• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.67-76
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• 2018

This study was performed to investigate acoustic characteristics of sustained vowels produced by Seoul Korean speakers. For this study, three hundred nine healthy adults were chosen as participants from Korean Standard Speech Database. These subjects were divided into five chronological age groups (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60-70s) and two gender groups (male and female). Fundamental frequency (f0), jitter, shimmer, and NHR (noise-to-harmonics ratio) was measured with 8 Korean vowels (/ɑ/, /æ/, /ʌ/, /e/, /o/, /u/, /ɯ/, /i/) by using Praat. The results showed that the vowel type significantly affected all acoustic parameters. Gender affected f0, jitter, and NHR significantly. The mean female speakers' f0 was greater than the males', and the mean jitter and NHR of male speakers was greater than the females'. Moreover, age affected shimmer and NHR significantly; in particular, the shimmer and NHR of elderly speakers was greater than the young speakers.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.129-143
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• 2003

Fundamental frequency (Fo), jitter, shimmer, and harmonics-to-noise ratio (NHR) have been measured to see their interactions between the parameters using Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP). 100 Korean normal adults (50 males and 50 females) ranging from their early 20's to their early 30's produced the eight sustained vowels including /a/, /i/, /u/, /c/, /e/,/$\varepsilon$/, /i/, and /e/. The subjects were asked to read the above vowels five times in isolation with the interval of five seconds, respectively. Male voices, on the average, showed 130.7 Hz in Fo, 0.6696% in jitter, 1.8151% in shimmer, and 0.12 in NHR, while female voices showed 232.8 Hz in Fo, 0.9222% in jitter, 1.9199% in shimmer, and 0.1098 in NHR. As to the correlation coefficient, it was found that for male speakers jitter vs. shimmer, shimmer vs. NHR, Fo vs. shimmer, and Fo vs. NHR are statistically significant. It was found that for female subjects jitter vs. shimmer and Fo vs. shimmer are statistically significant. However, it is concluded that the correlation coefficient in females are not meaningful in a practical way though they are all statistically significant.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.107-114
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• 2014

MDVP and Praat are measured by nine variables in common; F0, jitter local, jitter absolute, jitter relative average perturbation, jitter period perturbation quotient, shimmer local, shimmer dB, shimmer amplitude perturbation quotient, and NHR. In the present study, 30 female subjects were divided by their disorders(control group, vocal nodule group), ages(from 18 to 50 years old), gender(women), and severities of voice disorder(GRBAS-G0, G1, G2). Then, the subjects' vowel /a/ was evaluated by MDVP and Praat. First, jitter and shimmer variables of the MDVP were significantly different by severities. Praat showed different jitter, shimmer, and NHR parameters by severities. Second, jitter and NHR levels of MDVP were meaningfully higher than Praat regardless their severities. The result of the research confirms the relationships among GRBAS, MDVP and Praat as well as the differences in acoustic variables between MDVP and Praat.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.557-566
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• 2019

Paldang is a river reservoir in the Midwest of Korea, which is a drinking water source for the metropolitan area. Since the Paldang Reservoir is shallow, and has a short hydraulic residence time, its water quality is directly impacted by two incoming rivers, the north Han River (NHR) and the south Han River (SHR). The NHR has different seasonal patterns of water temperature from the SHR because the NHR is greatly impacted by the discharge water from upstream dams. The electrical conductivity (EC) and other material concentrations of the SHR are usually higher than those of the NHR because its basin is limestone-based. The difference in water temperature in the two rivers causes density flow, and the distribution of the EC within the reservoir can be an indicator for monitoring density flow. From the vertical gradient of the EC at the dam site, from spring to fall, it was confirmed that the SHR flowed into the upper layer, and the NHR flowed into the lower layer, and vice versa at other times. The relative difference (RD) of the EC between the upper layer and the lower layer at the dam site was used as an indicator for density flow. The RD of the EC showed a very significant correlation with the RD of total organic carbon (r = 0.70, p < 0.001) and the RD of total nitrogen (r = 0.58, p < 0.01). This relationship is based on the assumption that the difference in electrical conductivity and water quality between the SHR and the NHR is constant. However, in many cases this assumption is inconsistent. Thus, further study is needed on more suitable indicators to evaluate the impact of density flow on water quality.

• MALSORI
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• no.44
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• pp.47-59
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• 2002

Mean F0, Jitter, Shimmer, and NHR were measured in 21 opera singers, 13 Korean traditional 'pansori' singers, and 21 non-singers. Four voice sampling conditions were ordinary /α/ prolongation, /α/ prolongation using vocal technique as if the subjects were singing, oral reading of the words of a song, and singing. One-way ANOVA and Sheffe post-hoc analysis were used to identify significant differences among the groups. The mean F0 was significantly different among the 3 groups in all conditions except for the ordinary /α/ prolongation condition. The opera singers produced lower jitter and NHR compared to 'pansori' singers and non-singers only in the singing condition.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.213-220
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• 2007

This study investigates the voice quality including F0, jitter, shimmer, and NHR for the children with cochlear implant (CI group) and those with normal hearing (NH group). The CI group was further classified two sub-groups depending upon the time of surgery (i.e. under four years vs. over four years). Three corner vowels (e.g. /a/, /i/, /u/) with extended vocalization were used and analyzed with Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (Kay Elemetrics, Model 4300). The statistics were made in two independent sample t-test with SPSS 11.5. The results can be summarized as follows: (1) The children with cochlear implanted before 4 years of age had very similar data with the NH group except for the vowel /a/. (2) The children with cochlear implanted after 4 years of age, however, indicated significant differences in Fo (/a/, /i/, /u/), Jitter (/e/), shimmer (/a/, /i/, /u/) and NHR(/a/) in all three vowels. It is concluded that the early CI surgery and the early intervention would be very important to maintain better voice quality.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to know the acoustic characteristics of voice under stressful and relaxed conditions. Ten undergraduate male students participated in this study and produced 아, 에, 이 vowels in English reading, difficult Korean reading under stressful conditions, and easy Korean reading under relaxed conditions. After that, F0, jitter, shimmer, NHR, F1, F2, and F3 values were measured and analyzed. The results of this study demonstrate that speech parameters related to stress are jitter, shimmer, and NHR in that these values are lower under relaxed situations (easy Korean reading) than that of stressful situations (English and difficult Korean reading). This study will be a foundation to verify that the analysis of acoustic characteristics can serve as a quantitative tool for measuring stress levels.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.25-48
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• 1996

Mixed Model Assembly Lines (MMALs) are increasingly used to produce differentiated products on a single assembly line without work-in-process storage, Usually, a typical MMAL consists of a number of (1) stations doing exactly the same operation on every job, (2) stations involving operations with different choices, and (3) stations offering operations that are not performed on every job, or that are performed on every job but with many options. For stations of the first type there is no sequencing problem at all. However, for the second type a set-up cost is incurred each time the operation switches from one choice to another. At the third type of stations, different models, requring different amounts and choices of assembly work, creates an uneven flow of work along the line and variations in the work load at these stations. When a subsequence of jobs requires more work load than the station can handle, it is necessary to help the operations at the station or to complete the work elsewhere. Therefore, a schedule which minimize the sum of set-up cost and utility work cost is desired. So this study has developed Fixed Random Ordering Rule (FROR), Fixed Ascending Ordering Rule (FAOR), Fixed Descending Ordering Rule, and Extended NHR (ENHR). ENHR is to choose optimal color ordering of each batch with NHR, and to decide job sequence of the batch with it, too. As the result of experiments, ENHR was the best heuristic algorithm. NHR is a new heuristic rule in which only the minimum addition of violations from both partial sequence and unassigned sequence at every branch could be considered. And this is a heuristic sequencing rule for the third type of stations at MMAL. This study developed one more heuristic algorithm to test the performance of NHR, which is named as Practical Heuristic Rule (PHR).

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.179-192
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• 2002

Our present study was performed to investigate acoustically the Korean normal adults' voices, with enough large number of subjects to be reliable. 120 Korean normal adults (60 males and 60 females) of the age of 20 to 39 years produced sustained three vowels, /a/, /i/, and /u/ and read a part of 'Taking a Walk' paragraph, and by analyzing them acoustically with MDVP of CSL, we could get the fundamental frequency ($F_{0}$), jitter, shimmer and NHR of sustained vowels: speaking fundamental frequency ($SF_{0}$), highest speaking frequency (SFhi), lowest speaking frequency (SFlo) of continuous speech. As results, on the average, male voices showed 118.1$\sim$122.6 Hz in $F_{0}$, 0.467$\sim$0.659% in jitter, 1.538$\sim$2.674% in shimmer, 0.117$\sim$0.114 in NHR, 120.8 Hz in $SF_{0}$, 183.2 Hz in SFhi, 82.6 Hz in SFlo. And, female voices showed 211.6∼220.3 Hz in F0, 0.678∼0.935% in jitter, 1.478∼2.582% in shimmer, 0.098∼0.114 in NHR, 217.1 Hz in $SF_{0}$, 340.9 Hz in SFhi, 136.0 Hz in SFlo. Among the 7 parameters, every parameters except shimmer showed the significant difference between male and female voices. And, when we compared the three vowels, they showed significant differences one another in shimmer and NHR of both genders, but not in $F_{0}$ of males and jitter of females.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.147-154
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• 2018

Wet voice quality (WVQ) is a characteristic that appears after swallowing. Although the concept is accepted by many clinicians worldwide, it is nevertheless ambiguous. In this study, we investigated WVQ in patients with swallowing disorders using acoustic analysis. A total of 106 patients diagnosed with penetration-aspiration by the videofluoroscopic swallowing study (VFSS) were recruited. A voice recording of vowel /a/ was conducted before and after the VFSS, and an acoustic analysis was then performed using PRAAT. Voice after VFSS was used for a perceptual judgment and divided into two groups: the Wet group (48 patients) and the Non-wet group (58 patients). At the post-VFSS stage, the two groups displayed significant differences in many acoustic parameters including F0_SD, Jitter, RAP, Shimmer, APQ, HNR, NHR, FUF, DVB, and CPP. The parameter affecting judging wetness resulted into Jitter and NHR by the logistic regression test. At the pre-VFSS stage, the two groups differed significantly in many acoustic parameters including Intensity, Jitter, RAP, Shimmer, NHR, FUF, DVB, and CPP. Both pre-and post-VFSS, the mean values of all significant parameters, except Intensity, HNR, and CPP, were higher in the Wet group. According to pre-and post-VFSS, the two groups displayed interactions in many parameters (Intensity, F0_SD, Jitter, RAP, Shimmer, APQ, HNR, NHR, FUF, DVB, and CPP). In particular, Intensity increased in both groups after the VFSS, although the increase in the Non-wet group was greater. Based on these results, it was conjectured that the WVQ after swallowing resulted from the secretion effect of the mucous membrane due to the dry laryngeal characteristic of elderly patients, rather than aspiration resulting in food on the vocal cords.