition. Within-group analyses showed fronto-parietal networks were active in each condition. Direct comparisons between 1- and 2-back showed higher activation during the 2-back than 1-back. We found that increased activation of these regions at lower task demand is associated with increased cost of implementing.