• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.19-27
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• 2015

Purpose: A system to measure the visibility of agricultural tractor operators was designed and evaluated according to ISO standards, and a blind area diagram around the tested tractor was created based on the manual method recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Methods: A visibility measurement system was designed and evaluated based on the ISO 5006 and ISO 5721-1 standards. Two bulbs used to simulate the operator's eyes were mounted on a bar with a supporting frame. A wooden frame was used to determine the seat index point position. The 12-m visibility test circle was divided into six sectors of vision, and the test tractor was placed at the center of the circle. Artificial light was supplied in the darkened environment, and shadow or masking effects were measured manually around the 12-m circle. Results: When the bulbs were placed at the operator's eye level, front visibility was good; no masking was found in the "A" vision sector, but larger masking widths were found in the "B" and "C" vision sectors. Since the masking width exceeded 700 mm, additional tests, such as movement of the light sources to both sides of the operator's eye level, were performed. Less than six masking effects were found in the semi-circle of vision to the front, and more than one masking was found in the "B" and "C" visual fields. The minimum distance between the centers of two masking effects exceeded 2500 mm when measured as a chord on the semi-circle of vision. A blind area diagram was created to define the exact nature of the blind spots and mirror visibility. Conclusions: Visibility evaluation is an effective way to enable proper and safe operation for agricultural tractor operators. Inclusion of this visibility evaluation test in the general testing process might aid tractor manufacturers.

• Journal of muscle and joint health
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.28-39
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• 2002

Objective. The 12 forms of Sun-style Tai Chi exercise has been developed specifically for arthritis patients in order to reduce their symptoms and to improve physical functioning. This quasi-experimental study examined the changes in pain, balance, muscle strength and physical functioning in women with osteoarthritis at the completion of the 12 week Tai Chi exercise program. Methods. The patients with osteoarthritis who signed the consent form were screened by their primary physician according to the inclusion criteria and invited to the study. Total of 66 osteoarthritis women with an average age of 63 years were participated in the Tai Chi exercise. At the completion of 12 weeks, 34 patients completed both pretest and posttest measures with 48% of overall dropout rate. Outcome measures were physical symptoms, balance, muscle strength, physical functioning, and depression. Paired t-test was utilized to examine differences between pre and post-measures. Results. After participating in the Tai Chi exercise program, the women with osteoarthritis showed significant improvements in their physical fitness measures, and consequently in their physical functioning. In physical fitness test, there were significant improvements in balance, flexibility, muscle strengths of knee, grip, and back muscles after the Tai Chi exercise. However, No significant differences were found in pain and stiffness of their knee joints and depression measure. Conclusion. The 12 forms of Tai Chi exercise has been found safely applicable to the older women with osteoarthritis for 12 weeks, and effective in improving balance, flexibility, and muscle strengths, and consequently lessening difficulties of performing their activities of daily life.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Physical Medicine
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.135-147
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• 2020

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of physiotherapy intervention for patients with COVID-19 during their hospital admission and post-discharge. METHODS: The recommendations and guidelines of physiotherapy management, medical management, and general information of the WHO, Australian Physiotherapist, European Respiratory Society, British Thoracic Society, and American Thoracic Society were reviewed. RESULTS: This paper contains general information on COVID-19, including medical management, and the importance of physiotherapy approaches including an assessment of the patients' function, such as the 6-minute walking test, five sit to stand or sit to stand for one minute to measure their function as their recovery journey. The patients' quality of life, anxiety, and depression should be considered. Physiotherapy management should be based on an assessment of the patient's presenting impairments, including inclusion and exclusion of physiotherapy intervention. The paper also approaches step by step with the disease progress, from an intensive care unit, the general ward in the acute phase, through to the rehabilitation ward if needed, and post-discharge as an outpatient.. CONCLUSION: The paper has a limitation due to the unknown factor of the natural history of COVID-19. Depending on the patients' recovery journey and the rehabilitation needed, any physiotherapy interventions should focus on what the patients' need on their journey to recovery, e.g., pulmonary, cardiac, neurological, and general rehabilitation. In addition, applying personal protection equipment for treating physiotherapists is a mandatory requirement because this protects from the transmission of COVID-19.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.261-282
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• 2019

The research related to testing pupils' achievement in the field of Measurement and Measure in initial teaching of geometry points to an insufficient adoption of the basic components of the length measurement concept among pupils. In order to discover the cause, we looked at the basic components on which the procedure of measuring length using a ruler is based, highlighted the possibilities of introducing the procedure in measuring length, and determined pupils' achievement during the procedure of measuring length using a ruler. The research sample consisted of 145 pupils, out of which 72 were the 2^nd grade pupils and 73 were the 4^th grade pupils. A descriptive method was applied in the research. The technique we used was testing, and for the statistical data processing we used a χ² test. The results of the research show that, when drawing a straight line of a given length using a ruler, there is no statistical difference in achievement between the 2^nd and 4^th grade pupils, nor in the pupils' knowledge regarding drawing a ruler independently, while drawing a straight line of a given length using a "broken" ruler 4^th grade pupils are statistically better. The results of the research indicate that pupils' achievement is better in doing standard tasks than in non-standard ones, given that the latter require conceptual knowledge. The components of the concept of length measurement using ruler have not been sufficiently developed yet, and these include: zero-point, partitioning a measured object in a series of consecutive measurement units and their iteration. We shed more light on the critical stage in the procedure of length measurement - the transition from non-standard to standard units and the formation of the length measurement scale. For further research, we propose to look at the formation of the concept of length measurement using the ruler through all its components and their inclusion in the mathematics curriculum, as well as examining the correlation of pupils' achievement in the procedure of measuring length with their achievement in measuring area (and volume).

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.53-66
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• 2009

Objective : Acupuncture has been widely used throughout the world for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis (knee OA). This study investigated whether acupuncture, particularly Sa-am acupuncture, could be effective in relieving pain and improving the symptoms of knee OA. Method : This study was conducted as a prospective, randomized, controlled, and patient- and investigator-blinded clinical trial. Forty volunteers with knee OA participated in the study. All participants were screened through an inclusion and exclusion criteria. Thirty four participants completed the clinical trial. In total, forty subjects were randomly selected to receive Sa-am acupuncture. Eight sessions of acupuncture were given at the contralateral side of the problematic knee for 4 weeks. Korean translation of Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (KWOMAC) scores were measured twice: at the beginning and end of the clinical trial period. Both the Patient Global Assessment and physical health scores based on the 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey were also used to measure the results. Results : Compared to the pre-trial scores, the Sa-am acupuncture group (n=34) showed a significant decrease in KWOMAC total scores according to a paired t-test. The Sa-am acupuncture group also showed significant improvement in the Patient Global Assessment when compared to the pre-trial. Conclusions : Sa-am acupuncture for knee OA resulted in an improved KWOMAC total score. This was mostly driven by the function component score that was greatly affected by acupuncture. However, further studies with expanded designs are needed to solidify this finding with scientific rigor.

• Women's Health Nursing
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.109-119
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to describe prenatal nursing intervention studies on pregnant women and their families published in Korean nursing journals to identify research trends and to analyze the characteristics of intervention studies. This scoping review was conducted using Arksey and O'Malley's framework. We identified a research question and searched six domestic electronic databases for relevant articles. Forty-five references that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria were finally selected. We extracted the data using an analytic framework, and then collated and summarized the characteristics of the intervention studies. The most frequently used research designs were non-randomized controlled trials (91.1%), and only a few studies applied a specific theoretical framework (24.4%). The participants were mainly pregnant women only (64.4%) during the third trimester (35.6%) of pregnancy. Prenatal education was the most common type of intervention (48.9%), followed by complementary therapy (37.8%) and psychosocial support programs (13.3%). The most commonly used outcome variables were drawn from the psychological domain (44.5%), although distinct types of outcome variables-especially from the psychological and physical domains-were used to measure the effectiveness of different types of prenatal interventions. This review suggests that further prenatal nursing intervention studies in Korea should expand the study participants to include pregnant women's family members, high-risk and vulnerable groups, and women throughout entire pregnancy. Furthermore, it is necessary to develop integrative prenatal nursing interventions that promote family support and participation by facilitating partnerships among women, families, and nurses before, during, and after pregnancy.

• The Journal of Korean Society for School & Community Health Education
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.27-42
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• 2017

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of smoking prevention programs and their effectiveness for Korean school-aged children and adolescents by using systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods: Electronic searches were performed in RISS, NAL, DBPia, KISS using keywords according to inclusion criteria. 21 studies published from 2003 to the first half of 2017 that dealt with effects of smoking prevention programs for school-aged children and adolescents were selected for systematic review. Results: All 21 studies were quasi-experimental research designs. More than half of the programs(66.7%) were conducted for male and female. Most of the programs were conducted more than once a week(71.4%). 14 studies(66.7%) did not report using a theoretical model. Five dependent variables(knowledge of smoking, attitude toward smoking, non-smoking intention, self-assertiveness, and self-efficacy) were selected to measure the effectiveness of the smoking prevention programs. Knowledge of smoking was the most effective at hedge's g=0.673. Self-efficacy and self-assertiveness variables were statistically significant at hedge's g=0.461 and hedge's g=0.279, respectively. Effect sizes of attitude toward smoking and non-smoking intention were not statistically significant compared to the control group. As a result of the moderator effect analysis on the knowledge of smoking variable, the statistically significant variables were 'gender of participants'(p<0.01) and 'duration of the program'(p<0.001). Conclusions: The results of this study using systematic review and meta-analysis will be evidence-based data for researchers conducting smoking prevention programs in school-aged children and adolescents.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.443-457
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• 2019

Objectives: This study aimed to review the clinical research trends in respiratory diseases related to particulate matter (PM) to help design clinical studies on herbal medicine that protects against PM. Methods: We searched three international databases (Pubmed, EMBASE, and CENTRAL) to investigate clinical studies on respiratory diseases related to PM and to analyze their study design, respiratory-related disease, inclusion/exclusion criteria, study period, outcome measure, study results, measurement method of PM and range of PM. Results: A total of 18 studies were finally selected, including 13 observational studies and 5 randomized controlled trials. The selected studies showed an increasing trend from 1985 to 2018 and were conducted mostly in North America, followed by Europe and Asia. Subject disease and age were decided in variety by each study objective, although asthma accounted for the majority. For the outcome assessment, pulmonary function test was mostly used for lung function. Quality of life questionnaires and biomarkers in blood and sputum were also used. Conclusion: A well-designed clinical study on herbal medicine that protects against PM is needed, and this study is expected to be used as base data.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.721-732
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• 2018

Latent class analysis (LCA) is an important tool to explore unseen latent groups in multivariate categorical data. In practice, it is important to select a suitable set of variables because the inclusion of too many variables in the model makes the model complicated and reduces the accuracy of the parameter estimates. Dean and Raftery (Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, 62, 11-35, 2010) proposed a headlong search algorithm based on Bayesian information criteria values to choose meaningful variables for LCA. In this paper, we propose a new variable selection procedure for LCA by utilizing posterior probabilities obtained from each fitted model. We propose a new statistic to measure the adequacy of LCA and develop a variable selection procedure. The effectiveness of the proposed method is also presented through some numerical studies.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.71-83
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• 2019

Purpose: This meta-analysis aimed to analyze to the effects of aquatic exercise programs in children with cerebral palsy and identify directions for future research. Methods: A systematic search based on the PRISMA guidelines was undertaken for studies conducted between 2006 and 2018 on aquatic exercise programs in children with cerebral palsy. A total of 10 studies were selected according to the inclusion criteria. The methodological quality was assessed using the Risk of Bias Tool for Randomized Controlled Trials (RoB) and Risk-of-Bias Assessment Tool for Non-randomized Studies (RoBANS). A meta-analysis software (CMA 3.0) was used to calculate the mean effect size, effect size by intervention (Halliwick and Watsu Aquatic methods), and effect size by outcome. Results: The mean effect size was 0.457. The effect size by intervention was largest for the Halliwick method, followed by the Watsu method. The effect size by outcome was largest for range of motion, followed by the gross motor function measure, the Pediatric Berg Balance Scale, and the Modified Ashworth Scale. Meta-regression analysis showed effect size increased when sample size, number of sessions, and length of sessions increased. Conclusion: The results show that aquatic exercise programs have a positive effect on children with cerebral palsy. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a guideline that recommends the appropriate intervention and the identifies the direction of future studies on aquatic exercise programs.