The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for office workers to experience work from home (WFH). The aims of this study are to investigate the prevalence rate of musculoskeletal discomfort (MSD) and the work conditions of homeworkers during WFH as well as to evaluate the association and predicted risk of ergonomic factors and MSD. A total of 232 homeworkers completed questionnaires. Chi-square test and logistic regression were used to analyze the association and prediction of work arrangements and home workstation setups and musculoskeletal outcomes. The result showed that 61.2% of homeworkers reported MSD while WFH. Because of the small living spaces in Hong Kong, 51% and 24.6% of homeworkers worked in living/dining areas and bedrooms, respectively, potentially affecting their work and personal life. Additionally, homeworkers adopted a flexible work style, but prolonged computer use while WFH. Homeworkers who used a chair without a backrest or a sofa could predict a significantly higher risk of MSD. The use of a laptop monitor posed about a 2 to 3 times higher risk of suffering from neck, upper back, and lower back discomfort than the use of a desktop monitor. These results provide valuable information to help regulators, employers, homeworkers, and designers create better WFH guidelines, work arrangements, and home settings.

The study explores the effects of the flame-retardant properties of nano-particles on water-based fire-retardant coatings, which include the effects on thermal stability and combustion properties. The coating used by the paper is acrylate resin (VAC), which is added with 3 basic components, including fire-retardant ammonium polyphosphate, pentaerythritol and melamine (APP-PER-MEL), to form an itumescent fire retardant (IFR). Then the fire retardent is added with magnesium hydroxide (Mg(OH)2, MH) nano-particles, multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWNT) and zinc borate (ZB) nano-powders of different concentrations, to form water-based fire-retardant coatings. By adjusting and controlling the concentration ratios of flame retardant to the 3 kinds of nano-particles with different profiles, the study analyzes the fire-retardant multiplying effect of nano-particles on water-based coatings. The nano-coatings mixed in special proportion are coated on plywood. Through thermogeavimetric analyzer (TGA) and cone calorimeter (CCT), the study inspects the thermal stability and combustion properties of water-based fire-retardant nano-coatings. The experimental results show that when the fire-retardant nano-coating composed of MH of concentration 28% and MWNT of concentration 2% is compared with the fire-retardant coating added with flame retardant only, the amount of residue can be increased by around 80% at combustion temperature 580°C. Besides, when the fire-retardant nano-coating composed of MH of weight concentration 28% and MWNT of weight concentration 2% is compared with the fire-retardant coating added with flame retardant only, the maximum heat release can be decreased by about 15%. The time required for this fire-retardant nano-coating to achieve maximum heat release is delayed by around 70 seconds when compared with other samples. Besides, the char-layered structure formed during thermal decomposition of nano-coating is more compact than the char-layered structure of water-based coating composed of the flame-retardant APP-PER-MEL components only. Therefore, nano-coatings can effectively decrease the transfer of heat and inflammable volatiles to plywood surface, and can enhance the flame retardant performance of plywood.

The purpose of this study was to investigate consumer lifestyles and preferences for sofa leather through Literature Review, Focus Group Interview and Experts Interview. The lifestyle questionnaire was created to research into the subjects’ preferences in accordance with 4 kinds of leather types, 5 kinds of grains, and 5 kinds of colors. After the authors’ statistical analysis of 206 copies of the effective questionnaires, the research results among every group showed that the favorites were Aniline Leather of leather types, smaller particles of grains, and high contrast colors, such as white and black. Further, the consumer groups against sofa leather could be divided into 5 difference ones. The taste of the elder subjects in "Appreciate Life" was similar to the overall preferences ; however, the taste of the junior subjects in "Single Learing" and "Youthful & Carefree" was unique and different from the overall preferences.

The product form design activities involve a high degree of uncertainty and complexity and are therefore not easily formulated, coded and regularized. Consequently, very few of the computer-aided design approaches presented in the literature can support the conceptual form design tasks typically performed at the preliminary stages of a product’s development cycle. To enable designers to perform their design activities more objectively and efficiently, this paper combines the principles of fuzzy set theory, the shape-blending method and genetic algorithms to generate a knowledge-based approach for product form design based upon a database describing the relationships between different product forms and their corresponding perceptual image evaluations.

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