Background: Rounded Shoulder Posture (RSP) and Forward Head Posture (FHP) often result from prolonged digital device use, leading to muscle imbalance, pain, and functional limits. Growing demand for postural correction highlights the need for effective exercise approaches. Objectives: This study compared strengthening, self-stretching, and mixed exercises on acromion height, craniovertebral angle, and muscle tone in adults with FHP and RSP. Design: Randomized controlled pretest-post test trial over four weeks. Methods: Thirty university students (acromion height ≥2.5 cm, craniovertebral angle ≤53°) were randomly assigned to strengthening (n=6), self-stretching (n=9), or mixed exercise (n=9) groups. Participants exercised three times weekly for four weeks. Pre- and post-tests measured acromion height, craniovertebral angle, and muscle tone of the pectoralis major, upper trapezius, and sternocleidomastoid using MyotonPro®. Data were analyzed with Wilcoxon signed ranks, Kruskal-Wallis, and repeated measures ANOVA (P<.05). Results: All groups significantly improved acromion height and craniovertebral angle (P<.05) without intergroup differences. Significant tone change appeared only in the upper trapezius (P<.05), with the mixed group showing the largest improvement. Conclusion: All exercises improved posture in adults with FHP and RSP. Mixed exercise yielded the greatest reduction in upper trapezius tone, suggesting a multimodal approach may be most effective.

In this study, the antioxidizing effect of 2,3-dicaffeoyl-epi-quinic acid (DEQA) was investigated. The antioxidant activity was evaluated by measuring the scavenging effect on DPPH radical and peroxynitrite and the reducing power on ferric ion. DEQA showed a scavenging effect and reducing power comparable to vitamin C used as a positive control. Also, DEQA effectively inhibited production of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) in HT-1080 cells, showing the scavenging ratio of 43.8% even at 10 μM concentration of DEQA after 2 hours in HT-1080 treated with H2O2. In addition to this, DEQA inhibited the production of nitric oxide (NO) very effectively in Raw 264.7 cells. The above results suggest that DEQA has the potential to be developed as a natural antioxidant.

A 1.8 μm thick polycrystalline diamond (PCD) thin film layer is prepared on a Si(100) substrate using hot-filament chemical vapor deposition. Thereafter, its thermal conductivity is measured using the conventional laser flash analysis (LFA) method, a LaserPIT-M2 instrument, and the newly proposed light source thermal analysis (LSTA) method. The LSTA method measures the thermal conductivity of the prepared PCD thin film layer using an ultraviolet (UV) lamp with a wavelength of 395 nm as the heat source and a thermocouple installed at a specific distance. In addition, the microstructure and quality of the prepared PCD thin films are evaluated using an optical microscope, a field emission scanning electron microscope, and a micro-Raman spectroscope. The LFA, LaserPIT-M2, and LSTA determine the thermal conductivities of the PCD thin films, which are 1.7, 1430, and 213.43 W/(m·K), respectively, indicating that the LFA method and LaserPIT-M2 are prone to errors. Considering the grain size of PCD, we conclude that the LSTA method is the most reliable one for determining the thermal conductivity of the fabricated PCD thin film layers. Therefore, the proposed LSTA method presents significant potential for the accurate and reliable measurement of the thermal conductivity of PCD thin films.