Office Chair Research Articles

Importance of Hospital Furniture in Modern Medical Facilities

Hospital furniture is an essential part of medical care for hospitals. It includes trolleys, side screens and beds to name just a few. Medical devices alongside modern furnishings have played an important role within health care ever since its inception. Hospital Furniture is one thing that every hospital must possess. The hospitals are committed to ensuring that patients feel comfortable and safe during their treatments, which is why they use advanced furniture technology in all their clinical settings. Medical examination of patients is a crucial part in diagnosing them, and ICU hospital furniture helps to ensure the safety for critical ill people. Clinical furnishings thus have immense variety applications which can be found at any medical facility. Hospital furniture is a necessary and important part of any healthcare system. It can make or break the quality care patients receive while hospitalized, so its design must be top notch. From beds to stretchers, even medical carts, there are numerous types that each has their own specific purpose in mind for hospital use which will help you provide comfort as well maintain safety on both sides with ease. Furniture is essential for creating a comfortable and welcoming environment. It’s also necessary to ensure that furniture can be easily maintained, as well as being durable enough so it lasts through years of use without showing too much wear or tear from normal usage by patients in your hospital facility. The right medical supplier will help to me et al. these needs with their wide variety products available on the market today including: office chairs (especially those designed specifically towards hospitals), tables made especially low height spaces like examining rooms where people may want extra space around them when sitting down but not folded up completely against wall.

Eating America

Research Article| August 01 2022 Eating America Joanne Jacobson Joanne Jacobson Joanne Jacobson is professor emerita of English at Yeshiva University, and former Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Yeshiva College. Her most recent book is Every Last Breath: A Memoir of Two Illnesses (University of Utah Press, 2020). “Eating America” is part of a new project, on home. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Gastronomica (2022) 22 (3): 19–22. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2022.22.3.19 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Joanne Jacobson; Eating America. Gastronomica 1 August 2022; 22 (3): 19–22. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2022.22.3.19 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentGastronomica Search In the years just after World War II, the Passover seder pressed into service every seat in my aunt and uncle’s house, down to the nicked and crayon-stained furniture from my cousins’ bedrooms. Included, of course, were the massive, upholstered oak chairs that completed the dining room set, one of the first major purchases that clinched homeownership for this first American generation. The sticky, vinyl-seated chairs from the kitchen dinette were also jammed around the table, and the wheeled office chairs that had to be lugged from the basement—which occasionally took an elder on an unexpected ride into a wall. The aging immigrants who gathered rarely spoke of their own flight, at the turn of the twentieth century, from Polish anti-Semitism or the Czar’s army; nor did they connect their escape from Europe to the story of the Israelites’ escape from Egypt that they read in stumbling English from the... You do not currently have access to this content.

As Good As Its Taste

The Algerian delegates hurriedly returned after the meeting ended as the Prime Minister had announced the Movement Control Order last night. Haji Mohamed Fauzy Abdul Hamid (Hj. Fauzy), President of the corporate group, stepped towards his Chesterfield office chair. He peered outside the window while reminiscing his first step into the business world four decades ago. Innumerable, valuable experience propped his footing in the MOFAZ building. 
 “What in the world is a share? I have not the slightest idea about listing. Where can we find that many, Fauzy? I can only spend RM1,000. For the rest, you have to go and ask yourself,” Ahmad’s shrill voice concerned him. He still had to meet 27 other people. “That cannot be all you have, Ahmad. I knew you bought a lot of Nestle stocks last week. They are piled up in your home. You have spent more than RM30,000 on those!” Fauzy’s tone rose. “You know those are capital, right? The margin is small, too, only 2 to 3%!” Ahmad was relentless. They were racking their brains to find a way to obtain RM25 million in 30 days. “If a close friend like you cannot even outlay 1%, who else can I ask?” Fauzy exclaimed and immediately left the building of the Consortium of Bumiputera Nestle Distributors (GAPENEST).
 He concentrated his entire thought on how to generate the RM25 million while holding the crumpled letter from Nestle he had received. He was uncertain whether the news was good or bad for GAPENEST and himself.

Study of the Anatomical Association between Morton’s Neuroma and the Space Inferior to the Deep Transverse Metatarsal Ligament Using Ultrasound

Morton’s neuroma (MN) is a common condition in clinical practice. The compressive etiology is the most accepted, in which compression occurs in the tunnel formed by the adjacent metatarsals, the deep transverse metatarsal ligament (DTML) and the plantar skin. Ultrasound (US) is a reliable method of study. The presence of insufficient space under the DTML may be related to the appearance of MN. Objectives: To verify the relationship between MN and the space under the DTML between the metatarsal heads of the third (M3) and the fourth (M4) metatarsals using US. Methods: This is a cross-sectional epidemiological study. The research study using the ultrasound (US) technique was carried out on 200 feet belonging to 100 patients aged 18 to 65 of both sexes, with a control group formed by 62 patients and a study group formed by 38 patients diagnosed with MN. Results: The presence of MN and the factors associated with it were studied in 100 patients using ultrasound (US). The assessment and comparison with US of the space inferior to the DTML between M3 and M4 in control groups and patients with MN show that patients with MN have a smaller size in the variable “h” (height or distance DTML-plantar skin), in the variable “b” (base or intermetatarsal distance M3 and M4) and in the variable “s” (surface of the parallelogram “h” × “b”). The predictors of MN are a decrease in dimension “b” and an increase in weight. Sitting in an office chair and the use of a bicycle, due to equinus, have an influence on the space below the DTML, reducing it and promoting the appearance of MN. Conclusions: The two US measurements (“h” and “b”) in the space below the DTML are smaller in patients with MN than in the asymptomatic group. A shorter distance between M3 and M4, and an increase in BMI are predictors of MN.

Smart Office Chairs with Sensors for Detecting Sitting Positions and Sitting Habits

The health consequences of prolonged sitting in the office and other work chairs have recently been tried to be alleviated or prevented by the application of modern technologies. Smart technologies and sensors are installed in different parts of office chairs, which enables monitoring of seating patterns and prevents positions that potentially endanger the health of users. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of previous research in the field of the application of smart technologies and sensors built into office and other types of chairs in order to prevent diseases. The articles published in the period 2010-2020 and indexed in WoS CC, Scopus, and IEEE Xplore databases, with the keywords “smart chair” and “sensor chair” were analysed. 15 articles were processed, with their research being based on the use of different types of sensors that determine the contact pressures between the user’s body and stool parts and recognise different body positions when sitting, which can prevent negative health consequences. Analysed papers prove that the use of smart technology and a better understanding of sitting, using various sensors and applications that read body pressure and determine the current body position, can act as preventive health care by detecting proper heart rate and beats per minute, the activity of individual muscle groups, proper breathing and estimates of blood oxygen levels. In the future research, it is necessary to compare different types of sensors, methods used and the results obtained in order to determine which of them are most suitable for the future development of seating furniture for work.

A hybrid approach to product prototype usability testing based on surface EMG images and convolutional neural network classification

ObjectiveIt is common for employees to complain of muscle fatigue when resting in a reclined position in an office chair. To investigate the physical factors that influence resting comfort in a supine position, a newly designed product was used as the basis for creating a prototype experiment and testing its efficacy in use. Subjective questionnaires were combined with surface EMG measurements and deep learning algorithms were used to identify body part comfort to create a hybrid approach to product usability testing. MethodsTo facilitate the use of sEMG-based CNNs in human factors engineering, a subjective user assessment was first conducted using a combination of body mapping and an impact comfort scale to the screen which body parts have a significant impact effect on comfort when using the prototype. A control group (no used) and an experimental group (used) were then created and the body parts with the most significant effects were measured using sEMG methods. After pre-processing the sEMG signal, sMEG feature maps were obtained by mean power frequency (MPF) and linear regression was used to analyze the comforting effect. Finally, a CNN model is constructed and the sMEG feature maps are trained and tested. ResultsThe results of the experiment showed that the user's subjective assessment showed that 10 body parts had a significant effect on comfort, with the right and left sides of the neck having the highest effect on comfort (4.78). sEMG measurements were then performed on the sternocleidomastoid (SCM) of the left and right neck. Linear analysis of the measurements showed that the control group had higher SCM fatigue than the experimental group, which could also indicate that the experimental group had better comfort. The final CNN model was able to accurately classify the four datasets with an accuracy of 0.99. ConclusionThe results of the study show that the method is effective for the study of physical comfort in the supine sitting position and that it can be used to validate the comfort of similar products and to design iterations of the prototype.

Controlled Rotation of Human Observers in a Virtual Reality Environment.

The low cost and availability of Virtual Reality (VR) systems have supported a recent acceleration of research into perception and behavior under more naturalistic, multisensory, and immersive conditions. One area of research that has particularly benefited from the use of VR systems is multisensory integration, for example, the integration of visual and vestibular cues to give rise to a sense of self-motion. For this reason, an accessible method for the controlled physical rotation of an observer in a virtual environment represents a useful innovation. This paper presents a method for automating the rotation of an office swivel chair along with a method for integrating that motion into a VR experience. Using an example experiment, it is demonstrated that the physical motion, thus produced, is integrated with the visual experience of an observer in a way consistent with expectations; high integration when the motion is congruent with the visual stimulus and low integration when the motion is incongruent.

An Object Detection Model for Paint Surface Detection Based on Improved YOLOv3

To solve the problem of poor performance of the target detection algorithm and false detection in the detection of paint surface defects of office chairs five-star feet, we propose a defect detection method based on the improved YOLOv3 algorithm. Firstly, a new feature fusion structure is designed to reduce the missed detection rate of small targets. Then we used the CIOU loss function to improve the positioning accuracy. At the same time, a parallel version of the k-means++ initialization algorithm (K-means||) is used to optimize and determine the parameters of the a priori anchor so as to improve the matching degree between the a priori anchor and the feature layer. We constructed a dataset of paint surface defects on the five-star feet of office chairs and performed optimization training, and used multiple algorithms and different datasets to conduct comparative experiments to validate the algorithm. The experimental results show that the improved YOLOv3 algorithm is effective in that the average precision on the self-made dataset reaches 88.3%, which is 5.8% higher than the original algorithm. At the same time, it has also been verified based on the Aliyun Tianchi competition aluminum dataset, and the average precision has reached 89.2%. This method realizes the real-time detection of the paint surface defects of the five-star feet of the office chair very well.

Does active sitting provide more physiological changes than traditional sitting and standing workstations?

This cross-sectional study examined the physiological effects of two active chairs (AC1: had the feature to pedal and slide forward; AC2: was a multiaxial chair) compared to a traditional office chair and standing workstation. Twenty-four healthy participants computed at each of the workstations for 60 min. The active protocol was to alternate between a pedalling/side-to-side motion and sliding forward/front-to-back motion to the sound of a metronome operating at 40 bpm. The participants' physiological effects were recorded using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS); electrodermal activity (EDA) and a heart rate (HR) monitor for each collection period. Statistical analysis was conducted using a repeated measures analysis of variance for within-task and between-workstation comparisons. A Tukey's post hoc analysis was calculated for significant findings. Both active chairs significantly increased oxygenated blood in the gastrocnemius and participants' heart rate and EDA (stress) levels were affected slightly by task and time. However, participants felt more “productive” sitting in the control chair than in either of the active chairs.

Does sitting on a stability ball increase fall risk during ergonomic reaching tasks?

Although sitting on a stability ball has become an alternative to using an office chair, little is known about the increased potential for a fall on the deformable seat. This study examined differences in stability between sitting on a seat pan of a backless office chair and a stability ball during reaching tasks. Sixteen participants performed forward and lateral reaching tasks on a backless and armless office chair and stability ball while whole-body motion and force data under the seat were recorded. Even with participants placing their feet 16.5 cm wider when seated on the ball, the perceived fall risk was significantly greater. Centre of pressure displacement tended to be smaller under the ball for lateral reach directions, but larger during far anterior reaches. While not statistically significant, the medial-lateral margin of stability was on average 3.4 cm smaller on the ball. Despite attempts to increase stability by widening their stance, stability ball fall risk remained higher.

Research on the Intelligent Design of Office Chair Patterns

(1) Background: Personalized product customization is an important direction in the development of the chair industry. This paper studies an intelligent design method for the rapid realization of personalized office chair customization; (2) Methods: based on the case-based reasoning (CBR) method, the characteristic attributes of office chair patterns are analyzed, and an attribute model is established. According to office chair data and customer demand, an intelligent design model using multi-layer weighted k-nearest neighbor (K-NN) for chair patterns is developed using the entropy weight method and an analytic hierarchy process. In addition, an example is employed for verification of the K-NN and multi-layer weighted K-NN retrieval models; (3) Results: both models are able to effectively retrieve chair type cases that meet the target requirements from the office chair pattern base; the case matching similarity of the multi-layer weighted K-NN retrieval model was higher, with an average increase of about 3.9%, and the chair pattern case results obtained by setting different customer needs are different, indicating that the case can be selected according to different customer preferences, which is more conducive to personalized product customization design; (4) Conclusions: The multi-layer weighted K-NN model for intelligent chair pattern design proposed in this paper is more conducive to personalized product customization design.

P41 Major bacteria species surface contaminants in hospitals of Littoral Region, Cameroon

BackgroundGlobally, the levels of healthcare-associated infections (or nosocomial infections) are high and especially those due to bacteria are significant and costly. Healthcare environments provide a worrying reservoir for spreading infections. According to WHO, low and middle-income countries may be particularly at risk. Hence, the need to perform timely assessment of surface contamination of bacterial origin, in four different hospitals in major units of the Littoral Region, Cameroon.MethodsA cross-sectional and descriptive study was conducted from December 2018 to May 2019. A simple random sampling was used to swab 10 selected equipment items (treatment tables, operating tables, delivery tables, office tables, anaesthesia equipment, surgical aspirators, oxygen concentrators, wheelchairs, patients and office chairs) and 10 materials (fans, patient bedside tables, patient bed rails, trolleys, door handles, negatoscopes, baby scales, air conditioners, antiseptic container boxes and antiseptic container covers). In the mornings after disinfection but before start of work in each unit, we collected all selected equipment and materials using sterile swabs moistened in sterile normal saline, which were immediately transported to the microbiology laboratory for processing. After inoculation in four agar media consecutively (three sector petri dish with different media: eosin methylene blue, CLED and mannitol salt agar and the blood agar media in one segmented petri dish) and incubated in appropriate conditions. Identification and confirmation were based on morphological characteristics of bacteria colonies, microscopy and biochemical methods using API staph, strepto and 20ETM gallery (bioMérieux).ResultsOf a total of 236 samples collected, 119 (50.4%) showed bacterial growth, 33 different species of which 62/119 (52.10%) were Gram-positive cocci and 57/119 (47.90%) Gram-negative bacilli. Staphylococcus aureus 45/119 (37.81%), Escherichia coli 6/119 (5.04%) and Acinetobacter spp. 4/119 (3.36%) were the most common contaminants. Patient bedside tables, office chairs and patient bed rails were the highest contaminants respectively 14/119 (11.76%), 13/119 (10.92%) and 12/119 (10.08%). Emergency units were the main contaminated area for Gram-positive cocci, 12/62 (19.35%) majority S. aureus 9/62 (14.51%) as most as Gram-negative non-Enterobacteriaceae 11/31 (35, 48%) with predominance of Chryseomonas meningoseptica and Mannheimia haemolytica both 2/31 (6.45%). Therefore for Gram-negative bacilli Enterobacteriaceae family, the highest level of bacterial isolates was recovered in laboratory 7/26 (26.92%), in which E. coli was predominantly reported 4/26 (15.38%). However, S. aureus was the only species found in all hospitals and units.ConclusionsHospital environment is a serious reservoir of bacteria. This work will help clinical care and decision making to take appropriate actions to improve sanitation and ensure control measures to limit the spread of hospital-acquired infections.

Analysis of the Potential of Decentralized Heating and Cooling Systems to Improve Thermal Comfort and Reduce Energy Consumption through an Adaptive Building Controller

Thermal comfort is one of the most important factors for occupant satisfaction and, as a result, for the building energy performance. Decentralized heating and cooling systems, also known as “Personal Environmental Comfort Systems” (PECS), have attracted significant interest in research and industry in recent years. While building simulation software is used in practice to improve the energy performance of buildings, most building simulation applications use the PMV approach for comfort calculations. This article presents a newly developed building controller that uses a holistic approach in the consideration of PECS within the framework of the building simulation software Esp-r. With PhySCo, a dynamic physiology, sensation, and comfort model, the presented building controller can adjust the setpoint temperatures of the central HVAC system as well as control the use of PECS based on the thermal sensation and comfort values of a virtual human. An adaptive building controller with a wide dead-band and adaptive setpoints between 18 to 26 °C (30 °C) was compared to a basic controller with a fixed and narrow setpoint range between 21 to 24 °C. The simulations were conducted for temperate western European climate (Mannheim, Germany), classified as Cfb climate according to Köppen-Geiger. With the adaptive controller, a 12.5% reduction in end-use energy was achieved in winter. For summer conditions, a variation between the adaptive controller, an office chair with a cooling function, and a fan increased the upper setpoint temperature to 30 °C while still maintaining comfortable conditions and reducing the end-use energy by 15.3%. In spring, the same variation led to a 9.3% reduction in the final energy. The combinations of other systems were studied with the newly presented controller.

Instrumented Office Chair With Low-Cost Plastic Optical Fiber Sensors for Posture Control and Work Conditions Optimization

People spend more and more time sitting and this habit has been shown to cause spine pathologies. Thus, the scientific community and the industry have become interested in instrumented chairs development to detect incorrect user postures. In this work we present the development and implementation of invisibles and non-intrusive plastic optical fiber sensor cells to monitor the posture and evaluate the ergonomic behavior of a seated person. The low-cost plastic optical fiber (POF) based sensing devices developed in this work, were implemented in an office chair, to evaluate the workers posture throughout their work day. In addition to the sensors, Android and PC software applications were developed, to provide real time feedback and alerts to the user whenever an inadequate posture is detected, or the seating position is the same for a long time. The proposed approach was evaluated in a study involving six users, and results show that it can detect the user’s position with 96.6% accuracy.

Evaluation of postural stability of the head and neck in a resting sitting position using a neck pillow

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of the presence and characteristics of a neck pillow on head and neck posture in the resting sitting position with eyes closed. Sitting posture maintenance tests were conducted on four subjects using a middle-back office chair. The head and neck postures in the normal sitting posture and in the sitting posture with two types of neck pillows were recorded for 15 minutes with closed eyes. The motion amount of the center of gravity of the head and neck was similar among conditions. However, the variation of the center of gravity position of the head and neck throughout the test tended to be smaller when a comfortable neck pillow was used.

A Knowledge-enriched Framework for Life Cycle Assessment in Manufacturing

Even though carbon neutralization is promised by several countries, many developed tools for life cycle assessment (LCA) or sustainability performance is still not widely and easily used in industrial practices. A big gap exists between having the tools and using the tools, which is currently facilitated by human expertise. LCA practitioners should embrace and take advantage the rapid development of knowledge graph (KG) technology. In this paper, the important position and key methodologies of KG are presented in the context of LCA, latest advances are reviewed and presented. A framework of knowledge-enriched LCA is proposed which was illustrated with a LCA-oriented process-flow knowledge graph (PFKG) for inventory analysis. The knowledge acquisition and construction of PFKG was demonstrated with aluminum die casting, and on top of which a recommendation application of PFKG was discussed in a case of five-star feet of office chair. PFKG can facilitate non-experts in identifying the complex structured relationship between process and flow, and recommend possible life cycle inventory data. It is envisioned that merging with KG will boost engineering sustainability in a more practical manner.

3D printed FBG based sensor for vital signal monitoring – Influence of the infill printing parameters

The fused deposition modelling technique has been used in the production of strain sensors in which fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) are encapsulated during the 3D printing process. This paper reports the study of the influence of the FBG position and the material filling, in this case a flexible polymer material, on the sensors’ sensitivity and overall performance. In addition, this study preliminarily evaluated the ability of the strain sensor to monitor (heart rate) HR and (respiratory rate) RR as a wearable on the wrist and as a non-intrusive solution on the back of an office chair.

Action Planning Including Holding Pattern Selection for Organizing Office Chairs by a Dual-Arm Mobile Robot

Action Planning Including Holding Pattern Selection for Organizing Office Chairs by a Dual-Arm Mobile Robot

ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT PREVENTIVE MEASURES TO IMPROVE HOME OFFICE ERGONOMICS – RESULTS FROM A STUDY ON THE FIRST WAVE OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN LATVIA

Introduction: Telework, also known as remote work, distance work, telecommuting, was gaining popularity already before the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite benefits, telework can also cause workers' mental and physical health, and forced telework during the COVID-19 pandemic has promoted the onset of these problems.
 Objectives: The objective of the study was to analyze the management of ergonomics in teleworking workplaces and the association between pain longer than three days and preventive measures provided by employers in Latvia during the 1st emergency restrictions, which were in force between 12 March and 9 June 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
 Methods: Web-survey was used to gather information from respondents – workers. In total, 1006 workers fully filled in the questionnaire in October 2020. Four hundred eighty-three teleworkers of both genders were identified.
 Results: 35.7% of respondents reported pain longer than three days. The odds of pain were increased in case of lack of all analyzed preventive measures. For those who reported not being provided with a computer and other IT equipment OR for pain was 1.50 (CI 0.95-2.37). Even higher OR was observed in case of not receiving advice on how to arrange an ergonomic workstation (OR= 2.37, CI 1.32-4.25) and not having identified working conditions (OR= 2.61, CI 1.43-4.77). The highest risk was observed if the employer had not provided an office table and office chair (OR=5.46, CI 1.78-16.80).
 Conclusion: Teleworkers not receiving support from the employer on the arrangement of home offices have an increased risk of having pain for longer than three days. Provision of an office worktable, an office chair, advice on how to arrange an ergonomic workplace and provision of workplace risk assessment are key measures to be taken by the employer to improve home office ergonomics of their workers.

MODELISASI KURSI DENGAN PENGGABUNGAN HASIL DEFORMASI BENDA-BENDA RUANG MENGGUNAKAN KURVA BEZIER

Chairs are needed by humans to do some work, especially students and office workers. The parts contained in the chair are the chair legs, chair legs eats and chair backs. The purpose of this study is to obtain variations in the shape of office chairs using Bezier curves and incorporate the results of deformation of space geometric objects. In modeling this chair, it is divided into several stages, namely first, building the chair leg components. This chair leg component consists of chair wheels, connecting two wheels with tube deformation, modeling the chair leg branch components and modeling chair leg supports. Second, namely the model of the chair leg seat. Chair leg seat consists of regular hexagon prism deformation and regular quadrangle prism deformation. The third is the modelization of the back of the chair by using a rectangular prism model. The result of combining several components of the chair using one modeling axis produces 36 chair models, with special provisions, namely that the seat support parts can only be joined using a tube.