• Title/Summary/Keyword: Impaired vision

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Current Status of Taeniasis and Cysticercosis in Vietnam

  • De, Nguyen Van;Le, Thanh Hoa;Lien, Phan Thi Huong;Eom, Keeseon S.
    • Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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    • v.52 no.2
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    • pp.125-129
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    • 2014
  • Several reports on taeniasis and cysticercosis in Vietnam show that they are distributed in over 50 of 63 provinces. In some endemic areas, the prevalence of taeniasis was 0.2-12.0% and that of cysticercosis was 1.0-7.2%. The major symptoms of taeniasis included fidgeted anus, proglottids moving out of the anus, and proglottids in the feces. Clinical manifestations of cysticercosis in humans included subcutaneous nodules, epileptic seizures, severe headach, impaired vision, and memory loss. The species identification of Taenia in Vietnam included Taenia asiatica, Taenia saginata, and Taenia solium based on combined morphology and molecular methods. Only T. solium caused cysticercosis in humans. Praziquantel was chosen for treatment of taeniasis and albendazole for treatment of cysticercosis. The infection rate of cysticercus cellulosae in pigs was 0.04% at Hanoi slaughterhouses, 0.03-0.31% at provincial slaughterhouses in the north, and 0.9% in provincial slaughterhouses in the southern region of Vietnam. The infection rate of cysticercus bovis in cattle was 0.03-2.17% at Hanoi slaughterhouses. Risk factors investigated with regard to transmission of Taenia suggested that consumption of raw meat (eating raw meat 4.5-74.3%), inadequate or absent meat inspection and control, poor sanitation in some endemic areas, and use of untreated human waste as a fertilizer for crops may play important roles in Vietnam, although this remains to be validated.

Landscape Changes: Assessing Pennsylvania State Park Viewsheds Across the Marcellus Shale Region

  • Nicholas, Kyle
    • Journal of Cadastre & Land InformatiX
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    • v.46 no.2
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    • pp.197-209
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    • 2016
  • The Marcellus Shale industry has impacted Pennsylvania since 2005 and has been a major driver of land use change ever since. The Pennsylvania state park system has been facing encroachment from this industry ever since the first Pennsylvania wellpad was drilled in 2008. Previous research conducted overviews the impacts associated with this industry in regards to environmental quality, but there is limited research associated with the social impacts. The conducted research overviews the Marcellus Shale industry in regards to encroachment on Pennsylvania state parks through a GIS analysis. The purpose of the research is to evaluate how the viewsheds (areas of vision from a given point) of Pennsylvania state park land has been impaired by the Marcellus Shale industry. The results of the research show how the landscape of state parks have change due to the Marcellus Shale industry, and also a focus will be placed on scenic vistas (areas that highlight spectacular views within state parks) of selected parks to see to what extent that pristine landscape has been altered. The results of the research will help provide an idea of landscape change utilizing a GIS analysis and hopefully help to guide future growth.

Development of Sensor Device and Probability-based Algorithm for Braille-block Tracking (확률론에 기반한 점자블록 추종 알고리즘 및 센서장치의 개발)

  • Roh, Chi-Won;Lee, Sung-Ha;Kang, Sung-Chul;Hong, Suk-Kyo
    • Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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    • v.13 no.3
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    • pp.249-255
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    • 2007
  • Under the situation of a fire, it is difficult for a rescue robot to use sensors such as vision sensor, ultrasonic sensor or laser distance sensor because of diffusion, refraction or block of light and sound by dense smoke. But, braille blocks that are installed for the visaully impaired at public places such as subway stations can be used as a map for autonomous mobile robot's localization and navigation. In this paper, we developed a laser sensor stan device which can detect braille blcoks in spite of dense smoke and integrated the device to the robot developed to carry out rescue mission in various hazardous disaster areas at KIST. We implemented MCL algorithm for robot's attitude estimation according to the scanned data and transformed a braille block map to a topological map and designed a nonlinear path tracking controller for autonomous navigation. From various simulations and experiments, we could verify that the developed laser sensor device and the proposed localization method are effective to autonomous tracking of braille blocks and the autonomous navigation robot system can be used for rescue under fire.

A clinical analysis on glaucoma, cataract and causing-blindness-diseases by oriental medical therapy (內障과 眼盲疾患의 韓方治驗에 關한 小考)

  • Kim, Gyung-Jun;Chae, Bhung-Yoon
    • The Journal of Korean Medicine Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology and Dermatology
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    • v.10 no.1
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    • pp.340-348
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    • 1997
  • The glaucoma, cataract and causing-blindness-diseases have high clinical importance by their severity of the symptoms and possibility of causing visual loss. Glaucoma is caused by an increase in the intraocular pressure, if severe enough, can cause field loss and eventually complete blindness. In cataract, the general clarity of vision is impaired due to a loss of transparency of the chrystalline lens of the eye. The causing-blindness-diseases can be divided to PokMaeng which cause sudden blindness and ChungMaeng, in which visual acuity is losed gradually. In glaucoma, cataract and causing-blindness-diseases, the visual acuity is affected and the patient may complain blurriness, fatigue of eye, visual field loss deficiency or scintillant feeling, vitreous floaters. In this study, 32 patients who have cataract, glaucoma or other causing-blindness-diseases was treated with oriental medicine or acupuncture from July, l996 to May. 1997, and was followed up by their symptoms and visual acuity. 1. In glaucoma patients, intraocular pressure decreased significantry and the symptoms improved positively. 2. In cataract patients, there was no improvement of visual acuity but $40\%$ of patients found their symptoms improved. 3. In causing-blindness-diseases, $57\%$ of patients reported improvement of their symptoms such as blurriness or fatigue of eye. 4. Through oriental medical treatment, the symptoms of glaucoma, cataract and causing-blindness-diseases can be treated effectively. Therefore oriental management seems to be possible to cure glaucoma, cataract and causing-blindness-diseases.

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Technological Trends in Sensory Substitution (감각치환 기술 동향)

  • Moon, K.D.;Kim, M.S.;Jeong, C.Y.;Park, Y.K.;Shin, S.Y.;Oh, C.M.;Park, J.S.;Shin, H.C.
    • Electronics and Telecommunications Trends
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    • v.34 no.4
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    • pp.65-75
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    • 2019
  • Sensory substitution involves mapping the characteristics of one sensory modality to the stimuli of another sensory modality. In general, when a person is visually impaired or deaf, they do not actually lose their ability to see or hear completely; however, they only lose their ability to transmit sensory signals from the periphery to the brain. It has been experimentally proven that a person who has lost the ability to retrieve data from the retina can still visualize subjective images by using data transferred from other sensory modalities such as tactile or auditory modalities. This is because vision processing pathways are still intact in most cases. Therefore, sensory substitution uses human perception and the plasticity of the human brain to transmit sensory signals through pathways that have not been lost. In this study, we analyze the characteristics and problems of various devices used for sensory substitution and summarize the recent technological trends in these devices.

Development of a Vegan Decipher System for the Social Vulnerable, such as the Low Vision Person and the Visually Impaired Person Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) (광학 문자 인식(OCR)을 활용한 저시력자 및 시각장애인 등 사회적 약자를 위한 비건 판독 시스템 개발)

  • Hye-Rim OH;Ye-Na Kong;Jeong-Min Kim;Jea-Jun Choi
    • Annual Conference of KIPS
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    • 2023.11a
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    • pp.990-991
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    • 2023
  • 커져만 가는 비건 시장에 비해서 비건 제품의 가격은 높고, 한정되어 있다. 성분표만을 보고 비건 여부를 파악하기에는 어렵고, 저시력자 및 시각장애인에게는 더욱 어려운 일이다. 치주 질환이나 당뇨를 포함한 크고 작은 다양한 질병으로 인해 육식 섭취 대신 불가피하게 채식을 실천해야 하는 경우 또는 가격 부담이 크고 찾기 어렵다. 그래서 비건 인증을 받은 제품 대신 일반 제품들 사이에서 비건에 적합한 제품을 찾는 데 도움이 되는 시스템을 개발하고자 한다. 본 논문에서는 저시력자 및 시각장애인을 위한 큰 글씨 화면, 음성 입출력 시스템 제공과 성분표 촬영을 통해 비건 적합 여부 및 알레르기 정보 제공, 사용자 특성 분석을 통한 UI 구성의 서비스를 제공한다. 성분표 촬영에 어려움을 겪는 저시력자 및 시각장애인에게 편리를 제공하기 위해 소프트웨어 뿐만 아니라 하드웨어를 구성한다.

A Case Study on the Visually Impaired Secondary Students' Conception of the Changes of State of Water (시각장애 중고등학생의 물의 상태변화 개념에 대한 사례 연구)

  • Kim, Hak Bum;Cha, Jeongho
    • Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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    • v.62 no.1
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    • pp.43-51
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    • 2018
  • In this study, visually impaired secondary students' conception of "changes of state of water" was explored. Science inquiry activity for students with visual impairments was implemented to 16 middle school students and 15 high school students from school for the blind. 14 of them were totally blind, 13 had low vision and the others were not identified. Inquiry activities were conducted by communicating with the researcher while students were individually exploring the molecular models of water and ice developed for the study. After the exploration, students were asked to explain the concept of changes of state of water with the model they explored. Opinion on the need and the usability of this kind of tactile model was also asked to them. All conversations were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. As a result, students with visual impairments answered exactly about the materials used for the model and their numbers. However, they didn't know what the model stood for. They had experiences of learning molecule of water and changes of state of water, but it was a phenomenon and superficial understanding. Students got to understand the molecular structures of water and ice, and had a positive perception on the need and the usability of the model. Based on these results, educational implications were discussed.

Fire Detection using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks for Assisting People with Visual Impairments in an Emergency Situation (시각 장애인을 위한 영상 기반 심층 합성곱 신경망을 이용한 화재 감지기)

  • Kong, Borasy;Won, Insu;Kwon, Jangwoo
    • 재활복지
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    • v.21 no.3
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    • pp.129-146
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    • 2017
  • In an event of an emergency, such as fire in a building, visually impaired and blind people are prone to exposed to a level of danger that is greater than that of normal people, for they cannot be aware of it quickly. Current fire detection methods such as smoke detector is very slow and unreliable because it usually uses chemical sensor based technology to detect fire particles. But by using vision sensor instead, fire can be proven to be detected much faster as we show in our experiments. Previous studies have applied various image processing and machine learning techniques to detect fire, but they usually don't work very well because these techniques require hand-crafted features that do not generalize well to various scenarios. But with the help of recent advancement in the field of deep learning, this research can be conducted to help solve this problem by using deep learning-based object detector that can detect fire using images from security camera. Deep learning based approach can learn features automatically so they can usually generalize well to various scenes. In order to ensure maximum capacity, we applied the latest technologies in the field of computer vision such as YOLO detector in order to solve this task. Considering the trade-off between recall vs. complexity, we introduced two convolutional neural networks with slightly different model's complexity to detect fire at different recall rate. Both models can detect fire at 99% average precision, but one model has 76% recall at 30 FPS while another has 61% recall at 50 FPS. We also compare our model memory consumption with each other and show our models robustness by testing on various real-world scenarios.

Experience of Continuous Intercostal Nerve Block for Management of the Post-thoracotomy Pain -10 cases- (지속적 늑간신경 차단법에 의한 개흉술후 통증관리 치험)

  • Won, Kyung-Sub;Lee, Jeong-Seok;Kim, Yong-Ik;Hwang, Kyung-Ho;Park, Wook
    • The Korean Journal of Pain
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    • v.9 no.1
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    • pp.135-139
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    • 1996
  • Intercostal nerve blockade with local anesthetics has been used extensively in the past to provide pain relief following thoracotomy. Its popularity fell, for a period, probably due to increasing use of epidural analgesia. More recently, interest has focused on intercostal nerve block with the introduction of variously sited catheters. Two epidural catheters were placed under direct vision, in the intercostal spaces just above and below the wound by feeding the catheters posteriorly from the wound edges, superficial to the parietal pleura. Bupivacaine 0.25%. Was infused continuously at a rate of 5 ml/hour through each of the two intercostal catheters. Each catheter was primed with 10 ml/hour through each of the two intercostal catheters. Each catheter was primed with 10 ml of 0.25% bupivacaine. Postoperative vital signs resembled preoperation data. Arterial carbon dioxide pressure ($PaCO_2$) was unchanged and arterial oxygen pressure ($PaO_2$) was increased during two days after surgery because oxygen was administered at 21/min. Forced vital capacities (FVC) and forced expiratory volume in 1 second ($FEV_1$) were decreased the day of operation but restored to preoperative value from second operation day. VAS were increased on operation day but decreased from second operation day. Motion range of arms were not impaired. We concluded that continuous intercostal nerve block through catheters placed during thoracotomy in the adjacent intercostal spaces is a simple and effective method for management of the post-thoracotomy pain.

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Analyzing Driving Risk Self-Perception Characteristics of Elderly Drivers (노인 운전자의 운전 위험성 자각 특성 분석)

  • Choi, Seong-Youl
    • Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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    • v.10 no.7
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    • pp.223-231
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    • 2020
  • Older drivers have an increased risk of accidents due to poor function, but they also develop self-regulation ability to check their own changes. Thus, information on whether the actual elderly driver responds to changes in driving ability and risk may provide a meaningful basis for the clinic and research of the elderly's driving ability assessment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to provide basic data for the evaluation of elderly drivers by analyzing the driving risk self-perception characteristics in terms of driving behavior and function with Korean elderly drivers. A self-reporting assessment was conducted on 500 elderly drivers living in the community and the characteristics of driving risk perception were analyzed. As a result, it was confirmed that many elderly drivers are aware of the driving risk when their vision and hearing are impaired or when they find it difficult to adapt to changes in driving conditions. On the other hand, the characteristics of insensitive reactions to changes in medical health conditions, such as drug use or epilepsy, seizures, and loss of consciousness, were identified. The researcher hopes this study will contribute to the safety management of elderly drivers in Korea, where aging is accelerating.