• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.81-85
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• 2009

Work related musculoskeletal disorders(WMSDs) was a leading cause of sick leave and injuries in the industries of our country. Posture was an important consideration in the design of work method and workplaces, because it affected the ability of workers to use various equipments and influenced how long they could perform their job without feeling discomfort, fatigue, and musculoskeletal disorders. Imbalanced lower limb postures such as a squatting posture were awkward working postures common to the shipbuilding shops, farms, automobiles assembly lines in our country. Different awkward working postures were known to be associated with specific musculoskeletal disorders. Eight postures in lower limb postures divided into balanced and imbalanced postures were evaluated by electromyographic(EMG) activity for lower limb muscles. Twelve male subjects participated in this study. This paper was to analyze the effects of lower limb muscles workload according to lower limb postures(knee angle) and working time. The ANOVA results showed that most EMG root mean square(RMS) values were statistically significant effect according to lower limb postures(knee angle) and working time. Therefore, the results of this study will provide the basis to evaluate workload of lower limb postures correctly adopted by workers in various jobs and the ergonomic reference to prevent WMSDs.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.473-480
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• 2011

Objective: This paper presents the results of a literature review undertaken to analyze the types and risk factors of unsafe posture in accordance with the crops and the working position and to introduce various ergonomic intervention approaches. Background: There is clear and consistent evidence that agricultural work has been rated as one of the dangerous occupations in the world. A considerable number of adverse health conditions, including musculoskeletal disorders(MSDs) are related to agricultural work. Method: An agricultural work requires squatting, kneeling, and bending(stooping) postures for significant periods of the work day which due to a wide variety of activities such as planting, cultivating and harvesting various agricultural products. Thus, each of these postures is analyzed in detail to recommend the improvement methods. Results: Various unsafe postures in agricultural works are revealed and analyzed. It is proven that ergonomics intervention has the potential benefits to reduce MSDs among agricultural workers. Two types of ergonomic intervention methods were discussed to improve unsafe working postures, engineering controls and administrative controls. Conclusion & Application: As a concluding remark, this article can be used as a reference manual for the agricultural workers and also used to raise the research community's awareness to the risk of unsafe working postures for workers in agriculture.

• Physical Therapy Rehabilitation Science
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.136-144
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• 2022

Objective: This study was to identify the effect of pressure biofeedback applied in various postures that allow the application of abdominal drawing-in. Design: A cross sectional study. Methods: The study intended to compare changes in the thickness of abdominal muscles between different postures when abdominal drawing-in was performed using a pressure biofeedback unit in five postures and to compare differences in terms of measures such as the transverse abdominis's preferential activation ratio(PAR). Data measured from 30 healthy individuals were used for data analysis. A paired t-test and repeated measures analysis of variance was performed to compare the thickness of each abdominal muscle. Results: The transverse abdominis's and internal oblique's thickness showed statistically significant differences in all postures when abdominal drawing-in (p<0.05). In the comparison between the postures, statistically significant differences were observed between the positions of hook-lying and wall support standing and between supine and wall support standing and between hook-lying and sitting (p<0.05). In terms of the transverse abdominis's PAR in each posture, statistically significant differences were observed between hook-lying and quadruped, hook-lying and sitting, hook-lying and wall support standing, quadruped and supine, sitting and supine, as well as wall support standing and supine (p<0.05). Conclusions: When abdominal drawing-in using pressure biofeedback unit is performed for stabilization exercises, selecting and applying specific postures according to targeted muscles and the subject's functional ability will help provide a more efficient and accurate intervention.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.169-176
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• 2014

As body postures on bed affects various sleep related diseases, it is considered as important information when monitoring sleeping in daily life. Though there have already been a few approaches to monitor body postures on bed conventionally, the development for simple and unconstrained methods is still needed to realize the long-term daily monitoring. Focusing on the fact that ballistocardiogram changes depending on the body postures on bed, we developed a novel method to estimate body posturesusing extremely simple, film-type ballistocardiogram sensor which is based on polyvinylidene fluoride(PVDF) film. With 10 subjects, we performed two experiments. One was for an estimation test to show that body postures on bed can be estimated by ballistocardiogram, and the other was for a reproducibility test to present the feasibility of ballistocardiogram based body postures monitoring. To estimate body postures on bed, we made an individual template set of body postures by designating one ballistocardiogram (BCG) sample as a template in each postures. Then, we calculated Pearson's correlation coefficients between a sample and each templates and estimated the body posture of the sample by choosing a posture which corresponds to the most significant correlation coefficients. As a result, we estimated body postures on bed with 99.2% accuracy in average and found that the estimation using ballistocardiogram is reproducible.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.281-289
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• 2012

Objective: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the potential risk of shoulder muscle at particular working postures in sitting. Background: The cause of shoulder pain needs to be specifically studied in relation with particular shoulder postures to prevent shoulder MSDs in workplace. Method: In this study MVC, fatigue and subjective workload were investigated depending on the change of shoulder posture. An experiment was designed to evaluate the six shoulder muscles at nine shoulder postures including the combination of 30(adduction), 0, 30(abduction) degrees and 60, 90, and 120 degrees of shoulder flexion. Surface electrodes were attached to the middle trapezius, inferior middle trapezius, anterior deltoid, posterior deltoid, serratus anterior and teres major. Thirteen subjects participated in the experiment. Dependent variables were RPE (rating of perceived exertion), MVC(maximum voluntary contraction) and MPF(mean power frequency) shift by EMG (electromyography). Results: The middle trapezius and inferior middle trapezius were not significantly fatigued at all postures. The decline of MPF slope was less than 10% at all postures. The anterior deltoid was significantly fatigued all postures. The decline of MPF slope was more than 10% at all postures. The posterior deltoid was significantly fatigued 30 degrees of adduction and 90 degrees of flexion. And, neutral and 30 degrees of abduction postures were fatigued more than 90 degrees of flexion. The serratus anterior was significantly fatigued except for 30 degrees of adduction and 60 degrees of flexion posture. The teres major was significantly fatigued except for neutral and 60 degrees of flexion, 30 degrees of abduction and 60 degrees of flexion posture. Conclusion: It was found that a certain muscle was fatigued fast at particular posture compared to other muscles, which would mean that a certain shoulder muscle at particular posture could be easily exposed to the risk of musculoskeletal disorders than other muscles. Application: It is expected that the result can be applied to design workplace using shoulder muscles.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.3-13
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• 1991

As the VDT work constrains work postures because of its work characteristics. VDT worksta- tions should be properly designed so as to be fitted to various types of physical conditions of op- erators. Therefore, in this study, the preferred settings of VDT wrokstation dimensions of operators. Therefore, in this study, the preferred settings of VDT workstation dimensions and work postures were studied in order to determine the appropriate dimensions and the work postures for VDT operators which will alleviate the musculoskeletal troubles or visual fatigue. The scpoe of the study is as follows. 1. Measurement and analysis of the preferred settings of the height of workstation, keyboard, seat, and screen among the experienced VDT operators. 2. Anaysis of the relationship between the preferred settings of workstation height and the seat height control among the experienced VDT operators. 3. Analysis of the work postures of the experienced VDT operators.

• Annals of Clinical Neurophysiology
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.95-100
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• 2000

Purpose : Primary writing tremor(PWT) can be classified as either type A or type B depending on whether tremor appeared during writing or whilst writing and also on adopting the hand postures normally used for writing. Through the clinical experience author has had an impression that PWT type B may not be purely dependant on specific writing postures. The objective of this study was to clarify whether PWT type B have writing posture-specificity or not. Results : The data indicated that type B PWT is not writing posture-specific. Various pronation and supination postures could evoke tremor as well as writing postures. Furthermore most of other pronation- and supination-related tasks could evoke tremors as well as action of writing. Conclusions : The present data suggest that PWT should be limited only on the pure form of task-spesific PWT type A.

• Proceedings of the ESK Conference
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.437-440
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• 1997

The association of poor body postures with pains or symptoms of musculoskeletal discorders has been reported by many researchers. An ergonomic evaluation of postural stresses as well as biomechanical stresses is also important especially when a job involves highly repetitive or prolonged poor body postures. The human body is divided into five parts: shoulder/upper arm, lower arm/wrist, back, neck, lower extremities. A work-sampling based macropostural classification system was developed to characterize various postures in this study. Application of the posture classification schema developed in this study to 7 automobile assembly tasks showed that the schema can be used as a tool to didntify the operation and tasks involving highly stressful body postures. This posture classification schema can also be applied as a basis for quantitive evaluating the workload of manual task.

• Journal of Auto-vehicle Safety Association
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.99-105
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• 2021

Vehicle occupant postures are anticipated to vary more widely during automated driving and to become more significant in terms of the autonomous vehicle safety. Experimental and computational approaches are needed to investigate and evaluate occupant behaviors during automated driving in general. However the validity and effect of such occupant postures are unknown, thus it is necessary to examine occupant behaviors and injury countermeasures for various occupant postures. This study was focused on the development and evaluation of restraint system model for occupant behavior examinations in the first step according to autonomous vehicle occupant safety. The finite element models of dummy and restraint system were set up and simulation results showed overall model performance and safety tolerances of different reclined occupant postures during frontal impact loading.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.121-131
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• 2002

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the physical load by identifying harmfully working postures and to develop recommendations for improving the existing situation with nurses in ICU, thereby to provide the basis for development of work-related musculoskeletal preventive program. Method: Various types of tasks were recorded with a video camera to chart and analyze different postures by OWAS(Ovako Working Posture Analysing System). Collected data showed that poor postures were adopted, not only for lifting or repositoning a patient, but also for other tasks. Data Analysis: The performed activities were then divided into Nursing Intervention Classification. Altogether 128 postures were selected for analysis. Then they were classified into different OAC (OWAS Action Categories). From all the observation, unhealthy postures, for which corrective measures had to be considered immediately (i.e., 75% classified as OACII+III+IV) were found. Collected data were analyzed in terms of percentage, 2-tail Mann-Whitney U test. Result: Poor postures mainly occur during 'positioning the patient' and 'airway suctioning' in NIC. No difference was found (p=0.060) between the percentage of harmful posture adopted during the patient handling tasks and non-patient handling tasks. Conclusion: This study shows, that in the nursing profession with ICU not only occur during patient handling, but also during other activities. The OWAS method was useful in determining the physical load by locating potential activities due to harmfully working postures, providing a detailed description with analysis, and suggesting successful means to reduce postural load.