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In this paper, we address a system that can accurately locate and monitor work tools in a complex assembly process, such as automotive production. Our positioning monitoring system is positioned by a combined sensor of the UWB module and the MEMS IMU (inertial measuring unit) sensor based on the extended Kalman filter. The MEMS IMU sensor provides the positioning calibration information. The proposed method incorporates IMU and UWB positioning to compensate for errors that can only occur in UWB positioning through the extended Kalman filter (EKT). This EKT is improved by the error dynamic equation derived from the sparse state-space matrix. Also, the proposed method computes the transmission time and distance between the tag and anchor of the UWB module by the TWR (two-way range) system. The tag of a mobile node, which is attached to a moving tool, measures the position of the work tool and transmits the position coordinate data to the anchor. Here, the proposed method uses the trilateration localization method by the confidence distance compensation to prevent the distance error by obstacles and changes in the indoor environment. Experimental results verified that the proposed method confirms whether a specific tool is accurately used according to the prescribed regulations and has more positioning accuracy than the conventional methods.

Obesity is characterized as a chronic, low-grade inflammation state accompanied by the infiltration of immune cells into adipose tissue and higher levels of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. This study aimed to investigate the mechanisms and effects of Coptidis Rhizoma (CR) on obesity and its associated inflammation. First, we applied a network pharmacology strategy to search the target genes and pathways regulated by CR in obesity. Next, we performed in vivo experiments to confirm the antiobesity and anti-inflammatory effects of CR. Mice were assigned to five groups: normal chow (NC), control (high-fat diet (HFD)), HFD + CR 200 mg/kg, HFD + CR 400 mg/kg, and HFD + metformin 200 mg/kg. After 16 weeks of the experimental period, CR administration significantly reduced the weight of the body, epididymal fat, and liver, it also decreased insulin resistance, as well as the area under the curve of glucose in the oral glucose tolerance test and triglyceride in the oral fat tolerance test. We observed a decrease in adipose tissue macrophages (ATMs) and inflammatory M1 ATMs, as well as an increase in anti-inflammatory M2 ATMs. Gene expression levels of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines, including tumor necrosis factor-α, F4/80, and C-C motif chemokine (CCL)-2, CCL4, and CCL5, were suppressed in adipose tissue in the CR groups than levels in the control group. Additionally, histological analyses suggested decreased fat accumulation in the epididymal fat pad and liver in the CR groups than that in the control group. Taken together, these results suggest that CR has a therapeutic effect on obesity-induced inflammation, and it functions through the inhibition of macrophage-mediated inflammation in adipose tissue.

Background Finding a material that supports bone regeneration is the concern for many investigators. We supposed that a composite scaffold of poly(ε) caprolactone and β-tricalcium phosphate (PCL-TCP) would entail desirable characteristics of biocompatibility, bioresorbability, rigidity, and osteoconductivity for a proper guided bone regeneration. Furthermore, the incorporation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) would boost the bone regeneration. We conducted this study to evaluate the bone regeneration capacity of PCL-TCP scaffold that is loaded with MSCs and PRP. Materials and methods Five miniature pigs received 6 implants in 6 created-mandibular bony defects in the right and left lower premolar areas. The bony defects were managed according to the following three groups: the PCL-TCP scaffold loaded with MSCs and PRP (MSCs+PRP+PCL-TCP) group (n = 10), PCL-TCP scaffold loaded with PRP (PRP+PCL-TCP) group (n = 10), and PCL-TCP scaffold group (n = 10). After 12 weeks, the bone regeneration was assessed using fluorochrome bone labeling, μCT bone morphogenic analysis, and histomorphometric analysis. Results All of the three groups supported the bone regeneration around the dental implants. However, the PCL-TCP scaffold loaded with MSCs and PRP (MSCs+PRP+PCL-TCP) group showed non-significant higher bone surface, bone specific surface, and bone surface density than the other two groups as revealed by the μCT bone morphogenic analysis. Histologically, the same group revealed higher bone-implant contact ratio (BIC) (p = 0.017) and new bone height formation (NBH, mm) (p = 0.0097) with statistically significant difference compared to the PCL-TCP scaffold group. Conclusions PCL-TCP scaffold is compatible for bone regeneration in bone defects surrounding dental implants. Moreover, the incorporation of MSCs and PRP optimized the bone regeneration process with respect to the rate of scaffold replacement, the height of the regenerated bone, and implant stability.

Background. Obesity is a chronic low-grade systemic inflammation state, which causes insulin resistance, diabetes, and other metabolic diseases. Baicalin is known to have anti-inflammatory and antiobesity effects. In this study, we investigated the cellular and molecular immunological effects of baicalin on obesity-induced inflammation. Methods. Male C57BL/6 mice were assigned to four groups: the normal chow, high-fat diet (HFD), BC2 (HFD + baicalin 200 mg/kg), and BC4 (HFD + baicalin 400 mg/kg) group; the three groups except normal chow were fed with a high-fat diet for 8 weeks to induce obesity followed by baicalin treatment with two doses for 8 weeks. The body weight, epididymal fat weight, liver weight, food intake, oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), oral fat tolerance test (OFTT), and serum lipids were measured. We evaluated insulin resistance by measuring the serum insulin level and homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR). Also, the major obesity-associated immune cells including monocytes, macrophages, T lymphocytes, and dendritic cells in the blood, fat, and liver and the inflammatory and insulin signaling-related gene expressions in the fat and liver were evaluated. Results. Baicalin significantly reduced the body weight and liver weight and improved serum fasting glucose, insulin, HOMA-IR, free fatty acid, HDL cholesterol, and the levels of glucose and triglyceride at each time point in the OGTT and OFTT. In the analysis of immune cells, baicalin significantly decreased inflammatory Ly6Chi monocytes, M1 adipose tissue macrophages (ATMs), and M1 Kupffer cells. On the contrary, baicalin increased anti-inflammatory M2 ATMs and liver CD4+ T cells and CD4/CD8 ratio. In the analysis of inflammatory and insulin signaling molecules, baicalin significantly downregulated the gene expression of tumor necrosis factor-α, F4/80, and C-C motif chemokine 2 while upregulated the insulin receptor mRNA expression. Conclusion. From these results, baicalin can be a promising treatment option for obesity and its related metabolic diseases based on its anti-inflammatory property.

Anthropomorphic animal face masking is the process where human characteristics are plotted on the animal kinds. The term anthropomorphic derived from anthropomorphism, which means displaying animals, gods, and other objects as if they are human in appearance, character, or behavior. In this research, we are proposing a compact automatic Control Point selection system based morphing process. Our compact system contains the Viola-Jones algorithm based Control Point selection system that detects facial features for the human face and takes the Control Points automatically. In addition, for the animal face Control Points, we made a predefined animal face set containing their corresponding Control Points. The whole process is done by firstly finding the Control Points and secondly, doing triangulation based morphing between the particular human face and the animal face. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed morphing method produces less deformation and at the same time manages to complete the morphing process without any human assistance.

The demand on the security and reliability of the communication and data link of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is much higher since the environment of the modern battlefield is becoming more and more complex. Since the UAV communication link and its reliability evaluation represent an arduous field, we have concentrated our work on this topic. A UAV communication channel is a key factor that can affect the performance of the data link in terms of high data rate and reliable transmission of information. Moreover, the wireless communication channel opens up the door for several types of remote attacks. Therefore, the communication channel between the vehicle and ground control station (GCS) should be secure and has to provide an efficient data link. For this purpose, we have investigated the one-time pad (OTP) encryption technique for a UAV communication system. The comparative results present that OTP has better performance in terms of accuracy and execution time than other encryption algorithms.

The CDMA service coverage is split into different cells. If the available resource in a cell is not sufficient to supply the user's requirement, that cell becomes a hot-spot. As a result, the call will be clogged. The hot-spot causes the high blocking probability. Therefore, various methods including channel borrowing, cell overlaying, adaptive cell sectorization and so on, have been mentioned in many papers. In this paper, we proposed a beam reassignment method (BR) to diminish the call-blocking probability of one hot-beam and multi-service CDMA. A simulation result shows the effectiveness of the BR method in a hot-spot in two and three service-classes.

The complete analysis of the images representing the human epithelial cells of type 2, commonly referred to as HEp-2 cells, is one of the most important tasks in the diagnosis procedure of various autoimmune diseases. The problem of the automatic classification of these images has been widely discussed since the unfolding of deep learning-based methods. Certain datasets of the HEp-2 cell images exhibit an extreme complexity due to their significant heterogeneity. We propose in this work a method that tackles specifically the problem related to this disparity. A dynamic learning process is conducted with different networks taking different input variations in parallel. In order to emphasize the localized changes in intensity, the discrete wavelet transform is used to produce different versions of the input image. The approximation and detail coefficients are fed to four different deep networks in a parallel learning paradigm in order to efficiently homogenize the features extracted from the images that have different intensity levels. The feature maps from these different networks are then concatenated and passed to the classification layers to produce the final type of the cellular image. The proposed method was tested on a public dataset that comprises images from two intensity levels. The significant heterogeneity of this dataset limits the discrimination results of some of the state-of-the-art deep learning-based methods. We have conducted a comparative study with these methods in order to demonstrate how the dynamic learning proposed in this work manages to significantly minimize this heterogeneity related problem, thus boosting the discrimination results.

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This paper presents the quench initiation and propagation characteristics of no-insulation racetrack coils wound using three types of Cu-stabilized GdBCO coated conductors (CCs), with SUS and brass laminations, and without lamination. The test results show that the minimum quench energy values of the brass-laminated GdBCO CC coil were larger than those of the SUS-laminated one. Moreover, the normal zone propagation velocities of the brass-laminated GdBCO CC coil were greater than those of the SUS-laminated one due to the higher thermal conductivity of brass. Moreover, the nonlaminated GdBCO CC coil exhibited greatly improved thermal stability compared to the brass/SUS-laminated GdBCO CC coils, because the local heat in the event of quenching was easily dissipated due to the absence of lamination.

This paper deals with the low-pass filtering characteristic of the axial magnetic field of no-insulation and partial-insulation high temperature superconducting (HTS) coils carrying a dc-biased ac current. Recently, the no-insulation winding technique has been issued as a key technique to enhance the performance of HTS coils in terms of the overall current density, thermal stability, and mechanical integrity. In this paper, to verify the effect of time-varying external distortion on no-insulation HTS coils, an experimental analysis is carried on three HTS coils-insulation, no-insulation, and partial-insulation coils. To simulate the environment in which time-varying external distortion influences the HTS coils, a dc-biased ac current is carried by the HTS coils. The axial magnetic fields of no-insulation, partial insulation, and insulation HTS coils are experimentally tested and analyzed. When the coils carry a dc-biased ac current, the no-insulation and partial-insulation coils have a tendency to attenuate the high-frequency components and to act as a low-pass filter on the axial magnetic field; however, the insulation coil does not attenuate the high-frequency components of the axial magnetic field. The analysis of the experimental results can be useful data for the adoption of no-insulation and partial-insulation windings in superconducting applications.

The quench and recovery characteristics of two GdBCO-coated conductor racetrack coils, one wound onto a high-strength aluminum (AL 6061-T6) bobbin and the other wound onto an oxygen-free high-conductivity (OFHC) copper bobbin, were evaluated to investigate the effect of bobbin material on the thermal stability of the HTS racetrack coil. The test results show that the minimum quench energy values of the coil wound onto the OFHC copper bobbin were larger than those of the coil wound onto the AL 6061-T6 bobbin. Furthermore, in the case of the coil wound onto the OFHC copper bobbin, the voltage signals increased more slowly compared to the coil wound onto the AL bobbin, and the recovery time was much shorter after a hot spot was generated by a heater. Overall, the coil wound onto the OFHC copper bobbin exhibited better thermal stability due to its superior thermal diffusivity.

Currently, there are many applications used vector map data widely. But the production of vector map consumes a lot of money and human resource while vector map data is bought by any user or attacked by pirates, and then they distributed vector map data easily without permission from providers. So, provider desires a method to encrypt vector map data before storing and transmitting to ensure the access control and prevent illegal copying of it. This paper presents a perceptual encryption method for vector map data based on encrypting geometric objects in the frequency domain of discrete cosine transform. Geometric objects in vector map are changed by geometric transformations. After that, they are encrypted selectivity in the frequency domain of discrete cosine transform to obtain encrypted objects. In experiments, vector map data is changed entirely after encryption process, and the proposed method is very effective for a large of vector map datasets.

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of acupuncture on urinary incontinence and to discuss why these acupoints were selected. Seven databases were searched for any randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that investigated the use of acupuncture or acupressure as a treatment for urinary incontinence, and the Cochrane risk of bias tool was utilized to evaluate the risk of bias in each study. Four RCTs met all the inclusion criteria. The results from the selected RCTs failed to demonstrate any statistically significant improvements in urinary incontinence, although acupuncture or acupressure did exhibit favorable effects on overactive bladder symptoms and quality of life, in comparison with other conventional therapies. There have been limited results supporting acupuncture or acupressure as an effective treatment method for urinary incontinence; therefore, further RCTs are required to confirm the effectiveness of acupuncture or acupressure in the treatment of urinary incontinence.

In Korea, the safety climate of working environments is a crucial aspect of the issue of establishing an industrial accident-prevention policy. However, there have been insufficient studies on safety climate in South Korean working environments. The purpose of this study is to examine the safety climate factors that influence a safe working environment using a South Korean sample. A total of 500 surveys targeting manufacturing industry employees were conducted, and 131 valid samples were used for evaluation. Safety knowledge, safety compliance, safety motivation, and safe working environment were established as the main factors affecting safety climate awareness, and structural equation modeling was performed to confirm significant relationships. Out of eight hypotheses, three were rejected, and safety knowledge and safety motivation were shown to have no statistically significant effect on the safeness of the work environment. This result reflects the limitations of South Korea’s government-led Occupational Safety and Health training and promotion programs and of systematic knowledge transfer and the encouragement of participation.

OBJECTIVES: Authors investigated the pattern of the rate of occupational injuries and illnesses (ROII) at the level of enterprises in order to build a network for exchange of experience and knowledge, which would contribute to workers' safety and health through safety climate of workplace. METHODS: Occupational accidents were analyzed at the manufacturing work site unit. A two step clustering process for the past patterns regarding the ROII from 2001 to 2009 was investigated. The ROII patterns were categorized based on regression analysis and the patterns were further divided according to the subtle changes with Mahalanobis distance and Ward's linkage. RESULTS: The first clustering of ROII through regression analysis showed 5 different functions; 29 work sites of the linear function, 50 sites of the quadratic function, 95 sites of the logarithm function, 62 sites of the exponential function, and 54 sites of the sine function. Fourteen clusters were created in the second clustering. There were 3 clusters in each function categorized in the first clustering except for sine function. Each cluster consisted of the work sites with similar ROII patterns, which had unique characteristics. CONCLUSION: The five different patterns of ROII suggest that tailored management activities should be applied to every work site. Based on these differences, the authors selected exemplary work sites and built a network to help the work sites to share information on safety climate and accident prevention measures. The causes of different patterns of ROII, building network and evaluation of this management model should be evaluated as future researches. Language: en

The SIP(Session Initation Protocol) is an application layer protocol that is used to establish, release, and change the call session of the IP telephony. In the SIP signalling networks, when the number of the UA(User Agent) requested the call session increase, the number of messages to be processed by SIP proxy server increase. It often will be caused the overload of the SIP proxy server. In this paper, we proposed the overload control method with a normal queue and a delay queue in the SIP proxy server. When it is estimated the overload of the server by the excess of the high threshold in the normal queue, new INVITE messages will be put into the delay queue to reduce the load of the server. It results in some delay of the call session from the INVITE message. Subsequently when the number of messages in the normal queue is reduced below the low threshold, the INVITE messages in the delay queue is processed. The simulation results showed that the number of the retransmission messages by our proposed method was 45% less than the one by the method with single queue. The results also showed that the average call success rate by the proposed method was 2% higher than the one by the method with single queue.

Long working hours adversely affect workers' safety and health. In 2004, Korea passed legislation limiting the working week to 40 h, to improve quality-of-life and to increase business competitiveness. In the present study, we explored the characteristics of work in Korea and compared our data of the second Korean Working Conditions Survey (KWCS) with those of the first KWCS. We found that the average number of hours worked weekly has been reduced but the proportions of workers who work for more than 48 h per week has increased over the 4 yr between the two Korean surveys in all categories studied (male, female, employee, self-employed, and employer). We also found that self-employed and employers work much longer hours than do employees, who are protected by the Labor Standards Act. This was particularly true in the accommodation and food service sectors. In conclusion, Korean workers work longer than do workers of EU countries. The use of average figures masks differences in the numbers of working hours among those engaged in various types of employment, or in certain work sectors. Therefore, the Korean government should not simply monitor reductions in average weekly working hours, but should identify employees working for over 60 h weekly, and reduce their working time.

Objectives: In Korea, an average of 258 workers claim compensation for their noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) on an annual basis. Indeed, hearing disorder ranks first in the number of diagnoses made by occupational medical check-ups. Against this backdrop, this study analyzed the impact of 19 types of noise-generating machines and equipment on the sound pressure levels in workplaces and NIHL occurrence based on a 2009 national survey on work environments. Methods: Through this analysis, a series of statistical models were built to determine posterior probabilities for each worksite with an aim to present risk ratings for noise levels at work. Results: It was found that air compressors and grinding machines came in first and second, respectively in the number of installed noise-generating machines and equipment. However, there was no direct relationship between workplace noise and NIHL among workers since noise-control equipment and protective gear had been in place. By building a logistic regression model and neural network, statistical models were set to identify the influence of the noise-generating machines and equipment on workplace noise levels and NIHL occurrence. Conclusion: This study offered NIHL prevention measures which are fit for the worksites in each risk grade.

대두는 여러 종류의 파이토케미컬을 함유하고 있으며 이에 의한 항산화, 항염증, 항비만 효능 등이 있음이 잘 알려져 있다. 대두 부산물 성분의 비만억제효능을 확인하기 위하여 Oil-Red O 염색법과 정량 PCR을 통하여 지방세포분화억제 및 지방생성억제 효능을 분석하였다. 분화유도물질인 isobutylmethylanthine (IBMX), ...

Objectives: The occupational accident rate was officially reported to be 0.77 per 100 workers in 2001 and 0.70 in 2009. The stagnant decrease in accident rate raises a question about the effectiveness of prevention activity because there have been active prevention efforts in the past 10 years. It is also necessary to know the exact status of occupational injuries to direct a prevention strategy. Methods: The author re-analyzed occupational injury statistics to find the reason for stagnant decreases in occupational injuries. Compensated occupational injuries cases were used to calculate fatal and non-fatal injury rates. Injuries from commuting accidents and sports activities were excluded as well as occupational diseases. The number of workers was adjusted to that of full time equivalent employees. Results: The fatal injury rate excluding injuries associated with commuting accidents, sports activities, and occupational diseases decreased from 12.59 in 2001 to 8.20 in 2009. In 2007, 67.5% of accidents that involved being caught in objects, which are mostly caused by machines and equipment, occurred in the manufacturing industry; this type of incident has decreased since 2001. The fatal and non-fatal injury rates in the manufacturing industry have continuously decreased while the rates in the service industry have not changed from 2001 to 2009. Non-fatal injuries might not be reported in many cases. The number of insured workers was underestimated as long working hours were not adjusted for in the reporting system. Conclusion: The occupational fatal injury rate has decreased and the non-fatal injury rate might have decreased during the last 10 years, although the statistics show stagnancy. The decrease of the injury rate was countervailed by various factors. Hence, the current accident rate does not reflect the actual situation of accidents in Korea. Korea needs to develop an improved system to more accurately calculate occupational fatal and non-fatal injury rates.

A plastic fraction consisting mainly of polyurethane/styrofoam waste is generated after separating valuable spare parts and metals from used electrical home appliances. In Korea, such waste is currently incinerated in cement kilns or is landfilled. However, owing to its high volatile matter content, conversion into gaseous or liquid pyrolysis products is a preferable alternative. A pyrolysis process of polyurethane and styrofoam waste from electrical home appliances was evaluated by characterizing the products generated at 500°–800°C. The para meters determined were the yields of gas, oil, and char; the characteristics of the remaining char; and the con centration of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins/polychlorinated dibenzo-furans in the product gas. As expected, the char yield decreased at higher temperatures, whereas gas and oil yields showed increasing tendency. The oil products could be used as storable fuels with a calorific value of 6000–8000 kcal/kg. Fine pores were observed in the char. The adsorption and decolorizing ability of the char were almost the same as those of activated carbon, so that pyrolysis char has potential for use as a sorbent. Further feasibility studies will be needed before utilizing pyrolysis technology to recover either fuels or usable products from polyurethane/styrofoam waste.

A 900 mV single-stage class-AB amplifier suitable for the Switched-Opamp technique is presented. To improve the slew-limited characteristics, a Dynamic Current Source (DCS) circuit which boosts the tail currents of the amplifier is proposed. The tail current of the proposed circuit is well defined and independent of technology parameters and supply variations. The tail current of the amplifier is 40 μA with zero differential voltages, while the maximum output current is nearly 900 μA. A single-loop 3rd order Σ-Δ modulator with the proposed amplifier was designed. For a 260 mV 15.625 kHz sinusoidal input signal, the simulated dynamic range of the modulator is 89 dB.

In this paper, a novel 800 mV beta-multiplier reference current source circuit is presented. In order to cope with the narrow input common-mode range of the Opamp in the reference circuit, the resistive voltage divider was employed. High gain Opamp was designed to compensate for the intrinsic low output resistance of the MOS transistors. The proposed reference circuit was designed in a standard 0.18 μm CMOS process with nominal V th of 420mV and -450mV for n-MOS and p-MOS transistor, respectively. The total power consumption including Opamp is less than 50μW.

3D content-based hashing has not been as widely used as compared to 2D content-based hashing in the case of multimedia content such as images and videos. In this study, we develop a robust 3D mesh-model hashing based on a heat kernel signature (HKS) that can describe a multi-scale shape curve and is robust against isometric modifications; we also discuss the robustness, uniqueness, security, and model space of the hash for 3D model hashing.

When the multiple video sources are transmitted together through the channel of fixed bandwidth, an efficient joint bandwidth allocation is necessary. This paper presents a joint bandwidth allocation method to satisfy the user requirements that the bandwidths for each sources are assigned to allow differentially the certain picture quality levels according to their priorities. We first find a model of distortion and bitrate for the multiplexing system of multiple sources. Then we obtain the bitrate for each source to keep the required distortion level among the sources by using approximate model parameters for simple implementation. It is shown by simulation that the proposed bandwidth allocation method can keep almost the user-required picture quality level among the sources in comparison to an independent bandwidth allocation method.

A pulsed-laser beam was used to induce the conversion of a sulfonium precursor polymer into the light-emitting conjugated polymer, poly(p-phenylene vinylene) (PPV). The light-emitting PPV could be prepared by way of a conversion process using a XeCl excimer laser and simultaneously patterning a thin polymer line on a substrate. The main advantage of the method used in this study over the conventional method, thermal annealing, is the short tack time. It also has the possibility of easily patterning the conjugated polymer via a wet-processing route through the selective irradiation of a pulsed-laser beam for pixel formation. The surface morphology of the polymer film converted by laser annealing was superior to that of the film converted by thermal annealing.

The virtual cell loss rate was introduced for the training pattern of the neural network in the VOB(Virtual Output Buffer) model. The VOB model shows that the neural network can find the connection admission boundary without the real cell loss rate. But the VOB model tends to overestimate the cell loss rate, so the utilization of network is low. In this paper, we uses the reference curve of the cell loss rate, which contains the information about the cell loss rate at the connection admission boundary. We process the patterns of the virtual cell loss rate using the reference curve, We performed the simulation with two major ATM traffic classes. One is On-Off traffic class that has the traffic characteristic of LAN data and other is Auto-Regressive traffic class that has the traffic characteristic of a video image communication.