Calf massager: Intervention for body muscle discomfort during prolonged standing

Many occupations require workers to stand for long periods of time without proper interventions, which causes discomfort in the back and lower limbs. Therefore, this study aims to assess the effectiveness in alleviating body muscle discomfort during prolonged standing through the use of a calf massager. This study was conducted among male workers at a manufacturer with production line workers and the list was obtained from the HR Department and simple random sampling was done by number categorization. A total of 100 respondents (50 respondents for both the control and the experimental groups) participated in this study. The experiment took place in a room with a similar setup for the production line. Each respondent was requested to perform the simulated task for 2 hr. For the experimental group, the calf massager was turned on every 15 min. At every 15‐min interval after turning on the calf massager, respondents from both groups were required to evaluate their discomfort level on a Borg's scale CR‐10 questionnaire. The results showed that the level of body discomfort among respondents in the experimental group reduced (20–30%) compared with that of the control group. Multivariate analysis results revealed that the discomfort rating for the lower back, knees, thighs, calves, and feet was significantly lower (p < .05) among the experimental group compared with the control group. For lower body parts, the lower back region was statistically significant (p < .05) at the 90th, 105th, and 120th min; the thigh region was statistically significant (p < .05) at the 120th min; the knee region was statistically significant (p < .05) at the 105th and 120th min; the calf region was statistically significant (p < .05) at all minute intervals except the 15th and 45th min, while the feet region, was statistically significant at the 105th and 120th min. Therefore, this study indicates that calf massage treatment is capable of reducing body muscle discomfort during prolonged standing and highlights the significance of calf massage.     

Phase-Structural and Electrochemical Properties of La2MgNi9 Alloys

Powder Metallurgy and Metal Ceramics - Multiphase La 2 MgNi 9 alloys are synthesized by induction melting. The crystalline structures of all phases in the alloys are determined with X-ray...     

Perspectives on Design and Innovation

A series of studies of top European and other firms has revealed patterns of design management associated with commercial success. Firms that invest resources and professional expertise in product and industrial design in traditional and new industries have been commercially more successful than firms that pay less attention to these aspects of design. As an industry matures there is a shift in emphasis from design associated with technological innovation, to designs supporting technical improvements, and then to supporting user needs, fashion and product variants. These issues are illustrated through the history of the evolution of the bicycle.     

Determination du coefficient d'extinction molaire de OH− dans les verres fluores a base de metaux lourds

The extinction coefficient ? at 2.9 μm for OH in fluoride glasses is measured by determining the amount of HF evolved during heating of the glass under steam and the corresponding intensity of the OH absorption band. This coefficient is respectively equal to 31 litre mole^?1 cm^?1 for BTYbZ glass (15 BaF₂ - 29 ThF₄ - 28 YbF₃ - 28 ZnF₂) and 19.5 litre mole^?1 cm^?1 for BALLA glass (34 BaF₂ - 57 ZrF₄ - 4 AlF₃ - 5 LaF₃).     

Reaction of zirconium fluoride glass with water: kinetics of dissolution

When liquid water contacts a zirconium-barium-lanthanum fluoride glass, at least three different processes occur. Barium and zirconium fluoride dissolve into the water, water penetrates into the glass, and zirconium fluoride crystals grow on the glass surface, in static solution. The rate of dissolution, as measured by solution analysis, is possibly controlled by diffusion in the solid surface; surface blockage and surface reactions are other possible kinetic steps involved. Diffusion in solution is not the controlling mechanism. Hydrogen profiles in the glass surface suggest that the penetration rate of water into the glass is controlled by diffusion and a surface reaction.     

Criteria to disprove context freeness of collage languages

Collage grammars are context-free devices which generate picture languages consisting of collages—sets of parts, where a part is a set of points in a given space. In order to show that certain collage languages cannot be generated, the well-known pumping technique turns out to be rather useless. To circumvent this difficulty, other necessary criteria for context-freeness are established in this paper. Roughly speaking, these criteria reveal that (1) the collages in a context-free collage language can be deflated stepwise in such a manner that the difference between subsequent collages in the resulting chain is small and (2) the volume of parts can grow or shrink only exponentially.     

Constructing a short form of the Smoking Consequences Questionnaire with adolescents and young adults.

The goal of the present studies was to construct and validate a short form of the 50-item Smoking Consequences Questionnaire (SCQ; T. H. Brandon & T. B. Baker, 1991), a measure of smoking outcome expectancies. In Study 1, a 21-item short form (S-SCQ) was derived from a sample of 107 young adults previously treated for substance abuse. In Study 2, the measure was cross-validated on 125 adolescents in treatment for substance abuse. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed good model fit and factorial invariance for the 4 S-SCQ subscales across both samples. Validation analyses on each sample found that subscale scores generally correlated significantly with smoking-related variables. The present studies provide initial evidence for the utility of the S-SCQ when used with young adults and adolescents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)