• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.2
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• pp.145-161
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• 2021

Dynamic compaction of Aluminum powder using gas detonation forming technique was investigated. The experiments were carried out on four different conditions of total pre-detonation pressure. The effects of the initial powder mass and grain particle size on the green density and strength of compacted specimens were investigated. The relationships between the mentioned powder design parameters and the final features of specimens were characterized using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models using the Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH) algorithm were also developed to predict the green density and green strength of compacted specimens. Furthermore, the desirability function was employed for multi-objective optimization purposes. The obtained optimal solutions were verified with three new experiments and ANN models. The obtained experimental results corresponding to the best optimal setting with the desirability of 1 are 2714 kg·m-3 and 21.5 MPa for the green density and green strength, respectively, which are very close to the predicted values.

• Food Science of Animal Resources
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.1014-1032
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• 2020

This work aimed to investigate the psychobiotic effects of six bacterial strains on the mind and behavior of male Wistar rats. The probiotic (PRO) group (n=7) were rats pre-treated with antibiotics for 7 days followed by 14-day probiotic administration, antibiotics (ANT) group (n=7) were rats treated with antibiotics for 21 days without probiotics. The control (CON) group (n=7) were rats that received sham treatment for 21 days. The six bacterial strains with probiotic properties were mostly isolated from Thai fermented foods; Pedicoccus pentosaceus WS11, Lactobacillus plantarum SK321, L. fermentum SK324, L. brevis TRBC 3003, Bifidobacterium adolescentis TBRC 7154 and Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis TBRC 375. The probiotics were freeze-dried into powder (6×10⁹ CFU/5 g) and administered to the PRO group via oral gavage. Behavioral tests were performed. The PRO group displayed significantly reduced anxiety level and increased locomotor function using a marble burying test and open field test, respectively and significantly improved short-term memory performance using a novel object recognition test. Antibiotics significantly reduced microbial counts in rat feces in the ANT group by 100 fold compared to the PRO group. Probiotics significantly enhanced antioxidant enzymatic and non-enzymatic defenses in rat brains as assessed using catalase activity and ferric reducing antioxidant power assay, respectively. Probiotics also showed neuroprotective effects with less pyknotic cells and lower frequency of vacuolization in cerebral cortex. This multi-strain probiotic formulation from Thai fermented foods may offer a potential to develop psychobiotic-rich functional foods to modulate human mind and behaviors.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2002.07a
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• pp.678-681
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• 2002

In this paper, we propose a block LMS algorithm using distributed arithmetic (BDA) and a multi-memory block structured BDA (MBDA). Moreover, we propose an effective VLSI architecture of adaptive digital filter using MBDA, and evaluate the sampling rate and output latency.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1991.10b
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• pp.1752-1757
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• 1991

This paper presents a new method for detecting microcalcifications on mammograms by using morphological filter. This filter is an extension of Top-hat transformation in morphological operations with multi-scale and multiple structuring elements. The proposed method makes it possible to detect geometrical structures considered to be microcalcifications on the basis of their size, shape and density. Experimental results to show the effectiveness of the proposed method are also presented.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.427-438
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• 2018

In this paper, the single and multi-objective optimization of thin-walled conical tubes with different types of indentations under axial impact has been investigated using surrogate models called metamodels. The geometry of tapered thin-walled tubes has been studied in order to achieve maximum specific energy absorption (SEA) and minimum peak crushing force (PCF). The height, radius, thickness, tapered angle of the tube, and the radius of indentation have been considered as design variables. Based on the design of experiments (DOE) method, the generated sample points are computed using the explicit finite element code. Different surrogate models including Kriging, Feed Forward Neural Network (FNN), Radial Basis Neural Network (RNN), and Response Surface Modelling (RSM) comprised to evaluate the appropriation of such models. The comparison study between surrogate models and the exploration of indentation shapes have been provided. The obtained results show that the RNN method has the minimum mean squared error (MSE) in training points compared to the other methods. Meanwhile, optimization based on surrogate models with lower values of MSE does not provide optimum results. The RNN method demonstrates a lower crashworthiness performance (with a lower value of 125.7% for SEA and a higher value of 56.8% for PCF) in comparison to RSM with an error order of $10^{-3}$. The SEA values can be increased by 17.6% and PCF values can be decreased by 24.63% by different types of indentation. In a specific geometry, higher SEA and lower PCF require triangular and circular shapes of indentation, respectively.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.639-654
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• 2021

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Many adolescents in developing countries skip breakfast. Innovative nutrition education (NE) strategies are needed to enhance knowledge and skills related to the breakfasts of adolescents in a low socioeconomic setting. The objective was to evaluate short- and long-term effects of a multi-strategy, school-based NE intervention on adolescents' breakfast-related personal influences and behaviors. SUBJECTS/METHODS: An intervention study with a cluster randomized controlled trial design was conducted in 4 senior high schools in Makassar, Indonesia. The multi-strategy NE intervention was delivered for 3 months. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire and a 3-day breakfast recall (face-to-face interview). Wilcoxon, McNemar, and Mann-Whitney tests were used to determine intra- and intergroup differences. RESULTS: Unlike knowledge, improvement was observed in attitude and self-efficacy scores in the intervention groups (IGs) (P < 0.01); however, no significant changes were observed in the control group (CG). More students showed improved motivation in the IG than in the CG (P > 0.05). Changes in breakfast frequency and macronutrient intake from breakfast were greater in the IG than in the CG (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: A multi-strategy NE intervention is effective in producing positive changes in breakfast-related attitude, self-efficacy, and motivation of adolescents from a low-middle socioeconomic setting. The intervention improved breakfast frequency and nutrient intake. This intervention has promise for sustaining the observed changes over the long-term.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.1413-1432
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• 2023

Recommender systems aim to recommend items to users by taking into account their probable interests. This study focuses on creating a model that utilizes multiple sources of information about users and items by employing a multimodality approach. The study addresses the task of how to gather information from different sources (modalities) and transform them into a uniform format, resulting in a multi-modal feature description for users and items. This work also aims to transform and represent the features extracted from different modalities so that the information is in a compatible format for integration and contains important, useful information for the prediction model. To achieve this goal, we propose a novel multi-modal recommendation model, which involves extracting latent features of users and items from a utility matrix using matrix factorization techniques. Various transformation techniques are utilized to extract features from other sources of information such as user reviews, item descriptions, and item categories. We also proposed the use of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Feature Selection techniques to reduce the data dimension and extract important features as well as remove noisy features to increase the accuracy of the model. We conducted several different experimental models based on different subsets of modalities on the MovieLens and Amazon sub-category datasets. According to the experimental results, the proposed model significantly enhances the accuracy of recommendations when compared to SVD, which is acknowledged as one of the most effective models for recommender systems. Specifically, the proposed model reduces the RMSE by a range of 4.8% to 21.43% and increases the Precision by a range of 2.07% to 26.49% for the Amazon datasets. Similarly, for the MovieLens dataset, the proposed model reduces the RMSE by 45.61% and increases the Precision by 14.06%. Additionally, the experimental results on both datasets demonstrate that combining information from multiple modalities in the proposed model leads to superior outcomes compared to relying on a single type of information.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.7
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• pp.2839-2843
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• 2015

Background: MDR1, one of the most important drug-transporter genes, encodes P- glycoprotein (P-gp)-a transporter involved in protecting against xenobiotics and multi-drug resistance. The significance of the genetic background in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is not well understood. Materials and Methods: To evaluate whether C3435T and C1236T MDR1 polymorphisms are associated with the occurrence and outcome of ALL, 208 children with ALL (median age 5.0 yr) and 101 healthy Thai children were studied by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment-length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) assay. Results: C3435T and C1236T MDR1 polymorphism are significantly associated with the high-risk group (OR= 2.6, 95%CI =1.164-5.808; P=0.028 and OR= 2.231, 95%CI =1.068-4.659; p=0.047, respectively), indicating that both may be candidates for molecular markers in the high-risk group of ALL.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2002.07c
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• pp.1578-1581
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• 2002

In this paper, the accuracy of the direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation of signal impinged on the uniform linear array (ULA) is investigated. The conventional beamformer and Capon’s beamformer categorized in beamformaing techniques as well as MUSIC (MUlti-pie Signal Classification) and ESPRIT (Estimation of Signal Invariance Techniques) categorized in subspace- based methods are employed to estimate the DOAs. From the simulation result under uncorrelated environment, MUSIC can prominently distinguish the DOAs while the beamforming techniques cannot demonstrate the DOAs as clear as MUSIC does. Moreover, Uni-tary ESPRIT is employed to estimate the DOAs under uncorrelated signal conditions. By means of Uni-tary ESPRIT, the estimation has more accuracy with the computational-time reduction. In addition, it incorporates forward-backward averaging; thus Unitary ES-PRIT can overcome the problem of the coherent signal condition.

• Journal of Veterinary Science
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.29.1-29.6
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• 2021

West Nile virus (WNV), a neurotropic arbovirus, has been detected in mosquitos, birds, wildlife, horses, and humans in Malaysia, but limited information is available on WNV infection in Malaysian pigs. We tested 80 archived swine serum samples for the presence of WNV antibody and West Nile (WN) viral RNA using ID Screen West Nile Competition Multi-species enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits and WNV-specific primers in reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction assays, respectively. A WNV seroprevalence of 62.5% (50/80) at 95% confidence interval (51.6%-72.3%) was recorded, with a significantly higher seroprevalence among young pigs (weaner and grower) and pigs from south Malaysia. One sample was positive for Japanese encephalitis virus antibodies; WN viral RNA was not detected in any of the serum samples.