Objectives : The purpose of this study is to find out the correlation between the Vocal indicators and the 'Buzhongyiqi-Tang questionnaire' and the 'Chalder fatigue scale.' Methods : This study examined the mean value of each factor in the 'Buzhongyiqi-Tang Questionnaire,' 'Chalder fatigue scale' and the different voice indicators conducted on 81 healthy adult participants in relation to the results of the /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ pronunciation test. Results : There was significant correlation between the pronunciation of /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ vowels' F0 indexes and 'the Deficiency symptoms of Buzhongyiqi-Tang'. The results of the regression analysis showed the following significant findings for each pronouncing vowels: /i/ as a factor for 'the Deficiency symptoms of Buzhongyiqi-Tang'.; /a/ for 'the Consumptive fever of Buzhongyiqi-Tang'.; /i/ for 'the Vocal inflammation of Buzhongyiqi-Tang.; and /e/ as a factor of 'the Chadler physical fatigue'. Conclusions : The study showed a negative correlation between the Fundamental Frequency and the mean value of the questionnaire, which could be understood as higher the fatigue level, increased level of vocal vibration and higher pitch tone compared to the less fatigued group. We expect future studies to conduct research on methods to diagnose other illnesses using the vocal indicators based on the correlation between the vocal index and illnesses prescribed under traditional oriental medicine.
During the last two decades, much joint research regarding vibration based methods has been done, leading to developing various algorithms and techniques. These algorithms and techniques can be divided into modal methods and signal methods. Although modal methods have been widely used for health monitoring and damage detection, signal methods due to higher efficiency have received considerable attention in various fields, including aerospace, mechanical and civil engineering. Signal-based methods are derived directly from the recorded responses through signal processing algorithms to detect damage. According to different signal processing techniques, signal-based methods can be divided into three categories including time domain methods, frequency domain methods, and time-frequency domain methods. The frequency domain methods are well-known and interest in using them has increased in recent years. To determine dynamic behaviours, to identify systems and to detect damages of bridges, different methods and algorithms have been proposed by researchers. In this study, a new algorithm to detect seismic damage in the bridge's piers is suggested. To evaluate the algorithm, an analytical model of a bridge with simple spans is used. Based on the algorithm, before and after damage, the bridge is excited by a sine force, and the piers' responses are measured. The dynamic specifications of the bridge are extracted by Power Spectral Density function. In addition, the Least Square Method is used to detect damage in the bridge's piers. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm can identify the seismic damage effectively. The algorithm is output-only method and measuring the excitation force is not needed. Moreover, the proposed approach does not need numerical models.
During the past decades, detection of gear defects remains as a major problem, especially when the gears are subject to non-stationary phenomena. The idea of this paper is to mixture a multilevel wavelet transform with a fast EMD decomposition in order to early detect gear defects. The sensitivity of a kurtosis is used as an indicator of gears defect burn. When the gear is damaged, the appearance of a crack on the gear tooth disrupts the signal. This is due to the presence of periodic pulses. Nevertheless, the existence of background noise induced by the random excitation can have an impact on the values of these temporal indicators. The denoising of these signals by multilevel wavelet transform improves the sensitivity of these indicators and increases the reliability of the investigation. Finally, a defect diagnosis result can be obtained after the fast transformation of the EMD. The proposed approach consists in applying a multi-resolution wavelet analysis with variable decomposition levels related to the severity of gear faults, then a fast EMD is used to early detect faults. The proposed mixed methods are evaluated on vibratory signals from the test bench, CETIM. The obtained results have shown the occurrence of a teeth defect on gear on the 5th and 8th day. This result agrees with the report of the appraisal made on this gear system.
Because multiple ovulation embryo transfer (MOET) in cattle includes several benefits such as wide spreading of genetically superior offspring for long distance, this biotechnological method has been widely applied to Hanwoo. When the recipients are not stayed close after embryo recovery from donor, the embryos are moved to other farms via several vehicles (car, train, and airplane). However, air travel induces lesser oxygen level, increased vibration, lower air pressure, higher noise, and increased exposure of cosmic radiation to living things than ground level. It was still unknown that fresh embryos obtained from multiple ovulation of Hanwoo could maintain their fertility after being transported via air plane, the present case report introduced a clinical case of MOET in Hanwoo after shipping fresh embryos via air transportation. The donor was multi-ovulated via follicle-stimulating hormone series of injection, which was followed by a gonadotrophin-releasing hormone injection and artificial insemination twice. The embryos were recovered by the uterine flushing, packed in ministraws, transported to recipients for 6 h including 1 h air flight, and then transferred to the synchronized recipients. During pregnancy diagnosis of early gestation period, 5 of 7 recipients (71.4%) presented no heat signs and showed fetal sacs with fluid under transrectal ultrasonography. After normal gestation period, all recipients naturally delivered healthy calves (male n = 2 and female n = 3) without abortion, stillbirth, and premature birth. The present case report indicated that transportation of fresh embryos for MOET via domestic flight in Korea did not affect to their fertility.
Blood and urine mercury level of three workers were monitored during 60~80 days after high exposure to mercury at the silver refining plant. Mercury was used to form silver-mercury amalgam from plating sludge. Workers were exposed to mercury about 70 days at the several processes, such as hand held weaving, vibration table, and heating from the furnace. mercury was analysed by atomic absorption spectroscopy-vapor generation technique. Recovery from the biological sample was 95.51% and pooled standard deviation was 0.033. At the time of study, there was no work at the workplace. So, airborne mercury concentration was measured with area sampling 5 days after the work, ranged from 0.1459 to 1.2351 mg/㎥(Arithmatic mean 0.4711 mg/㎥, Geometric mean 0.3566 mg/㎥) at the inside of the plant, that is far above the ACGIH's TLV(0.025 mg/㎥) and ranged from 0.0073 to 0.0330 mg/㎥ at the outdoor. Blood mercury levels at the beginning of the monitoring were 4~14 times greater than the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists Biological Exposure Index(ACGIH BEI, 15 ug/L). Blood mercury levels were decreased logarithmically, that is, rapidly at the high level and slowly at the low level but sustained above the level of the ACGIH BEI 60~80 days after the work. Urine mercury levels at the beginning of the monitoring were 8~16 times greater than the ACGIH BEI(35 ug/g creatinine). Urine mercury levels were decreased logarithmically, but correlation between urine level and off-days were lower than those of blood. Decreasing pattern of blood mercury levels were little affected than that of urine levels when the chelating agent, D-penicillamine, was administered. There was correlation between blood mercury level and urine mercury level(0.81~0.83) but it didn\`t mean that the highest blood mercury level corresponded the highest urine mercury level. In our study, Case 1 always shows the highest level in urine but case 3 always shows the highest level in blood. Creatinine correction represented better correlations between urine mercury levels and blood levels, and between urine levels and off-days rather than by urine volume. Spot urine sampling had a wide variation than that of whole day urine sampling. So, We recommend spot urine sampling for screening and whole day urine sampling for exact diagnosis.
The fundamental vocal frequency is produced by simple vibration of the whol length of the vocal folds and is one of the most important single parameters in determining the eventual characteristics of the voice. Authors measured the external laryngeal size, fundamental frequency in 3rd decades adults and about 10-year old children for use them as the base of diagnosis and treatment of laryngeal disease. Results were as follows: 1 In adults, mean external laryngeal size was 37.8
It is important to develop a digital SOC (Social Overhead Capital) maintenance system for preemptive maintenance in response to the rapid aging of social infrastructures. Abnormal signals induced from structures can be detected quickly and optimal decisions can be made promptly using IoT sensors deployed on the structures. In this study, a digital SOC monitoring system incorporating a multimetric IoT sensor was developed for long-term monitoring, for use in cloud-computing server for automated and powerful data analysis, and for establishing databases to perform : (1) multimetric sensing, (2) long-term operation, and (3) LTE-based direct communication. The developed sensor had three axes of acceleration, and five axes of strain sensing channels for multimetric sensing, and had an event-driven power management system that activated the sensors only when vibration exceeded a predetermined limit, or the timer was triggered. The power management system could reduce power consumption, and an additional solar panel charging could enable long-term operation. Data from the sensors were transmitted to the server in real-time via low-power LTE-CAT M1 communication, which does not require an additional gateway device. Furthermore, the cloud server was developed to receive multi-variable data from the sensor, and perform a displacement fusion algorithm to obtain reference-free structural displacement for ambient structural assessment. The proposed digital SOC system was experimentally validated on a steel railroad and concrete girder bridge.
Since cracks in concrete structures expedite corrosion of reinforced concrete over a long period of time, regular on-site inspections are essential to ensure structural usability and prevent degradation. Most of the safety inspections of facilities rely on visual inspection with naked eye, so cost and time consuming are severe, and the reliability of results differs depending on the inspector. In this study, a portable measuring device that can be used for safety diagnosis and maintenance was developed as a device that measures the width and length of concrete cracks through image analysis of cracks photographed with a camera. This device captures the cracks found within a close distance (3 m), and accurately calculates the unit pixel size by laser distance measurement, and automatically calculates the crack length and width with the image processing algorithm developed in this study. In measurement results using the crack image applied to the experiment, the measurement of the length of a 0.3 mm crack within a distance of 3 m was possible with a range of about 10% error. The crack width showed a tendency to be overestimated by detecting surrounding pixels due to vibration and blurring effect during the binarization process, but it could be effectively corrected by applying the crack width reduction function.
The wall shear stress in the vicinity of end-to end anastomoses under steady flow conditions was measured using a flush-mounted hot-film anemometer(FMHFA) probe. The experimental measurements were in good agreement with numerical results except in flow with low Reynolds numbers. The wall shear stress increased proximal to the anastomosis in flow from the Penrose tubing (simulating an artery) to the PTFE: graft. In flow from the PTFE graft to the Penrose tubing, low wall shear stress was observed distal to the anastomosis. Abnormal distributions of wall shear stress in the vicinity of the anastomosis, resulting from the compliance mismatch between the graft and the host artery, might be an important factor of ANFH formation and the graft failure. The present study suggests a correlation between regions of the low wall shear stress and the development of anastomotic neointimal fibrous hyperplasia(ANPH) in end-to-end anastomoses. 30523 T00401030523 ^x Air pressure decay(APD) rate and ultrafiltration rate(UFR) tests were performed on new and saline rinsed dialyzers as well as those roused in patients several times. C-DAK 4000 (Cordis Dow) and CF IS-11 (Baxter Travenol) reused dialyzers obtained from the dialysis clinic were used in the present study. The new dialyzers exhibited a relatively flat APD, whereas saline rinsed and reused dialyzers showed considerable amount of decay. C-DAH dialyzers had a larger APD(11.70
The wall shear stress in the vicinity of end-to end anastomoses under steady flow conditions was measured using a flush-mounted hot-film anemometer(FMHFA) probe. The experimental measurements were in good agreement with numerical results except in flow with low Reynolds numbers. The wall shear stress increased proximal to the anastomosis in flow from the Penrose tubing (simulating an artery) to the PTFE: graft. In flow from the PTFE graft to the Penrose tubing, low wall shear stress was observed distal to the anastomosis. Abnormal distributions of wall shear stress in the vicinity of the anastomosis, resulting from the compliance mismatch between the graft and the host artery, might be an important factor of ANFH formation and the graft failure. The present study suggests a correlation between regions of the low wall shear stress and the development of anastomotic neointimal fibrous hyperplasia(ANPH) in end-to-end anastomoses. 30523 T00401030523 ^x Air pressure decay(APD) rate and ultrafiltration rate(UFR) tests were performed on new and saline rinsed dialyzers as well as those roused in patients several times. C-DAK 4000 (Cordis Dow) and CF IS-11 (Baxter Travenol) reused dialyzers obtained from the dialysis clinic were used in the present study. The new dialyzers exhibited a relatively flat APD, whereas saline rinsed and reused dialyzers showed considerable amount of decay. C-DAH dialyzers had a larger APD(11.70