• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.623-629
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• 1998

To provide sufficient sound to the hearing-impaired person(HIP) who have many difficulty in communication with others using general telephone, big amplification is needed. But big amplification can occur howling as a side effect. In this study we developed the new technique of big amplification without howling, manufactured and estimated the new hearing aid telephone. Telephone speech is divided to three frequency band, amplified respectively and fitted to HIP's hearing ability. The telephone speech frequency is monitored by counter in time domain. The counter transfers the sinusoidal sound to rectangular wave using comparator and counts the number of rectangular wave in a certain time period, that is frequency, to monitor the howling. Telephone have microphone and speaker, which are fitted in a rigid structure and frequency band of telephone sound is limited, so howling occurs in the limited frequency band. If the counter notices that howling conditions happen, microprocessor decreases quickly the gain of the related frequency band. The result of test of our new hearing aid telephone showed that we can amplifiy the sound as much as 40dB, which is meaningful level to many HIP, and make HIP increase their perception ability from 20% to 60.8% in 1 syllable test and from 28.9% to 78% in 2 syllable test.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.67-76
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• 2022

This study aimed to examine Korean listeners' mode of perceiving sound duration as prolongation, whether dichotomous or continuous. Thirty-five Korean participants (17 men and 18 women) listened to the Korean segment /s/, which was lengthened by 0-980ms in 20-ms increments. Then, the participants were asked to rate each version of the sound based on a rating of one to 100 (the closer to 100, the more disfluent). To examine whether listeners perceived durational variations for the fricative segment dichotomously or continuously, a curve was estimated using the best-fitting regression model for the observed data with the highest adjusted R-squared value. The mode of perceiving durational variations for the segment was continuous (or gradient) rather than discontinuous (or dichotomous). No gender difference was found in the mode of perceiving prolongation. However, there was a significant gender difference in that men rated the most disfluent sounds higher than women. The findings of this study were further discussed in relation to the existing literature, and clinical implications for the assessment of stuttering were presented.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.37-46
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• 2017

Purpose - Many studies have shown the effects of the external images of female flight attendants on the customers' satisfaction. Recently, the perception of male flight attendants has become more important and positive, and airlines are hiring a significant number of male flight attendants every year. Due to the lack of research on the male flight attendant, however, the images of male flight attendants were investigated for this study. Research, design, data and methodology - Using survey techniques with 204 respondents, this study used analytical data based their resulting analysis. Results - The study examined whether the image of the male flight attendant affects the cognitive and emotional perceptions of customers. The focus of the present study is the external image of the male flight attendant, and the following image-component divisions were formed: hairstyle, body type, uniform, speech, and facial expression. Conclusions - The study purpose sought to determine whether the image of the male flight attendant exert effects on the emotional and cognitive images of airlines, and if these images have a positive effect on the customers' satisfaction and loyalty for an airline, so that airlines can use the external image of the male flight attendant to help with its own image reinforcement.

• The korean journal of orthodontics
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.20-26
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• 2016

Objective: Patients' and parents' expectations are important in orthodontic treatment decision making. The literature generally demonstrates the perceived benefits of orthodontic treatment, but patients' and their parents' concerns about orthodontic treatment have not been investigated comprehensively. The aim of this study was to identify patients' and parents' concerns about orthodontic treatment and compare them according to sex, age, and treatment demand level. Methods: One hundred and eighty-nine children and their parents were interviewed about concerns related to orthodontic treatment. Patients and parents were asked about orthodontic treatment decisions. Answers were recorded as "yes," "no," or "don't know." Chi-squared and Fisher's exact tests were used to compare concerns between age groups, sexes, and treatment demand levels. Kappa statistics were used to assess agreement between patients and their parents. Results: Concerns about orthodontic treatment were gathered under 10 items as follows: "feeling pain," "the appearance of braces," "being teased," "avoiding smiling," "speech problems," "dietary changes," "problems with transportation," "economic problems," "long treatment duration," and "missing school." There was no statistically significant difference in concerns between the sexes or age groups. Some concern items and treatment demand were inversely related in patients. Conclusions: The results of this study demonstrate patients' and parents' concerns about orthodontic treatment. Differences between the concerns of patients with different treatment demands imply that children might reject orthodontic treatment because of their concerns. Appropriate consultation of patients addressing their concerns may help reduce anxiety and improve the acceptance of treatment.

• MALSORI
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• no.38
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• pp.99-112
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• 1999

The aim of this paper is to measure the duration of Japanese 'sokuon' [t/k] and 'haneruon' [m/n] produced by Korean and Japanese native speakers. It was shown that in the case of Korean speakers, the duration of geminate of 'sokuon' was 1.5 times longer than that of a single consonant, whereas in the case of Japanese speakers, it was 2 times longer. The difference between Korean and Japanese prosodic structures appears to affect the perception and acquisition of a foreign rhythmic patternm non-existent in the speaker's native tongue. The duration of geminate of [s] was 2 times as long as a single consonant in both Korean and Japanese speakers' production. On the average, the duration of Japanese 'sokuon' [t/k/s] was 1.7 times longer than that of a single consonant in Korean speakers' pronunciation, whereas 2 times longer in Japanese speakers' pronunciation. The production of 'haneruon' by either Korean or Japanese speakers yielded a similar result to 'sokoun': 1) geminates lasted longer than a single consonant; 2) single [m] is longer than single [n]: 3) geminate of [n] is 3 times as long as single [n], whereas geminate of [m] is 2 times as long as single [m].

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.20-26
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• 2010

The aim of this study was to test the feasibility of a wireless transceiver that can be inserted into the ear canal. The wireless technology could minimize the cosmetic problems of patients, and it can be applied to binaural hearing aids for improving speech perception. In order to implement the ear canal insertable transceiver, simple finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations were carried out to determine the feasibility, and the hardware of the transceiver was implemented within the ear shell. The size of the implemented transceiver was only $7{\times}7mm$, and it could successfully transmit signals to external devices. In order to measure the radiation pattern, a simple RF phantom was used, and the maximum attenuation from the phantom was observed to be 23 dB when the reference antenna was placed at a distance of 2 m from the transmitter.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.343-348
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• 1996

This paper examines the contribution of vocalic information (after the onset of voicing) to the perception of Korean alveolar stops: the aspirated /$t^{h}$/, the lenis /t/, and the fortis /$t^{*}$/. These stops have been analyzed as differing in VOT (Abramson & Lisker, 1964), the glottal width or aspiration (Kim, 1970), and F0 and intensity build-up (Han & Weitzman, 1970). These studies focused on the articulatory and acoustic qualities of the consonants and often assumed that the consonantal portion before the onset of voicing plays the main role in maintaining the three-way distinction. In contrast, the role of the following vowels was given less attention. In order to investigate the contribution of the following vowels, a perceptual study was conducted using stimuli cross-spliced from three naturally produced syllables [$t^{h}al$] 'mask', [tal] 'moon', and [$t^{*}al$]) 'daughter'. Stimuli were presented to 12 Korean listeners for identification. Each subject responded to a total of 486 tokens. The results show that vowels play the primary role when the cut occurs at the star of voicing. Even with cuts at 10 ms and 40 ms into voicing, the following vowel still plays a clear role. This suggests that vowels carry the important information for distinguishing the three stops.

• MALSORI
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• no.40
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• pp.1-12
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• 2000

This paper investigated how $/\int/$ in English and German is perceived and interpreted in the loanwords in Korean. $/\int/$ in these languages does not show one-to-one correspondence in Korean: $/\int/$ in the coda position in English and German is perceived as [swi] in Korean while $/\int/$ in the onset position is perceived as [syu]. This paper examined phonetic characteristics of $/\int/$ in English and German through its acoustic analysis and attempted to figure out which factor could explain this surface distribution of [swi] and [syu]; phonological (onset vs. coda) or phonetic (coarticulation) factor. Two acoustic features of $/\int/$ in English and German were examined: duration and energy Peak frequency of the frication noise. German $/\int/$ Perceived as [swi] in Korean showed higher energy Peak frequency and longer duration than that perceived as [syu] in Korean. English iii perceived as [swi] also showed longer duration than that Perceived as [syu] in Korean but energy Peak frequency showed different behavior. English $/\int/$ showed coarticulation with the preceding vowel rather than being affected by its position in the syllable in English. This paper concludes that 1)Phonetic characteristics used are duration and energy Peak frequency of its frication noise when $/\int/$ in English and German are adopted in Korean, 2)duration is used prior to energy peak frequency, which can be used as an enhancing feature.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.53-69
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• 1996

Much research has been done on the rues differentiating the three Korean stops in word initial position. This paper focuses on a more neglected area: the acoustic cues differentiating the medial tense and lax unaspirated stops. Eight adult Korean native speakers, four males and four females, pronounced sixteen minimal pairs containing the two series of medial stops with different preceding vowel qualities. The average duration of vowels before lax stops is 31 msec longer than before their tense counterparts (70 msec for lax vs 39 msec for tense). In addition, the average duration of the stop closure of tense stops is 135 msec longer than that of lax stops (69 msec for lax vs 204msec for tense). THESE DURATIONAL DIFFERENCES ARE 50 LARGE THAT THEY MAY BE PHONOLOGICALLY DETERMINED, NOT PHONETICALLY. Moreover, vowel duration varies with the speaker's sex. Female speakers have 5 msec shorter vowel duration before both stops. The quality of voicing, tense or lax, is also a cue to these two stop types, as it is in initial position, but the relative duration of the stops appears to be much more important cues. The duration of stops changes the stop perception while that of preceding vowel does not. The consequences of these results for the phonological description of Korean as well as the synthesis and automatic recognition of Korean will be discussed.

• The Journal of Advanced Prosthodontics
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.43-51
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• 2012

PURPOSE. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of sociodemographic factors on quality of satisfaction towards denture treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS. One hundred subjects (filling inclusion criteria) who were wearing a denture for at least two months were enrolled and divided into five groups on the basis of sociodemographic variables (age, gender, literacy level, socio-economic and marital status). Questionnaires consisting of 38 questions (positive and negative attitude towards denture satisfaction) related to patients' perception of clinical outcome in different domains such as mastication, appearance, speech, comfort, health, denture care and social status were scored by the subjects. Questions reflecting positive attitude were scored as 2, 1, or 0 (yes, uncertain and no, respectively) and reversely for the negative questions. Statistical analysis was done by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (${\alpha}$= .05). RESULTS. Level of denture satisfaction was higher in age subgroup belonging to 45 - 65 years of age in relation to comfort, health and denture care. Female and male showed significant priority for denture treatment because of esthetic and function respectively. Level of satisfaction was statistically significant with literacy level. Upper high income group showed significantly higher level of satisfaction only in case of social status. Married group showed significantly higher satisfaction level only with comfort. CONCLUSION. Patients' sociodemographic variables were influential factors on denture satisfaction.