• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.921-947
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• 2016

Concrete Filled Fibre Reinforced Polymer Tube (CFFT) for new columns construction has attracted significant research attention in recent years. The CFFT acts as a formwork for new columns and a barrier to corrosion accelerating agents. It significantly increases both the strength capacity (Strength enhancement ratio) and the ductility (Strain enhancement ratio) of reinforced concrete columns. In this study, based on predefined selection criteria, experimental investigation results of 134 circular CFFT columns under axial compression have been compiled and analysed from 599 CFFT specimens available in the literature. It has been observed that actual confinement ratio (expressed as a function of material properties of fibres, diameter of CFFT and compressive strength of concrete) has significant influence on the strength and ductility of circular CFFT columns. Design oriented models have been proposed to compute the strength and strain enhancement ratios of circular CFFT columns. The proposed strength and strain enhancement ratio models have significantly reduced Average Absolute Error (AAE), Mean Square Error (MSE), Relative Standard Error of Estimate (RSEE) and Standard Deviation (SD) as compared to other available strength and strain enhancement ratios of circular CFFT column models. The predictions of the proposed strength and strain enhancement ratio models match well with the experimental strength and strain enhancement ratios investigation results in the compiled database.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.127-140
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• 2013

This paper investigates the role of corporate entrepreneurship for enhancing a firm's market orientation and competence. It distinguishes exploitive competence enhancement from explorative competence enhancement. The results reveal that corporate entrepreneurship influences both exploitive competence enhancement and explorative competence enhancement. Interestingly, among the components of market orientation, competitor orientation plays key roles, facilitating interfunctional coordination, and thus increasing exploitive competence enhancement and explorative competence enhancement. However, customer orientation affects only explorative competence enhancement.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.91-97
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• 2000

Objective: To determine whether the time-intensity curves acquired by test and main dose contrast injections for MR angiography are similar. Materials and Methods: In 11 patients, repeated contrast-enhanced 2D-turbo-FLASH scans with 1-sec interval were obtained. Both test and main dose timeintensity curves were acquired from the abdominal aorta, and the parameters of time-intensity curves for the test and main boluses were compared. The parameters used were arterial and venous enhancement times, arterial peak enhancement time, arteriovenous circulation time, enhancement duration and enhancement expansion ratio. Results: Between the main and test boluses, arterial and venous enhancement times and arteriovenous circulation time showed statistically significant correlation (p < 0.01), with correlation coefficients of 0.95, 0.92 and 0.98 respectively. Although the enhancement duration was definitely greater than infusion time, reasonable measurement of the end enhancement point in the main bolus was impossible. Conclusion: Only arterial and venous enhancement times and arteriovenous circulation time of the main bolus could be predicted from the test-bolus results. The use of these reliable parameters would lead to improvements in the scan timing method for MR angiography.

• Journal of Medicine and Life Science
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.1-5
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• 2019

Our purpose was to evaluate usefulness of the contrast-enhanced 3 dimensional fluid attenuated inversion recovery (3D-FLAIR) technique of half brain volume to diagnose the patients with facial neuritis based on segment-based analysis. We assessed retrospectively 17 consecutive patients who underwent brain MR imaging at 3 tesla for facial neuritis: 11 patients with idiopathic facial neuritis and 6 with herpes zoster oticus. Contrast enhanced 3D-FLAIR sequences of the half brain volume were analyzed and 3D T1-weighted sequence of the full brain volume were used as the base-line exam. Enhancement of the facial nerve was determined in each segment of 5 facial nerve segments by two radiologists. Sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of enhancement of each segment were assessed. The authors experienced a prompt fuzzy CSF enhancement in the fundus of the internal auditory canal in patients with enhancement of the canalicular segment. Interobserver agreement of CE 3D-FLAIR was excellent(${\kappa}$-value 0.885). Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of each segment are 1.0, 0.823, 0.912 in the canalicular segment; 0.118, 1.0, 0.559 in the labyrinthine segment; 0.823, 0.294, 0.559 in the anterior genu; 0.823, 0.529, 0.676 in the tympanic segment; 0.823, 0.235, 0.529 in the mastoid segment, respectively. In addition, those of prompt fuzzy enhancement were 0.647, 1.0, and 0.824, respectively. Incidence of prompt fuzzy enhancement with enhancement of the canalicular segment was 11 sites(55%): 6 (54.5%) in idiopathic facial neuritis and 5 (83.3%) in herpes zoster. Enhancement of the canalicular segment and prompt fuzzy enhancement on CE 3D-FLAIR was significantly correlated with occurrence of facial neuritis (p<0.001). CE 3D-FLAIR technique of the half brain volume is useful to evaluate the patients with facial neuritis as an adjunct sequence in addition to contrast-enhanced 3D T1-weighted sequence. On segment-based analysis, contrast enhancement of the canalicular segment is the most reliable. Prompt fuzzy enhancement is seen in not only herpes zoster, but in idiopathic facial neuritis.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.153-169
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• 2012

This study reviews an English enhancement course implemented for medical and nursing college students of 2011 to improve their standardized English test scores. A total of 117 first-year students underwent the pre-test and the post-TOEIC in November 2011. After the pre-test, lectures on listening enhancement strategies and problem solving tactics on reading comprehension were supplemented with 4 times of enhancement-tests. Their pre- and post-TOEIC results were compared to see if such enhancement strategies were effective to improve their TOEIC scores. It was further to investigate, through survey questionnaires, how the subjects felt about a number of pre-test-type TOEIC exercise with what-to-listen and how-to-infer listening strategies and pattern-drill practices for reading comprehension. It was found that the scores of listening comprehension improved significantly for both major students whereas reading scores showed slight decrease among nursing majors. It is concluded that administering numerous pre-test-type-TOEIC exercise is effective for students to improve their listening scores supplemented with listening strategies Also, students' response showed positive toward the enhancement course.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.1793-1801
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• 2016

Speech enhancement is a challenging problem due to the diversity of noise sources and their effects in different applications. The goal of speech enhancement is to improve the quality and intelligibility of speech by reducing noise. Many research works in speech enhancement have been accomplished in English and other European Languages. There has been limited or no such works or efforts in the past in the context of Tamil speech enhancement in the literature. The aim of the proposed method is to reduce the background noise present in the Tamil speech signal by using wavelets. New modified thresholding function is introduced. The proposed method is evaluated on several speakers and under various noise conditions including White Gaussian noise, Babble noise and Car noise. The Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), Mean Square Error (MSE) and Mean Opinion Score (MOS) results show that the proposed thresholding function improves the speech enhancement compared to the conventional hard and soft thresholding methods.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.9-14
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• 2009

Speech enhancement methods can be generally classified into a few categories and they have been usually compared with each other in terms of speech quality. For the successful use of speech enhancement methods in speech recognition systems, performance comparisons in terms of speech recognition accuracy are necessary. In this paper, we compared the speech recognition performance of some of the representative speech enhancement algorithms which are popularly cited in the literature and used widely. We also compared the performance of speech enhancement methods with other noise robust speech recognition methods like PMC to verify the usefulness of speech enhancement approaches in noise robust speech recognition systems.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.3 no.6
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• pp.358-365
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• 2014

This paper proposes a method that reduces the flickering effect caused by A-GLG (Adaptive Gray-Level Grouping) during video contrast enhancement. Of the GLG series, A-GLG shows the best contrast enhancement performance. The GLG series is based on histogram grouping. Histogram grouping is calculated differently between the continuous frames with a similar histogram and causes a subtle change in the transformation function. This is the reason for flickering effect when the video contrast is enhanced by A-GLG. To reduce the flickering effect caused by A-GLG, the proposed method calculates a modified transformation function. The modified transformation function is calculated using a previous and current transformation function applied with a weight separately. The proposed method was compared with A-GLG for flickering effect reduction and video contrast enhancement. Through the experimental results, the proposed method showed not only a reduced flickering effect, but also video contrast enhancement.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.22-29
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• 2008

In this paper, we propose an adaptive color enhancement algorithm. It is used for the flat panel displays (FPDs) such as LCD, PDP, and so on. The proposed algorithm consists of an adaptive linear approximation CDF(Cumulative Density Function) algorithm and an adaptive saturation enhancement algorithm. The one is for contrast enhancement which prevents an image from the distortion by luminance transient of an input image. The other is the algorithm which improves the saturation without the contour artifact and over-saturation, whose problems are generated during the enhancing saturation. In addition, it allows to achieve the high quality image using the saturation enhancement method for a preferred color of original image. Visual test and standard deviation of their histograms have been applied to evaluate the resultant output images of the proposed algorithm.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.8
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• pp.753-762
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• 2006

In this paper, works related to enhancement of the CHF are reviewed in terms of fundamental mechanisms and practical applications. Studies on CHF enhancement in forced convection are divided into two categories, CHF enhancement of internal flow in tubes and enhancement of CHF in the nuclear fuel bundle. Methods of enhancing the CHF of internal flows in tubes include enhancement of the swirl flow using twisted tapes, a helical coil, and a grooved surface; promotion of flow mixing using a hypervapotron; altering the characteristics of the heated surface using porous coatings and nano-fluids; and changing the surface tension of the fluid using additives such as surfactants. In the fuel bundle, mixing vanes or wire wrapped rods can be employed to enhance the CHF by changing the flow distributions. These methods can be applied to practical heat exchange systems such as nuclear reactors, fossil boilers, fusion reactors, etc.