• Journal of muscle and joint health
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.55-65
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• 2009

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of water exercise program on physical fitness, pain and quality of life(QoL) in patients with osteoarthritis. Methods: Thirty-four old women were divided into the exercise(EG, n=18) and control groups(CG, n=16) after 6-week self-help education program. The EG carried out 6-week supervised water exercise program(60min/day, 2days/wk). Physical fitness, pain, and QoL were assessed by Senior Fitness Test Manual(Rikli & Jones, 2005), Pain rating scale(0-10) and World Health Organization QoL BREF(Min et al., 2000), respectively. Results: Both EG and CG increased upper and lower-body strength(all, p<.05), which were measured by arm curl and chair stand, respectively. For flexibility test, the EG increased upper and lower body(all, p<.05). Balance of the EG increased(p<.05), but not in the CG. Pain significantly decreased in the EG post training(p=.000). However, both EG and CG did not significantly improve for QoL. Conclusion: Six weeks of water exercise program did induce significant improvement in physical fitness and pain control in patients with osteoarthritis.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.86 no.6
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• pp.739-750
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• 2023

This study examines the two-level behavior of the toggle brace damper within a steel frame having a yielding pipe damper and rotational friction damper. The proposed system has two kinds of fuse for energy dissipation in two stages. In this mechanism, rotational friction damper rather than hinged connection is used in toggle brace system, connected to a pipe damper with a limited gap. In order to create a gap, bolted connection with the slotted hole is used, such that first a specific movement of the rotational friction damper solely is engaged but with an increase in movement, the yielding damper is also involved. The performance of the system is such that at the beginning of loading the rotational friction damper, as the first fuse, absorbs energy and with increasing the input load and further movement of the frame, yielding damper as the second fuse, along with rotational friction damper would dissipate the input energy. The models created by ABAQUS are subjected to cyclic and seismic loading. Considering the results obtained, the flexibility of the hybrid two-level system is more comparable to the conventional toggle brace damper. Moreover, this system sustains longer lateral displacements. The energy dissipation of these two systems is modeled in multi-story frames in SAP2000 software and their performance is analyzed using time-history analysis. According to the results, permanent relocations of the roof in the two-level system, in comparison with toggle brace damper system in 2, 5, and 8-story building frames, in average, decrease by 15, 55, and 37% respectively. This amount in a 5-story building frame under the earthquakes with one-third scale decreases by 64%.

• The Korean Journal of Franchise Management
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.25-49
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• 2014

This study is to examine the impact of sales franchisor's relationship-oriented efforts(flexibility, problem solving support, customization, information exchange, and supervisor characteristics) on relationship quality(satisfaction, trust, and commitment) and recontract intentions. In order to analyze proposed model, this study collected the 233 franchisees with owner or hired manager. The data were analyzed with SPSS/PC 18.0 and AMOS 18.0. First, to test unidimensionality and nomological validity of the measures of each construct we employed a scale refinement procedure. The result of reliability test with confirmatory factor analysis warranted unidimensionality of the measures for each construct. The findings are as follows: First, relationship-oriented efforts had positive effects on relationship quality (satisfaction, trust, and commitment) of franchisee. Second, satisfaction had positive effect on trust, but did not on recontract intentions. Third, trust had positive effects on commitment and recontract intentions, respectively. Finally, commitment had a positive effect on recontract intentions. At the end of this paper, managerial implications and limitations and future research directions were suggested.

• The Journal of Korean Academy of Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapy
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.63-72
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• 2023

Background: This study investigated the effects of face-to-face and non-face-to-face McKenzie exercises and elastic band strengthening exercises on falls and fitness in older adults. Methods: A total of 44 subjects were divided into a face-to-face group (FG; n=22) and a non-face-to-face group (NFG; n=22) who met older adults. Both groups used McKenzie exercises and strength training with elastic bands The fall efficacy scale (K-FES) and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) Pro were used to compare the senior fitness test (SFT). Results: No significant differences were detected between the two groups before the intervention; however, a significant difference was noted in the K-FES scores after the intervention. The change in HbA1c after the intervention was not statistically significant in the FG or the NFG, and no significant difference was detected between the two groups. The change in lower limb muscle strength in the elderly physical fitness test showed no significant difference between the two groups before or after the intervention. The change in upper limb flexibility after the intervention was not significantly different in the FG or NFG, indicating no significant difference between the two groups. The change in the 3-meter round-trip test after the intervention was significantly different in both the FG and NFG groups, but the difference between the groups was not statistically significant. The change in the grip strength test of the dominant hand showed no significant difference after the intervention in the FG or the NFG, and the difference between the FG and NFG groups was not statistically significant. The dominant foot external standing after the intervention was significantly improved in the FG, but no significant difference was detected in the NFG, and the difference between the two groups was not statistically significant. Conclusion: The study findings revealed that FG and NFG McKenzie exercises and elastic band strengthen exercises were equally effective at preventing falls and improving fitness in older adults.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.97-102
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• 2023

This study is to provide improvement of tester for IoT system, which has recently become diversified and large-scale and It is about a method to improve the packet processing performance of the tester and securing flexibility in traffic protocol creation and operation. The purpose of this study is to design a OSS DPDK-based high-speed IoT network performance test system, which pre-verifies and measures the performance of data traffic transmission in an increasingly sophisticated high-capacity IoT network system. The basic structure of the high-speed IoT performance tester was designed using a DPDK-based traffic generator, the expected effect was suggested to traffic modeling and packet generation capability when the system was applied through experiments

• Composites Research
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.402-407
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• 2023

Activated carbon fibers (ACFs) are fibrous form of activated carbon (AC) with higher mechanical strength and flexibility, which make them suitable for building modules for applications including directional gas flow such as air and gas purification. Similarly, ACFs are anticipated to excel in the efficient capture of CO₂. However, due to the difficulties in fabricating monofilament carbon fibers at a laboratory scale, most of the studies regarding ACFs for CO₂ capture have relied on electrospun carbon fibers. In this study, we fabricated monofilament carbon fibers from PAN-based monofilament precursors by stabilization and carbonization. Then, ACFs were successfully prepared by chemical activation using KOH. Different weight ratios ranging from 1:1 to 1:4 were employed in the fabrication of ACFs, and the samples were designated as ACF-1 to ACF-4, respectively. As a function of KOH ratio, increase in surface area could be observed. However, the CO₂ adsorption trend did not follow the surface area trend, and the ACF-3 with second largest surface area exhibited the highest CO₂ adsorption capacity. To understand the phenomena, nitrogen content and ultramicropore distribution, which are important factors determining CO₂ adsorption capacity, were considered. As a result, while nitrogen content could not explain the phenomena, ultramicropore distribution could provide a reasoning that the excessive etching led ACF-4 to develop micropore structure with a broader distribution, resulting in high surface area yet deteriorated CO₂ adsorption.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.8
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• pp.403-408
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• 2007

In a large corpus-based speech synthesizer, a break, which is a parameter influencing the naturalness and intelligibility, is used as an important feature during a unit selection process. Japanese is a language having intonations, which ate indicated by the relative differences in pitch heights and the APs(Accentual Phrases) are placed according to the changes of the accents while a break occurs on a boundary of the APs. Although a break can be predicted by using J-ToBI(Japanese-Tones and Break Indices), which is a rule-based or statistical approach, it is very difficult to predict a break exactly due to the flexibility. Therefore, in this paper, a method is to conduct a unit search by dividing breaks into two types, such as a fixed break and a flexible break, in order to use the advantages of a large-scale corpus, which includes various types of prosodies. As a result of an experiment, the proposed unit selection method contributed itself to enhance the naturalness of synthesized speeches.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.187-192
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• 2023

The United States (US) National Science Foundation's (NSF's) National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a continental-scale observation facility, constructed and operated by Battelle, that collects long-term ecological data to better understand and forecast how US ecosystems are changing. All data and samples are collected using standardized methods at 81 field sites across the US and are freely and openly available through the NEON data portal, application programming interface (API), and the NEON Biorepository. NSF led a decade-long design process with the research community, including numerous workshops to inform the key features of NEON, culminating in a formal final design review with an expert panel in 2009. The NEON construction phase began in 2012 and was completed in May 2019, when the observatory began the full operations phase. Full operations are defined as all 81 NEON sites completely built and fully operational, with data being collected using instrumented and observational methods. The intent of the NSF is for NEON operations to continue over a 30-year period. Each challenge encountered, problem solved, and risk realized on NEON offers up lessons learned for constructing and operating distributed ecological data collection infrastructure and data networks. NEON's construction phase included offices, labs, towers, aquatic instrumentation, terrestrial sampling plots, permits, development and testing of the instrumentation and associated cyberinfrastructure, and the development of community-supported collection plans. Although colocation of some sites with existing research sites and use of mostly "off the shelf" instrumentation was part of the design, successful completion of the construction phase required the development of new technologies and software for collecting and processing the hundreds of samples and 5.6 billion data records a day produced across NEON. Continued operation of NEON involves reexamining the decisions made in the past and using the input of the scientific community to evolve, upgrade, and improve data collection and resiliency at the field sites. Successes to date include improvements in flexibility and resilience for aquatic infrastructure designs, improved engagement with the scientific community that uses NEON data, and enhanced methods to deal with obsolescence of the instrumentation and infrastructure across the observatory.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.431-441
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• 2024

A newly developed line-style sand pluviator has been calibrated to prepare repeatable sand specimens of specific statuses of compactness and homogeneity for laboratory tests. Sand is falling via a bottom slot of a fixed hopper, and by moving the sample container under the slot, the container is evenly filled with sand. The pluviator is designed with high flexibility: The falling height of sand, the hopper's opening width and the relative moving speed between the hopper and the sample box can be easily adjusted. By changing these control factors, sand specimens of a wide range of densities can be prepared. A series of specimen preparation was performed using the coarse Merwede River sand. Performance of the pluviator was systematically evaluated by exploring the alteration of achievable density, as well as checking the homogeneity and fabric of the prepared samples by CT scanning. It was found that the density of prepared coarse sand samples has monotonic correlations with none of the three control factors. Furthermore, CT scanning results suggested that the prepared samples exhibited excellent homogeneity in the horizontal direction but periodical alteration of density in the vertical direction. Based on these calibration test results, a preliminary hypothesis is proposed to describe the general working principles of this type of pluviators a priori, illustrating the mechanisms dominating the non-monotonic correlations between control factors and the relative density as well as the vertically prevalent heterogeneity of specimens. Accordingly, practical recommendations are made in a unified framework in order to lessen the load of similar calibration work.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.39 no.8
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• pp.683-691
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• 2015

Circulating Fluidized Bed(CFB) combustion has the several advantages which are the fuel flexibility, the economy, the efficiency and the environment. It is necessary to apply a renewable energy to produce electricity due to the Renewable Portfolio Standard(RPS) mandates recently. So, in this study, co-combustion with a coal and a wood pellet was investigated to evaluate the combustibility and the environment as function of blending ratio of them in a Lab-scale CFB reactor. To investigate the characteristics of the co-combustion, the blending ratio which is the weight of wood pellet by the total calorific value of the supplied, was considered. Bed material was a river sand(No. 7). As increasing the blending ratio, the exhausted gas emissions such as CO, NOx, HC and SOx were decreased. But in case of wood pellet over 30%, CO, HC and SOx emission were increased. And the gas temperatures at the downstream were decreased.