• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.125-133
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• 2004

Safety, accessibility and distinguishment as the concept of architectural planning and design are demanded in staircases due to increase of the old aged people and disabled people's enlarged social participation. In this research is tried to provide the importance of vertical walking function at the design for the staircases. For this reason, structural elements of the staircases are studied in the ergonomic aspect for barrier-free environment and a comparative study is made on the regulations of the staircases in the inside and outside of the country in disabled & aged people's view. Based on this study, the quality of the staircases in public facilities and Apartments is analyzed. As the result, it has been proved that the vertical walking function of the staircases is the most fundamental characteristic of the staircases design before everything else.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.104-113
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• 2015

Background: Given the long hours on the road involving multiple and interacting work stressors (i.e., delivery pressures, irregular shifts, ergonomic hazards), commercial drivers face a plethora of health and safety risks. Researchers goal was to determine whether and to what extent long-haul trucker work schedules influence sleep duration and quality. Methods: Survey and biometric data collected from male long-haul truck drivers at a major truckstop in central North Carolina over a six month period. Results: Daily hours worked (mean = 11 hours, 55 minutes) and frequency of working over government-mandated daily HOS regulations (23.8% "frequently or always") were statistically significant predictors of sleep duration. Miles driven per week (mean = 2,812.61), irregular daily hours worked (63.8%), and frequency of working over the daily hour limit (23.8% "frequently or always") were statistically significant predictors of sleep quality. Conclusion: Implications of findings suggest a comprehensive review of the regulations and operational conditions for commercial motor vehicle drivers be undertaken.

• Journal of the Korea Furniture Society
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.517-532
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• 2009

This study was carried out to review the characteristics of the Swedish modern furniture design and the works of Bruno Mathsson, who is appreciated as one of the most important furniture designers in the history of modern Swedish design. First, the authors examined how the Swedish designers set the value of warm, graceful humanity, practical simplicity, and the traditional craftsmanship in their furniture design with modernist ideology. Second, by examining the range of Bruno Mathsson's works from the 1930s to the 1980s, the authors searched for how these works show the realized models of the ideals of Swedish modern furniture. In this, this article explains that Mathsson's works and the modern Swedish furniture could have been regarded and beloved as being innovative and modern for more than 50 years for their friendliness to human body by the ergonomic structure and to human feeling by the quality of natural materials and finishes. In addition, their consistent effort to adopt traditional craftsmanship into functionalist ideals of modern design shows how these furniture designs could have keep the lasting quality in the life of people in different time frames.

• Proceedings of the Korea Inteligent Information System Society Conference
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• 2001.01a
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• pp.11-15
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• 2001

The explosion of the Internet, and most recently e-commerce, has caused great interest in agent technologies. The development of virtual environments has also increased in the last few years. A growing number of real-time applications use graphics with photorealistic quality, especially in the field of training, but also in the areas of design and ergonomic research. We describe an attempt to develop a framework that provides customers with multimedia information and interactive experiences with a virtual shopping environment. The application presented consists on a virtual visit to a music -store where the user is guided by an intelligent agent named Lizeth which responds in real-time to user's requests with precise information about music, artist's biographies, prices and related products to help the user to make decisions. The potential of UML and the Java programming language is discussed to show their application in the field of intelligent agents as mediators on shopping processes. We conclude that the proposed framework leads to the creation of application with a potentially significant impact in the development of e-commerce systems embedded in virtual environments.

• Physical Therapy Korea
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.60-67
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• 2018

Background: Progressive muscle weakness is aggravated not only in the skeletal muscles but also in the respiratory muscles in many patients with neuromuscular diseases (NMD). Inspiratory muscle training (IMT) has been reported as therapy for pulmonary rehabilitation to improve respiratory strength, endurance, exercise capacity, and quality of life, and to reduce dyspnea. Objects: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of playing harmonica for 5 months on pulmonary function by assessing the force vital capacity (FVC), peak cough flow (PCF), maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP), maximal expiratory pressure (MEP), and maximal voluntary ventilation (MVV) in patients with NMD. Methods: Six subjects with NMD participated in this study. The subjects played harmonica once a week for 2 hours at a harmonica academy and twice a week for 1 hour at home. Thus, training was performed thrice a week for 23 weeks. The examiner assessed pulmonary function by measuring FVC in the sitting and supine positions and PCF, MIP, MEP, and MVV in the sitting position at the beginning of training and once a month for 5 months. Results: Both sitting and supine FVC significantly increased after playing harmonica (p=.042), as did MIP (p=.043) and MEP (p=.042). Conclusion: Playing harmonica can be used as an effective method to improve pulmonary function in patients with NMD.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2007.03a
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• pp.311-317
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• 2007

"Environmentally Sound and Sustainable Development (ESSD)" is a key word in recent years. The construction industry, have put a great influence on ergonomic and sustainable environment. Recently, "green building certifications", such as Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and eco-friendly material regulation have been established. With this regard, new construction and aged-housing remodeling projects are required to meet these certification criteria. Multi-housing residents have great concern on eco-product, since many cases are reported that Sick Building Syndrome is caused by toxic substance from building materials. Aged-housing remodeling project is very unique in that building residents are selected prior to design phase. Therefore, the analysis of resident's need for building materials in aged-housing remodeling is relatively easy compared to new building construction. As such, it is very important to analyze their preferences for eco-friendly materials prior to project execution. The purpose of this study is to find the needs of residents and priority of their needs. Based on their needs and priority, this paper provides a new strategy in using environment-friendly materials and maximizing their satisfaction level when aged housing remodeling is constructed. In addition, this paper provide new criteria in selecting new developed environmental materials in remodeling projects for the purpose of improving the safety and health level in construction industry.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.35-42
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• 2011

Efficient space plans are built upon relations of both human and physical compositions, and the standard of the interaction is basically the human scale. Especially in medical areas, the character of the users within human scale design environment is quite significant. Unlike large hospitals with great plans and scalability performed by experts, mid-sized clinics tend to have limited space, designed by non-specialists who highlight aesthetics over functionality in floor plans which leads to poor quality in medical service. For this reason, this study will include the application of human scale based therapy rooms within the clinic from a physical standpoint and will further analyze and pinpoint any room for improvement to further enable more efficient ergonomic space planning. In this study, theoretically will contemplate over human scale, mid-sized clinic, therapies, and therapists, while the case study will include status of the recent human scale based mid-sized clinic from a physical viewpoint, classification and analysis amongst human and physical compositions chosen by discretion from either a newly opened or a newly re-modeled clinic within the last 2 years, which has 15 beds or more, minimum 3 physical therapists, with more than 5 different therapy facilities in the metropolitan area in order to measure the human scale of therapy rooms in a mid-sized clinic. As a result, the area where improvement can practically be applied is the physical composition, which does not include human scale like human composition factors as therapists and patients, and hence, I suggest the human scale applied efficient medical space plan become the base of this study and look forward to subsequent improvement in the quality of medical services.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.170-176
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• 2018

Recently, weapon system requires personal protection products due to the explosion of rapid-fire explosion, which is considered to be multi threat in modernization, complication and war against terrorism. However, the conventional Korean military bullet protection helmets are not suitable for wearing convenience and combatant interoperability in terms of ergonomic. In this paper, we propose a suitable 3D Scanning method for the head, and compare the measured 3D dimension with the existing 2D measurement value to identity the reliability. Reverse engineered soldier head using the quick surface method was realized with a perfect free-form surface and satisfactory tolerance range (${\pm}0.2mm$). Through the comparison of 3D and 2D measured head dimensions, the absolute error value was 0.73 mm on average and relative error was 0.35 %, confirming the high accuracy of the 3D scan modeling. Also, quick surface method using 3D scanner is suggested a fast and accurate skill for ergonomics in obtaining the head modeling needed for military's personal bullet protection helmet design.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.38-48
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• 2021

Purpose: As the number of gastric cancer survivors is increasing and their quality of life after surgery is being emphasized, single-port surgery is emerging as an alternative to conventional gastrectomy. A novel multi-degree-of-freedom (DOF) articulating device, the ArtiSential® device (LivsMed, Seongnam, Korea), was designed to allow more intuitive and meticulous control for surgeons facing ergonomic difficulties with conventional tools. In this study, we evaluated the feasibility of this new device during single-port laparoscopic distal gastrectomy (SP-LDG) for early gastric cancer (EGC) patients. Materials and Methods: Consecutive patients diagnosed with EGC who underwent SP-LDG with ArtiSential® (LivsMed) graspers between April 2018 and August 2020 were enrolled in the study. The clinical outcomes were compared with those of a control group, in which prebent graspers (Olympus Medical Systems Corp) were used for the same procedures. Results: Seventeen patients were enrolled in the ArtiSential® group. There was no significant difference in operative time (205.4±6.0 vs. 218.1±9.9 minutes, P= 0.270) or the quality of surgery, in terms of the number of retrieved lymph nodes (49.5±3.5 vs. 45.9±4.0, P=0.473), length of hospital stay (15.4±2.0 vs. 12.4±1.3 days, P=0.588), and postoperative complications (40.0% vs. 41.2%, P=0.595), between the ArtiSential® group and the control group. Conclusions: The new multi-DOF articulating grasper is feasible and can be used as an alternative for prebent graspers during SP-LDG.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.48-59
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• 1999

Objectives. This study was conducted to evaluate the association between upper extremity musculoskeletal symptoms and Rapid Upper Limb Assessment(RULA) in vehicle assembly line workers. The goal of this study is to show the feasibility of RULA as a checklist for work related musculoskeletal symptoms (WMSDs) in Korean workers. Methods. The total number of 199 people from the department of assembly and 115 people from the department of Quality Control(QC) in automotive plant were subjects for this cross sectional study. A standard symptom questionnaire survey has been used for the individual characteristics, work history, musculosketal symptoms and non-occupational covariates. The data were obtained by applying one-on-one interview for the all subjects. RULA has been applied for ergonomic work posture analysis and the primary ergonomic risk sure was computed by RULA method. Association between upper extremity musculoskeletal symptoms and RULA were assessed by multiple logistic regression analysis. Results. A total of 314 workers was examined. The prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms by NIOSH case definition was 62.4%. The distribution of musculoskeletal symptoms by the part of the body turned out to be following; back:41.4%, neck: 32.8%, shoulder: 26.4%, arm: 10.5% and hand:29.3%. The relationship of the individual RULA scores were statistically significant for the prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms. As the result of the multiple logistic regressioin analysis, grand final score (OR=2.250 95% CI: 1.402-3.612) was associated with musculoskeletal symptoms in any part of the body.; upper arm score(OR=1.786 95% CI: 1.036-3.079) and posture score A(OR=1.634 95% CI: 1.016-2.626) in neck; muscel use score(OR=3.076 95% CI:1.782-5.310) and posture score A(OR=1.798 95% CI: 1.072-3.017) in shoulder; upper arm score(OR=1.715 95% CI: 1.083-2.715) and muscel use score(OR=2.057 95% CI:1.303-3.248) in neck & shoulder; muscle use score(OR=10.662 95% CI: 3.180-35.742) in arm; writst/wist score(OR=2.068 95% CI: 1.130-3.786) and muscle use score(OR=2.215 95% CI: 1.284-3.819) in hand & wrist.; muscle use score of trunk (OR=2.601 95% CI: 1.147-5.901) in back. Conclusions. Musculoskeletal symptoms of the extremities were strongly associated with individual RULA body score. These results show that RULA can be used as a useful assessment tool for the evaluation of musculoskeletal loading which is known to contribute to work-related musculoskeletal disorders. RULA also can be used as a screening tool or incorporated into a wider ergonomic assessment of epidemiological, physical, mental, environmental and organizational factors. As shown in this study, complement of the analysis system for the other risk factors and characterizing between the upper limb and back part will be needed for future work.