• IE interfaces
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.197-208
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• 1997

In workplace design, an ergonomic solution should ensure low postural stress in the operator during his/her work. Stress caused by awkward working postures of the trunk, shoulders and legs can result in fatigue, discomfort, musculo-skeletal disorders and nerve entrapment syndromes. Since discomfort and musculo-skeletal disorders are both related to exposure to biomechanical load on the musculo-skeletal system, minimization of discomfort will contribute to reduction of the risk for musculo-skeletal disorders as well. Therefore, in this study, perceived discomfort on the human body joints was measured in the standing postures using the magnitude estimation in order to have a standardized numerical scale for joint discomfort. Nine healthy graduate students participated voluntarily in the laboratory study. The results revealed that perceived discomfort of all the joints increased as the joints deviated from neutral position. Especially, it showed drastic increment on perceived discomfort when deviation from neutral position in each human body joint increased from 75% to 100%. in terms of relative range of motion(R0M). On the basis of these experimental results, a preliminary ranking for assessment of stressfulness of non-neutral postures around the human body joints was suggested.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.233-256
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• 2015

This paper presents an experimental study to assess the effectiveness of using ferrocement to strengthen deficient beam-column joints. Ferrocement is proposed to protect the joint region through replacing concrete cover. Six exterior beam-column joints, including two control specimens and four strengthened specimens, are prepared and tested under constant axial load and quasi-static cyclic loading. Two levels of axial load on column (0.2fc'Ag and 0.4fc'Ag) and two types of skeletal reinforcements in ferrocement (grid reinforcements and diagonal reinforcements) are considered as test variables. Experimental results have indicated that ferrocement as a composite material can enhance the seismic performance of deficient beam-column joints in terms of peak horizontal load, energy dissipation, stiffness and joint shear strength. Shear distortions within the joints are significantly reduced for the strengthened specimens. High axial load (0.4fc'Ag) has a detrimental effect on peak horizontal load for both control and ferrocement-strengthened specimens. Specimens strengthened by ferrocement with two types of skeletal reinforcements perform similarly. Finally, a method is proposed to predict shear strength of beam-column joints strengthened by ferrocement.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.982-994
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• 2001

Commercially available software packages permit to position human models of various geometries in practical scenarios while respecting the anatomical constraints of the skeletal joints and of the bulk of the bodies. Beyond such features, the PAM-Comfort(sup)TM software has been conceived to provide direct access to the muscular forces needed by humans to perform physical actions where muscle force is required. The PAM-Comfort(sup)TM human models are made of multi-body linked anatomical skeletons, equipped with finite elements of the relevant skeletal muscles. The hyper-static problem of determination of muscle forces is solved by optimisation technique. Voluntary stiffening of muscles can be added to the basic contraction levels needed to perform a specific task. The calculated muscle forces obey Hills model. The model and software have been applied in several interesting scenarios of various fields of application, such as car industry, handling of equipment and sports activities.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.85-90
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• 2003

Purpose : To investigate the differences between the position of the mandibular condyles in temporomandibular joints of patients presenting with normal occlusion and skeletal class III malocclusion. Materials and Methods: Forty-two subjects with normal occlusion and thirty-seven subjects exhibiting skeletal class III malocclusion prior to orthodontic treatment were included in the study. Transcranial radiographs of each subject were taken at centric occlusion and 1 inch mouth opening. The positional relationship between the mandibular condyles with articular fossae and articular eminences at two positional states were evaluated and analyzed statistically. Results: The mandibular condyles of the skeletal class III malocclusion group were found to be located more anteriorly from the center of the articular fossae compared to the normal occlusion group in centric occlusion. The mandibular condyles of the skeletal Class III malocclusion group were located more superiorly from the middle of articular height than those of the normal occlusion group in centric occlusion. However, these differences were not statistically significant. At 1 inch mouth opening, the mandibular condyles of the skeletal class III malocclusion group were placed more posteriorly from the articular eminences than those of the normal occlusion group. The mean angle of the articular eminence posterior slope were 56.51 ° ± 6.29° in the normal occlusion group and 60.37° ± 6.26° in the skeletal Class III malocclusion group. Conclusions: The mandibular condyles of the skeletal Class III malocclusion group were placed more anteriorly at centric occlusion and more posteriorly at 1 inch mouth opening when compared with those of the normal occlusion group.

• Journal of mucopolysaccharidosis and rare diseases
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.5-7
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• 2016

Mucolipidoses II and III alpha/beta (ML II and ML III) are lysosomal disorders in which the essential mannose-6-phosphate recognition marker is not synthesized onto lysosomal hydrolases and other glycoproteins. The disorders are caused by mutations in GNPTAB, which encodes two of three subunits of the heterohexameric enzyme, N-acetylglucosamine-1-phosphotransferase ML II, recognizable at birth, often causes intrauterine growth impairment and sometimes the prenatal "Pacman" dysplasia. The main postnatal manifestations of ML II include gradual coarsening of neonatally evident craniofacial features, early cessation of statural growth and neuromotor development, dysostosis multiplex and major morbidity by hardening of soft connective tissue about the joints and in the cardiac valves. Fatal outcome occurs often before or in early childhood. ML III with clinical onset rarely detectable before three years of age, progresses slowly with gradual coarsening of the facial features, growth deficiency, dysostosis multiplex, restriction of movement in all joints before or from adolescence, painful gait impairment by prominent hip disease. Cognitive handicap remains minor or absent even in the adult, often wheelchair-bound patient with variable though significantly reduced life expectancy. As yet, there is no cure for individuals affected by these diseases. So, clinical manifestations and conservative treatment is important. This review aimed to highlight the extra-skeletal clinical problems in ML II and III.

• Journal of Genetic Medicine
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.93-97
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• 2012

Kniest syndrome (OMIM #156550) is a rare autosomal dominant disorder caused by a dysfunction of type II collagen, which is encoded by the COL2A1 gene (OMIM +120140) mapped to chromosome 12q13.11. Type II collagen, a molecule found mostly in the cartilage and vitreous tissues, is essential for the normal development of bones and other connective tissues. Kniest syndrome is a type II collagenopathy that presents as skeletal abnormality associated with disproportionate dwarfism, kyphoscoliosis, enlarged joints, visual loss, hearing loss, and cleft palate. This report describes a Korean patient with Kniest syndrome who was diagnosed with typical clinical features and radiologic findings. The patient presented with disproportionately short stature and kyphoscoliosis from birth. A skeletal survey revealed fused lamina in the thoracic spine, hemivertebrae, flexion deformities in multiple joints, and plagiocephaly.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.779-791
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• 1997

The purpose of this study is to measure a perceived joint discomfort in the seated and standing position, and to provide ranking systems of perceived joint discomfort. Nineteen mole subjects with no history of musculo-skeletal disorders participated in the experiment. Their physical characteristics were: age $-25.4{\pm}2.7$years, stature $-171.9{\pm}6.0cm$, and body weight $-67.1{\pm}7.0kg$. The results showed that the perceived joint discomforts were different depending upon the joints involved in motion and their movement directions (degree of freedom of motions), which implied that the human body motions and their degrees of freedom should be classified into several distinct classes that need to be assigned different weights of postural stress. Therefore, three ranking systems based on the perceived joint discomforts were suggested, which were classified by the degree of freedom of motions and joints, by only degree of freedom motions, and by joints involved in motion, respectively. In the seated position, the hip movement was the most stressful, the bock was the second, and the shoulder was the third. Likewise, in the standing postures, the hip was the most, the bock was the second, and the ankle was the third. It was expected that these joint motion ranking systems could be used by practitioners of health and safety to improve the comfort of working postures in industry.

• The korean journal of orthodontics
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.66-73
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• 2015

Objective: To compare condylar position and morphology among different vertical skeletal patterns. Methods: Diagnostic cone-beam computed tomography images of 60 adult patients (120 temporomandibular joints) who visited the orthodontic clinic of Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital were reviewed. The subjects were divided into three equal groups according to the mandibular plane angle: hypodivergent, normodivergent, and hyperdivergent groups. Morphology of the condyle and mandibular fossa and condylar position were compared among the groups. Results: The hypodivergent and hyperdivergent groups showed significant differences in superior joint spaces, antero-posterior condyle width, medio-lateral condyle width, condyle head angle, and condylar shapes. Conclusions: Condylar position and morphology vary according to vertical facial morphology. This relationship should be considered for predicting and establishing a proper treatment plan for temporomandibular diseases during orthodontic treatment.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.286-299
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• 2022

Human activity recognition in real time is a challenging task. Recently, a plethora of studies has been proposed using deep learning architectures. The implementation of these architectures requires the high computing power of the machine and a massive database. However, handcrafted features-based machine learning models need less computing power and very accurate where features are effectively extracted. In this study, we propose a handcrafted model based on three-dimensional sequential skeleton data. The human body skeleton movement over a frame is computed through joint positions in a frame. The joints of these skeletal frames are projected into two-dimensional space, forming a "movement polygon." These polygons are further transformed into a one-dimensional space by computing amplitudes at different angles from the centroid of polygons. The feature vector is formed by the sampling of these amplitudes at different angles. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using a support vector machine on four public datasets: MSR Action3D, Berkeley MHAD, TST Fall Detection, and NTU-RGB+D, and the highest accuracies achieved on these datasets are 94.13%, 93.34%, 95.7%, and 86.8%, respectively. These accuracies are compared with similar state-of-the-art and show superior performance.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2008

Osteoarthritis (OA), one of the most common skeletal disorders characterized by cartilage degradation and osteophyte formation in joints, is induced by accumulated mechanical stress; however, little is known about the underlying molecular mechanism. Several experimental OA models in mice by producing instability in the knee joints have been developed to apply approaches from mouse genetics. Although proteinases like matrix metalloproteinases and aggrecanases have now been proven to be the principal initiators of OA progression, clinical trials of proteinase inhibitors have not been successful for the treatment, turning the interest of researchers to the upstream signals of proteinase induction. These signals include undegraded and fragmented matrix proteins like type II collagen or fibronection that affects chondrocytes through distinct receptors. Another signal is proinflammatory factors that are produced by chondrocytes and synovial cells; however, recent studies that used mouse OA models in knockout mice did not support that these factors have a role in the central contribution to OA development. Our mouse genetic approaches found that the induction of a transcriptional activator Runx2 in chondrocytes under mechanical stress contributes to the pathogenesis of OA through chondrocyte hypertrophy. In addition, chondrocyte apoptosis has recently been identified as being involved in OA progression. We hereby propose that these endochondral ossification signals may be important for the OA progression, suggesting that the related molecules can clinically be therapeutic targets of this disease.