• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.15-21
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• 2019

Korean and English are both known to show on-focus pitch range expansion and post-focus pitch range compression (PFC). But it is not clear if this prosodic similarity would make it easy for Korean speakers to learn English focus prosody. In the present study, we conducted a production experiment using phone number strings to examine whether Korean learners of English produce a native-like focus prosody. Korean learners of English were classified into three groups (advanced, intermediate and low) according to their English proficiency and were compared to native speakers. Results show that intermediate and low groups of speakers did not increase duration, intensity, and pitch in the focus positions, nor did they compress those cues in the post-focus positions. Advanced speakers noticeably increased the acoustic cues in the focus positions to a similar extent as native speakers. However, their performance in post-focus positions was quite far from that of native speakers in terms of pitch and excursion size. These results thus demonstrate a lack of positive transfer of focus prosody from Korean to English in L2 learning, and learners may have to relearn it from scratch, which is consistent with a previous finding. More importantly, the results provide further support for the view proposed in other works that acoustic properties of PFC were not easily transferred from one language to another.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09a
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• pp.336-345
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• 2010

GS E&C was awarded the contract for the construction of Hanoi - Hai Phong Expressway Package EX-7 from Station Km 72+000 to Station Km 81+300 in December 2008. This project is the $7^{th}$ contract package of the 105.5 km long expressway near Hai Phong city, which includes a FCM-styled bridge along with high embankments over soft ground. For these high embankments, there is a need to treat the soft soil for improving the overall stability during construction and for reducing the post-construction settlement of the expressway. The Designer of this project had adopted four (4) different types of ground improvement techniques to treat the soft ground, including the prefabricated vertical drains (PVD), sand drains (SD), pack drains (PD, or sometimes called packed sand drains), and sand compaction piles (SCP). The main focus of soft soil treatment should be paid attention to the residual settlement after construction. In current design, however, it appeared that the secondary compression (or creep) of the improved soil layer and the consolidation settlement of the lower untreated compressible soil layer have been neglected in the estimation of the post-construction settlement. These uncalculated residual settlements may not only unsatisfy the design criteria but also raise serious problems during service period of this expressway. In this paper, the subsoil condition and current design were reviewed focusing on the employed soft soil treatment method and expected residual settlement.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.316-322
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• 2010

The packaging of fruits is very important because appropriate packaging can optimize the maintenance of freshness of fruits during their distribution in low or normal temperatures until the products reach consumers. The focus of this study was on the use of functional packaging materials for the post-harvest maintenance of the freshness of fruits. Oak charcoal has excellent far infrared emission and ethylene absorption qualities, and we developed a charcoal-processing packaging linerboard to evaluate the possibility for the use of charcoal as a functional packaging material for pears. Oriental pears of the Niitaka cultivar used in this study account for about 70% of pears harvested every year, and are a very popular domestic fruit in Korea. Pears packaged in packaging materials processed with charcoal were of significantly higher quality (p<0.05) than those packaged with conventional packaging materials, suggesting that charcoal-processed packaging materials can be used as functional packaging material for extending the storability and distribution time of fruits. Charcoal-coated linerboard was shown to be the most appropriate packaging material based on its compression strength, ethylene absorption performance, and the firmness and minimal weight loss of pears.