Background: Chronic nonspecific low back pain (CNLBP) is a common musculoskeletal condition among middle-aged adults, often causing physical limitations and reduced quality of life. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is a widely used non-pharmacological method for pain relief and muscle modulation. Objectives: To compare the effects of two high-frequency, high-intensity TENS protocols on pain, muscle tone, and stiffness in individuals with CNLBP. Design: Single-blinded, randomized controlled trial. Methods: Twenty-eight individuals with CNLBP were randomly assigned to an experimental group (EG) or control group (CG). Both received 60 Hz, highintensity TENS twice weekly for four weeks. Pain equivalent current (PEC), visual analogue scale (VAS), pain degree (PD), muscle tone (Hz), and stiffness (N/m) were measured pre- and post-intervention by a blinded assessor. Results: The EG showed significant improvements in all outcomes (P<.05), while the CG showed significant change only in VAS scores. Between-group analysis showed greater reductions in pain and muscle-related variables in the EG. Conclusion: The EG protocol, with individualized intensity adjustments and targeted stimulation sites, was more effective than the CG protocol in improving pain, muscle tone, and stiffness in adults with CNLBP.

This study revisits prosodic phrasing in North Kyungsang Korean (NK), focusing on intonational phrase (I-phrase). Based on the observation in Kim (1988) that a boundary low tone appears at the right edge of I-phrase, the present study shows in a constraint-based framework that I-phrasing is recursive and that the interaction of markedness and faithfulness constraints leads to a better description of I-phrasing in NK. Match Clause constraints (Selkirk 2011), faithfulness constraints, are employed to show the direct relation between surface syntactic clause edges and I-phrase edges. Even though it defies Non-Recursivity of the Strict Layer Hypothesis (Selkirk 1984, 1966), Equal Sisters constraint (Myrberg 2013), a markedness constraint, is shown to resolve the mismatch between syntactic and prosodic constituent edges by demanding the same prosodic category among prosodic sisters. Also shown here is that recursive I-phrasing is due to the ranking of Equal Sisters above Match Clause constraints. We provide one more piece of evidence for recursive prosodic phrasing by showing how I-phrases are formed in NK.