According to the frequent use of mobile devices, risk of repetitive strain injury for the finger joints was increasing recently. The purpose of this study was to investigate the difference of muscular endurance limit of the thumb between adults and children. A total of thirty subjects (15 adults: $41.0{\pm}7.9$ years and 15 children: $9.5{\pm}2.7$ years) was recruited for this experiment. Maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) of the thumb was measured for 100 trials for each subject by using a push-pull gauge. From the maximum peak value obtained, three main factors (MVC, endurance limit, and fatigue index) were defined to quantify fatigue characteristics of the thumb flexor muscle. The experimental results showed that the mean of MVC, endurance limit, and fatigue index of the children were approximately 50% compared to the adults (p < 0.001). From the results of Pearson correlation test, the endurance limit was highly correlated with weight, age, hand length rather than height. Based on this study, children are more vulnerable to repetitive task using the thumb such as text/SNS messaging, gaming, and scrolling.

Persons with sensorineural hearing impairment have troubles in hearing at noisy environments because of their deteriorated hearing levels and low-spectral resolution of the auditory system and therefore, they use hearing aids to compensate weakened hearing abilities. Various algorithms for hearing loss compensation and environmental noise reduction have been implemented in the hearing aid; however, the performance of these algorithms vary in accordance with external sound situations and therefore, it is important to tune the operation of the hearing aid appropriately in accordance with a wide variety of sound situations. In this study, a sound classification algorithm that can be applied to the hearing aid was suggested. The proposed algorithm can classify the different types of speech situations into four categories: 1) speech-only, 2) noise-only, 3) speech-in-noise, and 4) music-only. The proposed classification algorithm consists of two sub-parts: a feature extractor and a speech situation classifier. The former extracts seven characteristic features - short time energy and zero crossing rate in the time domain; spectral centroid, spectral flux and spectral roll-off in the frequency domain; mel frequency cepstral coefficients and power values of mel bands - from the recent input signals of two microphones, and the latter classifies the current speech situation. The experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm could classify the kinds of speech situations with an accuracy of over 94.4%. Based on these results, we believe that the proposed algorithm can be applied to the hearing aid to improve speech intelligibility in noisy environments.

In this study, biomechanical stability of the newly developed revision total knee arthroplasty (rTKA) was evaluated through strain and stress distribution analysis within the implanted proximal tibia using a three-dimensional finite element (FE) analysis. 2000N of compressive load (about 3 times body weight) was applied to the condyle surface on spacer, sharing by the medial (60%) and lateral (40%) condyles simulating a stance phase before toe-off. The results showed that PVMS within the revision total knee arthroplasty and the proximal tibia were less than yield strength considering safe factor 4.0 (rTKA: less than 10%, Cortical bone: less than 70%, Cancellous bone: less than 70%). The materials composed of them and the strain and stress distributions within the proximal tibia were generally well matched with those of a traditional revision total knee arthoplasty (Scorpio TS revision system, Stryker Corp., Michigan, USA) without the critical damage strain and stress, which may reduce the capacity for bone remodeling, leading to bone degeneration. This study may be useful to design parameter improvement of the revision total knee arthoplasty in biomechanical stability point of view beyond structural stability of revision total knee arthoplasty itself.

To enhance the speech perception of hearing aid users in noisy environment, most hearing aid devices adopt various beamforming algorithms such as the first-order differential microphone (DM1) and the two-stage directional microphone (DM2) algorithms that maintain sounds from the direction of the interlocutor and reduce the ambient sounds from the other directions. However, these conventional algorithms represent poor directionality ability in low frequency area. Therefore, to enhance the speech perception of hearing aid uses in low frequency range, our group had suggested a fractional delay subtraction and integration (FDSI) algorithm and estimated its theoretical performance using computer simulation in previous article. In this study, we performed a KEMAR test in non-reverberant room that compares the performance of DM1, DM2, broadband beamforming (BBF), and proposed FDSI algorithms using several objective indices such as a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement, a segmental SNR (seg-SNR) improvement, a perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ), and an Itakura-Saito measure (IS). Experimental results showed that the performance of the FDSI algorithm was -3.26-7.16 dB in SNR improvement, -1.94-5.41 dB in segSNR improvement, 1.49-2.79 in PESQ, and 0.79-3.59 in IS, which demonstrated that the FDSI algorithm showed the highest improvement of SNR and segSNR, and the lowest IS. We believe that the proposed FDSI algorithm has a potential as a beamformer for digital hearing aid devices.

For the biocompatibility test of implantable devices or for the sensitivity evaluation of biomedical sensors, it is required to understand the mechanism of the protein adsorption and the interaction between the adsorbed proteins and cells. In this study, the adsorption of proteins in a cell culture medium with fetal bovine serum onto an indium tin-oxide electrode was characterized by using linear sweep voltammetry and impedance spectroscopy. We immersed the fabricated ITO electrodes in the culture medium for 30, 60, or 90 min, and then measured the electrochemical properties of electrodes with 10 mM $Fe(CN){_6}^{3-/4-}$ and 0.1 M KCl electrolyte. With an increase of contacting time, the anodic peak current was decreased and the charge transfer resistance was increased. However, both parameters were recovered to the values before contact with the medium after the treatment of Trypsin/Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid hydrolyzing proteins.

The conventional simulators used the expensive commercial artificial heart with a limited performance, and focused on replicating the heart function. The arterial pressure is the key factor of the cardiovascular disease. The purpose of this study is to develop a simulator focused on the pressure wave. The simulator is composed of a step motor, slider-crank mechanism, piston-cylinder, two check valves, a elastic tube, and two reservoirs. With the changes of design parameters, the functions of the simulator were evaluated. The simulator shows the good agreement of the characteristics of the cardiovascular system.