• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.504-517
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• 2012

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate gender differences in risk factors and sleep, depression, and mobility of Korean elderly with and without low back pain and sciatica. Methods: Data were derived from the 2011 Korean National Survey on Older Adults. Participants included 10,674 community-dwelling elderly. The group of elderly subjects with low back pain and sciatica and the group of elderly subjects without low back pain and sciatica were compared according to gender. Result: Age, monthly income, exercise, arthritis, osteoporosis, and providing caring support were significant risk factors for low back pain and sciatica in elderly male subjects. On the other hand, monthly income, living arrangement, arthritis, osteoporosis, providing caring support, and television watching time were significant risk factors in elderly female subjects. Significant differences in depression and mobility according to low back pain and sciatica were observed in both genders. Conclusion: Risk factors for low back pain and sciatica in elderly differed according to gender. Low back pain and sciatica showed an association with depression and mobility. These findings should be considered in planning for nursing intervention for low back pain and sciatica.

• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.67-75
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to assess the agreement of manual muscle testing (MMT) and test-retest reliability of a hand held dynamometer for the posterior gluteus medius muscle, with and without lumbar stabilization, using a pressure biofeedback unit for patients with low back pain. The pressure biofeedback unit was used to minimize the substitute motion of the lumbopelvic region during hip abduction in patients lying on their side. Fifteen patients with low back pain participated in this study. A tester determined the MMT grades of the posterior gluteus medius with and without the pressure biofeedback unit. Active hip abduction range of motion with an inclinometer and the strength of their posterior gluteus medius using a hand held dynamometer were measured with and without the pressure biofeedback unit in the MMT position. The agreement of the grade of muscle strength in the MMT, and intra-rater reliability of both the active hip abduction range of motion and the strength of posterior gluteus medius were analyzed using the weighted kappa and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), respectively. The agreement of MMT with the pressure biofeedback unit (weighted kappa=.92) was higher than the MMT (weighted kappa=.34)(p<.05). The inclinometer with pressure biofeedback unit measurement of the active hip abduction range of motion had an excellent intra-rater reliability (ICC=.90). Also, the hand held dynamometer with pressure biofeedback unit measure of strength of the posterior gluteus medius had a good intra-rater reliability (ICC=.85). Therefore, the test for muscle strength with pressure biofeedback unit will be a reliable method for the determination of the MMT grades or amount of posterior gluteus medius muscle strength and the measurement of the range of motion for hip abduction in patients with low back pain.

• Journal of Korean Physical Therapy Science
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.104-111
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of exercise program of on improvement of low back pain in pregnant woman. The subject with pregnant woman were 24 members recruited among in pregnant woman of S Hospital in Bucheon between 25 and 35 years old. 24 patients were randomly distributed into two groups(Exercise group = 12, Control group = 12). William's back exercise, Pelvic floor muscle strengthening exercise and hydrotherapy were applied to Exercise group respectively. Control group were applied only hydrotherapy. The exercise program of low back was given four times a week for 12 weeks between september 2002 and March 2003. The results were compared by VAS(Visual Analog Scale) and MPQ(McGill Pain Questionnaire) at before exercise(12 weeks of pregnancy), after 6weeks(18 weeks of pregnancy) and after 12weeks(24 weeks of pregnancy). The results of this study were as follow : After the back exercise program in the Exercise group and control group improved low back pain by VAS and MPQ with no statistical significance. On the other hand, back pain by VAS and MPQ was statistical significantly improved in the Exercise group than control group.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.63-73
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to quantify the hands of fabrics for the Korean folk clothes using both a KES-FB and an artificial neural network. In order to select the proper input parameters, we calculated the correlation using step-wise regression between mechanical properties and the hand value of fabrics. For the classification, the primary hand values and total hand value, five neural networks with three-layered structure were constructed using the error back propagation algorithm and, in order to reduce errors and to speed up learning, the momentum method was selected. From the analysis of the primary and total hands using a self-constructed artificial intelligence system, the error rates of sleekness, stiffness, silkiness, and roughness compared with the judgement of expert panels were found to be 3.3%, 3.3%, 1.6%, and 4.9%, respectively, while that of the total hand was 9.83%.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.24 no.7 s.196
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• pp.120-125
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• 2007

Analysis of elders' behavioral characteristic during showering provides important fundamental data when developing an automatic showering system. We recorded showering behavior of 37 elders' at the front, back, left and right view using four CCTV cameras. The photographic data were analyzed by counting the frequencies of body scrub and identifying zones where hands could reach. And we measured their body sizes, and conducted questionnaire of showering for 302 peoples. Analysis was done according to the analysis criteria established. The human body was divided into 14 zones from a body, and the numbers of body scrub for each zone were counted. The average total numbers of body scrub were 170.8 excluding the head, the face and the neck. The average numbers of body scrub with right hand were 70.2, left hand were 88.2, and both hands were 81.8. The percentages of body scrub frequencies were 16.3% (breast), 12.2%(crotch), 8.8% (abdomen), 7.5% (waist), 8.8% (shoulder), 7% (hips), 0.4% (back), 15.2% (arm), and 23.9% (leg). Elders scrubbed the breast, crotch and abdomen more frequently than the back and hips. According to the video analysis and questionnaire results, the distribution of shower heads (or nozzles) at the front side should be arranged at the ratio of 40% of the trunk(breast, shoulders, abdomen), 20% of the thighs, the calves, and the crotch, respectively. The distribution of shower heads (or nozzles) of the back side were arranged at the ratio of 20% of the waist and the arms, 20% of the back, the thighs, the calves, and the hip, respectively.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.368-374
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• 2011

This paper proposes a robot control human interface using Markov model (HMM) based hand signal recognizer. The command receiving humanoid robot sends webcam images to a client computer. The client computer then extracts the intended commanding hum n's hand motion descriptors. Upon the feature acquisition, the hand signal recognizer carries out the recognition procedure. The recognition result is then sent back to the robot for responsive actions. The system performance is evaluated by measuring the recognition of '48 hand signal set' which is created randomly using fundamental hand motion set. For isolated motion recognition, '48 hand signal set' shows 97.07% recognition rate while the 'baseline hand signal set' shows 92.4%. This result validates the proposed hand signal recognizer is indeed highly discernable. For the '48 hand signal set' connected motions, it shows 97.37% recognition rate. The relevant experiments demonstrate that the proposed system is promising for real world human-robot interface application.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics B
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• v.29B no.9
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• pp.68-75
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• 1992

In this paper the back-propagation algorithm through omitting redundant learning has been proposed to improve learning speed. The proposed algorithm has been applied to XOR, Parity check and pattern recognition of hand-written numbers. The decrease of the number of patterns to be learned has been confirmed as learning proceeds even in early learning stage. The learning speed in pattern recognition of hand-written numbers is improved more than 2 times in various cases of hidden neuron numbers. It is observed that the improvement of learning speed becomes better as the number of patterns and the number of hidden numbers increase. The recognition rate of the proposed algorithm is nearly the same as that conventional method.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2013.11a
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• pp.192-193
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• 2013

The purpose of this research is to comprehend experimentally the nature of human static load to wall for making use of the result as basic data to evaluate resisting force of lightweight wall. Human motions exerting static load are classified to 4 types, and two-hands pushing and shoulder pushing are defined as the instantaneously forcing motions with hands or shoulder put on the load plate, respectively. Back leaning and one-hand leaning are defined as motions of taking a rest in their respective comfortable posture. Measurement of static horizontal load caused by each motion showed that the highest load ratio depends on hardness of load plane and was 1.17~1.25 times of weight in two-hands pushing, 0.95~0.99 times in shoulder pushing, 0.16~0.18 times in back leaning, and 0.12~0.15 times in one-hand leaning.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.398-400
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• 2008

In this work, an air-bending test using magnesium alloy ZK60 sheet was carried out at the various temperatures from room temperature to $300^{\circ}C$ in order to investigate the effect of grain size on the spring-back characteristic. It was found out from experiments that the amount of spring-back was nearly zero at all temperature range when the specimens with grain sizes of 14.66 and $60.71{\mu}m$ were bent by $90^{\circ}$. On the other hand, the spring-back amount dramatically increased at room temperature and phenomenon of spring-go was observed at high temperature when the specimen with submicro grain size of $0.98{\mu}m$ was bent by $90^{\circ}$. From this kind of different spring-back characteristics according to the grain size, it was confirmed that the grain size of material is one of the important factors which have an effect on the spring-back.