• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.268-272
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• 2009

In this paper, we propose a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based incremental robust adaptation with a forgetting factor for the speaker verification. Speaker recognition system uses a speaker model adaptation method with small amounts of data in order to obtain a good performance. However, a conventional adaptation method has vulnerable to the outlier from the irregular utterance variations and the presence noise, which results in inaccurate speaker model. As time goes by, a rate in which new data are adapted to a model is reduced. The proposed algorithm uses an incremental robust adaptation in order to reduce effect of outlier and use forgetting factor in order to maintain adaptive rate of new data on GMM based speaker model. The incremental robust adaptation uses a method which registers small amount of data in a speaker recognition model and adapts a model to new data to be tested. Experimental results from the data set gathered over seven months show that the proposed algorithm is robust against outliers and maintains adaptive rate of new data.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.41-45
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• 2010

Image processing techniques are fundamental in human vision-based image information processing. There have been widely studied areas such as image transformation, image enhancement, image restoration, and image compression. One of research subgoals in those areas is enhancing image information for the correct information retrieval. As a fundamental task for the image recognition and interpretation, image enhancement includes noise filtering techniques. Conventional filtering algorithms may have high noise removal rate but usually have difficulty in conserving boundary information. As a result, they often use additional image processing algorithms in compensation for the tradeoff of more CPU time and higher possibility of information loss. In this paper, we propose a Fuzzy Mask Filtering algorithm that has high noise removal rate but lesser problems in above-mentioned side-effects. Our algorithm firstly decides a threshold based on fuzzy logic with information from masks. Then it decides the output pixel value by that threshold. In a designed experiment that has random impulse noise and salt pepper noise, the proposed algorithm was more effective in noise removal without information loss.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.67 no.4
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• pp.127-152
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• 2015

This study aimed to implement the enhancement program for the social work practice competency for children of community child center workers and to evaluate the program's effects. For this purpose, the program was implemented for ten community child center workers five times for five weeks(once a week, 120 minutes per session). For the quantitative evaluation, a non-equivalent control group design among quasi-experimental designs was used, and for the qualitative evaluation, the written materials related with the program were collected and analyzed. The results of the quantitative evaluation revealed that the social work practice skills and worker-client relationship empowerment of the community child center workers who participated in the competency enhancement program were significantly improved. In the qualitative evaluation, the subjective experiences were presented, including the improvement of the worker's practice competency and the worker's awareness of the changes in the child, the recognition of the strong points and the points to be improved in the program. This study is expected to raise the expertise and effectiveness of community child center workers, and ultimately, to contribute to the healthy development and the improvement of the mental health of children by improving the social work practice competency of the workers in community child centers, which comprise the representative service delivery system for children in South Korea.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.13-20
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• 2008

Although digital hearing aid algorithms have been developed to compensate hearing loss and to help hearing impaired people to communicate with others, digital hearing aid user still complain about difficulty of hearing the speech. The reason could be the quality of speech through digital hearing aid is insufficient to understand the speech caused by feedback, residual noise and etc. And another thing is masking effect among formants that makes sound quality low. In this study, we measured the masking characteristics of normal listeners and hearing impaired listeners having presbyacusis to confirm masking effect in speech itself. The experiment is composed of 5 tests; pure tone test, speech reception threshold (SRT) test, word recognition score (WRS) test, puretone masking test and speech masking test. In speech masking test, there are 25 speeches in each speech set. And log likelihood ratio (LLR) is introduced to evaluate the distortion of each speech objectively. As a result, the speech perception became lower by increasing the quantity of formant enhancement. And each enhanced speech in a speech set has statistically similar LLR, however speech perception is not. It means that acoustic masking effect rather than distortion influences speech perception. In actuality, according to the result of frequency analysis of the speech that people can not answer correctly, level difference between first formant and second formant is about 35dB, and it is similar to result of pure tone masking test(normal hearing subject:36.36dB, hearing impaired subject:32.86dB). Characteristics of masking effect is not similar between normal listeners and hearing impaired listeners. So it is required to check the characteristics of masking effect before wearing a hearing aid and to apply this characteristics to fitting.

• BMB Reports
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.6-12
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• 2015

Various biological molecules naturally existing in diversified species including fungi, bacteria, and bacteriophage have functionalities for DNA binding and processing. The biological molecules have been recently actively engineered for use in customized genome editing of mammalian cells as the molecule-encoding DNA sequence information and the underlying mechanisms how the molecules work are unveiled. Excitingly, multiple novel methods based on the newly constructed artificial molecular tools have enabled modifications of specific endogenous genetic elements in the genome context at efficiencies that are much higher than that of the conventional homologous recombination based methods. This minireview introduces the most recently spotlighted molecular genome engineering tools with their key features and ongoing modifications for better performance. Such ongoing efforts have mainly focused on the removal of the inherent DNA sequence recognition rigidity from the original molecular platforms, the addition of newly tailored targeting functions into the engineered molecules, and the enhancement of their targeting specificity. Effective targeted genome engineering of mammalian cells will enable not only sophisticated genetic studies in the context of the genome, but also widely-applicable universal therapeutics based on the pinpointing and correction of the disease-causing genetic elements within the genome in the near future.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.37-61
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is to identify (1) the successful quality management activities of domestic enterprises contribute to enhancing both corporate and national competitiveness and that the corporate and national competitiveness are related each other; (2) and to have the government and the citizens as well as enterprises re-recognize the importance of quality management and encourage them to make aggressive investments on quality management. It was found in this study that the enterprises with quality management scheme showed better performance that those without quality management activities. It was also found that quality competitiveness is a key factor for the enhancement of the national competitiveness, and that although quality improvement is normally realized through efforts of private enterprises (a conventional paradigm), active government support and participation are absolutely necessary for the competitiveness of the nation and industries. Accordingly, the quality management should be recognized not only as part of business improvement activities, but as nationwide activities where public sectors including government enterprises, hospitals, schools, regional governments, media companies and citizens groups are involved. In order to build a high-quality nation in the 21st century, the quality improvement should be realized through concerted efforts of the people, enterprises and the government.

• BMB Reports
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.308-314
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• 1997

We investigated biotinylation of nitrocellulose membrane for immuno-filtration capture assay. In order to enhance the efficiency of biotinylation, nitrocellulose membranes were pretreated with several chemicals for the purpose of suitable protein absorption through surface modification. As a signal generating enzyme, urease was used and the concentration of avidin was optimized for the efficient binding kinetics between urease-biotin in liquid phase and biotinylated membrane in solid phase. For effective biotinylation, bovine serum albumin-biotin complexes could be immobilized at a concentration of $370\;{\mu}g$/stick ($4.4\;cm^2$). Among tested chemicals, polylysine (0.25%) showed a significant effect in biotinylation. Polylysine is thought to enhance surface area by extending unbound residues into solution. Time of treatment over 30 min and higher molecular weight of polylysines (58,100 dalton) showed positive effect on the enhancement of biotinylation. The result from this study may be useful for developing a new biosensor and other biofunctional membranes for examining molecular recognition.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.303-316
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• 2004

Recently, with the improvement of national income, the increase of int e rest in the consumers, health, and the enhancement of recognition of environment the demands of environmental-friendly agricultural products(EFAPs) are on the rise rapidly. The demand in the market for EFAPs increases rapidly, and the sales amount increases by 30~40% every year. But, it is in situation that the EFAPs arc not distributed well between the producers and consumers now. That is, the producers of EFAPs can not End th e ir markets. And, the consumers do not trust the EFAPs. Also, it is in situation that it is difficult to promote the demand because of relatively higher prices than the general agricultural products. To solve these problems, it may be summed up as follows. First, it needs to reduce the distribution cost by the construction of stable supply basis. Second, it needs to improve the distribution system of EFAPs. Third, it needs to enhance the differentiation and improve the consumers, reliability. Fourth, it needs to make in brand and extend the various publicities. Fifth, it needs to construct the supporting system and enhance the cooperation with the related institutions. Sixth, it needs to End new demand and introduce the procurement system by the government.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.240-258
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• 2006

The potential of ecosystem-based fisheries management is recently recognized to be very important to improve the sustainability of fisheries resources. Under the depressed condition of many fisheries resources, this recognition has been expanded and more effort has been taken to improve this approach. Taking ecosystem concept includes the use of other tools of management in addition to fisheries regulation, such as stock and productivity enhancement, provision of physical structure, or marine protected areas. In the ecosystem-based fisheries management approach, it would require to holistically consider ecological interactions of target species with predators, competitors, and prey species, the effects of climate on fisheries ecology, the complex interactions between fishes and their habitat, and the effects of fishing on fish stocks and their ecosystem. Fisheries management based upon the understanding of these factors can prevent significant and potentially irreversible changes in marine ecosystems caused by fishing. A useful approach for analyzing tropho-dynamic interactions and mass-balance in marine ecosystems is introduced to demonstrate the complexity and usefulness of the ecosystem approach, which was applied to a small ecosystem in Korea. Korea should seriously consider to take the ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management, since most major fish stocks are currently depleted due to many reasons such as overfishing, land reclamation and coastal pollution.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.1-22
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• 2004

Internet commerce has the potential to propel a company to "break out" of existing strategic constraints and radically alter business processes, strengthen customer and supplier ties, and open up new markets. Therefore, many firms have rushed into internet commerce to conduct business more efficiently, create new business opportunities, and generate business value. Since internet shopping mall not only become a valuable channel for selling goods to customers, but also offer companies an important vehicle for attaining competitive advantages in the new digital economy, the design and content of internet shopping mall must reflect its business goals and customers' needs. However, as little empirical evidence on the effect of internet shopping mall contribution of firm performance exist, the functionality of a firm's internet shopping mall has been decided voluntarily from its business experience. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the marketing functional characteristics of internet shopping mall and its performance. 125 questionnaires from internet shopping malls which sell physical goods direct to an individual end consumer were collected. The results showed that some factors(price, product recognition, reliability enhancement) affect positive effects on the performance of internet shopping mall.