• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제8권5호
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• pp.117-126
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• 2021

Microfinance focuses on economic development at a minute level. Microfinance is adopted to reduce the poverty level in the economic system. This study is conducted to investigate the microfinance institutions' outreach, its growth, and challenges faced by the Microfinance Banks (MFBs) and Microfinance Institutions (MFIs). Data is collected from MFBs and MFIs working in Muzaffarabad as well as from interviews and focus group discussions. Findings are based upon lending, headcount ratio, offers, the value of their offer, and the possible growth chances of microfinance in Muzaffarabad. In addition to this, the challenges associated with microfinance outreach have been highlighted during analysis and guidelines have been provided to the MFBs and MFIs to increase their outreach. The sector is financially unstable which is attributable to its reliance on conventional sources of funding. The industry faces several endogenous as well as exogenous challenges from its environment which obstructs its growth. Further, it helps the policymakers to work on the development of the region and provide the base for further future research work.

• 대한임베디드공학회논문지
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• 제15권5호
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• pp.227-234
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• 2020

In this paper, we propose wav-U-Net to improve speech enhancement in heavy noisy environments, and it has implemented three principal techniques. First, as input data, we use 128 modified Mel-scale filter banks which can reduce computational burden instead of 512 frequency bins. Mel-scale aims to mimic the non-linear human ear perception of sound by being more discriminative at lower frequencies and less discriminative at higher frequencies. Therefore, Mel-scale is the suitable feature considering both performance and computing power because our proposed network focuses on speech signals. Second, we add a simple ResNet as pre-processing that helps our proposed network make estimated speech signals clear and suppress high-frequency noises. Finally, the proposed U-Net model shows significant performance regardless of the kinds of noise. Especially, despite using a single channel, we confirmed that it can well deal with non-stationary noises whose frequency properties are dynamically changed, and it is possible to estimate speech signals from noisy speech signals even in extremely noisy environments where noises are much lauder than speech (less than SNR 0dB). The performance on our proposed wav-U-Net was improved by about 200% on SDR and 460% on NSDR compared to the conventional Jansson's wav-U-Net. Also, it was confirmed that the processing time of out wav-U-Net with 128 modified Mel-scale filter banks was about 2.7 times faster than the common wav-U-Net with 512 frequency bins as input values.

• 기술혁신연구
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• 제5권1호
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• pp.206-222
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• 1997

The conventional analysis with which justifies government intervention of the private sector's innovation activities is the market failure approach. According to such analysis, fund allocation through autonomous market mechanisms is not optimal in technology financing because of the disparity between the desirable level of investment for society as a whole and that for private firms. To optimize the fund allocation, public policies such as subsidy, preferencial loan and venture capital investment programs are designed for technology development projects performed by private firms. They, however, have not been effective in increasing private investment for such projects. In most cases, it was found that little considerations given to the relationship between uncertainty embodied in technology development projects and each types of financing. With respect to optimizing fund allocation, technology development projects should be financed by different means according to their probability of success and the expected value of technology. Employing various theoretical models on financing decision-making we verify here that technology development projects to be supported by commercial banks or venture capital institutions is limited contingent upon levels of uncertainty adn expected value. Under the assumption that financial institutions are risk averse, loan or investment can be available only if the probability of success of the project is higher than the probability premium and the current market rate of interest. Therefore, the projects that have lower probability of success and/or small expected return are excluded from commercial loan or investment programs. However, the remaining projects, whose probability of success is low but with high expected return, may be applied under government subsidy programs. To achieve optimality of fund allocation and to activate technology financing, we conclude that there should be a systematic division of role among financial institutions including government commercial banks, and venture capital institutions.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• 제7권7호
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• pp.349-360
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• 2020

The study aims to empirically examine the determinants of bank margins from Pakistan, an emerging South Asian economy. To elucidate the importance of the Pakistani banking sector, secondary data has been used, which was extracted from the annual accounts of twenty-four Pakistani scheduled commercial banks (20 conventional, four full-fledged Islamic) over a sample period of 2006 to 2017. The factors identified in the dealership model and the subsequent empirical developments in the dealership model categorized as bank-specific, diversification, regulatory, and industry concentration are analyzed by applying the most-common linear dynamic panel-data estimator, the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator, developed by Arellano and Bond (1991). The findings reveal that, among the bank-specific variables, funding cost, credit risk, managerial efficiency, market share, and operating cost are significant predictors of bank margins. For diversification variables employed in the study, both variables including net non-interest income and asset diversity are as well significant predictors of bank margins. It is also found that the market concentration variable proxied by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) is significantly predicting bank margins. Subsequently, one of the regulatory variables, the opportunity cost of holding reserves, and one bank-specific variable, the degree of risk aversion, are insignificant in the model.

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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• 제27권6호
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• pp.523-527
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• 2005

Allograft donations are commonly found to be contaminated. The most of tissue banks has promoted the use of ionizing radiation for the sterilization of biological tissues. The potential for transmission of human infectious diseases and contamination of microorganism has created serious concern for the continued clinical use of hard and soft-tissue allografts. Tissue banks have employed 15-25kGy for sterilization of hard and tendon allografts, which, according to the national standards, approaches the level at which the tissue quality is adversely affected for transplantation. The donations of allogeneic tissues to the Korea Tissue Bank over a 2-year period were reviewed, and the incidence and bacteriology of contamination were detailed. Clinical outcomes were determined for donors who had positive cultures at the time of retrieval and during the processing and they were compared with those of post sterilization. After exposure of the frozen block bone to 25kGy and the processed tissues to 15kGy of gamma irradiation, the authors were able to demonstrate complete inactivation of the bacteria. The aim of this study was to obtain the effects of gamma irradiation and the irradiation dose according to the type of tissue, through conventional microbiologic test without on influence of biocompatibility in allografts. The contamination rate after the final irradiation sterilization is 0% in the processed allografts. This may be due to the fact that the gamma radiation and processing steps are effective to control contamination.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제36권5호
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• pp.799-807
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• 2014

In this paper, we design a rake-based cellular radar receiver (CRR) scheme to detect a moving target located in a multipath environment. The modules of Doppler filter banks, threshold level test, and target detection module are newly introduced into the conventional rake receiver so that it can function as a radar system. The proposed CRR tests the Doppler-shift frequency and signal-to-noise ratio of the received signal against predefined threshold levels to determine detection and then calculates target velocities and ranges. The system performance is evaluated in terms of detection probability and the maximum detection range under a Nakagami-n channel that reflects the multipath environment.

• 전력전자학회논문지
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• 제20권3호
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• pp.280-289
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• 2015

A high-efficiency full-bridge DC-DC converter with a current-doubler rectifier and an asymmetric pulse-width modulation is proposed. Through the asymmetric pulse-width modulation, the proposed converter achieves zero-voltage switching of power switches without the circulating currents. The proposed converter reduces the output current ripple through the current-doubler rectifier. A control strategy is suggested for the proposed converter to charge battery banks. A constant current and constant voltage charging is performed. The proposed converter achieved a higher efficiency compared with the conventional full-bridge DC-DC converter with a phase-shift modulation. The performance of the proposed converter is evaluated by the experimental results for a 1.0 kW prototype circuit.

• 한국의학물리학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국의학물리학회 2002년도 Proceedings
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• pp.311-313
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• 2002

We are under development of a 3D PET scanner with depth of interaction (DOI) capable of high sensitivity and high resolution. In this scanner, a maximum data transfer rate of coincidence pair's event information is 10 Mcps and one event is a 64-bit data format. This maximum data transfer rate corresponds by 10 times a conventional PET scanner. A data acquisition system, which fulfills the specification of this scanner, is considered for parallel collection with banks including several coincidence units. Data transfer rate is improved by optimizing parameters of a message size, and so on.

• 대한설비공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한설비공학회 2009년도 하계학술발표대회 논문집
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• pp.1129-1134
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• 2009

A numerical study has been conducted to investigate the effect of tube arrangement on the heat transfer and the pressure loss for cross flow heat exchangers. By defining a transverse deviation factor, ${\varepsilon}_t=l_T/S_T$, the flow pattern and the heat transfer characteristics are compared for selected ${\varepsilon}_t$ values of 0.0(in-lined), 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5(staggered) by using a commercial software. Computational domain includes 1 pitch in the transverse direction and 5 pitches in the flow direction with due periodic boundary conditions.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• 제9권1호
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• pp.45-51
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• 2014

Distribution system is a critical link between customer and utility. The control of power loss is the main factor which decides the performance of the distribution system. There are two methods such as (i) distribution system reconfiguration and (ii) inclusion of capacitor banks, used for controlling the real power loss. Considering the improvement in voltage profile with the power loss reduction, later method produces better performance than former method. This paper presents an advanced evolutionary algorithm for capacitor inclusion for loss reduction. The conventional sensitivity analysis is used to find the optimal location for the capacitors. In order to achieve a better approximation for the current candidate solution, Opposition based Differential Evolution (ODE) is introduced. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is validated through 10, 33, 34 and85-bus radial distribution systems.