• Title/Summary/Keyword: UsN

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Accuracy of Body Mass Index-defined Obesity Status in US Firefighters

  • Jitnarin, Nattinee;Poston, Walker S.C.;Haddock, Christopher K.;Jahnke, Sara A.;Day, Rena S.
    • Safety and Health at Work
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    • v.5 no.3
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    • pp.161-164
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    • 2014
  • Obesity is a significant problem affecting United States (US) firefighters. While body mass index (BMI) is widely used to diagnose obesity, its use for this occupational group has raised concerns about validity. We examined rates and types of misclassification of BMI-based obesity status compared to body fat percentage (BF%) and waist circumference (WC). Male career firefighters (N = 994) from 20 US departments completed all three body composition assessments. Mean BMI, BF%, and WC were $29kg/m^2$, 23%, and 97 cm, respectively. Approximately 33% and 15% of BF%- and WC-defined obese participants were misclassified as non-obese (false negatives) using BMI, while 8% and 9% of non-obese participants defined by BF% and WC standards were identified as obese (false positives) using BMI. When stratified by race/ethnicity, Pacific Islanders showed high rates of false positive misclassification. Precision in obesity classification would be improved by using WC along with BMI to determine firefighters' weight status.

Current Status of Nuclear Waste Management (and Disposal) in the United States

  • McMahon, K.;Swift, P.;Nutt, M.;Birkholzer, J.;Boyle, W.;Gunter, T.;Larson, N.;MacKinnon, R.;Sorenson, K.
    • Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology
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    • v.1 no.1
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    • pp.29-35
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    • 2013
  • The United States Department of Energy (US DOE) is conducting research and development (R&D) activities under the Used Fuel Disposition Campaign (UFDC) to support storage, transportation, and disposal of used nuclear fuel (UNF) and wastes generated by existing and future nuclear fuel cycles. R&D activities are ongoing at nine national laboratories, and are divided into storage, transportation and disposal. Storage R&D focuses on closing technical gaps related to extended storage of UNF. Transportation R&D focuses on ensuring transportability of UNF following extended storage, and addressing data gaps regarding nuclear fuel integrity, retrievability, and demonstration of subcriticality. Disposal R&D focuses on identifying geologic disposal options and addressing technical challenges for generic disposal concepts in mined repositories in salt, clay/shale, and granitic rocks, and deep borehole disposal. UFDC R&D goals include increasing confidence in the robustness of generic disposal concepts, reducing generic sources of uncertainty that may impact the viability of disposal concepts, and developing science and engineering tools to support the selection, characterization, and licensing of a repository. The US DOE has also initiated activities in the Nuclear Fuel Storage and Transportation (NFST) Planning Project to facilitate the development of an interim storage facility and to support transportation infrastructure in the near term.

Digital Scan Converter Algorithm for Ultrsound Sector Scanner (초음파 섹터 스캐너를 위한 디지털 스캔 변환 기법)

  • 김근호;오정환
    • Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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    • v.17 no.4
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    • pp.469-478
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    • 1996
  • In the conventional digital ultrasound scanner, the reflected signal is sampled either in polar coordinates of R-$\theta$ method, or in Cartesian coordinates of uniform ladder algorithm (ULA). The R-$\theta$ scan method necessitates a coordinate transform process which makes hardware complex in comparison with ULA scan mrthoA In spite of this complexity, R-$\theta$ method has a good resolution in ultrasonographic (US) image, since scan direction of the US imaging is a radial direction. In this paper, a new digital scan converter is proposed, which is named the radius uniform ladder algorithm (RULA). The RULA has the rome scan direction as the US scanning in the radial direction and as the display space in the $\theta$ direction. In tllis new approach, sampled points we uniformly distributed in each horizontal line i.n well as in each radial ray so that the data are displayed in the Cartesian coordinates by the 1-D interpolation process. The propped algorithm has an uniform resolution in the periphery and the center field in comparison with equi-angle ULA and equi-interval ULA. To extend the scan angle, concentric square raster sampling (CSRS) is adopted with reduction of discontinuities on the junctions between horizontal scan and vertical scan. The discontinuities are reduced by using the hmction filtering along the $\theta$ direction.

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Developing a Job Exposure Matrix of Work Organization Hazards in the United States: A Review on Methodological Issues and Research Protocol

  • Choi, BongKyoo
    • Safety and Health at Work
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    • v.11 no.4
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    • pp.397-404
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    • 2020
  • Background: Most job exposure matrices (JEMs) have been developed for chemical and physical hazards in the United States (US). In addition, the overall validity of most JEMs of work organization hazards using self-reported data in the literature remains to be further tested due to several methodological weaknesses. Methods: This paper aims to review important methodological issues with regard to a JEM of work organization hazards using self-report data and to present a research protocol for developing a four-axis (job titles, hazards, sex, and time) JEM of major work organization hazards using the US General Social Survey-Quality of Work-Life (GSS-QWL) data (2002-2018; N = 7,100 workers). Results: Five methodological weaknesses in existing JEMs of work organization hazards using self-report data were identified: having only two axes (hazard and occupation), using psychometrically weak items and scales, including scales having little interoccupational variability, unresolved optimal minimum numbers of subjects per occupation, and low accessibility. The methodological weaknesses were successfully addressed in the proposed research protocol. Conclusion: The work organization JEM to be developed will significantly facilitate and strengthen occupational epidemiological studies on work organization hazards and major health outcomes, improve national and occupational surveillance of work organization hazards, and promote interventions for a healthy work environment in the US.

A CLASS OF ARITHMETIC FUNCTIONS ON PSL2(ℤ), II

  • Spiegelhalter, Paul;Zaharescu, Alexandru
    • Bulletin of the Korean Mathematical Society
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    • v.51 no.2
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    • pp.443-455
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    • 2014
  • Atanassov introduced the irrational factor function and the strong restrictive factor function, which he defined as $I(n)=\displaystyle\prod_{p^{\alpha}||n}^{}p^{1/{\alpha}}$ and $R(n)=\displaystyle\prod_{p^{\alpha}||n}^{}p^{{\alpha}-1}$ in [2] and [3]. Various properties of these functions have been investigated by Alkan, Ledoan, Panaitopol, and the authors. In the prequel, we expanded these functions to a class of elements of $PSL_2(\mathbb{Z})$, and studied some of the properties of these maps. In the present paper we generalize the previous work by introducing real moments and considering a larger class of maps. This allows us to explore new properties of these arithmetic functions.

Generalized Binary Bent Sequences (일반화된 이진 Bent 시퀀스)

  • Gil, Gang-Mi;No, Jong-Seon;Shin, Dong-Joon
    • The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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    • v.27 no.1A
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    • pp.35-41
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    • 2002
  • In this paper, we generalize the family of binary bent sequences introduced by Olsen, Scholtz and Welch [2] to obtain the generalized binary bent sequences with optimal correlation and balance properties. The modified trace transform is introduced and it enables us to use linear function from ${F_{2^n}}$ to the intermediate field ${F_{2^e}}$, where e|n. If we choose e=1, our method becomes the conventional binary bent sequence case. Also, some examples are given which show that our construction gives the family of simple binary sequences with optimal correlation and balance properties.

Randomizing Sequences of Finite Length (유한 순서열의 임의화)

  • Huh, Myung-Hoe;Lee, Yong-Goo
    • The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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    • v.23 no.1
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    • pp.189-196
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    • 2010
  • It is never an easy task to physically randomize the sequence of cards. For instance, US 1970 draft lottery resulted in a social turmoil since the outcome sequence of 366 birthday numbers showed a significant relationship with the input order (Wikipedia, "Draft Lottery 1969", Retrieved 2009/05/01). We are motivated by Laplace's 1825 book titled Philosophical Essay on Probabilities that says "Suppose that the numbers 1, 2, ..., 100 are placed, according to their natural ordering, in an urn, and suppose further that, after having shaken the urn, to shuffle the numbers, one draws one number. It is clear that if the shuffling has been properly done, each number will have the same chance of being drawn. But if we fear that there are small differences between them depending on the order in which the numbers were put into the urn, we can decrease these differences considerably by placing these numbers in a second urn in the order in which they are drawn from the first urn, and then shaking the second urn to shuffle the numbers. These differences, already imperceptible in the second urn, would be diminished more and more by using a third urn, a fourth urn, &c." (translated by Andrew 1. Dale, 1995, Springer. pp. 35-36). Laplace foresaw what would happen to us in 150 years later, and, even more, suggested the possible tool to handle the problem. But he did omit the detailed arguments for the solution. Thus we would like to write the supplement in modern terms for Laplace in this research note. We formulate the problem with a lottery box model, to which Markov chain theory can be applied. By applying Markov chains repeatedly, one expects the uniform distribution on k states as stationary distribution. Additionally, we show that the probability of even-number of successes in binomial distribution with trials and the success probability $\theta$ approaches to 0.5, as n increases to infinity. Our theory is illustrated to the cases of truncated geometric distribution and the US 1970 draft lottery.

Fractional-N PLL Frequency Synthesizer Design (Fractional-N PLL (Phase-Locked Loop) 주파수 합성기 설계)

  • Kim Sun-Cheo;Won Hee-Seok;Kim Young-Sik
    • Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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    • v.42 no.7 s.337
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    • pp.35-40
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    • 2005
  • This paper proposes a fractional-N phase-locked loop (PLL) frequency synthesizer using the 3rd order ${\Delta}{\sum}$ modulator for 900MHz medium speed wireless link. The LC voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is used for the good phase noise property. To reduce the lock-in time, a charge pump has been developed to control the pumping current according to the frequency steps and the reference frequency is increased up to 3MHz. A 36/37 fractional-N divider is used to increase the reference frequency of the phase frequency detector (PFD) and to reduce the minimum frequency step simultaneously. A 3rd order ${\Delta}{\sum}$ modulator has been developed to reduce the fractional spur VCO, Divider by 8 Prescaler, PFD and Charge pump have been developed with 0.25um CMOS, and the fractional-N divider and the third order ${\Delta}{\sum}$ modulator have been designed with the VHDL code, and they are implemented through the FPGA board of the Xilinx Spartan2E. The measured results show that the output power of the PLL is about -lldBm and the phase noise is -77.75dBc/Hz at 100kHz offset frequency. The minimum frequency step and the maximum lock-in time are 10kHz and around 800us for the maximum frequency change of 10MHz, respectively.

The Performance Analysis of Digital Watermarking based on Merging Techniques

  • Ariunzaya, Batgerel;Chu, Hyung-Suk;An, Chong-Koo
    • Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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    • v.12 no.3
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    • pp.176-180
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    • 2011
  • Even though algorithms for watermark embedding and extraction step are important issue for digital watermarking, watermark selection and post-processing can give us an opportunity to improve our algorithms and achieve higher performance. For this reason, we summarized the possibilities of improvements for digital watermarking by referring to the watermark merging techniques rather than embedding and extraction algorithms in this paper. We chose Cox's function as main embedding and extraction algorithm, and multiple barcode watermarks as a watermark. Each bit of the multiple copies of barcode watermark was embedded into a gray-scale image with Cox's embedding function. After extracting the numbers of watermark, we applied the watermark merging techniques; including the simple merging, N-step iterated merging, recover merging and combination of iterated-recover merging. Main consequence of our paper was the fact of finding out how multiple barcode watermarks and merging techniques can give us opportunities to improve the performance of algorithm.

Comparison of Objective Functions for Feed-forward Neural Network Classifiers Using Receiver Operating Characteristics Graph

  • Oh, Sang-Hoon;Wakuya, Hiroshi
    • International Journal of Contents
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    • v.10 no.1
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    • pp.23-28
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    • 2014
  • When developing a classifier using various objective functions, it is important to compare the performances of the classifiers. Although there are statistical analyses of objective functions for classifiers, simulation results can provide us with direct comparison results and in this case, a comparison criterion is considerably critical. A Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) graph is a simulation technique for comparing classifiers and selecting a better one based on a performance. In this paper, we adopt the ROC graph to compare classifiers trained by mean-squared error, cross-entropy error, classification figure of merit, and the n-th order extension of cross-entropy error functions. After the training of feed-forward neural networks using the CEDAR database, the ROC graphs are plotted to help us identify which objective function is better.