• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
• /
• v.16 no.5
• /
• pp.846-860
• /
• 2011

The binaural auditory system of human has ability to differentiate the direction and the distance of the sound sources by using the information which are inter-aural intensity difference(IID), inter-aural time difference(ITD) and/or the spectral shape difference(SSD). These information is generated from the acoustical transfer of a sound source to pinna, the outer ears. We can create a virtual sound system using the information which is called Head related transfer function(HRTF). However the performance of 3D sound is not always satisfactory because of non-individual characteristics of the HRTF. In this paper, we propose the algorithm that uses human's auditory characteristics for accurate perception. To achieve this, excitation energy of HRTF, global masking threshold and loudness are applied to the proposed algorithm. Informal listening test shows that the proposed method improves the sound localization characteristics much better than conventional methods.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
• /
• 2004.05a
• /
• pp.535-541
• /
• 2004

For housing estate of a new administrative capital city, Noise reduction method is a important design factor. As measuring a noise level of traffic noise according to separation from road, it can be created a quite housing estate. Analyzing of merits and demerits in sound barrier walls and tunnels can be proposed environment friendly soundproofing facilities. Number of measurement was performed to know what kind of layout of housing estate is good for noise reduction. Through this measurement, ㄷ shaped layout or parallel layout has the advantage of sound insulation rather than right angled layout. In this case (ㄷ shaped layout or parallel layout) buildings neighboring to the road should be designed to insulate sound. Evergreen trees should be planted between housing estate and road more than 30m (at least 7～8m) in order to reduce noise and have masking effects. If broad-leaved trees are planted more than 30m, approximately 10dB noise is reduced and 2～4dB if 7～8m. Roads in the estate should be designed considering pedestrians first, and special roads for moving and ambulance should be designed as skew road, if possible. The result shows that 15$^{\circ}$-sloped‘S’road reduces 1～2dB noise and 30$^{\circ}$-sloped road reduces 4～7dB. If noise barrier is inevitably installed, it should be designed to go well wit neighboring environment so as to install Environment Friendly Noise Barrier using materials and trees including wood and soil. Through this study the results are used to guideline for construction of environment friendly housing estate

• Korean journal of food and cookery science
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.361-366
• /
• 1996

Acceptable fish noodles of better nutritional and sensory values than conventional noodle made only wheat flour were prepared by mixing wheat flour and ground tile fish (Branchioste gus japonicus). In oder to mask a distinctive fish odor, various herbs and spices, such as ginger (Zingiber officinale), curry (Chalcas koenigii), nutmeg (Myristica Pagrans), garlic (Ailium sativum), black pepper (Piper nigrum), lemon (Cirtus limon) or sodachi (Citrus sudachi) were added to the basic tile fish noodle. Also, for the purpose of enhancing eating qual ify and nutritional value of basic noodle were combined some agricultural or fishery products of Cheju island, citrus fruits; danyooja (Citrus danyooga), hagul (C. natfudaidai), medical plants; angelica utilis (Angelica keiskei), ginseng (Panax ginseng), cactus (Opuntia dillenii), vegetable; carrot (Daucus carota), dropwort (Oenanthe jnvanica), seaweeds; fusiforme (Hizkia fusiforme), gulfweed (Sargaceae hlvelium). The optimal mixing ratio for preparing the basic tile fish noodle amounted to ground tile fish 135 g: tile fish stock 139 $m\ell$: wheat flour 450 g: salts 10 g. The mixture of curry powder (2.5 g) and nutmeg powder (2.5 g) was proved to be the most effective combinations for masking unfavorable fish odor. The optimal amounts of materials to be added to the prepared basic noodle were 25 g citrus zest and 80m1 citrus juice for citrus fruits noodles, and ca. 140 g puree for noodles from medical plants, vegetables and seaweeds, respectively. The preference score obtained from consumer preference test, on a 9-point scales, were in oder of i) danyooja > carrot, angelica, ginseng > fusiforme, ii) hagul > dropwort, cactus > gulfweed. The shelf-life of tile fish noodle based on bacterial counting was estimated to be 7-days at 5$^{\circ}C$.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
• /
• v.49 no.4
• /
• pp.16-22
• /
• 2012

In this paper, the forensic marking algorithm is proposed using psychoacoustic model II and MDCT for high-quality audio. The proposed forensic marking method, that inserts the user fingerprinting code of the audio content into the selected sub-band, in which audio signal energy is lower than the spectrum masking level. In the range of the one frame which has 2,048 samples for FFT of original audio signal, the audio forensic marking is processed in 3 sub-bands. According to the average attack of the fingerprinting codes, one frame's SNR is measured on 100% trace ratio of the collusion codes. When the lower strength 0.1 of the inserted fingerprinting code, SNR is 38.44dB. And in case, the added strength 0.5 of white gaussian noise, SNR is 19.09dB. As a result, it confirms that the proposed audio forensic marking algorithm is maintained the marking robustness of the fingerprinting code and the audio high-quality.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.16 no.12
• /
• pp.4945-4948
• /
• 2015

Background: Adiponectin is a protein, synthesized by adipose tissue, which has a questionable role in breast cancer pathogenesis. This study focused on serum levels of adiponectin among cases and controls, and its possible association with breast cancer risk. Materials and Methods: This case-control study covered 175 diagnosed breast cancer patients with positive histopathology from Breast Clinic, surgical unit-1, Civil Hospital, Karachi and 175 healthy controls from various screening programs. Blood samples were obtained after an overnight fast and later analyzed. Results: Fasting blood glucose was significantly raised, while serum adiponectin was significantly decreased in breast cancer cases when compared to control subjects. To find the precise influence of serum adiponectin on the risk of breast cancer, subjects were divided in to quartiles based on serum levels of adiponectin. It is observed that risk of breast cancer decreased with rising quartile. Q2 (25th-50th) had the highest OR=1.76 (CI: 0.93- 3.34), Q3 (50th-75th) has OR= 0.89 (CI: 0.48-1.64), while subjects in the highest quartile Q4 (>75th) had significantly (p< 0.05) decreased risk of breast cancer having OR=0.06 (CI: 0.02-0.15), when compared to the lowest quartile. Conclusions: We demonstrated a statistically significant association of elevated serum adiponectin with decreased risk of breast cancer. This signifies a protective role of adiponectin via an intricate mechanism of masking mitogenic growth factors in breast carcinogenesis.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.201-210
• /
• 2005

This paper proposes a power efficient 2-dimensional DCT/IDCT architecture driven by input data to be processed. The architecture achieves low power by taking advantage of the typically large fraction of zero and small-valued input processing data in video and image data compression. In particular, it skips multiplication by zero and dynamically activates/deactivates required bit-slices of fine-grain bit partitioned adders within multipliers and accumulators using simple input ANDing and bit-slice MASKing. The processed results from 1-D DCT/IDCT do not have unnecessary sign extension bits (SEBs), which are used for further power reduction in matrix transposer. The results extracted by bit-level transition activity simulations indicate significant power reduction compared to conventional designs.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
• /
• v.8 no.5
• /
• pp.700-706
• /
• 2005

The immigration control system authorizes the immigration of travelers by means of passport inspections such as the judgment of forged passports, the search for a wanted criminal or a person disqualified for immigration, etc. The judgment of forged passports plays an important role in the immigration control system. Therefore, as the pre-phase for the judgment of forged passports, this paper proposed a novel method for the recognition of passport using ART2-based RBF network. The proposed method extracts the area of code and individual codes by applying the Sobel masking, the smearing and the contour tracking algorithm in turn to the passport image. This paper proposed the RBF network that applies the ART2 algorithm to the middle layer, and applied the enhanced RBF network to the recognition of individual codes. The results of the experiments for performance evaluation on the real passport images showed that the proposed method has the better performance compared with other approaches.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.30 no.5
• /
• pp.255-264
• /
• 2011

The Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF) means a process related to acoustic transmission from 3d space to the listener's ear. In other words, it contains the information that human can perceive locations of sound sources. So, we make virtual 3d sound using HRTF, despite it doesn't actually exist. But, it can deteriorate some three-dimensional effect by the confusion between front and back directions due to the non-individual HRTF depending on each listener. In this paper, we proposed the new algorithm to reduce the confusion of sound image localization using human's acoustic characteristics. The frequency spectrum and global masking threshold of 3d sounds using HRTF are used to calculate the psychoacoustical differences among each directions. And perceptible cues in each critical band are boosted to create effective 3d sound. As a result, we can make the improved 3d sound, and the performances are much better than conventional methods.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.35-43
• /
• 2004

In this paper, we proposed a vehicle recognition and electronic toll collection system with detection and classification of vehicle identification mark and emblem as well as recognition of vehicle license plate to unman toll fee collection system or incoming/outcoming vehicles to an institution. In the proposed algorithm, we first process pre-processing step such as noise reduction and thinning from the rear side input image of vehicle and detect vehicle mark, emblem and license plate region using intensity variation informations, template masking and labeling operation. And then, we classify the detected vehicle features regions into vehicle mark and emblem as well as recognize characters and numbers of vehicle license plate using hybrid and seven segment pattern vector. To show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, we tested it on real vehicle images of implemented vehicle recognition system in highway toll gate and found that the proposed method shows good feature detection/classification performance regardless of irregular environment conditions as well as noise, size, and location of vehicles. And also, the proposed algorithm may be utilized for catching criminal vehicles, unmanned toll collection system, and unmanned checking incoming/outcoming vehicles to an institution.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
• /
• v.1 no.3
• /
• pp.163-174
• /
• 2007

Folate has received international attention regarding its role in the risk-reduction of birth defects, specifically neural tube defects (NTDs). In 1998 health officials in Canada, like the United States, mandated the addition of folic acid to white flour and select grain product's to increase the folate intake of reproductive-aged women. Subsequent to this initiative there has been an increase in blood folate concentrations in Canada and a 50% reduction in NTDs. Many countries, including Korea, have not mandated folic acid fortification of their food supply. Reasons vary but often include concern over the masking of vitamin $B_{12}$ deficiency, a belief that folate intakes among womenare adequate, low priority relative to other domestic issues, and the philosophy that individuals have the right not to consume supplemental folic acid if they so choose. Prior to folic acid fortification of the food supply in Canada, the folate intakes of women were low, and their blood folate concentrations while not sufficiently low to produce overt signs of folate deficiency (eg. anemia) were inconsistent with a level known to reduce the risk of an NTD-affected pregnancy. The purpose of this article is to describe the role of folate during the periconceptional period, pregnancy, and during lactation. The rationale for, and history of recommending folic acid-containing supplements during the periconceptional period and pregnancy is described as is folic acid fortification of the food supply. The impact of folic acid fortification in Canada is discussed, and unresolved issues associated with this policy described. While the incidence of NTDs in Canada pre-folic acid fortification were seemingly higherthan that of Korea today, blood folate levels of Korean women are strikingly similar. We will briefly explore these parallels in an attempt to understand whether folic acid fortification of the food supply in Korean might be worth consideration.