• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.435-444
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• 2011

The development of ubiquitous healthcare technology and portable electronic devices requires new energy sources for providing continuous power supply. This study particularly focuses on an energy harvesting system capable of charging energy using clothing. One of the sources for energy harvesting is heat energy, which is the difference in temperature of the body and the surrounding environment. In this study, the skin temperature distribution of the human body was empirically measured to determine the basic materials needed to develop heat energy harvesting clothing. The distribution of skin temperature in different sections of the human body was analyzed. The analysis found that the skin temperature of the upper body was higher than that of the lower body. The area close to the heart with a lot of blood flow was especially high. The skin temperature of the back side of the body, such as the back of the neck, upper back, and waist, was higher than that of the front side of the body. As for the arms, the skin temperature of the upper arms was higher than that of the lower arms, and the skin temperature of the back side of the arms was lower than that of the front and the flank side of the arms. The difference in the average skin temperature and the environment temperature was highest at the back of the neck, and thereby is considered to be the most appropriate section to integrate the heat energy harvesting function and structure. The following sections had the next highest difference in values, listed in descending order: the back of the waist, the sides of shoulders, the front chest area, the front side of the upper arms, and the front abdomen. Based on the skin temperatures of the different sections of the human body, this study outlines the basic guidelines for developing heat energy harvesting clothing.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.330-341
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the film 'The Island' on 2nd year nursing students' nursing informatics (NI) competency. The participants were sixty-eight students in a baccalaureate nursing program of a private university, taking the course, 'Nursing & Informatics' in the 2012 fall semester. Over the 15 weeks, the film was used for five weeks as introduction to NI, peer-to-group discussions, and self-reflection on lessons learned regarding NI. A qualitative content analysis was used to explore the students' experiences and perceptions on their NI competency. As a result, students signified the NI concept as the assessment of biometrics data, promotion of optimal health with the support of various technologies, and integration of patient-centered care into routine practice. They also highlighted the importance of security and safety measures as well as high quality health technology including the ubiquitous health monitoring system. Overall, the lesson outcomes of the course were met. As a supportive, instructional strategy, the use of the movie, 'The Island', was effective for nursing students in achieving NI competencies. Further study is warranted to determine if movies can be used as a means of continuing education to improve informatics competences in healthcare professionals.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.64-70
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• 2011

Portable artificial electronic nose (E-nose) system suffers from noisy fluctuation in surroundings such as temperature, vapor concentration, and gas flow, because its measuring condition is not controled precisely as in the laboratory. It is important to develop a simple and robust vapor recognition technique applicable to this uncontrolled measurement, especially for the portable measuring and diagnostic system which are expanding its area with the improvements in micro bio sensor technology. This study used a PDA-based portable E-nose to collect the uncontrolled vapor measurement signals, and applied the image matching algorithm developed in the previous study on the measured signal to verify its robustness and improved accuracy in portable vapor recognition. The results showed not only its consistent performance under noisy fluctuation in the portable measurement signal, but also an advanced recognition accuracy for 2 similar vapor species which have been hard to discriminate with the conventional maximum sensitivity feature extraction method. The proposed method can be easily applied to the data processing of the ubiquitous sensor network (USN) which are usually exposed to various operating conditions. Furthermore, it will greatly help to realize portable medical diagnostic and environment monitoring system with its robust performance and high accuracy.