• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.97-125
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• 2020

This case study examined the effects of synchronization-based group music therapy for improving peer interaction of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The participants were five children between the ages of 6 and 10 with ASD. A total of eight 30-minute music therapy sessions were conducted two times a week. During sessions, target behaviors (i.e., engagement in joint action, synchronized movements, eye contact, and initiation of social interaction) were observed and analyzed. Also, the PIPPS-P was completed by parents to identify behavioral changes in real-life environments from pretest to posttest. Following the intervention, all of the participants showed increases in synchronized movements with peers and attempts to initiate social interaction. In addition, parents rated their children's play behavior as being improved in their everyday living environment. These results support that synchronous movements between children with ASD, which were facilitated with rhythmic cueing, led to enhanced engagement in joint action. Considering that those movements are the basis for further social skills (e.g., play behavior), this study also indicates that synchronization-based group music therapy could be an effective therapeutic approach for improving the peer interaction of this population.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.374-381
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• 2015

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of vitamin E (VE), ferulic acid (FA) and their combination supplementation on meat quality and antioxidant capacities of finishing pigs. Sixty barrows were randomly allocated to four experimental diets using a $2{\times}2$ factorial arrangement with 2 VE supplemental levels (0 or 400 mg/kg) and 2 FA supplemental levels (0 or 100 mg/kg) in basal diets. After 28 days, six pigs per treatment were slaughtered. The results showed that VE supplementation increased loin eye area of pigs (p<0.05) and FA supplementation increased $pH_{45min}$ value (p<0.05). The interaction of $FA{\times}VE$ was observed in shear force of longissimus dorsi muscle (p<0.05). Moreover, supplementation with VE decreased hepatic and sarcous malondialdehyde (MDA) content, increased hepatic glutathione (GSH) content and sarcous glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) activity (p<0.05). Additionally, supplementation with FA increased hepatic GSH-Px activity and decreased sarcous MDA content (p<0.05). However, dietary treatment did not affect the expression of genes related to nuclear factor, erythroid 2-like 2 (NFE2L2) pathway. These results suggest that dietary FA and VE could partially improve meat quality and antioxidant capacity of finishing pigs, but not by activating NFE2L2 pathway under the normal conditions of farming.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.944-949
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• 2018

The mass attenuation coefficients (${\mu}/{\rho}$) of food waste samples (pomegranate peel, acorn cap, lemon peel, mandarin peel, pumpkin peel, grape peel, orange peel, pineapple peel, acorn peel and grape stalk) have been measured employing a Si(Li) detector at 13.92, 17.75, 20.78, 26.34 and 59.54 keV. Also, the theoretical values of the mass attenuation coefficients have been evaluated utilizing mixture rule from WinXCOM program. The results showed that the lemon peel has the highest values of ${\mu}/{\rho}$ among the selected samples. From the obtained mass attenuation coefficients, we determined some absorption parameters such as effective atomic number ($Z_{eff}$), electron density ($N_E$) and molar extinction coefficient (${\varepsilon}$). It was found that the $Z_{eff}$ values of all food wastes lie within the range of 4.034-7.595, whereas the $N_E$ of the studied food wastes was found to be in the range of $0.301-1.720{\times}10^{25}$ (electrons/g) for present energy region.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.159-165
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• 2003

Ankyrins are a ubiquitously expressed family of intracellular adaptor proteins involved in targeting diverse proteins to specialized membrane domains in both the plasma membrane and the endoplasmic reticulum. Recently, the studies with C-terminus of ankyrins have identified that ankyrin-B is capable of interacting with Hsp40 and sAnkl is capable of interacting with obscurin and titin, but the function of C-terminal domain of ankyrin-G remains unknown. To identify proteins interacting C-terminus of ankyrin-G, we used the C-terminus of ankyrin-G as a bait for a yeast two-hybrid screen of brain cDNA library. Approximately 1.33$\times$l0$^6$ transformants were screened, of which 13 positive clones were obtained as determined by activation of HIS3, ADE2 and MELl reporter genes. Sequence analyses of these 13 plasmids revealed that cDNA inserts of 13 colonies showed highly homologous to 11 genes, including 5 known (i.e., Na$^+$/K$^+$ ATPase $\beta$1, SERBPl, UTF2, cytochrome C oxidase and collagen IV $\alpha$2) and 6 unknown genes. The evaluation of the proteins that emerge from these experiments provides a rational approach to investigate the those proteins significant in interaction with ankyrin-G.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.363-374
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• 2018

The façade is an important, complex, and costly part of a building, performing multiple objectives of value to the occupants, like protecting from wind, rain, sunlight, heat, cold, and sound. But the frequency of façade fires in large buildings is alarming, and has multiplied by seven times worldwide over the last three decades, to a current rate of 4.8 fires per year. High-performing polymer based materials allow for a significant improvement across several objectives of a facade (e.g., thermal insulation, weight, and construction time) thereby increasing the quality of a building. However, all polymers are flammable to some degree. If this safety problem is to be tackled effectively, then it is essential to understand how different materials, and the façade as a whole, perform in the event of a fire. This paper discusses the drivers for flammability in facades, the interaction of facade materials, and current gaps in knowledge. In doing so, it aims to provide an introduction to the field of façade fires, and to show that because of the drive for thermal efficiency and sustainability, façade systems have become more complex over time, and they have also become more flammable. We discuss the importance of quantifying the flammability of different façade systems, but highlight that it is currently impossible to do so, which hinders research progress. We finish by putting forward an integral framework of design that uses multi-objective optimization to ensure that flammability is minimized while considering other objectives, such as maximizing thermal performance or minimizing weight.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.225-238
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• 2019

In this paper a novel and efficient computational framework to estimate the stress range versus number of cycles curves experienced by a cable due to external excitations (e.g., seismic excitations, traffic and wind-induced vibrations, among others) is proposed. This study is limited to the wind-cable interaction governed by the Vortex Shedding mechanism which mainly rules cables vibrations at low amplitudes that may lead to their failure due to bending fatigue damage. The algorithm relies on a stochastic approach to account for the uncertainties in the cable properties, initial conditions, damping, and wind excitation which are the variables that govern the wind-induced vibration phenomena in cables. These uncertainties are propagated adopting Monte Carlo simulations and the concept of importance sampling, which is used to reduce significantly the computational costs when new scenarios with different probabilistic models for the uncertainties are evaluated. A high fidelity cable model is also proposed, capturing the effect of its internal wires distribution and helix angles on the cables stress. Simulation results on a 15 mm diameter high-strength steel strand reveal that not accounting for the initial conditions uncertainties or using a coarse wind speed discretization lead to an underestimation of the stress range experienced by the cable. In addition, parametric studies illustrate the computational efficiency of the algorithm at estimating new scenarios with new probabilistic models, running 3000 times faster than the base case.

• Korean Journal of Weed Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.197-204
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• 1998

This study was conducted to determine the activity of ALS, content of endogenous free amino acids and fatty acids affected by herbicide mixture of cyhalofop-butyl, pyribenzoxim and pyrazosulfuron-ethyl. $I_{50}$ values (concentration required for 50% inhibition of ALS activity) of pyribenzoxim herbicide on the activity of ALS in Echinochloa crus-galli and Cyperus serotinus in vitro were recorded at 4${\times}$100 nM and 5${\times}$10 nM, respectively, while $I_{50}$ values of pyrazosulfuron against E crus-galli and C. serotinus were 4.5${\times}$10 nM and 4${\times}$10 nM, respectively, and the mixture of two herbicides showed additive effect on ALS activity at the low application rate, and independent effect at the high application rates of two herbicides. The inhibition rates of the three herbicides mixture treatment on the three branch-chain amino acids such as valine, leucine and isoleucine were 74.6%, 66.6% and 57.9% in C. serotinus and 36.6% 51.1% and 48.1% in E. crus-galli, respectively. A little bit higher inhibitory effect on the three branch-chain amino acids in C. serotinus and E. crus-galli seedlings was observed in two herbicide mixture of pyribenzoxim with pyrazosulfuron than three herbicide mixture of cyhalofop with pyribenzoxim and pyrazosulfuron. The interaction among three herbicides showed non-antagonism on the amounts of endogenous free amino acids.

• Korean Journal of Weed Science
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.139-146
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• 1997

The experiment was conducted at Gyeongbuk Provincial Rural Development Administration in 1996 to obtain basic information on weed ecology and effective weed control in direct-seeded rice fields under different seeding types and seeding times. A large number of upland weeds such as Echinochloa crus-galli, Digitaria sanguinalis, Capsella bursa-pastoris and Stetaria viridis etc occurred at early growth stage, while Eleocharis kuroguwai, Aneilema keisak and Cyperus serotinus dominated at late stage in dry seeded rice field. In wet seeded rice field, the dominance of E. crus-galli was lower and the occurrence of M. vaginalis and A. keisak were higher than in dry seeded field. Amount of weed occurrence in dry seeded field was 1.8 to 2.4 times greater than in wet seeded field and it increased with delaying seeding time. Increasing rate of weed occurrence through whole life cycle was the highest at 20 days after seeding (DAS) to 40 DAS, regardless of seeding types and seeding times. Simpson index in wet seeded field was higher than in dry seeded field and it gradually increased as growing of dominant species. For F-value test, it was recognized as statistical significant in seeding types, seeding times and interaction of two factors.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.53-69
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• 2011

Vision and voice-based technologies are commonly utilized for human-robot interaction. But it is widely recognized that the performance of vision and voice-based interaction systems is deteriorated by a large margin in the real-world situations due to environmental and user variances. Human users need to be very cooperative to get reasonable performance, which significantly limits the usability of the vision and voice-based human-robot interaction technologies. As a result, touch screens are still the major medium of human-robot interaction for the real-world applications. To empower the usability of robots for various services, alternative interaction technologies should be developed to complement the problems of vision and voice-based technologies. In this paper, we propose the use of accelerometer-based gesture interface as one of the alternative technologies, because accelerometers are effective in detecting the movements of human body, while their performance is not limited by environmental contexts such as lighting conditions or camera's field-of-view. Moreover, accelerometers are widely available nowadays in many mobile devices. We tackle the problem of classifying acceleration signal patterns of 26 English alphabets, which is one of the essential repertoires for the realization of education services based on robots. Recognizing 26 English handwriting patterns based on accelerometers is a very difficult task to take over because of its large scale of pattern classes and the complexity of each pattern. The most difficult problem that has been undertaken which is similar to our problem was recognizing acceleration signal patterns of 10 handwritten digits. Most previous studies dealt with pattern sets of 8~10 simple and easily distinguishable gestures that are useful for controlling home appliances, computer applications, robots etc. Good features are essential for the success of pattern recognition. To promote the discriminative power upon complex English alphabet patterns, we extracted 'motion trajectories' out of input acceleration signal and used them as the main feature. Investigative experiments showed that classifiers based on trajectory performed 3%~5% better than those with raw features e.g. acceleration signal itself or statistical figures. To minimize the distortion of trajectories, we applied a simple but effective set of smoothing filters and band-pass filters. It is well known that acceleration patterns for the same gesture is very different among different performers. To tackle the problem, online incremental learning is applied for our system to make it adaptive to the users' distinctive motion properties. Our system is based on instance-based learning (IBL) where each training sample is memorized as a reference pattern. Brute-force incremental learning in IBL continuously accumulates reference patterns, which is a problem because it not only slows down the classification but also downgrades the recall performance. Regarding the latter phenomenon, we observed a tendency that as the number of reference patterns grows, some reference patterns contribute more to the false positive classification. Thus, we devised an algorithm for optimizing the reference pattern set based on the positive and negative contribution of each reference pattern. The algorithm is performed periodically to remove reference patterns that have a very low positive contribution or a high negative contribution. Experiments were performed on 6500 gesture patterns collected from 50 adults of 30~50 years old. Each alphabet was performed 5 times per participant using $Nintendo{(R)}$ $Wii^{TM}$ remote. Acceleration signal was sampled in 100hz on 3 axes. Mean recall rate for all the alphabets was 95.48%. Some alphabets recorded very low recall rate and exhibited very high pairwise confusion rate. Major confusion pairs are D(88%) and P(74%), I(81%) and U(75%), N(88%) and W(100%). Though W was recalled perfectly, it contributed much to the false positive classification of N. By comparison with major previous results from VTT (96% for 8 control gestures), CMU (97% for 10 control gestures) and Samsung Electronics(97% for 10 digits and a control gesture), we could find that the performance of our system is superior regarding the number of pattern classes and the complexity of patterns. Using our gesture interaction system, we conducted 2 case studies of robot-based edutainment services. The services were implemented on various robot platforms and mobile devices including $iPhone^{TM}$. The participating children exhibited improved concentration and active reaction on the service with our gesture interface. To prove the effectiveness of our gesture interface, a test was taken by the children after experiencing an English teaching service. The test result showed that those who played with the gesture interface-based robot content marked 10% better score than those with conventional teaching. We conclude that the accelerometer-based gesture interface is a promising technology for flourishing real-world robot-based services and content by complementing the limits of today's conventional interfaces e.g. touch screen, vision and voice.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.1539-1545
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• 2007

An experiment was conducted using 20 male buffalo calves to study the effect of vitamin E and selenium supplementation on their immune response and plasma ${\alpha}$-tocopherol and selenium status. These buffalo calves (10-12 months old, average body weight $75.30{\pm}2.20 $ kg) were randomly allotted to four treatments on the basis of their body weights and were fed on wheat straw and concentrate mixture to meet their nutrient requirements of 500 g/d body weight gain. The buffalo calves were fed either a control diet (neither supplemented with Se nor VE) or diets supplemented with Se at 0.3 ppm (+Se), DL-alpha tocopheryl acetate at 300 IU (+VE), and both DL-alpha tocopheryl acetate at 300 IU and Se at 0.3 ppm (+Se+VE). These experimental diets were fed for 180 days. Blood samples were collected at day 0 and subsequently at 45 day intervals up to 180 days of experimental feeding to monitor plasma ${\alpha}$-tocopherol and Se concentrations. To assess humoral immune response, all calves were sensitized with formalin inactivated Pasteurella multocida antigen at 135 days of experimental feeding and blood was collected on 0, 7, 14, 21 and 28 days post vaccination (DPV) to measure antibody production using indirect ELISA. Cell mediated immune response of calves was assessed after 180 days of experimental feeding by in vivo delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) reaction using phytohaemaglutinin-P (PHA-P) as a mitogen. Results revealed that feeding of VE and Se improved the plasma levels of these nutrients. Plasma levels of Se were affected by supplementation of both VE (p<0.001) and Se (p<0.001); however, no interaction ($Se{\times}VE$) was observed. Supplementation of Se improved the humoral immune response (p<0.008), whereas, VE showed a tendency towards improvement in cell mediated immune response (p<0.064). It was concluded that vitamin E and Se supplementation improved the status of these micronutrients and humoral immune response in buffalo calves.