Background: During postural control, older adults are more dependent on proprioception than are young adults. Ankle proprioception, which plays an important role in maintaining postural balance, decreases with age. Published studies are insufficient to establish a significant age difference in postural sway resulting from the known age-related decrease in ankle proprioception and do not examine various detailed test conditions. Objects: The present study aimed to compare ankle proprioception between older and younger groups along dimensions of position vs. force proprioception and dorsiflexion vs. plantarflexion. The present study also aimed to compare postural sway between young and older women during quiet standing under two sensory conditions. Methods: We recruited seven young women aged 21–24 and seven older women aged 60–63. Ankle proprioception was assessed as the accuracy of the joint position sense (JPS) and the force sense (FS). Postural sway was assessed using center-of-pressure measurements recorded during quiet standing under two sensory positions: eyes open and eyes closed with head tilted back. Results: Older women had lower JPS in dorsiflexion and lower FS in plantarflexion than did younger women. We found no significant age differences in JPS in plantarflexion or in FS in dorsiflexion. We observed a main effect of group on postural sway in two sway parameters out of three. We observed significant differences in JPS with dorsiflexion, and in FS with plantarflexion. Conclusion: Proprioception for ankle plantar flexor decreased more significantly with aging than did that for ankle dorsiflexor, accounting for the impaired postural balance observed in older women.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of taping on knee joint for patellofemoral compressive force (PCF) during stair descent for elderly women. Ten healthy elderly women voluntarily participated in this study. A three-dimensional motion analysis system and force plates were used to analyze the movements of the joints for the lower extremities. The results were as follows: There were no significant differences for the maximum PCF, maximum quadriceps contraction force and maximum knee extension moment (p>.05) but, there was a pattern decreasing all values with the taping during stair descent. There were significant differences for the knee and ankle angle on the event of maximum PCF (p<.05) and there was a pattern decreasing all values with the taping during stair descent. Therefore, taping on the knee would be effective to relieve the pain like patellofemoral pain syndrome in the knee joint.

The Joint South Korea and United States Jeju 4.3 Task Force on Social Healing Through Justice, proposed here, focuses on potential next steps in view of the strong sense of many that 4.3 reconciliation is "unfinished business." It proposes a creative yet practical way for the United States, South Korea and Jeju people to engage in collaborative 4.3 social healing. Together as Part of the proposed Joint Task Force, they might more fully implement past recommendations and chart and oversee next steps toward comprehensive and enduring social healing “by doing justice." ’This proposal is based on the National Committee’s now-translated Report and the insights of scholars and the work of many of you here, along with others deeply interested in social justice. Those of us not from Jeju, or South Korea, who appreciate your invitation to participate, humbly and respectfully offer this proposal for your consideration with justice in mind.

In this study, the compressive force is evaluated for the SMA surface reinforcement member which is to improve the bond capacity at cold-joint in PC member. As a result, the total compressive force can be estimated according to the number of wires.

In this paper, a method for estimation of external force on an end-effector using joint torque sensor is proposed. The method is based on portion of measure torque caused by external force. Due to noise in the torque measurement data from the torque sensor, a recursive least-square estimation algorithm is used to ensure a smoother estimation of the external force data. However it is inevitable to create a delay for the sensor to detect the external force. In order to reduce the delay, modified recursive least-square is proposed. The performance of the proposed estimation method is evaluated in an experiment on a developed six-degree-of-freedom robot. By using NI DAQ device and Labview, the robot control, data acquisition and The experimental results output are processed in real time. By using proposed modified RLS, the delay to estimate the external force with the RLS is reduced by 54.9%. As an experimental result, the difference of the actual external force and the estimated external force is 4.11% with an included angle of 5.04° while in dynamic state. This result shows that this method allows joint torque sensors to be used instead of commonly used external sensory system such as F/T sensors.

A simplified linearized dynamic equation for the propulsion force generation of an Ostraciiform fish robot with elastically jointed double caudal fins is derived in this paper. The caudal fin is divided into two segments and connected using an elastic joint. The second part of the caudal fin is actuated passively via the elastic joint connection by the actuation of the first part of it. It is demonstrated that the derived equation can be utilized for the design of effective caudal fins because the equation is given as an explicit form with several physical parameters. A simple Ostraciiform fish robot was designed and fabricated using a microprocessor, a servo motor, and acrylic plastics. Through the experiment with the fish robot, it is demonstrated that the propulsion force generated in the experiment matches well with the proposed equation, and the propulsion speed can be greatly improved using the elastically jointed double fins, improving the average speed more than 80%. Through numerical simulation and frequency domain analysis of the derived dynamic equations, it is concluded that the main reason of the performance improvement is resonance between two parts of the caudal fins.