• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.21-28
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• 2007

In most of hearing aids, amplification algorithms are used to compensate hearing loss, noise and feedback reduction algorithms are used and to increase the perception of speeches contrast enhancement algorithms are used. However, acoustic masking effect is occurred between formants if contrast is enhanced excessively. To confirm the masking effect in speeches, the experiment are composed of 6 tests; test pure tone test, speech reception test, word recognition test, pure tone masking test, formant pure tone masking test and speech masking test, and for objective evaluation, LLR is introduced. As a result of normal hearing subjects and hearing impaired subjects, more making is occurred in hearing impaired subjects than normal hearing subjects when using pure tone, and in the speech masking test, speech reception is also lower in hearing impaired subjects than in normal hearing subjects. This means that acoustic masking effect rather than distortion influences speech perception. So it is required to check the characteristics of masking effect before wearing a hearing aid and to apply this characteristics to fitting curve.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.13-20
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• 2008

Although digital hearing aid algorithms have been developed to compensate hearing loss and to help hearing impaired people to communicate with others, digital hearing aid user still complain about difficulty of hearing the speech. The reason could be the quality of speech through digital hearing aid is insufficient to understand the speech caused by feedback, residual noise and etc. And another thing is masking effect among formants that makes sound quality low. In this study, we measured the masking characteristics of normal listeners and hearing impaired listeners having presbyacusis to confirm masking effect in speech itself. The experiment is composed of 5 tests; pure tone test, speech reception threshold (SRT) test, word recognition score (WRS) test, puretone masking test and speech masking test. In speech masking test, there are 25 speeches in each speech set. And log likelihood ratio (LLR) is introduced to evaluate the distortion of each speech objectively. As a result, the speech perception became lower by increasing the quantity of formant enhancement. And each enhanced speech in a speech set has statistically similar LLR, however speech perception is not. It means that acoustic masking effect rather than distortion influences speech perception. In actuality, according to the result of frequency analysis of the speech that people can not answer correctly, level difference between first formant and second formant is about 35dB, and it is similar to result of pure tone masking test(normal hearing subject:36.36dB, hearing impaired subject:32.86dB). Characteristics of masking effect is not similar between normal listeners and hearing impaired listeners. So it is required to check the characteristics of masking effect before wearing a hearing aid and to apply this characteristics to fitting.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.19-27
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• 2015

Purpose: A system to measure the visibility of agricultural tractor operators was designed and evaluated according to ISO standards, and a blind area diagram around the tested tractor was created based on the manual method recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Methods: A visibility measurement system was designed and evaluated based on the ISO 5006 and ISO 5721-1 standards. Two bulbs used to simulate the operator's eyes were mounted on a bar with a supporting frame. A wooden frame was used to determine the seat index point position. The 12-m visibility test circle was divided into six sectors of vision, and the test tractor was placed at the center of the circle. Artificial light was supplied in the darkened environment, and shadow or masking effects were measured manually around the 12-m circle. Results: When the bulbs were placed at the operator's eye level, front visibility was good; no masking was found in the "A" vision sector, but larger masking widths were found in the "B" and "C" vision sectors. Since the masking width exceeded 700 mm, additional tests, such as movement of the light sources to both sides of the operator's eye level, were performed. Less than six masking effects were found in the semi-circle of vision to the front, and more than one masking was found in the "B" and "C" visual fields. The minimum distance between the centers of two masking effects exceeded 2500 mm when measured as a chord on the semi-circle of vision. A blind area diagram was created to define the exact nature of the blind spots and mirror visibility. Conclusions: Visibility evaluation is an effective way to enable proper and safe operation for agricultural tractor operators. Inclusion of this visibility evaluation test in the general testing process might aid tractor manufacturers.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.1431-1441
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• 2016

In case of ARX based block cipher algorithms with masking countermeasures, there is a need for a method to convert between Boolean masking and arithmetic masking. However, to apply masking countermeasures to ARX based algorithms is less efficient compared to masked AES with single masking method because converting between Boolean and arithmetic masking has high computation time. This paper shows performance results on 32-bit platform implementations of LEA with various masking conversion countermeasures against first order side channel attacks. In the implementation point of view, this paper presents computation time comparison between actual measurement value and theoretical one. This paper also confirms that the masked implementations of LEA are secure against first order side channel attacks by using a T-test.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.599-602
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• 2005

This paper describes a experimental study determining the effects of the type and loudness of introducing sounds on the amenity and the masking degree of background noise. 132 relative test sounds with 11 types of introducing sounds and 3 steps of road traffic noise were presented to 29 subjects through headphone in the laboratory experiment. Seven scale of polar adjective such as 'Strong Weak', 'Pleasant Unpleasant', 'Clear Unclear', 'Suitable Unsuitable', 'Comfortable-Discomfortable' was employed for the evaluation of amenity. And Seven scale of mono polar adjective such as 'Very-Not at all' was employed for the evaluation of masking degree against road traffic noise. The results are as follows; Green music was evaluated the highest amenity among test sounds and murmurs of a stream, signal music, song of a bird, crying of insect was showed the amenity rank of order. The softer and weaker introducing sound was evaluated more suitable and comfortable under the road traffic noise. So adequate level of introducing sounds was considered for the desirable urban soundscape. Also the louder sounds compared to background noises had greater masking effects. But similar levels of introducing sounds were recommended considering both good amenity and masking effects.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.521-528
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• 2011

A variety of noise control methods have been developed as an interest on noise issues increases. Among them, noise control methods using masking effect, a phenomenon to reduce the ability to notice the unwanted sound by proper sound, to implement a pleasant sound environment have been studied under the name of soundscape. We proposed a novel vector base amplitude panning(VBAP) based noise control method to apply to the building environment. The proposed method could improve the amenity inside the building to reproduce the sounds with excellent masking effect on the incoming path of noise using the control speakers, considering the direction of noise source. The directional masking sounds can be generated by using VBPA technique. To verify the performance of the proposed method, we carried out the subjective test for the degree of amenity according to direction of the masking sound. Subjective test results showed that it is possible to improve the amenity inside the building by controlling the direction of masking sound considering the human's auditory characteristic.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.89-100
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• 2024

The primary goal of software testing is to identify and correct errors within software. A key challenge in this process is error masking, where errors disappear internally before reaching the output. This paper investigates the causes and characteristics of error masking, which complicates software testing. The study involved injecting artificial errors into three software programs to examine the extent of error masking by various test cases and to explore the underlying reasons. The experiment yielded four major findings. First, about 50% of the error masking occurred because the errors were not executed. Second, among various operators, logical and arithmetic operators masked errors less frequently, while relational and temporal operators tended to mask errors more extensively. Third, certain test cases demonstrated exceptional effectiveness in propagating errors to the output. Fourth, the type of error injected influenced the masking effect.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.227-232
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• 2008

The masking effect of chlorine on algae-related taste and odor(T&O) compounds has long been an important issue for water suppliers. In this study, masking experiments with chlorine were performed on two kinds of treated water and one of raw water. After adding chlorine(0 to 0.8 mg/L) to water samples, odor intensity was evaluated by a newly developed sensory method(2-out-of-5 odor test) for three days along with the measurement of residual chlorine concentration. Even though the relationship between the residual chlorine concentration and odor reported by the sensory analysts was not always coincident, it was proved that residual chlorine more than a certain concentration could completely mask both added geosmin and naturally occurring T&O compounds. For the sand-filtered water spiked with 10 ng/L of geosmin, 0.12-0.18 mg/L of residual chlorine was necessary to achieve complete masking. In the case of GAC-filtered water, 10 ng/L of spiked geosmin was completely masked by 0.15-0.1 mg/L of residual chlorine. Combined ozone and GAC was not enough to treat raw water spiked with 300 ng/L of geosmin. In this experiment, sensory analysts were able to detect earthy or musty odors from the treated water. From a masking experiment with raw water taken from the Daechung Reservoir, it was found that fishy odor was more difficult to mask with chlorine than earthy odor. As the chlorine residual declined, the analysts began to notice the original odor and the fishy odor was noticed earlier than the earthy odor.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.42-49
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• 2011

To expand lean misfire limit and improve combustion stability, the effects of port masking were estimated to secure basic data for applying the mechanism to SI engine instead of asymmetrical port and port throttling devises. For this purpose, various shapes and ratios of masking plates were mounted between port and manifold. The masking effects were evaluated by mixture response test under various load and speed conditions. The results showed that lean misfire limits were expended and fast combustion was observed for all masking shapes and ratios, especially, the effect of diagonal 1/4 masking was remarkable. In conclusion, the port masking method could be easily applied to engine without redesign of port for improving part load performance.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.529-534
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• 2009

One of the characteristics of the hearing impaired is that their frequency selectivity is poorer than that of the normal hearing. To compensate this, formant enhancement algorithms and spectral contrast enhancement algorithms have been developed. However in some cases, these algorithms fail to improve the frequency selectivity of the hearing impaired. One of the reasons is the acoustic masking among enhanced formants. In this study, we tried to enhance the formants based on the individual masking characteristic of each subject. The masking characteristic used in this study was minimum level difference (MLD) between the first formant to the second formant while acoustic masking was occurred. If the level difference between the two formants in each frame is larger than the MLD, the gain of the first formant was decreased to reduce the acoustic masking that occurred among formants. As a result of the speech discrimination test, using formant enhanced speeches, speech discrimination score (SDS) of the speeches having differently enhanced formants was significantly superior to SDS of the speeches having equally enhanced formants. It means that suppression of the acoustic masking among formants improve frequency selectivity of the hearing impaired.