• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.67-79
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• 1992

Cardiac systolic time intervals (STLs) and Heather index (HI) were used to access changes in left ventricular function of six male subjects exposed to postural changes,$0^{\circ}C$, ${\pm}2^{\circ}C$, ${\pm}45^{\circ}C$, ${\pm}90^{\circ}C$, Significant prolongation of the pre-ejection period (PEP) and PEP/ LVET ratio, shortening of the left ventricular ejection time (LVET), STI, HI and $1/PEP^{2}$were observed during exposure to both $+45^{\circ}C $ and $+90^{\circ}C $But the values measured during $-45^{\circ}C $ and$-90^{\circ}C $ were reversed. Changes in fluid shift, filling volume, preload, after load and sympathetic activities may account for the observed findings. Early response of cardiac foctions was recorded using impedance cardiography. This method is very simple but accurate. Thus it will be useful in this aerospace and work physiology. In conclusion, STIs appear to provide reliable noninvasive method for examining changes of cardiac function during exposure to postural changes.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.19-25
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• 2009

Purpose: We investigated the changes that effects of load stimulation (LS) on static balance and muscle activities in normal healthy elders and chronic stroke patients. Methods: Subjects were instructed twenty normal healthy elders (8 men and 12 women) and ten chronic stroke patients (4 men and 6 women). They were tested while standing on a force platform under two conditions; LS, no LS were applied in random order. Prior to testing, adhesive surface EMG electrodes were fastened to the skin overlying the right (non-paralytic side in stroke patient) bellies of tibialis anterior (TA) and lateral gastrocnemius (LG) muscles. They were assessed on postural sway and %MVC (Maximum voluntary contraction) of TA and LG. Results: Participants showed that the application of LS brought about a decrease in postural sway as expressed by average sway path and velocity. %MVC of TA and LG were increased. The application of LS to normal and stroke patients decreases postural sway during quite stance. Conclusion: These findings the application of LS to normal and stroke patients improves static balance.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1997 no.11
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• pp.39-43
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• 1997

Posturography stands or quantitative assessment of body postural stability analysis. The present study developed a balance plate system to monitor patient's center of pressure (COP) movement and to analyze its stability. An equilateral triangular shaped plate was made of duralumin and forces were measured on the three vertices of the plate using industrial load cells. Specially designed electronic circuit picked up force signals ed into data acquisition system to calculate the cartesian coordinates of COP. COP calculation error was less than 2%. The force signals enabled to compute stability measures, which consisted of a variety of clinical parameters related to postural stability. Clinical experiments were carefully designed and performed on 40 normal subjects. The results were that 1) postural stability decreased with age and 2) the best parameters were those of posture deviation measures. A customized PC-based software package was developed to apply the present technique with a great convenience to monitoring and analyzing postural stability in an accurate and quantitative way.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.289-296
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• 2005

This study aims to measure maximum holding times(MHTs) of symmetric and asymmetric whole body postures, and to compare three representative observational methods including OWAS, RULA, REBA, based on the MHTs. An experiment was conducted for obtaining the MHTs, in which hand position was used as experimental variable, and the MHT and subjective discomfort rating as dependent variables. The hand position was defined by the percentage of the shoulder height(%SH), the percentage of the arm reach(%AR) and rotation angle(R). The results showed that three independent variables of %SH, %AR and R significantly affected on the MHTs at ${\alpha}$=0.01, and that the MHTs were negatively linearly related to the discomfort scores of Borg CR10. It was also revealed that OWAS and REBA were less sensitive to postural stress than RULA. In addition, OWAS and REBA underestimated postural load of given postures compared to RULA. Therefore, it is recommended that among the three observational methods investigated in this study, RULA be used for a more precise evaluation of postural load.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.77-86
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• 2004

Observational methods to evaluate postural load have an intrinsic week point that is the problem of reliability in observing postures subjectively, although they have been widely used in assessing risk factors of work-related musculoskeletal disorders in the industry. In this study, observational reliability was discussed based on reviewing several previous studies. Practical guidelines was presented to reduce the observational errors when using video recording for the assessment of risk factors. In addition, previous studies on observational reliability were summarized and analyzed according to body parts to be observed, media for observation, objective measures, analysis, statistics, etc. It is expected that this basic study can be used to increase the applicability and accuracy of the observational methods.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.20 no.2 s.70
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• pp.127-132
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to compare representative posture classification schemes of OWAS, RULA and REBA in terms of correctness for postural load. The comparison was based on the evaluation results by the three methods for 224 working postures sampled from steel, electronics, automotive, and chemical industries. The results showed that OWAS and REBA generally underestimated postural stress than RULA irrespective of industry type, work performed and whether or not leg posture is balanced. While about $71\%\;and\;73\%$ of the 224 posture were evaluated with the action category/level 1 or 2 by OWAS and REBA respectively, about $60\%$ of the postures were classified into the action level of 3 or 4 by RULA. The coincidence rate of postural stress category between OWAS and RULA was just $33.5\%$, while the rate between RULA and REBA was $46.0\%$. It is concluded from the findings of this study and the previous research that compared to OWAS and REBA, RULA more precisely evaluates postural stress.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1997 no.11
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• pp.276-279
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• 1997

A simple bio-feedback system was developed to monitor and to analyze patient's postural balance. Two load celIs were used to measure the weight of each side. A specially designed electronic circuit was made to pick up the weight signals and to feed into the data acquisition system. Clinical trials were also made on 20-30 year-old normal subjects and nine hemiplegia patients who had the potential instability in weight bearing. A Microsoft window-based software collected and analyzed the postural balance data. Normal subjects showed only 5% deviations of their body weight. However, hemipegic patients had significant weight shifts toward the healthy limb. With the present system, patients can also exercise their balance and weight bearing. The present system should be of convenience to monitor in real-time and analyze the postural balance control of hemiplegic patients.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.21 no.3 s.75
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• pp.122-126
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• 2006

This study investigated effect of arm posture, wrist motion repetition and external load on perceived discomfort through an experiment. Eleven female college students participated in the experiment, where shoulder, elbow and wrist motion, wrist motion repetition, and external load were used as independent variables. The results showed that only external load had a significant effect on perceived discomfort. The perceived discomfort linearly increased with external load. Based on the results of this and the previous study for males, it was concluded that effect of external load on perceived discomfort was larger than that of other posture and motion repetition related variables. This implies that effect of external load is the most important factor considered in the first place when assessing postural load.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.328-334
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• 2019

Underwater architecture in providing a comfortable living space underwater is mandated to survive prevailing environmental loads, especially hydrostatic ambient water pressure exerted on the structure of individual habitat hulls at depth and hydrodynamic fluctuation of external forces that perturb the postural equilibrium and mooring stability of the underwater housing system, for which the design including the hull shape and mooring system constraint the responses. In this study, the postural stability of a proposed underwater floating housing system with three vertically connected ellipsoidal-shape habitat hulls of different sizes are theorized and calculated for hydrostatic stability, using MATLAB in the volumetric integration of a hull and the weight of operational loads under assumed scenarios. The assumptions made in the numerical method to estimate the stability of the habitat system include the fixed weight of the hulls, and their adjustable loads within operational limits for the set meteorological oceanic conditions. The purpose of this study was to numerically manipulate a) The buoyancy and b) The adjusted center of mass of the system within the range of designed external and internal load changes, by which the effective mooring system capability and postural equilibrium requirements were argued with the quantitative analysis.

• IE interfaces
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.85-93
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• 2003

The purposes of this study are to investigate perceived discomfort for static joint motions, and to propose rankings for the joint motions based on the perceived discomfort. The perceived discomfort was measured through an experiment using the free modulus method of the magnitude estimation, in which ten healthy college-age female students participated. The results showed that joints, joint motions and their levels significantly affected the perceived discomfort at $\alpha$=0.01, and that the interaction of joints and joint motion levels was also significant. Based on the experimental results, three rankings were proposed by joint and joint motions, by joints and by joint motions, which were very different from the existing ones. Especially, the proposed rankings were different from the males' published before in their order and magnitude. These rankings can be used as a valuable tool for better understanding potentially adverse effects of poor working postures in industrial sites, and as basic data for developing the postural classification scheme.