• Journal of Clinical Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.229-234
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• 2018

Background and Objectives : Vocal nodules occur with a 12-22% prevalence in pediatric populations. Most otolaryngologists recommend voice therapy as the primary treatment. The aim of this study is to evaluate patient compliance with voice therapy and its effect on vocal nodules in children. Materials and Methods : We retrospectively reviewed 44 pediatric patients between 3 and 11 years old diagnosed with vocal nodules between March 2015 and December 2017. We evaluated the treatment adoption rate, dropout rate during voice therapy, and reasons for dropout. For patients who completed voice therapy, we measured the changes in nodule size, perceptual parameters, and acoustic parameters. We evaluated patient satisfaction using the pediatric voice handicap index (P-VHI). Results : Of the 44 pediatric patients diagnosed with vocal nodules, 22 (50%) agreed to voice therapy. Of the 22 patients who started voice therapy, 5 (22.7%) dropped out during therapy because they were unsatisfied with their treatment. Another 4 patients discontinued therapy for reasons unrelated to treatment effectiveness. Vocal nodule disappeared or decreased in all 13 patients who completed voice therapy. All voice parameters were improved and statistically significant changes were observed in perceptual, acoustic, and P-VHI parameters. Conclusions : Although compliance to voice therapy among the pediatric patients with vocal nodules was low, there were significant improvements in voice parameters for those who completed voice therapy. A change toward a positive perception of voice therapy is necessary and a multidisciplinary approach is needed to improve the effect of voice therapy on pediatric patients with vocal nodules.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.31-36
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• 2009

This study attempted to examine the effects of a portable voice feedback device on the hyperfunctional voice behaviors of children with vocal nodules when they wore the device in their daily lives. The device could set fundamental frequency and intensity at optimal levels for the subjects, It produces an audible alarm for inappropriate hyperfunctional voices beyond the preset levels, In addition, the frequency of hyperfunctional voice behaviors was recorded by the device, therefore the users were able to chart their number of hyperfunctional voice behaviors per day, According to results acquired after having subjects wear the device for 12 weeks, the subjects' frequency of hyperfunctional voice behaviors decreased significantly (p < .01). Especially from the first to fourth week, the frequency of their hyperfunctional voice behaviors declined significantly.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.43-52
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• 2007

IEEE 802.15.4 specification which defines low-rate wireless personal area network(LR-WPAN) has application to home or building automation, remote control and sensing, intelligent management, environmental monitoring, and so on. Recently, it has been considered as an alternative technology to provide multimedia services such as automation via voice recognition, wireless headset and wireless camera for surveillance. In order to evaluate capability of voice traffic on the IEEE 802.15.4 LR-WPAN, we supposed two scenarios, voice traffic only and coexistence of voice and sensing traffic. For both cases we examined delay and packet loss rate in case of with and without acknowledgement, and various beacon period varying with beacon and superframe order values. In LR-WPAN with voice devices only, total 5 voice devices could be applicable and in the other case, i.e., coexisted cases of voice and sensor devices, a voice device was able to coexist with about 60 sensor devices.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.32-38
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• 1996

The preservation of the voice-producing mechanism is an important feature in the management of laryngeal cancer by radiotherapy. But, radiation therapy has certain side effects such as mucositis, tissue edema, necrosis and fibrosis which could effect on normal voice production. Several subjective studies that used questionnaires and auditory perceptual judgements of voice have been interpreted to mean that radiation results in a normal or near-normal voice. Objective evidence of the status of vocal function after radiation treatment, however, is still lacking. We analyzed the changes that occur in voice parameters in a group of patients undergoing radiation therapy, in order to determine the effect of radiation on voice quality. In this study acoustic, aerodynamic measures of vocal function were used to determine the characteristics of voice production. We found that voice parameters in early glottic cancer changed meaningfully comparing to normal larynx with or without radiation and radiation therapy has an little effect on normal larynx.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.15-24
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• 2001

In this paper we study the delay patterns of voice traffic for end-to-end users Caused by serving the whole bunch of applications traffic at the same time on the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network. Given the current situation that voice traffic is served along with other application services on the VoIP network, it is quite necessary to figure out how and by what the voice traffic requiring high QoS is delayed. We compare the delay performance of voice traffic on the VoIP network under FIFO with the one under Weighted Fair Queuing(WFQ), and discover the differences of the delay performance resulting from the use of different voice codec algorithms. The results of our study show that using the voice codec algorithm with a higher coding rate nd the queuing algorithm of WEQ can provide users with high-quality voice traffic.

• Transactions on Control, Automation and Systems Engineering
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.51-57
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• 2001

How to promote students interest is very important in undergraduate engineering education. One of the techniques for achieving this is select appropriate projects and to integrated them with regular courses. In this paper, a voice recognition system for autonomous robots is proposed as a project to educate students about microprocessors efficiently. The proposed system consists of a microprocessor and a voice recognition processor that can recognize a limited unmber of voice patterns. The commands of autono-mous robots are classified and are organized such that one voice recognition processor can distinguish robot commands under each directory. Thus. the proposed system can distinguish more voice commands than one voice recognition processor can. A voice com-mand systems for three autonomous robots is implemented with a microprocessor Inter 80CI196KC and a voice recognition processor HM2007. The advantages in integrating this system with regular courses are also described.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.7-22
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to develop a Korean assessment model for the patients with voice disorders. Interviews were conducted with 4 voice therapists and the results were analyzed by using a qualitative, constant-comparative design. According to the three themes emerged from the qualitative analysis, 10 subthemes were derived. The three main themes were 1) consideration on the disordered voice, 2) status quo of instrumental and perceptual evaluation, and 3) suggestions for the other voice therapists. The 10 subthemes can be summarized as the following: 1) judgment centering on the patients, 2) increase of the reliability of instrumental and perceptual evaluation, 3) voice therapists' positive participation in the assessment procedure of voice disorder.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.137-158
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• 2022

Purpose As artificial intelligence voice agents (AIVA) have been widely adopted in services, diverse forms of their voices, which are the main interface with users, have been experimented. The purpose of this study is to examine how users evaluate vocal characteristics (gender, voice pitch, and voice pace) of AIVA, depending on prior research on human voice attractiveness. Design/methodology/approach This study employed an experimental survey which 516 participated in. Each participant was randomly assigned into one of eight situations (e.g., male - higher pitch - faster pace) and listened a AIVA voice sample, which introduce weather information. Next, a participant answered three consequence factors (attractiveness, trust, and anthropomorphism). Findings The results reveal that female voices of AIVA were perceived as more attractive and trustworthy than male voices. As far as voice pitch goes, while lower-pitch voices were preferred in female voices, higher-pitch voices were preferred in male voices. Finally, faster voices of AIVA were more attractive than slower voices.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.69-74
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• 2023

This study introduces an innovative model for zero-shot voice conversion that utilizes the capabilities of HuBERT. Zero-shot voice conversion models can transform the speech of one speaker to mimic that of another, even when the model has not been exposed to the target speaker's voice during the training phase. Comprising five main components (HuBERT, feature encoder, flow, speaker encoder, and vocoder), the model offers remarkable performance across a range of scenarios. Notably, it excels in the challenging unseen-to-unseen voice-conversion tasks. The effectiveness of the model was assessed based on the mean opinion scores and similarity scores, reflecting high voice quality and similarity to the target speakers. This model demonstrates considerable promise for a range of real-world applications demanding high-quality voice conversion. This study sets a precedent in the exploration of HuBERT-based models for voice conversion, and presents new directions for future research in this domain. Despite its complexities, the robust performance of this model underscores the viability of HuBERT in advancing voice conversion technology, making it a significant contributor to the field.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.17-21
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• 2001

Aims of study : The purpose of this study is to measure the chronic and daily voice burden of the professionals in their actual working places. These will be a valuable guideline for preventing and controlling the voice production of professionals. Material and method : Our study was selected to the 10 female telephone operators in the Asan Medical Center, ages ranging from 22 to 38 years old. The symptoms and acoustic analysis of both telephone operators and the controls were evaluated before and after their working. The symptoms were evaluated with questionaires, and the acoustic analysis was measured by using CSL (computerized speech laboratory) system. Results : The symptoms of the professional voice abusers are same as those symptoms in laryngeal fatigue. The acoustic analysis before their working were significantly increased in jitter and shimmer, in comparison with the data of the control. This shows that the experimental group is exposed to the chronic burden of voice production. The jitter, shimmer, and NHR after their working are significantly increased in comparison with the data of the acoustic analysis before their working. This also shows that the experimental group is exposed to the daily burden of voice production. Conclusion : The acoustic analysis of the professional voice overusers has objectively measured that there are chronic and daily overloading to the voice of operators, and these will be a valuable data for preventing and controlling the professionals that abuse their voice.