• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.609-622
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• 2015

Objective: This study aims to investigate the correlation between office and work environment satisfaction levels and workers' musculoskeletal symptoms by conducting surveys asking office workers to state their musculoskeletal symptoms and office and work environment satisfaction levels. Background: The increased number of office workers and their indoor work hours using computers have led to new understandings of the importance of office environment including its temperature, humidity, noise levels, lighting and quality of air, and work environment including monitor arrangement, space arrangement and the functions of desks and chairs. Method: Specific details on office work, office environment satisfaction levels, work environment satisfaction levels, musculoskeletal symptoms, absence from work and treatment due to musculoskeletal related symptoms were analyzed based on the survey answers given by 397 office workers who were the subjects of this research. Results: Office workers showed different characteristics of musculoskeletal symptoms depending on their gender, age, work experience, office hours, break time and time spent on computers. Also, differences in symptoms were found for workers'with different satisfaction levels for office environment (temperature, humidity, noise levels, quality of air, lighting) and work environment (location of monitors, area and display of office space, chairs and desks). ANOVA shows the differences between groups of subjects classified by the experience of work-absences and treatments or pain complaints. Conclusion and Application: Relationship between workers' satisfaction levels with the office and work environment and their musculoskeletal symptoms is expected to be served as essential data for systematic management of the workplace.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.06c
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• pp.291-296
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• 1998

In the experiment carried out on 20 college students, recorded were frontal, temporal and occipital EEG, skin conductance response, skin conductance level, heart rate and respiration rate during listening to two music fragments with different affective valences and white noise administered immediately after negative visual stimulation. Analysis of physiological patterns observed during the experiment suggests that affective auditory stimulation with music is able to selectively modulate autonomic and cortical activity evoked by preceding aversive visual stimulation and to restore initial baseline levels. On other hand, physiological responses to white noise, which does not possess emotion-eliciting capabilities, evokes response typical for orienting reaction after the onset of a stimulus and is rapidly followed by habituation. Observed responses to white noise were similar to those specific to attention only and had no evidence for any emotion-related processes. Interpretation of the obtained data is considered in terms of the role of emotional and orienting significance of stimuli, dependence of effects on the background physiological activation level and time courses of attention and emotion processes. Physiological parameters are summarized with regard to their potential utility in differentiation of psychological processes induced by auditory stimuli.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.1013-1013
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• 2004

Soundscape design is applied for the purpose of expressing the characteristics of places, by supplying suitable background sound for various places expressing their identity. Bus stations are a place for aggregating people using transportation. That is, people go into a station, buy a ticket, and wait for departure or for other passengers. Therefore, they need to create a more comfortable sound environment. This study aims to make bus stations a comfortable place acoustically for users. In this study, analysis on behavior at various locations in the space was performed. Measurements were taken on the approaching path, waiting place, departure and arrival platforms for sound levels and frequency characteristics. In addition, on acoustic specialists evaluation, using questionnaires, was also performed ambient noise, information broadcasting and users dialogue.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.40-51
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• 2016

The problem has been pointed out that the domestic design response spectrum does not reflect site amplification, particularly in the high frequency bands, including the fact that site specific response spectrum from the observed ground motions appears relatively higher than design response spectrum. Among various methods, this study applied H/V spectral ratio of ground motion for estimating site amplification. This method, originated from S waves and Rayleigh waves, recently has been extended to Coda waves and background noise for estimating site amplification. For limited time of periods, 4 electric substation sites had operated seismic stations at two separate locations (bedrock and borehole) within each substation site. H/V spectral ratio of S wave, Coda wave, and background noise, was applied to 36 accelerations of 3 macro earthquakes (Odaesan, Jeju and Gongju earthquakes), larger than magnitude 3.4. observed simultaneously at each bedrock location within 4 electric substation sites. Site amplifications at the bedrock location of 4 sites were compared among S wave, Coda wave energy, and background noise, and then compared to the previous results from the borehole location data. The site classification was also tried using resonancy frequency information at each site and location. The results suggested that all the electric substation sites showed similar site amplification patterns among S wave, Coda wave, and background noise. Each station showed its own characteristics of site amplification property in low, high and specific resonance frequency ranges. Comparison of this study to other results using different method can give us much more information about dynamic amplification of domestic sites characteristics and site classification.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.316-325
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• 2014

The basic unit of school is a classroom and the aural environment of the classrooms is essential factor for education purposes. Therefore, many efforts have been undertaken for enhancing the acoustical performance of the classrooms in many countries. As a result, acoustic criteria including reverberation time and background noise level have been established in US and UK for school classrooms depending on the usage and size of the rooms. However, in Korea, there has been little researches concerning the room acoustical investigations of the classrooms. The present study investigates the current situation of the aural environment of the 15 classrooms in Korea including elementary, middle and high schools. The acoustic criteria measured include RT, $D_{50}$, STI, SNR and background noise level. As the results, it was found that the background noise levels of the schools adjacent to roads exceed the US and UK standard of 35 dB(A). Also, most schools have so low SNR that they may be interfered by noise, which may affect speech transmission. It was also revealed that some schools have longer RT than the US standard of 0.6 s, but they all have high speech intelligibility.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2003.07e
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• pp.2216-2219
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• 2003

Accurate speech region detection and automatic syllable segmentation is important part of speech recognition system. In automatic speech recognition system, they are needed for the purpose of accurate recognition and less computational complexity, In this paper, we Propose improved syllable segmentation method using ramp edge detection method and residual signal Peak energy. These methods were used to ensure accuracy and robustness for endpoint detection and syllable segmentation system. They have almost invariant response to various background noise levels. As experimental results, we obtained the rate of 90.7％ accuracy in syllable segmentation in a condition of accurate endpoint detection environments.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.167-173
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• 2020

Background and Objectives: Top-down restoration of distorted speech, tapped as phonemic restoration of speech in noise, maybe a useful tool to understand robustness of perception in adverse listening situations. However, the relationship between phonemic restoration and speech perception in noise is not empirically clear. Subjects and Methods: 20 adults (40-55 years) with normal audiometric findings were part of the study. Sentence perception in noise performance was studied with various signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) to estimate the SNR with 50% score. Performance was also measured for sentences interrupted with silence and for those interrupted by speech noise at -10, -5, 0, and 5 dB SNRs. The performance score in the noise interruption condition was subtracted by quiet interruption condition to determine the phonemic restoration magnitude. Results: Fairly robust improvements in speech intelligibility was found when the sentences were interrupted with speech noise instead of silence. Improvement with increasing noise levels was non-monotonic and reached a maximum at -10 dB SNR. Significant correlation between speech perception in noise performance and phonemic restoration of sentences interrupted with -10 dB SNR speech noise was found. Conclusions: It is possible that perception of speech in noise is associated with top-down processing of speech, tapped as phonemic restoration of interrupted speech. More research with a larger sample size is indicated since the restoration is affected by the type of speech material and noise used, age, working memory, and linguistic proficiency, and has a large individual variability.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.167-173
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• 2020

Background and Objectives: Top-down restoration of distorted speech, tapped as phonemic restoration of speech in noise, maybe a useful tool to understand robustness of perception in adverse listening situations. However, the relationship between phonemic restoration and speech perception in noise is not empirically clear. Subjects and Methods: 20 adults (40-55 years) with normal audiometric findings were part of the study. Sentence perception in noise performance was studied with various signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) to estimate the SNR with 50% score. Performance was also measured for sentences interrupted with silence and for those interrupted by speech noise at -10, -5, 0, and 5 dB SNRs. The performance score in the noise interruption condition was subtracted by quiet interruption condition to determine the phonemic restoration magnitude. Results: Fairly robust improvements in speech intelligibility was found when the sentences were interrupted with speech noise instead of silence. Improvement with increasing noise levels was non-monotonic and reached a maximum at -10 dB SNR. Significant correlation between speech perception in noise performance and phonemic restoration of sentences interrupted with -10 dB SNR speech noise was found. Conclusions: It is possible that perception of speech in noise is associated with top-down processing of speech, tapped as phonemic restoration of interrupted speech. More research with a larger sample size is indicated since the restoration is affected by the type of speech material and noise used, age, working memory, and linguistic proficiency, and has a large individual variability.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.385-392
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the image quality and exposure dose according to kVp and mAs in CT and to confirm improvement in image quality according to None IR and IR(Iterative Reconstruction) levels. Measurement results of image quality using Image J, HU(Hounsfield units) and BN(Background Noise) are decreased, while SNR(Signal to Noise Ratio) and $CTDI_{vol}$(CT dose index volume) are increased as the kVp increases and there was no change of BHU(Background Hounsfield units). BN was reduced due to increased kVp, while SNR and $CTDI_{vol}$ were increased. Also, the higher IR stage, the lower BN, SI(Signal Intensity) and HU while SNR was improved by about 10~60%. Based on this, when applying IR for clinical applications, it is necessary to finely adjust kVp and mA with a phased approach.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.640-647
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• 2001

In this paper, a noise-tolerant generalized symmetry transform(NTGST) is proposed as an effective attention operator for the spot detection in BLU inspection, in which various spots with variable sizes, shapes, gray levels, and low contrast, should be detected from the complex, noisy background with lattice shaped shading. The proposed NTGST takes into account the polarity of convergence and divergence of the radial orientation of the intensity gradient as well as it's magnitude and symmetry, and thereby can detect only the BLU spots from the noisy and lattice shaped shadows of background. Experiments are conducted on the BLU inspection image obtained by CCD camera, and the proposed NTGST is Proved to be effectively used in BLU inspection.