• Social Workers
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• no.11 s.43
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• pp.55-57
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• 2005

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.187-192
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• 2015

If the software is developed to analyze the speech disorder, the application of various converged areas will be very high. This paper implements the user-friendly program based on CART(Classification and regression trees) analysis to distinguish between normal and pathological voices utilizing combination of the acoustical and HOS(Higher-order statistics) parameters. It means convergence between medical information and signal processing. Then the acoustical parameters are Jitter(%) and Shimmer(%). The proposed HOS parameters are means and variances of skewness(MOS and VOS) and kurtosis(MOK and VOK). Database consist of 53 normal and 173 pathological voices distributed by Kay Elemetrics. When the acoustical and proposed parameters together are used to generate the decision tree, the average accuracy is 83.11%. Finally, we developed a program with more user-friendly interface and frameworks.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.269-274
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• 2017

This study aimed to investigate the acoustic differences that occur in diverse sections of sustained vowel phonation, which is often used in an objective speech analysis of voice disorder patients. The subjects included 17 voice disorder patients (vocal nodules) and 12 normal individuals without any voice disorder. The participants' sustained vowel phonation of /a/ was divided into onset, middle, and offset, and the jitter, shimmer, and NHR in each section were analyzed using the MDVP(Multi-Dimensional Voice Program). The Friedman test and post hoc analysis were used. In the vocal nodules group, the jitter, shimmer and NHR were significantly higher in the off section of sustained vowel phonation than in the middle section, and there were no significant differences between the beginning and middle sections. In contrast, in the group of normal individuals, there were no significant differences between any of the sections. The values of the acoustic parameters according to the section of analysis in the sustained vowel phonation are different and the vocal in the end section is significantly more unstable than that in the middle section. The results of this study will be useful for selecting the sections to be analyzed in sustained vowel phonation and interpreting the results of the analysis.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.323-333
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• 2009

Parabens are alkyl esters of p-hydroxybenzoic acid, which are widely used in foods, cosmetics, and pharmaceutic products as preservatives. Absorbed parabens are metabolized fastly and excreted. Actually human body is exposed to complex mixture of parabens. Safety assessment at various toxicological end points revealed parabens have a little acute, subacute and chronic toxicities. Some reports have argued that as parabens have estrogenic activity, they are associated with the incidence of breast cancer through dermal absorption by cosmetics. There is an inference that antiandrogenic activity of parabens may give rise to a lesion of male reproductive system, but also there is an contrary. At cellular level, parabens may inhibit mitochondrial function of sperms and androgen production in testis, but also there is an contrary. Parabens seem to have little or no toxicity in embryonic development. Parabens can cause hemolysis, membrane permeability change in mitochondria and apoptosis, suggesting cellular toxicity of parabens. Parabens evoked endocrine disruption in several fish species and have toxic effect on small invertebrates and microbes. Therefore, the toxicity of parabens should be considered as a potentially toxic chemical in the freshwater environment. In conclusion, though parabens may be considered as a low toxic chemical, more definite data are required concerning the endocrine disrupting effect of parabens on human body and aquatic animals according to route and term of exposure as well as the residual concentration of parabens.