• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.212-219
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• 2017

Background: Low back pain (LBP) is a major problem for office workers. Individuals adopting poor postures during prolonged sitting have a considerably increased risk of experiencing LBP. This study aimed to investigate seat pressure distribution characteristics, i.e., average pressure, peak pressure ratio, frequency of postural shift, and body perceived discomfort (BPD), during 1 hour of sitting among office workers with and without chronic LBP. Methods: Forty-six participants (chronic LBP = 23, control = 23) typed a standardized text passage at a computer work station for an hour. A seat pressure mat device was used to collect the seat pressure distribution data. Body discomfort was assessed using the Body Perceived Discomfort scale. Results: Office workers with chronic LBP sat significantly more asymmetrically than their healthy counterparts. During 1-hour sitting, all workers appeared to assume slumped sitting postures after 20 minutes of sitting. Healthy workers had significantly more frequent postural shifts than chronic LBP workers during prolonged sitting. Conclusion: Different sitting characteristics between healthy and chronic LBP participants during 1 hour of sitting were found, including symmetry of sitting posture and frequency of postural shift. Further research should examine the roles of these sitting characteristics on the development of LBP.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.47-56
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• 2019

Purpose - A work way of 'face to face' or a work way of 'unmanned' is very meaningful trend in contrast of robot as a worker. This paper explored some cases of unmanned terminal and kiosk which has been quickly adopted to fastfood industry in South Korea and researched whether any inconvenience or trouble exists in the level of 'the poor' and 'the aged' or not at the time of 'touching' screen in unmanned store. Research design, data, and methodology -The authors examined a few previous studies in keywords of AmazonGo, kiosk, digital divide, information gap, deregulation, and analyzed some cases of 'unmanned terminal' defines restrictively as all kinds of unmanned device, terminal and equipment including kiosk regardless of any place and type. Results - Promotion strategy of the unhandy and retailers needs to offer 'expansion of education and learning', readiness for the law aspect, reform of kiosk industry and priority of sufficient budge and politic assistance by government side. Conclusions - This paper presented some strategies of eliminating 'digital divide' both for a 'the poor', 'the aged', and for a retailer, so that the former may easily purchase goods on unmanned terminal, and the latter may easily sell the more goods at unmanned store.

• Journal of the Korean BIBLIA Society for library and Information Science
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.87-107
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• 2012

This paper analyzes the quality of library services for disabled by studying the service of national public libraries and libraries for the disabled. The sample consists of 768 public libraries and 36 libraries for the disabled. The evaluation criteria is composed of six areas: general, amenities, substitute data, complementary device, source/information service, and culture program. The findings show various deviations depending on the library operator, contents and region. The research also shows that the service quality for the disabled is higher in libraries with specialized worker for this type of library services.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.69-78
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• 2016

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop a wellness index for workers (WIW) and examine the validity and reliability of the WIW for assessing workers' wellness. Methods: The developmental process for the instrument included construction of a conceptual framework based on a wellness model, generation of initial items, verification of content validity, preliminary study, extraction of final items, and psychometric testing. Content validity was verified by 4 experts from occupational health nursing and wellness disciplines. The construct validity, convergent validity and discriminant validity were examined with confirmatory factor analysis. The reliability was examined with Cronbach's alpha. The participants were 494 workers from two workplaces. Results: Eighteen items were selected for the final scale, and the results of the confirmatory factor analysis supported a five-factor model of wellness with acceptable model fit, and factors named as physical emotional social intellectual occupational wellness. The convergent and discriminant validity were also supported. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was .91. Conclusion: The results indicate that the WIW is a valid and reliable instrument to comprehensively assess workers' wellness, and to provide basic directions for developing workplace wellness program.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.42
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• pp.107-138
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• 2000

Today, the public assistance program in Korea is provided mainly for the livelihood protection beneficiary in urban area. The fact that the urban community-centered program is also applied to the livelihood protection beneficiary in rural area brings about some problems in fitness and effectiveness of resource distribution. The purpose of my study is to present my opinion that the public assistance program for the rural community should be put in practice after being fully distinguished from the urban program for the effective distribution of limited social welfare resources to insure the minimum standard of living and seek the self-support contribution which is the purpose of the public assistance program. The subject for this study were livelihood protection beneficiaries living in both rural and urban area. And the study was carried out in this parts: first, the way of life in them, second, the contents of 6 main public assistance programs being carried out. Total number of the livelihood protection beneficiaries are 279 case: 143 case from 15 Dong in 5 cities, and 136 case from 15 Myun in 5 counties. And the social worker who are performing the public assistance programare consisted of 50 case: 25 case from 5 Dong in 5 cities, and 25 case from 5 Myun in 5 counties. This research reach the result that the differentiate performance of the public assistance program in rural community would be an effective device for self-support to be freed from the vicious circle of poverty.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.109-115
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• 2019

Smart Factory is a part of and a key point of the 4th industrial revolution. It performs optimization from the whole viewpoint, using comprehensive data of the post-process data by utilizing various sensors, controllers, and mobile devices beyond the existing factory automation level. In this paper, we design and implement an IoT platform that can detect the safety factors of the workers, the environmental factors of the factory, and real time monitoring at the control center, among the fields to implement smart factory. To accomplish this, we construct a monitoring device that provides sensor information control, server transmission of sensor information, and visualization of collected information. By using this system, it is possible to maintain the temperature and humidity for the optimum working environment in the factory. and also, By using the beacon, it is possible to measure the working time of the worker and trace the position.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.1138-1145
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• 2022

While pursuing digitalization and paperless projects, the construction industry needs to settle on how to make the most of digitized data and information. On-site workers, who currently rely on paper documents to check and review design and construction plans, will need alternative ways to efficiently access the information without using any paper. Augmented Reality is a potential solution where the information customized to a user is aligned with the physical world. This paper proposes the Augmented Reality framework to deliver the information on on-site resources (e.g., workers and equipment) using head-mounted devices. The proposed framework was developed by interoperating Augmented Reality-supported devices and a digital twin platform in which all information related to ongoing tasks is accumulated in real-time. On-site resources appearing in the user's field of view are automatically detected by an object detection algorithm and then assigned to the corresponding information by matching the data in the digital twin platform. Preliminary experiments show the feasibility of the proposed framework. Worker detection results can be visualized on HoloLens 2 in near real-time, and the matching process obtained the accuracy greater than 88%.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.375-381
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• 2022

Safety accidents are of concern during construction projects, even given the recent innovations in digital technologies. These projects remain focused on overcoming specific and limited applications on construction sites. For this reason, the development of an inclusive safety management system has become crucial. This study aims to build a Big Data platform to inform decisions on how to proactively eliminate worker hazards on construction sites. The platform consists of about 100,000 real records and a real-time monitored database featuring various safety indices, such as workers' altitudes, heart rates, and fatigability during construction, which are determined through various wearable devices. The data types are customized and integrated by a research team in accordance with the characteristics of a specific project using hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). The results can be helpful as efficient tools to ensure successful safety management in complex construction situations. This study is expected to provide three significant contributions to the field, including real-time fatigability analysis and tracking of workers on-site; providing early GPS-based warnings to workers who might be accessing dangerous spaces or places; and monitoring the workers' health indices, based on details from 100,000 cases.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.145-157
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• 2024

Undeclared nuclear activities are challenging given the lack of information from the sites involved in such activities. Wide-area environmental sampling (WAES) can be an effective method to detect undeclared nuclear activities. However, it is crucial to address the potential risks during the WAES, including sample tampering or extortions. Therefore, tracking and monitoring of various on-site data is imperative to accurately interpret the status of samples and workers throughout the WAES process. 'Environmental and Geographical Data Transfer (EGDT)' was developed for the real-time monitoring of integrated on-site data. EGDT module is equipped with various sensors and can be attached to a worker's uniform or a sample storage box. This study demonstrated the technical effectiveness of EGDT by exploring three experimental methodologies for feasibility assessment. Compared to the Normal Operation case, the inference of the Sample Extortion case was predominantly based on changes in lux and dose rate. The inference of the Out-of-Work-Area case primarily relied on changes in dose rate and acceleration. Finally, the preliminary evaluation of the performance of the developed prototype was conducted, and a foundation was established for enhancing the application in the WAES process.

• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.99-113
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• 2008

In order to protect Rescue 119 workers exposed on the spot from potential infection, this study identified their awareness and practices of infection control so that it could help preventing them from infection and also provide basic materials necessary for pre-hospital infection control. This study applied questionnaire survey to total 215 Rescue 119 workers at fire stations in Jeonbuk province, Jeonnam province and Gwangju city from July 14 to Sept. 14, 2006 for the benefit of data collection. The questionnaire about possible associations between awareness and practices of infection control consisted of total 46 times across 6 categories such as washing hands during emergency activities ; fluid therapy and injection ; respirator maintenance; individual hygienics ; disinfectant supplies and equipments maintenance ; and control of infectious wastes. And collected data were processed using SPSS statistic program to analyze frequency and percentage, mean and standard deviation, Pearson's correlation coefficient, t-test and one-way ANOVA. As a result, this study came to the following conclusions : In terms of awareness about infection control, our respondents showed highest awareness about infectious waste control, and also showed highest level of practices in washing hands during emergency activities. Throughout all domains, awareness means were higher than practice means. In particular, infectious waste control was the domain of significant differences between awareness and practices. In terms of associations between awareness and individual characteristics, it was found that female rescue worker group and hospital/general hospital career group (before joining the Rescue 119) showed significantly higher awareness on statistic level. In regard to associations between individual characteristics and practices, it was found that female rescue worker group showed higher level of practices than male group on statistic level. This study also analyzed correlations between rescue workers' awareness and practice of infection control. As a result, it was found that the higher awareness was in correlations with the higher practices across all 6 domains including washing hands. In addition, the higher awareness of a questionnaire item was in significantly positive correlations with the higher practice of other items. However, our respondents showed high awareness about anti-infection, but low practices in reality. This indicates necessity of devising possible solutions to improve the practices as much as awareness. Especially, it was noted that major reasons for insufficient practices of infection control guideline come from unhabituated practices and lack of supports for infection-preventing supplies and protective device (mask, etc). Hence, it is necessary to provide more infection-preventing supplies for local rescue workers sufficiently, in parallel with steady habituation of infection control. Furthermore, it is required to manage and study infection control policies even at pre-hospital step in efforts for effective infection control, education and activities.