• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.232-235
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• 2018

Background: This study was conducted to investigate the heat stress and semen quality among male workers in a steel industry in Iran and investigate the relationship between heat stress indices and semen parameters. Methods: The study was conducted on workers exposed (n = 30) and unexposed (n = 14) to heat in a steel industry. After obtaining a brief biography of the selected employees, scrotal temperature, oral temperature, and environmental parameters were measured, and their semen samples were analyzed according to the procedure recommended by the World Health Organization. The heat stress indices, including wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) and predicted heat strain (PHS), in their workplace were calculated according to environmental parameters (ISO 7243:1989 and 7933:2004, respectively). Results: Time-weighted averages of WBGT and PHS ($35.76^{\circ}C$ and 491.56 $w/m^2{\frac{w}{m^2}}$, respectively) for the exposed group were higher than threshold limit values. The mean difference of environmental, physiological, and semen parameters (exception: pH of semen), and also WBGT and PHS indices were statistically significant (p < 0.05) between the two groups. Mean semen parameters were in the normozoospermic range. WBGT and PHS indices showed significantly "negative" correlation with physiological parameters (scrotal and oral temperature) and most semen parameters (semen volume, sperm morphology, sperm motility, sperm count; p < 0.05); moreover, the correlation of WBGT with these parameters was stronger than PHS. Conclusion: Semen parameters of the studied workers exposed to heat were in the borderline level of normozoospermic range, and their semen parameters were significantly lower than controls. For better assessment of occupational environment concerning physiological and semen parameters in steel industries, WBGT can be a more useful index.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.400-406
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• 2014

This paper describes a robust watermark decoding model using a SVM(Support Vector Machine). First, the embedding process is performed inversely for a watermarked signal. And then the watermark is extracted using the proposed model. For SVM training of the proposed model, data are generated that are watermarks extracted from sounds containing watermarks by four different embedding schemes. BER(Bit Error Rate) values of the data are utilized to determine a threshold value employed to create training set. To evaluate the robustness, 14 attacks selected in StirMark, SMDI and STEP2000 benchmarking are applied. Consequently, the proposed model outperformed previous method in PSNR(Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) and BER. It is noticeable that the proposed method achieves BER 1% below in the case of PSNR greater than 10 dB.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.130-139
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• 2012

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the tire manufacturing work environments extensively and to identify workers' exposure to hazardous substances in various work processes. Methods: Personal air sampling was conducted to measure polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, carbon disulfide, 1,3-butadiene, styrene, methyl isobutyl ketone, methylcyclohexane, formaldehyde, sulfur dioxide, and rubber fume in tire manufacturing plants using the National Institute for Occupational Safety Health Manual of Analytical Methods. Noise, carbon monoxide, and heat stress exposure were evaluated using direct reading instruments. Past concentrations of rubber fume were assessed using regression analysis of total particulate data from 2003 to 2007, after identifying the correlation between the concentration of total particulate and rubber fume. Results: Workers were exposed to rubber fume that exceeded 0.6 mg/$m^3$, the maximum exposure limit of the UK, in curing and production management processes. Forty-seven percent of workers were exposed to noise levels exceeding 85 dBA. Workers in the production management process were exposed to $28.1^{\circ}C$ (wet bulb globe temperature value, WBGT value) even when the outdoor atmosphere was $2.7^{\circ}C$ (WBGT value). Exposures to other substances were below the limit of detection or under a tenth of the threshold limit values given by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. Conclusion: To better classify exposure groups and to improve work environments, examining closely at rubber fume components and temperature as risk indicators in tire manufacturing is recommended.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.1397-1403
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• 2018

Today, modern people perceive skin care as part of their physical health care, and acne is a common skin disease problem that is found on the face. In this paper, an effective acne detection algorithm using CIE $L^*a^*b^*$ color space has been proposed. It is red when the pixel value of the component image $a^*$ is a positive number, so it is suitable for detecting acne in skin image. First, the skin image based on the RGB color space is subjected to light compensation through color balancing, and converted into a CIE $L^*a^*b^*$ color space. The extracted component image $a^*$ was normalized, and then the skin and acne area were estimated with the threshold values. Experimental results show that the proposed method detects acne more effectively than the conventional method based on brightness information, and the proposed method is robust against the reflected light source.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.108-116
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the differences in the acoustic measurements (AVQI) and the auditory-perceptual assessments (GRBAS, CAPE-V) of the normal and vocal fold nodules. For this purpose, Total 335 voice samples were analyzed acoustically and three raters performed auditory-perceptual assessments. in the results, AVQI, G, and OS scores of the normal group were lower than those of the vocal fold nodules group. The correlations between the G scale and the OS scale were highly correlated, and the correlation between the AVQI, and auditory-perceptual results (G and OS) was also high value. The threshold values for discriminating AVQI, G, and OS between the two groups were ${\leq}4.06$, ${\leq}1$, and ${\leq}26$, respectively, and the predictive diagnostic power was 0.840, 0.860, and 0.848. In conclusion, AVQI and auditory-perceptual evaluation can improve potentiality the screening of vocal fold nodules and help to determine the diagnosis and treatment plan of voice disorders.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.22 no.9
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• pp.2043-2052
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• 1997

The object-oriented coding technique which is one of the coding methods in very low bit rate environment is suitable for videophone image sequence. The selection of source model affect image analysis. In this paper, an image analysis method for the object-oriented coding is presented. The process is composed of changed region detection andmotion estimateion. First, we use the standard deviation of frame difference as thrreshold to extract themoving area. If thesum of gray values in mask is greater than the threshold, the center pixel of the mask is regarded as moving region. After moving is detected in changed region by edge operator, observation point is determined from moving region. The motion is estimated by 6-parameter mapping method with determined observation point. The experimantal resutls show that the proposed method can significantly improve the image quality.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.35 no.4C
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• pp.350-357
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• 2010

In this paper, we present an auto-range fast bilateral filter (FBF) for high-dynamic-range (HDR) images, which increases computation speed by using adaptive standard deviations for range filter (RF) of FBF in iCAM06. Many images that cover the entire dynamic range of the scene with different exposure times are fused into one High Dynamic Range (HDR) image. The representative algorithm for HDR image rendering is iCAM06, which is based on the iCAM framework, such as the local white point adaptation, chromatic adaptation, and the image processing transform (IPT) uniform color space. FBF in iCAM06 uses constant standard deviation in RF. So, it causes unnecessary FBF computation in high stimulus range with broad and low distribution. To solve this problem, the low stimulus image and high stimulus image of CIE tri-stimulus values (XYZ) divided by the threshold are respectively processed by adaptive standard deviation based on its histogram distribution. Experiment results show that the proposed method reduces computation time than the previous FBF.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.11-19
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• 2003

A micro sensor array with 4 discrete sensors integrated on a microhotplate was developed for identifying the kinds and quantities of explosive gases. The sensor array consisited of four tin oxide-based thin films with the high and broad sensitivity to the tested explosive gases and uniform thermal distribution on the plate. The microhotplate, using silicon substrate with N/O/N membrane, dangling in air by Al bonding wires, and controlling the thickness by chemical mechanical process (CMP), has been designed and fabricated. By employing the sensitivity signal of the sensor array at 40$0^{\circ}C$, we could reliably classily the kinds and quantities of the explosive gases like butan, propane, LPG, and carbon monoxide within the range of threshold limit values (TLVs), employing principal component analysis (PCA).

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.69-77
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• 2007

Purpose: To evaluate the accuracy of the imaging reformation of cone beam computed tomography for the assessment of bone defect healing in rat model. Materials and Methods: Sprague-Dawley strain rats weighing about 350 gms were selected. Then critical size bone defects were done at parietal bone with implantation of collagen sponge. The rats were divided into seven groups of 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, and 8 weeks. The healing of surgical defect was assessed by multi planar reconstruction (MPR) images and three-dimensional (3-D) images of cone beam computed tomography, compared with soft X-ray radiograph and histopathologic examination. Results: MPR images and 3-D images showed similar reformation of the healing amount at 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, and 8 weeks, however, lower reformation at 3 weeks, 4 weeks, and 6 weeks. According to imaging-based methodologies, MPR image revealed similar reformation of the healing amount than 3-D images compare with soft X-ray image. Among the four threshold values for 3-D images, 400-500 HU revealed similar reformation of the healing amount. Histopathologic examination confirmed the newly formed trabeculation correspond with imaging-based methologies. Conclusion: MPR images revealed higher accuracy of the imaging reformation of cone beam computed tomography and cone beam computed tomography is a clinically useful diagnostic tool for the assessment of bone defect healing.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.36S no.7
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• pp.104-115
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• 1999

This paper proposes an efficient method for 3D modeling of a human face from trinocular images by reconstructing face surface using range data. By using a trinocular camera system, we mitigated the tradeoff between the occlusion problem and the range resolution limitation which is the critical limitation in binocular camera system. We also propose an MPC_MBS (Matching Pixel Count Multiple Baseline Stereo) area-based matching method to reduce boundary overreach phenomenon and to improve both of accuracy and precision in matching. In this method, the computing time can be reduced significantly by removing the redundancies. In the model generation sub-pixel accurate surface data are achieved by 2D interpolation of disparity values, and are sampled to make regular triangular meshes. The data size of the triangular mesh model can be controlled by merging the vertices that lie on the same plane within user defined error threshold.