Background and objectives: Patient-handling activities predispose women to chronic low back pain (CLBP), but sufficient evidence is not available on whether a 3D moving platform, made for core stability exercise, affects pain, trunk flexibility, and static/dynamic muscle contractions in CLBP patients. Materials and Methods: The participants were twenty-nine women who were randomly divided into a control group (CON) and a 3D exercise group (3DEG), which took part in 3D moving exercise three times a week for 8 weeks. Both groups measured a visual analog scale (VAS) about their CLBP. Body composition, forward and backward trunk flexibilities, static muscle contraction property in rectus abdominis, and erector spinae were measured by tensiomyography, which found contraction time (Tc) and maximal displacement (Dm). Dynamic muscle contraction property in the abdomen and back were measured with an isokinetic device, which could measure peak torque (Pt) and work per repetition (Wr), before and after the trial. Results: The 3DEG had a significantly decreased fat mass and waist/hip ratio, as well as improved static muscle contractions of the erector spinae. The Wr of trunk extensor of 3D exercise group were also significantly increased. In the VAS, although the scores showed a significant change in some variables, while others did not. The Δ% in feeling pain at rest or at night, during exercise, walking, sitting in a hard chair, sitting in a soft chair, and lying down in 3DEG were significantly changed after 8 weeks. This indicates that the platform exercise provided a greater reduction of pain for activities that are done on a daily basis. Conclusions: This study confirms that the 3D moving platform exercise can provide the similar effect of the core stability exercise used in previous studies. Moreover, this study suggests that 3D moving platform exercise is a suitable means to reduce fatness, to increase trunk extensor, and to increase trunk backward flexibility, which led to reduced back pain in the women with CLBP.

This article is a critical reflection on the author’s perambulatory experiences in Seoul as he follows the curves and strokes of contemporary Seoul’s streets. In theories of mobile communication technologies, there are few discussions about how and why people move and what happens during those movements. As the author manages his presence in the metropolitan environment of Seoul, he focuses on the new connections of social space and mobile communication technologies such as mobile phones, laptops, digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) receivers, and GPS (global positioning system) navigation. By concentrating on corporeal and incorporeal motions via walking, driving, and riding public transportation, the author discusses how the usage of new mobile communication technologies reshapes urban movement and private and public, inside and outside, near and far, and here and there conceptions of social space.

This study examines the dynamics of cultural politics in reality television shows featuring North Korean resettlers (NKR2) in South Korea. As existing studies focus on the role of media representation reproducing a dominant ideology for the resettlers, this paper focuses on the specific media rituals of NKR2 programs, which can be seen as a product of the neoliberalist localization process of the global media industry. In doing so, this paper demonstrates how NKR2 programs interrupt the current dynamics of emotions in regard to North Korean resettlers in South Korea. We argue that in shaping civic identity as an effect of the NKR2 show, cultural politics of citizenship in South Korea on North Korean resettlers serve the formation of relatively conservative and sexist civic identity.

This article is an attempt to make sense of the emerging culture of mobility in Seoul in the 1990s. The 1990s in a South Korean context is emblematic of a changed social reality and transformation. Grand narratives of development, anti-state democratization activism and Cold War politics were losing their effect and authority. Meanwhile, new forces of consumption, individualism, westernization and globalization were increasingly claiming a central presence in society and accentuating the crisis of identification and representation in cultural life and production. Looking at this particular historical situation, this article argues that the culture of mobility, in terms of the reorganization of mobility and visuality, interrupted the existing norms and mode of national identity and culture in South Korean society. The article focuses upon a new socio-cultural phenomenon known as 'Yu Hong Jun Syndrome', which emerged in the early and mid 1990s. It asks how a culture of mobility, while providing cues for ways of experiencing and seeing national landscapes and cityscapes, makes Seoulites rediscover the nation and locality as a potential space of belonging and, further, allows them to renegotiate alienated forms of social relations and everyday experiences in a globalizing metropolitan city. Seoul Searching: globalization and emerging culture of mobility in the 1990sIn the 1990s, Seoul was increasingly transforming, expanding and turning itself into what one might call a post-industrial or postmodern city. The traditional and authentic urban landscapes of the past and their related social life seemed to quickly disappear, whereas the newly fashioned consumption spaces in Seoul seem to shock urban inhabitants by bombarding Seoulites with a variety of stimuli and a dizzy array of representations. As a collective response to these increasing 'shock' experiences in a metropolitan city, a new perceptual attitude emerged in the early 1990s (Simmel [1903(Simmel [ ] 1971. It is expressive of a complex, conflictive and societal anxiety and desire not only to preserve the disappearing traditional, authentic, national identity and culture against the spreading western mass culture, but also to continue to relinquish the existing fruits of economic development, which had been successful. This search for authenticity and uniqueness in the fast-changing urban environments reshapes the relations of space, culture, identity in Seoul. In this article, I seek to make sense of the transformations of the relations of space, culture and identity in 1990s Seoul by conceptualizing them as distinctive articulations of a 'culture of mobility.' The culture of mobility as a historical concept intends to capture particular relationships among space, culture, identity, and mobility constructed in a historically specific situation. The experience of mobility over long distances has often been seen as the paradigmatic feature of modern life. Especially for the contemporary global world, mobility is often considered a defining characterist...

Owing to the high power requirements of tractors, their low-power transmission gears often experience durability problems such as burning of the clutch. The operation of tractors under high load conditions also causes clutch slip, with the consequent longer operation duration exacerbating the burning of the friction plate. Solving this problem requires effective lubricant distribution. This was achieved in the present study by the development of an analysis model for predicting the lubricant flow rate. The reliability of the model was verified by comparing its predictions for various operation conditions with experimental measurements. Using the model, it was determined that effective distribution of the lubricant could be achieved without significant modification of the system, by only adjusting the gaps between the clutch piston and the housing, and between the separation plates and the case.