• Proceedings of the Plant Resources Society of Korea Conference
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• 2021.04a
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• pp.3-3
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• 2021

The ongoing global pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has not only influenced over 1.26 billion people but also caused 2.77 million deaths worldwide (as of March 28, 2021). The vaccination could be the most efficient strategy to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, the continuous emergence of novel variants such as VUI-202012/01 (United Kingdom) and 501.V2 (South Africa) raises huge concerns about the effectiveness of the vaccine designed to target the original virus strain. Since ancient times regardless of the East and West, the plants which refered in this presentation have been consumed not only as food but also as a natural medicine to treat diverse diseases including infectious diseases. Importantly, these plants contain secondary metabolites that display antiviral activity involved in the inhibition of viral adsorption, penetration, and replication. Also, plant-derived natural medicines are expected to have a wider range of efficacy and fewer side effects than synthetic medicine, discovering novel plant-based viral agents would be a promising strategy to fight against SARS-CoV-2.

• The Korean Journal of Pain
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.401-405
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• 2013

Complex regional pain syndrome secondary to brachial plexus injury is often severe, debilitating and difficult to manage. Percuteneous radiofrequency sympathectomy is a relatively new technique, which has shown promising results in various chronic pain disorders. We present four consecutive patients with complex regional pain syndrome secondary to brachial plexus injury for more than 6 months duration, who had undergone percutaneous T2 and T3 radiofrequency sympathectomy after a diagnostic block. All four patients experienced minimal pain relief with conservative treatment and stellate ganglion blockade. An acceptable 6 month pain relief was achieved in all 4 patients where pain score remained less than 50% than that of initial score and all oral analgesics were able to be tapered down. There were no complications attributed to this procedure were reported. From this case series, percutaneous T2 and T3 radiofrequency sympathectomy might play a significant role in multi-modal approach of CRPS management.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2011.06a
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• pp.255-258
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• 2011

An application of Gammatone auditory filterbank for emotion recognition from speech is described in this paper. Gammatone filterbank is a bank of Gammatone filters which are used as a preprocessing stage before applying feature extraction methods to get the most relevant features for emotion recognition from speech. In the feature extraction step, the energy value of output signal of each filter is computed and combined with other of all filters to produce a feature vector for the learning step. A feature vector is estimated in a short time period of input speech signal to take the advantage of dependence on time domain. Finally, in the learning step, Hidden Markov Model (HMM) is used to create a model for each emotion class and recognize a particular input emotional speech. In the experiment, feature extraction based on Gammatone filterbank (GTF) shows the better outcomes in comparison with features based on Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) which is a well-known feature extraction for speech recognition as well as emotion recognition from speech.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.sup1
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• pp.55-63
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• 2016

Smoking and harmful drinking dramatically increase health risks but little is known about their cooccurrence and factors that influence this co-habit, limiting development and implementation of appropriately targeted prevention interventions. This study was conducted among youth aged 10-24 years old in the Chi Linh Demographic - Epidemiological Surveillance System (CHILILAB DESS). The total numbers in the first, second and third rounds in 2006, 2009 and 2013 were 12,406, 10,211, and 7,654, respectively. A random-effects logit model controlling for both time-variant and time-invariant variables was applied to explore factors associated with current smoking, harmful drinking, and occurrence of smoking and harmful drinking together. We found dramatically increasing trends in current smoking, harmful drinking and co-occurrence among youth. Our results indicate similar health problems among youth in peri-urban areas in Vietnam. Demographic characteristics (older age, being male, being unmarried, and having informal work) appeared to be predictors for smoking and drinking behaviour. Besides, peer and family members had significant influence on smoking, whereas having a close-friend who was smoking was the most important variable. The results suggested that smoking and harmful drinking should not be solved with separate, stand-alone interventions but rather with integrated efforts.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.581-609
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• 2014

Reinforced concrete (RC) structures are likely to experience damage when subjected to earthquakes. Damage index (DI) has been recognised as an advanced tool of quantitatively expressing the extent of damage in such structures. Last 30 years have seen many concepts for DI proposed in order to calibrate the observed levels of damage. The current research briefly reviews all available concepts and investigates their relative merits and limitations with a view to proposing a new concept based on residual deformation. Currently available DIs are classified into two broad categories - non-cumulative DI and cumulative DI. Non-cumulative DIs do not include the effects of cyclic loading, whilst the cumulative concepts produce more rational indication of the level of damage in case of earthquake excitations. Ideally, a DI should vary within a scale of 0 to 1 with 0 representing the state of elastic response, and 1 referring to the state of total collapse. Some of the available DIs do not satisfy these criteria. A new DI based on energy is proposed herein and its performances, both for static and for cyclic loadings, are compared with those obtained using the most widely accepted DI in literature. The proposed DI demonstrates a rational way to predict the extent of damage for a number of case studies. More research is encouraged to address some identified issues.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.261-280
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• 2014

In many parts of the world, reinforced concrete (RC) buildings, designed and built in accordance with older codes, have suffered severe damage or even collapse as a result of recent near-fault earthquakes. This is particularly due to the deficiencies of most of the older (and even some of the recent) codes in dealing with near fault events. In this study, a tested three-storey frame designed for gravity loads only was selected to represent those deficient buildings. Nonlinear time history analyses were performed, followed by damage assessment procedures. The results were compared with experimental observation of the same frame showing a good match. Damage and fragility analyses of the frame subjected to 204 pulse-type motions were then performed using a selected damage model and inter-storey drifts. The results showed that the frame located in near-fault regions is extremely vulnerable to ground motions. The results also showed that the damage model better captures the damage distribution in the frame than inter-storey drifts. The first storey was identified as the most fragile and the inner columns of the first storey suffered most damage as indicated by the damage index. The findings would be helpful in the decision making process prior to the strengthening of buildings in near-fault regions.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.597-610
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• 2020

Stress-strain models of fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) confined concrete have been widely investigated; however, the existing load which is always supported by structures during the retrofitting phase, namely 'preload', has been neglected. Thus, preload effects should be clarified, providing insightful information for FRP retrofitting of structures with preload conditions. Towards this aim, experiments were performed for 27 cylinder concrete specimens with the diameter 150 mm and the height 300 mm. Three specimens were used to test the compressive strength of concrete to compute the preloads 20%, 30% and 40% of the average strength of these specimens. Other 24 specimens were divided into 2 groups; each group included 4 subgroups. Four subgroups were subjected to the above preloads and no preload, and were then wrapped by 2 FRP layers. Similar designation is applied to group 2, but wrapped by 3 FRP layers. All specimens were tested under axial compression to failure. Explosive failure is found to be the characteristic of specimens wrapped by FRP. Experimental results indicated that the preload decreases 12-13% the elastic and second stiffness of concrete specimens wrapped by 2 FRP layers. The stiffness reduction can be mitigated by the increase of FRP layers. Preload negligibly reduces the ultimate force and unclearly affects the ultimate displacement probably due to complicated cracks developed in concrete. A mechanism of preload effects is presented in the paper. Finally, to take into account preload effects, a modification of the widely used model of un-preload FRP confined concrete is proposed and the modified model demonstrated with a reasonable accuracy.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.216-223
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• 2016

This paper proposes a new controller design method for a fork-type lifter (FTL) of a transportation mobile robot. The transportation robot needs to pick up a package from a stack on a storage shelf and move on by a planned path in a logistics center environment. The position of the storage shelf is recognized by reading a QR code on the floor, and using this position, the robot can move to reach the storage shelf and pick up the package. PID controllers and an adaptive controller are designed to control the velocity of two wheels and the position of the FTL. An adaptive controller for the lifter is designed to elevate up and down on a slideway to the correct height position of the package on the stack of the storage shelf. The simulation results show that the PID controllers can respond smoothly to the desired angular velocity and the adaptive controller can adapt quickly and correctly to the desired height.

• KIEE International Transactions on Electrophysics and Applications
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• v.5C no.6
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• pp.233-241
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• 2005

The present model of a SF6 arc accounts for the copper vapour contamination from the electrodes inside a Laval nozzle of a circuit breaker. Steady state simulations have been done for the arc with electrode gap of 60mm and DC electric current of 500A, 1000A and 1500A for both cases with and without copper contamination. The effects of electrode polarity are considered for the arc current of 1000A. It was found out that evaporation of copper from the anode results in a cooling of the arc in a region close to the electrodes. The electrical potential across the electrodes is not sensitive to the presence of copper vapour, typically less than $4\%$ difference. Transient analysis has been done in order to obtain the arc properties at current zero. The arc current is increased linearly from -1000 to 0A when the upstream electrode is cathode with constant dI/dt of $27.0A/{\mu}s$ (or decreased linearly from 1000 to 0A when upstream electrode is anode). It has been predicted that the presence of copper vapour reduces the interruption capability of the breaker.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2005.07b
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• pp.972-974
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• 2005

The present work deals with the theoretical study of the effects of copper vapours resulting from the erosion of the electrodes on the properties of a SF6 arc in a Laval nozzle. Computations have been done for a DC arc of 1000A with upstream gas pressure of 3.75MPa. The arc plasma is assumed to be in local thermodynamic equilibrium(LTE). The sheath and non-equilibrium region around the electrodes are not considered in this model. However, its effects on the energy flux into the electrodes are estimated from some experimental and theoretical data. The turbulence effects are calculated using the Prandtl mixing length model. A conservation equation for the copper vapour concentration is solved together with the governing equations for mass, momentum and energy of the gas mixture. Comparisons were made between the results with and without electrodes erosion. It has been found that the presence of copper vapours cools down the arc temperature due to the combined effects of increased radiation and increased electrical conductivity. The copper vapour distribution is very sensitive to the turbulent parameter. The erosion of upstream electrode(cathode) has larger effects on the arc compared to the downstream electrode(anode) as the copper vapour eroded from the anode cannot diffuse against the high-speed axial flow.